Marriage or work – the choice Afghanistan children must make as crisis deepens: World Vision

Monday, August 15, 2022

• 53% of Afghan children in four provinces are acutely malnourished, new report shows.
• 7 out of 10 boys and over half of all girls surveyed are being sent to work instead of school.
• 66% of children showing signs of mental health issues.

August 15, 2022 – Children in Afghanistan are revealing painful stories of survival after being plunged into an “abyss of suffering” with the triple threats of starvation, early marriage and child labour.

World Vision Australia has today released a new report titled, Afghanistan: A Children’s Crisis, investigating how lives of parents, and children, have changed one year after the country’s political transition to the Taliban.

The report paints a bleak picture with more than 53 per cent of children in four north-western provinces classed as acutely malnourished – while countrywide, 95 per cent of people don’t have enough food.

In Badghis, Ghor, Faryab and Herat, the mean income for a household is just AU$1.35 a day.

Stories shared with World Vision staff include severely malnourished babies whose siblings have already died, children missing school to collect water due to drought, and young girls cowering in fear as the men they’d been promised to for marriage try to take them home.

One 12-year-old girl, Farida, told World Vision: “Getting a divorce is the only dream I have in my life”.

World Vision Australia CEO Daniel Wordsworth said the organisation had helped 1.1 million people in the past 12 months with food, access to clean water and other supplies, but needed to reach so many more. 

In the past year alone, the number of people facing acute hunger increased by 60 per cent to 18.9 million.

“This is a country in freefall. Life has been tough for a long time in Afghanistan, but it has only been exacerbated by political conflict, economic and climate driven events, and the lingering impact of the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said.

“The situation has become so bad that parents are having to make very difficult decisions as their children starve. They must either send them to work or arrange child marriage to ensure the family’s survival. Some families are telling us they can’t even access seeds to eat.”

The survey of more than 800 parents, caregivers and their children found that 7 out of 10 boys and over half of all girls were sent to work rather than attending school.

“Children are having their childhoods ripped away. Even pure survival is now a challenge for many of these children who have been drawn into an abyss of suffering.

“World Vision had made some hard-won development gains in the past two decades. We started to open doors for new opportunities and brighter futures for Afghanistan’s girls and boys. These are now at risk of being lost, forever. Children are experiencing significant mental health issues as a result of this crisis. Sixty six percent of the parents we spoke to shared that a child in their care had shown signs of psychosocial distress.”

The World Vision report also found that Afghanistan’s public health system was in turmoil, creating significant risks for women and children. Sixty-four percent of babies are delivered at home, and less than a third of births are attended by a skilled professional.

The report also highlights the contraction of maternal, newborn and child health services alongside the reduction of trained personnel, which was rolling back years of progress and contributing to a rise in infant and maternal mortality.

Daniel said World Vision had ramped up its response to the most urgent humanitarian needs in the past year, including the provision of food, clean water, health, nutritional and psychosocial support as well as protection and education services.

“World Vision has not forgotten about the people of Afghanistan, but we need Australians to remember them too,” Daniel said.

“A $30 million contribution to Afghanistan by the Australian government as part of a $150 million famine package to help tackle the Global Hunger Crisis, would be a great first step.”

You can read the report here: https://www.wvi.org/publications/afghanistan/afghanistan-childrens-crisis

To donate to World Vision Australia’s child hunger appeal, go to
https://www.worldvision.com.au/child-hunger-appeal.

Media contact: For further information or to organise an interview, please contact:
Head of Communications and Media
Andrew Hewett
+61 437 981 669
andrew.hewett@worldvision.com.au.

NOTE TO EDITORS:

World Vision began emergency relief operations in Afghanistan in 2001, addressing the humanitarian needs of children and their families affected by conflict and natural disaster. Over 20 years later, World Vision Afghanistan continues to partner with communities to provide a humanitarian response alongside early recovery, resilience, and development initiatives in the western provinces of Herat, Ghor, Badghis and Faryab.

World Vision Afghanistan works in the areas of maternal and child health, nutrition, providing clean water sanitation and hygiene, livelihood and food security, education, child protection and multi-purpose cash programming.

World Vision works in collaboration with communities holistically to respond, comprehensively meet basic needs, and promote recovery, resilience and community development.

Afghanistan: A Children’s Crisis provides an analysis of recent data on the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan and combines it with new primary research from four provinces – Herat, Ghor, Faryab and Badghis – along with the testimonies of children and their families, who describe, in their own words, how the worsening situation in Afghanistan is impacting them.

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