AFGHAN CHILDREN FACE GRIM FUTURE AS VIRUS TAKES ITS TOLL
▶ Youths are being forced to give up on school as their families struggle for money
The economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic is pushing Afghan children into early marriage or work and away from education.
More than 50 per cent of Afghans live below the poverty line and about 64 per cent are under the age of 25, according to UN figures.
While many Afghans got by before the pandemic, they have now either exhausted their savings or lost opportunities to earn a daily income.
Halime, 12, is experiencing the economic effects of the outbreak.
Her parents decided that marrying her off was the only way to survive financially and she will move in with her husband within the next 12 months. Her price? About $2,600 (Dh9,550).
Halime, who lives in Herat province in a camp for internally displaced people, does not quite understand what marriage means.
“I will make tea and cook for my husband,” she said.
Her parents have lived here for the past three years, initially fleeing conflict in neighbouring Ghor province, barely surviving on a daily labourer wage.
“Work has now dried up,” said her father, Juma Gul, 47.
He blamed the pandemic for giving his daughter away. “It’s not that I want to marry her off, but what choice do I have?”
Halime is not an exception and throughout Afghanistan children are suffering tough consequences because of the spread of Covid-19.
Abdul, 9, attended school in Kabul before the country introduced restrictions to combat the outbreak and said he now spent most days in the market trying to sell bolani, a type of vegetable-filled bread common in Afghanistan.
“On my first day of work, I was yelled at constantly. ‘Go away boy,’ they told me. Sometimes people even hit me,” he said.
He said he did not mind working in the market, but the harassment scared him.
“My mother always tells me to be careful, to stay in the market and to not go home with people,” he said.
Even before the outbreak, about a quarter of Afghan children between the ages of 5 and 14 were forced to go to work, with only about half of them attending school.
“There are many dangers on the streets and since the pandemic, children have faced an increasingly tough time as many more families send their kids out to make an income,” Sonia Nezami, education director at Action for Development, told The National.
“Children are considered cheap labour and Covid-19 has increased the abuse and hardships they face.”
Afghanistan has reported more than 33,000 Covid-19 infections, but with few testing centres and a backlog in sample evaluation, the number of cases is likely to be far higher.
More than 900 deaths have been recorded.
Last month, the International Rescue Committee estimated that 40 per cent of virus tests in Afghanistan came back positive.
The pandemic is hindering other essential health work, including vaccination programmes for diseases such as polio.
“Since the beginning of the year, we have given out more than 20,000 vaccines. We had just five days left to finish vaccinating the entire province of Herat when Covid-19 hit,” said Ahmad Shah Ahmadi, a polio vaccination officer for the UN children’s fund.
Vaccinations were on hold because of the pandemic, he said.
Toddler Nargis missed several vaccinations, but her mother Nadaf, 35, is now trying to rectify that.
“We didn’t think about vaccinations or even visiting the doctor. Everywhere we went, we feared contracting the virus,” she said.
Polio is almost eradicated in Afghanistan but sporadic surges are not uncommon.
High up in the mountains of Badakhshan, Nasima, 10, is struggling because her school has been closed for months.
Afghanistan’s schools were in crisis before the pandemic and the number of children who attend is dropping because of increasing conflict and an end to donor funding, said Heather Barr, Human Rights Watch’s co-director for the women’s rights division.
“Thirty-five per cent of Afghan girls marry as children and being out of school is associated with child marriage,” Ms Barr said.
Nasima’s mother, Dona Gul, 30, said it was unlikely that her daughter would return to school, even if it reopened.
Ms Gul is a widow and relied on her sons to earn money as farmers or labourers in a nearby town, but the pandemic means work dried up and salaries were reduced.
“Nasima will either have to work or if there is a suitable match, she might get married,” Ms Gul said.
A bride’s dowry would be enough for the family to get through the pandemic and beyond, she said.
Having been married at 14 herself, Ms Gul said she once hoped to offer her daughter a better future.
“It is simply about survival,” she said.
“Sending my boys to work and debating marrying off my daughter, these are the consequences of the coronavirus and we have little alternative.”
Thirty-five per cent of Afghan girls marry and being out of school is associated with that
HEATHER BARR Human Rights Watch