A Child in Afghanistan: The Afghani Child Experience

Abstract

Children are the primary group most affected by all sorts of social and political developments in a society, whether negative or positive. The disintegration of the social fabric, the destabilisation of a country and the breakdown of political and social security pose a greater threat to children and expose them to greater harm compared to other social strata. Children, whose family integrity in cities, villages and towns has been reduced to dust by the civil war that has raged in Afghanistan for over 40 years, are the most exposed to this violence. Millions of Afghan children have been deprived of modern educational opportunities. On the other hand, the children have been forced to bear the economic burden of the household due to the loss of the source of income for the families as the fathers died in terror attacks. Add to this the psychological problems suffered by the children, as well as the physical abuse of boys, a bitter and archaic picture emerges. In addition, girls are forced to be married off to influential older men, sometimes the age of their grandfathers, and boys are given weapons at an early age, only to be offered to unlawful organisations as fighters to be deployed in conflict zones after harsh and difficult training. This threatens the very nature of what human and children's rights stand for. In this study, using the figures and statistics from UNICEF, Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and other institutions such situations of human rights and children's rights in this country are analysed.

Citation

Karaağaçlı, A. and Camilleri, M.J. (2022), "A Child in Afghanistan: The Afghani Child Experience", Yerdelen, B.K., Elbeyoğlu, K., Sirkeci, O., Işıkçı, Y.M., Grima, S. and Dalli Gonzi, R.E. (Ed.) Being a Child in a Global World, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 85-99. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80117-240-020221009