Afghanistan
 Save the Children has been working to help improve the lives of Afghan children and families for nearly 20 years – years of war, political turmoil, drought and oppression. The challenges for the people of Afghanistan are daunting, especially for children and women.
Political and economic uncertainly as well as personal and community insecurity still prevail in much of Afghanistan. Although Kabul and one or two other cities are bustling with small-scale commerce and with reconstruction, most areas of the country remain undeveloped and insecure.
- The average Afghan household’s monthly income is $6.
- Child and maternal malnutrition remains pervasive because many families do not understand basic good nutrition and unfortunately, poverty prevents the ones that do from providing healthy meals to their children and women of childbearing age.
- There is limited access to quality health care throughout the country. For every 1,000 Afghan children born, 165 die within the first year, and one quarter of all Afghan children die before their fifth birthdays – the vast majority from preventable diseases.
- Women have little access to reproductive health services; the maternal mortality rate for Afghan women is one of the world’s worst.
- Access to quality education is limited, especially in rural areas. Although an estimated 6 million children are enrolled in school, attendance is uneven and drop out rates are high. Many millions of children are not enrolled in school at all.
- Although landmine education programs have been very successful in helping prevent disability, maiming and death, Afghanistan is still one of the world’s most heavily mined countries.
Since 1985, Save the Children has been responding to the needs of Afghan children and families through programs in health, economic opportunities and landmine education. More recently, we worked with communities and partners to provide emergency relief efforts when families in northern Afghanistan could no longer defend themselves against a prolonged devastating drought and also helped them to be better prepared for similar threats in the future.
Save the Children is building on all its past programs in health and nutrition; education, literacy and early childhood development; drought relief and food security; child protection and landmine education, and economic opportunities to implement programs that address the urgent and long-term needs of some of Afghanistan’s most vulnerable children and families. We know that a critical step in rebuilding Afghanistan is a guarantee of girls’ and mothers’ equal access to health care and education, and that their particular needs must be taken into account in all our efforts.
Health
In four provinces in northern Afghanistan, and in Kabul and Mazar-i Sharif cities, we work with families, communities and health care workers in homes, health posts, clinics and hospitals to promote the basic health, well being and survival of children under age five and the health of women who are and may become mothers. While Afghanistan is starting to provide basic health care services for many of its people – children, youth and adults – a priority continues to be immunization against deadly childhood diseases and the control of childhood diarrhea and pneumonia, which are also preventable causes of child death.
To maintain this focus, Save the Children encourages people – from school children to government health officials – to take part in improving the health of Afghan children and mothers. In addition to government health care leaders and administrators, we support doctors, nurses, other clinicians and, importantly, community health volunteers who staff home-based health posts in some of the poorest and most rural areas of northern Afghanistan. In addition to supporting individual health care workers, we are also helping them develop systems for health information management as well as medicines and supplies management – all in support of better health care for Afghan children and families.
As part of our family-focused activities, Save the Children staff and community volunteers educate adults and older children about ways to prevent childhood illnesses and how to recognize symptoms of sickness and seek prompt and proper treatment. Other activities promote very young children’s overall well being by helping parents and caregivers understand and lead healthy and appropriate pre-school play and learning activities. Still other activities educate older children about nutrition and immunization, for example, so they may help their parents and grandparents understand the importance of early, complete and continuing attention to preventive health care actions.
Education
In partnership with the Afghan Ministry of Education, Save the Children is increasing access to education through school rehabilitation and community mobilization in poor, remote districts in two northern provinces. We support associations of teachers and parents, mothers and fathers alike, to promote education for girls as well as boys in their communities and to encourage them to take part in decision-making about their children’s education. Save the Children also is helping communities improve the quality of education their children receive by training teachers and providing them with assistance, including opportunities to improve their knowledge of overall child development – physical, nutritional and emotional development as well as intellectual development. We also provide learning materials such as library boxes for school children and play boxes for pre-school children.
Child Protection
A successful initiative in direct landmine and unexploded ordnance education has led to current child protection efforts that seek to address Afghanistan’s need to recognize and respond to the social and psychosocial needs of children. Community members are engaging in activities that build their awareness, knowledge and capacity to monitor and respond to a variety of child protection needs and issues – from specific cases of child abuse - to more commonly, community activities to address worst forms of unacceptable behavior, like corporal punishment as the norm for school and household discipline.
Based on The Children of Kabul project and other research, Save the Children knows that it is essential – and most effective – to create protection programs that address fears and threats that children themselves identify as affecting their well being. One activity that has been especially useful to Save the Children in helping Afghan children identify and voice their fears and concerns is the “Child-to-Child” approach, where children are encouraged to voice their concerns about things that cause them harm, worry and anxiety. Children and their parents are then mobilized to seek solutions to these problems, often with Save the Children staff support, through community leaders and government officials. Child-to-Child groups have shown very specific results. In Kabul, children work with the traffic police to ensure their safety on the streets and sidewalks of the city and in some rural towns children have engaged their parents, teachers and community leaders in creating their own safe play areas. In addition to these tangible successes for groups of children, including Afghan children and young people in addressing the issues they identify as being important to their overall well being is a significant step for Afghanistan’s future.
Together with our Save the Children Alliance partners from the UK, Sweden and Japan, through a Child Protection Action Network we are also working to raise the profile of the idea of child protection and child participation throughout Afghanistan by training our colleagues from government ministries, partner non-governmental organizations and UN agencies. In May 2004, the Child Protection Action Network supported a rally of working children to help them have their concerns heard by government officials and community leaders alike.
Economic Opportunities and Livelihoods
In four districts of northern Faryab Province, our Group Guaranteed Lending and Savings programs give women access to credit so they can pursue their work as carpet weavers and livestock raisers and maintain their roles as key wage earners for their families. In order to strengthen our programs and enhance the income of our clients, Save the Children conducted research on how Afghan families actually “build” their livelihoods. This research, combined with our interest in children’s nutritional status, led us to work with partners to pioneer a national Food Security and Nutritional Surveillance system, which provides important information for improving our programs. The system will be used by the government and other organizations throughout Afghanistan for planning as well as monitoring and evaluating factors and programs that affect the livelihoods and well being of Afghan families.
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