Afghanistan COI Repository

International Organization for Migration (IOM), MOVEMENTS IN AND OUT OF AFGHANISTAN 16 October to 31 October 2022, 9 November 2022

“1% of households resort to extreme measures such as selling organs, selling children, or child marriage to afford food”

 

Assessment Capacities Project (ACAPS), Afghanistan: Risk Overview, 7 November 2022

“The winter season, during which casual labour opportunities decrease and heating costs and health issues increase, always presents a challenge for poorer households. Should purchasing power decrease significantly, households will struggle to afford healthcare and be forced to prioritise food within families. Traditional coping mechanisms (e.g. borrowing money and selling household goods and assets) will further erode. In 2021, many families sold off their assets and entered the winter season with fewer or no assets. Poverty and the adoption of extreme coping mechanisms (such as switching to lower-quality foods and engaging in child labour, child trafficking, child marriage, and begging) will increase, exacerbating protection needs and the risk of civil unrest. Less poor people will become increasingly susceptible to future shocks, and the overall number of people in severe poverty will increase. […] People living in disaster-prone regions, especially those with harsh winters, have also likely exhausted traditional coping mechanisms, such as borrowing money and selling household goods and assets. Such a situation may lead them to turn to more extreme coping mechanisms, such as reducing food intake (primarily affecting women and girls), switching to lower-quality foods, and engaging in child labour, child trafficking, child marriage, and begging. People may also be more likely to illegally cross borders in search of work or opportunities, making them more vulnerable to human trafficking. They would also be leaving their families with reduced resources to meet needs and relying on remittances.”

 

International Organization for Migration (IOM), DTM AFGHANISTAN RETURNEE LONGITUDINAL SURVEY (RLS), 31 October 2022

“Fourteen per cent of participants reported having children in the household who worked. Among the children who were working, 36 per cent engaged in street vending, 28 per cent worked in agriculture, 13 per cent worked in shops or restaurants and 16 per cent participated in any type of work that was offered to them.”

 

HRW, Afghanistan: Women Protesters Detail Taliban Abuse, 20 October 2022

“Three Afghan women detained for protesting Taliban abuses described torture and other severe mistreatment in custody, Human Rights Watch said today. The women said they were wrongfully detained with their families, including small children. They experienced threats, beatings, dangerous conditions of confinement, denial of due process, abusive conditions of release, and other abuses. The authorities assaulted and administered electric shocks to detained male relatives. The women’s description of their experiences sheds light on the Taliban’s treatment of women protesters in custody and the Taliban’s efforts to silence the protest movement.”

 

Tolo News, Child Labor Increases in Helmand, Say Residents, 21 August 2022

“Child labor has increased in the southern province of Helmand, residents said, adding that it is due to a sharp rise in poverty in the country.”

“Families of the children stated that because of economic hardships, they were forced to send their children to work.”

“’Due to economic challenges, every family is forced to send their children to hard labor,’ said Abdul Satar, another resident of Lashkargah city.

Officials from the labor and social affairs directorate of Helmand said that at least 20% of children in the province are engaged in labor.” “The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Afghanistan previously referred to the situation of Afghan children as being more worrying than ever.”

 

Khaama Press, Child, 6, Tortured to Death by Father in Southern Afghanistan, 27 July 2022

“With a significant increase in family violence and personal enmity, reports of domestic violence leading to homicides have soared in number.

Only about a month ago, a man killed nine members of his family including his pregnant wife and four children, in southwestern Afghanistan.

In addition, according to provincial Taliban officials in the province of Faryab, in northern Afghanistan, recently, a pregnant woman was fatally stabbed by her husband in Maimana. Moreover, a man in the same province of Helmand used a knife to behead both his wife and their three-month-old infant.”

Khaama Press, Girl, 15, Killed by Unknown Armed Men in Northern Afghanistan, 24 July 2022

“According to the sources, the armed men killed a young girl after breaking into a house in the Kohistan district of Faryab province on Saturday night, July 23. On the other hand, the provincial Taliban officials have not yet spoken on the matter.

While the Taliban has taken no action to combat these crimes, reports of armed attacks by armed people have recently escalated, with women being the primary victims.Earlier this month, an unidentified man stabbed a 50-year-old woman to death in her own home in the central Afghan province of Kapisa.

In Kandahar Province’s Ayno Mina city, a man allegedly shot his ex-wife, killing two men and a woman. Over 100 women and girls have reportedly been killed, abducted, or committed suicide in the previous six months, according to a report by the Afghanistan International news channel. In recent months, there has been an upsurge in domestic violence, personal enmity, and family blood feuds, which have resulted in homicides, target killings, and honor killings.”

