New report highlights situation of women and children

Prospects for Afghan children have improved in recent years, though much work remains to be done to compensate for decades of conflict, under-investment and international isolation, according to a joint UN-government report just published. The report - the first comprehensive study since 1996 to present a widespread insight into and analysis of the condition of Afghanistan's women and children - was released on Tuesday. "Progress of Provinces; results of 2003 Afghanistan Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey [MICS]" is the outcome of a 12-month nationwide exercise led by the Afghanistan Central Statistical Office (CSO) with the support of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). MICS focused on a wide range of indicators, including services and facilities for pregnancy and childbirth, immunisation coverage, incidences of common childhood diseases, access to nutritional practices, access to water and sanitation, and access to education. "This report is extremely important on two fronts. First, it is published at the time the nation is being built. You cannot build a nation if you don't know where to put your foundation," Reza Hossaini, a UNICEF senior programme coordinator, told IRIN immediately after the report's launch. Hossaini said the report was also vital within the UN family as they were in the process of preparing a five-year plan to support the government of Afghanistan. "The data coming out of the survey helps us to set priorities and to have better planning." MICS is an internationally recognised system for gathering data on a selected number of indicators showing the condition of women and children in a particular country. The MICS process was developed in 1995 in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO), the United Nations Statistical Division, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and the United States Center for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC). Since then it has been used across the world as one of the main methods of collecting accurate data on children. Mohammad Ali Watanyar, the head of the CSO, told IRIN that the MICS findings alerted both the donors and the Afghan government. "Even though there are positive findings in MICS, we see there are huge problems indicating what has not been done yet," he said. Watanyar called on the international community and the Afghan government to take the MICS findings seriously and help Afghan women and children "before it is too late". Watanyar said the report found a reduction in maternal and child mortality since the 1996 MICS report. However, he said the key findings on the situation of women and children were still "shocking". "One in nine children will die before their first birthday. One in six will not survive until the age of five. The national illiteracy rate amongst Afghans over the age of 15 is 71 per cent. The country still has the highest rate of maternal mortality in the world." MICS shows that nearly 90 percent of births take place at home, and a similar percentage are attended by unskilled birth attendants. It indicates that 7 percent of primary school age children work for an income and nearly 6 percent of children do not live with both parents. According to UNICEF, the new findings show that the post-conflict country has never had as many schools as it has now. Families in Afghanistan have never had the kind of access to schools that they have now. "But still there are challenges. Even in Kabul a fifth of children are not going to school. In Helmand more than 80 percent of children are not going to school," said Hossaini. UNICEF also launched a companion report, "Changing Lives - an opportunity analysis" which attempts to further scrutinise the date provided by the MICS and other recent reports on women and children in Afghanistan.