100,000 "more" children could die - UNICEF

Up to 100,000 more children will die this winter in Afghanistan if aid does not reach them in sufficient quantities in the next few weeks, the head of UNICEF Afghanistan, Eric Larouche, said on Monday. The mortality rate for Afghan children could jump by a third this winter, he warned.

"The reason that I say 'more' is because 300,000 Afghan children already die each year, largely of preventable causes, [such as] measles, exposure, severe malnutrition, or diarrhoea that can be cured with a 10 cent sachet of oral rehydration salts," he said.

Speaking to journalists in Islamabad on Monday, Larouche said Afghan children were 25 times more likely to die before the age of five than an American, French or Saudi Arabian child. "Every 30 minutes, a young Afghan mother dies giving birth, leaving children with an irreplaceable void," he said, adding that more than half of Afghan children were currently malnourished.

According to a UNICEF survey in 1997, 95 percent of children living in Kabul had witnessed violence with their own eyes, seven out of 10 had lost a family member, and 90 percent believed that they would die during the fighting. Larouche said Afghan children were the most traumatised in the world.

Despite all the conventions ratified internationally that call for their protection, another generation of Afghan children was witnessing and enduring the violence of war, he said.

"We continue to fail them, and in fact mock them, I would say, with a sympathy that fails to bear fruit," he said. As UNICEF struggles to provide emergency aid inside Afghanistan along with other international organisations, Larouche noted that only half the US $36 million requested by UNICEF in response to the Afghan crisis had been received to date.