 

UN News, Thousands of children endure 'horrific conditions' in conflict zones: UN report, 11 July 2022

"The report highlights almost 24,000 verified grave violations against children, an average of some 65 violations every day. The killing and maiming of children was the most verified grave violation followed by the recruitment and use of children and the denial of humanitarian access.

The places where most children were affected by grave violations in 2021 were Afghanistan […]."

 

Jurist,org, UN officials will investigate killing of children in armed conflict in Ukraine, Ethiopia and Mozambique, 12 July 2022

"United Nations Secretary General Antiono Guterres […] also highlighted countries such as […], Afghanistan […] as having the highest number of violations against children."

 

AVA, Concern of the United Nations about the conditions of children in war-torn areas, 12 July 2022

"The United Nations has published a report describing the conditions of children in war-torn areas like Afghanistan as terrible.

In this report, it is said that 24,000 cases of serious violations against children have been highlighted in 2021. According to this report, more than 8 thousand children have been killed or maimed, including in Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen.

Out of nearly 24,000 cases of serious violations against children (an average of 25 cases per day), more than 5,200 cases are related to girls and more than 13,600 cases are related to boys.

According to this report, 1,600 children have been victims of multiple assaults. Remains of unexploded ammunition, improvised bombs and landmines have been the main cause of killing and maiming more than eight thousand children.

Also, according to this report, children are still being recruited by armed groups, whose number reaches more than 6,300 people.

The regions where the most children were affected by severe violations in 2021 were Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Israel, the Palestinian Territories, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

Virginia Gamba, the UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, said in the report that the terrible conditions suffered by children in armed conflicts cannot be described in words.Ms. Gamba added that those who survive these crises will be affected by deep physical and emotional scars for the rest of their lives.

"This report is a call to intensify work to better protect children during armed conflicts and ensure that they are given a real chance to recover and flourish," She said. Meanwhile, in 2021, two types of offenses showed a sharp increase: kidnapping and sexual violence, including rape, which according to this report both increased by 20 percent."

 

UNICEF, Afghanistan Humanitarian Situation Report, 15 June 2022

"The risk of explosive ordnances continues to pose a significant danger to children as previously inaccessible locations continued to open, resulting in a high number of child casualties."

 

Tolo News, Poverty Forcing Afghan Children into Hard Labour, 8 June 2022

"According to 2020 statistics from the National Statistics Office, more than 700,000 children in the country are engaged in hard labor. Poverty in the country has forced many children in the capital to work instead of going to school. They say they are concerned about not getting an education."

 

United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Global Annual Results Report 2021 GOAL AREA 2 Every child learns, 1 June 2022

"In 2021, UNICEF supported nearly 1,000 child survivors of landmines and ERW to receive direct survivor assistance; a 25 per cent increase from those reached in 2020. This is largely attributable to the resumption of the survivor assistance programme in Afghanistan, where 398 child survivors received assistance."

 

Pajhwok, 115 people killed, injured in Afghanistan last week, 30 April 2022

“Casualties"

At least 31 people were killed and 84 others injured in Afghanistan last week. Casualties from natural disasters not included in these figures. Five people were killed and 58 others injured in a bomb blast inside a mosque in Kabul City’s Allauddin area on Friday afternoon, according to health officials.Kabul police, however, said 10 people were killed and 30 others injured in the blast. No group has claimed responsibility for the blast.Eleven people were killed and 17 others injured in two separate blasts in Mazar-i-Sharif, the capital of Balkh province, last week. Daesh claimed responsibility for the two blasts.

A child was killed when armed men opened firing on a rickshaw in Jalalabad City last week. One child was killed, two others and a woman were injured in a warhead blast in Sararud district. Mining Department Director was killed and two others injured in a roadside blast in Faizabad City, the capital of northeastern Badakhshan province last week. Unknown gunmen killed a teenage boy in front of his home in the Arghandab district of Kandahar province.

According to local sources, five coalminers were killed in the Dara-i-Suf Paen district last week. Four people wounded in a landmine blast in Kunduz while a body was recovered in the Pashtonkot district of Faryab province.

 

The previous week, 128 people were killed and 161 others injured in Afghanistan.”

