More than 8 million Afghan children in need of life-saving support

Save the Children says the outbreak of the Coronavirus has increased the number of children in need of humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan.

Save the Children – an international organization for children protection – says that the number of Afghan children in need of help to survive before the outbreak of the Coronavirus was 5 million, while it has risen by about 3 million since the beginning of 2020.

Maryam Ataei, a spokeswoman for Save the Children, said that with the prevalence of Covid-19 in Afghanistan four out of every ten children need humanitarian assistance.

She added that more than 5 million children were already in need of assistance in 2020, however with the outbreak of the Coronavirus, the figure reached 8.12 million children.

Therefore, Save the Children calls for serious attention from the Afghan government and the international community.

However, the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs denies the statistics noting that there are nearly 6 million vulnerable children in Afghanistan, and the ministry has taken special measures to pick children from the streets for the Coronavirus period.

Ghulam Haidar Jailani, deputy head of social affairs at the ministry, said, “We have decided to collect all children from streets and accommodate them in the kindergartens that have been on lockdown, and if possible, we will help them reunite with their families.”

The Coronavirus has posed a special threat to Afghan labor children who have been wandering the streets looking for food day-to-day.

The figures provided by the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, and the United Nations in Afghanistan are as follows:

• There are more than 6 million vulnerable children in Afghanistan, of which 3.7 million are deprived of school.
• There are more than 2 million labor children, 1.2 million of whom are busy doing hard jobs.
• More than 100,000 children are disabled and over 100,000 others are orphans and homeless.

On the other hand, early this year, the General Director of Social Affairs of Tehran Municipality announced the preparation of a list of Afghan labor children who are to be returned to Afghanistan; the reason given is that these children can further spread the Coronavirus in Tehran.