AFGHANOTES #2

Afghan Children “Are at Greater Risk than Ever”

AFGHANOTES is the testimony of a team of Afghan journalists who are reporting for Outriders the events and daily life in Afghanistan since the Taliban swept into Kabul on August 15, 2021.

KABUL – Afghanistan. It is Monday, September 6th, 2021. A group of children are playing in Taliban-controlled Kabul. A boy sells coloured balloons just in the middle of traffic, motorcycles and cars. Children are the ones who have paid the heaviest price of conflict, and UNESCO fears that they, along with women, will suffer the most under the Taliban rule.

As the Taliban swept to power in Afghanistan, the population is facing several threats in the country with the second highest number of people facing hunger in the world, including drought, the effects of COVID-19, and conflict.

UNESCO warns that children in Afghanistan are “at greater risk than ever.”

#Violence

The children of Afghanistan have never known peace.

In 20 years of war:

33,000 children have been killed

or maimed, according to Save the Children. One child has been killed or injured every five hours in Afghanistan. The actual number of children who have suffered in the last 20 years of war is said to be much higher.

Millions of Afghan kids sleep every night with empty stomachs.

#Hunger

16,9 million people in Afghanistan

experience a high acute food insecurity, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization on United Nation (FAO), 

Afghanistan is facing the second largest hunger crisis in the world, after the Democratic Republic of the Congo (with almost 20 million hungry people), and followed by Yemen (16,1 million), Nigeria (13 million) and Ethiopia (12,9 million).

#School   

Over 4 million children are out of school,

according to UNICEF.

War has forced many children in Afghanistan to look for ways to earn a living.

#Home

Some 80,000 children have fled their homes

in the past two months alone, according to Save the Children. In total, more than 613,000 people in Afghanistan, including 362,000 kids, have been displaced over the past 12 months.  Today there are more than four million Internally Displaced People in Afghanistan, according to Amnesty International. 

Non Governmental Organizations fear a humanitarian catastrophe.

Photo: Zaki Daryabi