Kabul, November 22: Eight years after the US-led overthrow of the Taliban, children in Afghanistan are suffering disastrous levels of abuse, deprivation and mortality, officials said here on Sunday.
At a news conference marking the 20th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, officials said children’s rights were being neglected despite vast flows of Western aid into the country.
“Afghanistan has the highest infant mortality rate in the world,” said Catherine Mbengue, country representative for the UN children’s fund UNICEF.
“Seventy per cent of the population has no access to safe drinking water. Thirty per cent of children are involved in child labour. Forty-three per cent of girls are married under-age,” she said.
More than one in four children born in Afghanistan die before the age of five, according to UNICEF estimates, although recent research still due to be published suggests this level has been reduced to around one in five.
A member of Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission, Hamida Barmaki, said, “Violence against children in Afghanistan is widespread. Children are abused and insulted both in society and within homes.”
Hansjorg Kretschmer, head of the European Union’s representative office, said the country’s Child Protection Network had received 1,459 reports of sexual exploitation of children in 2008 but this was “the tip of the iceberg”.
–Agencies