KABUL (SW): As the world marks Universal Day of Children, more than three million children in Afghanistan remain deprived of basic education.
According to the officials at the Ministry of Education, up to three million children in the country are deprived of basic education, and are busy in hard labor and vulnerable to be sexually exploited. Kabir Haqmal, director for publications at the MoE, told Salam Watandar that the studies conducted by UNICEF and other international organizations suggest more than 3 million children have no access to education. Haqmal noted that insecurity, poverty and lack of awareness are the main reasons being this dilemma.
“These statistics are not accurate, we do not exactly know how many men, women and children are deprived of education, but rough estimates suggest that three to three and a half million children have no access to basic education”, he said.
Ragging violence and escalating poverty has pushed many young children to quit studies and get their hands on heavy and difficult jobs.
Abdul Fatah, media advisor at the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, said in this regard that their studies indicate that up to three million children across the country are engaged in child labor, half of them working under extremely difficult circumstances. “We are trying hard to address the issues of these children”, he said.
Besides the child labor, Afghan children are also faced with other issues like sexual exploitation, recruitment as child fighters and forced marriages.
