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One of the few aid organizations still working in Afghanistan is Unicef. The United Nations Children’s Fund describes Afghanistan as one of the most dangerous places for children. Bettina Junker from Unicef Switzerland describes what this means in concrete terms. She recently visited the country.
SRF News: How are the children in Afghanistan doing?
Bettina Junker: They’re not doing well – despite the many laughing children you see in the streets. Of the 43 million Afghans, half are children. And half, or around twelve million, urgently need humanitarian assistance. Three and a half million children under the age of five suffer acutely from malnutrition.
Many children are not doing well because they have no prospects at all.
Child mortality is one of the highest in the world. That’s what you see. What you don’t see is that many children are not doing well because they have no prospects at all. Especially not the girls. They are only allowed to go to school until the age of twelve. They are denied any further education or vocational training. You have no opportunity to develop or learn anything.
Compared to girls, boys in Afghanistan often have it better. Many of them can at least go to school. But they also lack prospects under the Taliban.
Reuters/Sayed Hassib
What is the state of school education in general?
Girls are only allowed to go to school until sixth grade. In principle, only half of all children of primary school age are enrolled in school anyway. Afghanistan is a country with 10,000 valleys and is extremely rural. In many places, children simply do not have time to go to school. Currently, 2.2 million girls over the age of twelve are excluded from any education.
Poverty is thus passed on to the next generation.
Many of them are married early, at the age of 14 or 15. And so they will pass on poverty to the next generation. The loss of future prospects has a very strong negative impact on the psychological well-being of these young women. Afghanistan is heading towards a future in which half of the population will be uneducated and will not be able to participate in the country’s economic development.
What can Unicef do to improve the situation of children?
In fact the conditions are very difficult. Afghanistan is also one of the countries most affected by climate change. There are floods and other natural disasters. This makes people even poorer and more needy. Economically the situation is desolate, there is no investment from abroad and no development. It is also difficult to reach people at all because of the many very remote regions.
We have reached three million girls at secondary level. This isn’t nothing.
But Unicef has been in Afghanistan for 75 years and we are in ongoing dialogue with the Taliban so that we have access to the people who need help. But that does not mean that we recognize the de facto Taliban regime. We have set up many offers in communities and small villages. There we often work with women who still have a basic level of education from before. They then teach primary and sometimes even secondary classes, including girls. There are also digital offerings via the Internet, television or radio. We have already reached three million girls at secondary school. This isn’t nothing.
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