 

United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) News, UNAMA statement on deadly attack in Kabul, 29 April 2022

“KABUL – The United Nations in Afghanistan condemns in the strongest terms today’s deadly attack in a Sufi Mosque in the Darulaman area of Kabul, which reportedly resulted in scores dead and wounded. Today’s attack on the Khalifa Sahib Mosque is the latest in a series of indiscriminate assaults on civilian targets in the capital and provinces, and directly affected at least two UN staff members and their families who were inside the mosque at the time of the attack. “Today’s attack, carried out on the last Friday of the Holy month of Ramadan and on the eve of the Eid-ul-Fitr, totally disregards human lives and religious sanctity. No words are strong enough to condemn this despicable act, targeting a place of worship, as Muslims across Afghanistan prepare to celebrate the Eid,” said Mette Knudsen, the UN Secretary-General’s Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan. “Recent attacks against civilians, targeting ethnic and religious minorities, represent a disturbing trend in Afghanistan. These violations of international humanitarian and human rights laws must end immediately.” The latest attack in Kabul follows a spate of attacks in recent weeks in mosques and schools in the major cities of Kabul, Kunduz and Mazar- e-Sharif, which appear to have specifically targeted members of the Hazara, Shia and Sufi minorities, including yesterday’s attack in Mazar-e-Sharif which also resulted in several killed and injured.”

 

ACLED, Regional Overview: South Asia and Afghanistan 9-15 April 2022, 20 April 2022

“Meanwhile, in Takhar province, Taliban forces engaged in internal clashes in Baharak and Chahab districts, resulting in at least nine fatalities. While the exact reason for the infighting remains unknown, locals in Chahab claimed that Taliban forces from the Uzbek and Pashtun ethnic groups fought against a Tajik Taliban commander (Hasht-e Subh, 11 April 2022) (for more information on Taliban infighting and the latest disorder trends in Afghanistan, see this joint ACLED and Afghan Peace Watch report). These trends contribute to the 110% increase in violence in Takhar last week relative to the past month flagged by ACLED’s Subnational Surge Tracker. The Subnational Tracker first warned of increased violence to come in Takhar in the past month.”

Committee to Protect Journalists, Taliban intelligence forces detain, beat journalist Mohib Jalili in Kabul, 18 April 2022

“On Saturday, April 16, more than seven armed men from the Taliban’s General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI) arrested Jalili, who was on his way home and works as a presenter with the independent 1TV station, in District 15 of the capital Kabul, according to the journalist, who spoke to CPJ by phone, a tweet by a local press freedom advocate, and the Afghanistan Journalists Center, a media watchdog group.

While Jalili was detained at a GDI office, Taliban intelligence agents beat him with a gun, resulting in a large welt on his left arm; called him names, such as the “devil journalist who ruins the Taliban’s reputation”; and held him for about three hours before releasing him without any charges, the journalist said. Upon release, an agent threatened Jalili and told him not to talk about the detention to any journalist or media outlets.”

 

Khaama Press (Afghan News Agency), Afghan Journalists Face Ever-Increasing Restrictions, 18 April 2022

“In one of the latest’s, a TV host and presenter Moheb Jalili, has been abducted and tortured by the Taliban members in district 15 of the Kabul city at around 8 Saturday night, according to sources. In an interview with Hasht-e-Subh, Jalili confirmed his detention, saying he is not sure of the crime for which the Taliban government has detained and tortured him for. The current government, however, did not immediately comment.”

 

US DOS, 2021 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Afghanistan, 12 April 2022

“Abductions: The UN secretary-general’s 2020 Children and Armed Conflict Report, released in June, cited 54 verified incidents of the Taliban abducting children. Of those, 42 children were released, four were killed, and the whereabouts of eight children remained unknown. […] Child labor remained a pervasive problem. Most victims of forced labor were children. Child laborers worked as domestic servants, street vendors, peddlers, and shopkeepers. There was child labor in the carpet industry, brick kilns, coal mines, and poppy fields. Children were also heavily engaged in the worst forms of child labor in mining, including mining salt; commercial sexual exploitation including bacha bazi (see section 6, Children); transnational drug smuggling; and organized begging rings. Some forms of child labor exposed children to land mines. Children faced numerous health and safety risks at work. There were reports of recruitment of children by the ANDSF during the year (see section 1.g.). Taliban forces pressed children to take part in hostile acts (see section 1.g.).

Some children were forced by their families into labor with physical violence. Families sold their children into forced labor, begging, or sex trafficking to settle debts with opium traffickers. Some parents forcibly sent boys to Iran to work to pay for their dowry in an arranged marriage. Children were also subject to forced labor in orphanages run by NGOs and overseen by the government.”

 

AVA Press, One fifth of starving Afghan families sending children out to work, 14 February 2022

“Up to one-fifth of families in Afghanistan have been forced to send their children out to work as incomes have plummeted in the past six months with an estimated one million children now engaged in child labour, according to new Save the Children research. A survey of 1,400 households across seven provinces of Afghanistan found that 82% of Afghans have lost income since the collapse of the former government and transition of power last August, with 18% reporting they had no choice but to send their children out to work.

