Afghanistan

Web Resources

World Vision
Background, history, facts and figures

United Nations Development Program
The United Nations Develop Programme (UNDP) has been present in Afghanistan for over 50 years, operating in all 34 provinces through crisis and through peace. The UNDP programme focuses on three areas of assistance: crisis prevention and recovery, democratic governance, and poverty reduction.

Facts and Statistics

  • 52% of all children under the age of five suffer from stunted growth

 

  • 41% of the rural population and 13 % of the urban population does not have access to proper sanitation

 

  • Afghanistan has the highest proportion of school-age (7-12) children in the world (1 in 5 Afghans is a school-age child)

 

  • According to the education ministry, at least a million girls of school age are not enrolled, 35% of the total population of girls

 

  • 57% of the population is under 18 years old

 

  • Afghanistan has the third highest maternal mortality rate in the world (after Sierra Leone and Angola) at 1600-2200 deaths per 100,000  

 

  • Average life expectancy in Afghanistan is 43 years old - 20 years less than any other Asian country

 

  • Female literacy in Afghanistan is the lowest in the world, somewhere between 9% and 18%

 

  • UNICEF estimates that in 2006, nearly 900 children under five died every day in Afghanistan

 

  • Between 2001 and 2006 the number of children enrolled in schools rose from 1 million to 6 million

 

  • At Spin Boldak border crossing between Afghanistan and Pakistan all children under the age of five, about 800 children a day, are immunized against polio by an Afghan team on one side working in tandem with a Pakistani team on the other.

 

Sources: UNICEF Afghanistan Child Alert 2007 and Afghanistan Millennium Development Goals Report 2005

Note: It is widely recognised that there is a problematic lack of data in Afghanistan that hampers the ability to provide comprehensive economic and social statistics