Life barely worth living: UN

With an average life expectancy of about 40 years, a staggering mortality rate of 25.7 percent for children under five years old, and an illiteracy rate of 64 percent, Afghanistan ranks among the most destitute, war-weary countries in the world in terms of human development, according to new analysis by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

In statement released on Friday, the Director of the Human Development Report Office at UNDP, Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, said that Afghanistan was "worse off than almost any country in the world. The country’s social and economic indicators are comparable, or lower than the indicators for Sub-Saharan Africa".

According to UNDP’s annual human development index, which looks at socioeconomic indicators, such as health, education and income, Afghans have among the lowest life-expectancies in the world. The only countries with lower life expectancies are Sierra Leone and Zambia, which are respectively ravaged by armed conflict and HIV/AIDS, it said.

Seventy percent of the Afghan population is estimated to be undernourished, with only 13 percent having access to improved water sources, the statement said.

Nearly two-thirds of Afghan adults are illiterate. Only five countries – all in Sub-Saharan Africa - of the 172 surveyed have lower literacy rates than Afghanistan.

The report said that Afghanistan lagged "catastrophically" behind other countries and regions in education. Less than one-third of children were enrolled in schools in 1999, placing Afghanistan 15th from bottom in worldwide school enrolment out of the 172 countries. It is the only country in the world that barred girls from attending school, it said.

Due to a lack of available information, Afghanistan has not featured in the Human Development Index since 1996 – in itself testimony to how bad the situation had become.

"These indicators highlight just how appalling the situation has become for Afghans who are acutely lacking of any quality of life in their own country," the spokeswoman for the office of the UN Coordinator, Stephanie Bunker, told IRIN on Friday. "Most Afghans barely have a life worth living at the moment," she added.