Afghan children are extremely vulnerable to all kinds of experiences that can harm them. As reported (in ‘Women on the Frontlines of Health Care: State of the World’s Mothers 2010’, Save the Children) Afghanistan has the highest maternal mortality rate in the world, while mortality for children under five is also extremely high.

Children may be injured accidentally by Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) or other weapons of war or may simply lack the access to healthcare that every child needs to grow up healthy and strong. Extreme poverty, chronic illness within families, and drug addiction are all factors that contribute to families sending their children out to work, often in harmful situations.

Many children are denied an education, sometimes because there is no local school, or because their families need them to earn money, or because they are afraid to allow their children outside the home because of the security situation. Girls in particular are at risk of the latter.

Many young girls marry early, sometimes to much older men in unions organized by their families to which they cannot object; another symptom of poverty and in some areas a tradition that continues, even where the law sets the marriage age at 15 for a girl who father has given permission, and 16 in all other cases. A strongly patriarchal society and one in which children and young people have no real voice exacerbates these problems.

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