According to Save the ’s_analysis, if just one child in each of these families is being sent to work, then more than one million children in the country are engaged in child labour. [...] Last month, Save the Children reported that the number of dangerously malnourished children visiting its health clinics had more than doubled since August.

Save the Children’s Country Director in Afghanistan, Chris Nyamandi, said:

“I’ve never seen anything like the desperate situation we have here in Afghanistan. We treat frighteningly ill children every day who haven’t eaten anything except bread for months. Parents are having to make impossible decisions – which of their children do they feed? Do they send their children to work or let them starve? These are excruciating choices that no parent should have to make.”

 

ILO, ILO Brief - Employment prospects in Afghanistan: A rapid impact assessment, 19 January 2022

“The impact on child labour

The worsening economic and jobs crisis could aggravate the child labour situation. The recent Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2019–20 estimated that approximately 1.06 million children aged 5-17 years, 9 per cent of this age group, were involved in child labour. The overall figure masks important differences by gender and area of residence: - Child labour has an important gender dimension in Afghanistan. Boys are more likely to be involved in child labour (12.6 per cent) than their female counterparts (5.1 per cent). In absolute numbers, there are more than 770,000 boys and about 300,000 girls in child labour. When the definition of child labour expands to include children carrying out household chores for 21 hours or more per week, the child labour prevalence increases to 13 per cent for both sexes and to almost 12 per cent for girls.

- Child labour is a predominantly rural phenomenon. Children living in rural areas (9.9 per cent or 839,000) are much more likely to be in child labour compared to those living in urban areas (2.9 per cent or 80,000).

- Only 40 per cent of children aged 5–17 years were attending school. A large share of children (41 per cent) were neither attending school nor working. [...] There are no current estimates on the impact that the recent political and socio-economic situation will have on the number of children in child labour. Nonetheless, a rise in the number of working children and a decline of children attending school are expected outcomes of the fragile situation in the country.”

 

Ariana News, Afghanistan tops list for number of child casualties since 2005, 1 January 2021

“The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said Friday that Afghanistan has witnessed the highest number of child casualties since 2005.

“In a statement issued on Friday, UNICEF stated that more than 28,500 children have been killed in conflicts since 2005 in Afghanistan.

“UNICEF said that Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, and northern Ethiopia, are the places where “thousands of children paid a devastating price as armed conflict, inter-communal violence, and insecurity continued.”“According to the statement, Afghanistan has recorded 27 percent of all verified child casualties globally.”

 

Global News, Girl shot dead by Taliban while family was preparing to flee Canada, 16 December 2021

“A 10-year-old girl was shot dead in Afghanistan while her family was preparing to flee to Canada under an immigration program for Afghans who worked for the Canadian Forces, multiple sources said Thursday.

The girl, Nazifa, was killed when gunfire erupted near a Taliban checkpoint in Kandahar on the night of Dec. 10, her father and the Canadian veterans group Aman Lara told Global News in interviews.The father had worked for the Canadian military in Kandahar until 2011. The family was approved for resettlement by Canada, but was stuck in Afghanistan due to the lack of evacuation efforts.”

 

AVA, Poverty in Afghanistan: Child Labor Increased in Baghlan after Taliban Takeover, 28 November 2021

“Residents are worried about children being forced to work hard on the streets of Pul-e-Khumri, saying that hundreds of children are working on the streets due to poverty. Local Taliban officials in Baghlan, however, say their government cannot manage the situation. Ataullah, a resident of Baghlan who has been running a shop in Pul-e-Khumri for ten years, says people’s lives are getting harder. According to him, poverty forced families to send their children to work on the streets. He adds with concern that the number of working children in the market is increasing every day. Hussainullah, an 11-year-old boy, has dropped out of school for a month while working in a wheelbarrow in -e-Khumri. He says that his father also has a wheelbarrow. Due to financial difficulties, he has been forced to take a wheelbarrow and provide alimony for his family often. Working Child in the streets of Baghlan province. “If my family’s economy were good, my only wish would have been to go to school,” said Hussainullah, a child who drives a wheelbarrow with difficulty. “I would like to go to school and study.””

 

UNAMA, UN Calls for solidarity and commitment to end violence against women and girls amidst humanitrian crises, 25 November 2021

“Gender-based violence continues to be a serious threat to women and girls and a major obstacle to achieving lasting sustainable development and peace. Referred to as a ‘shadow pandemic’ violence against women has been worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic and the humanitarian crisis.”

 

UNAMA, Report of the Secretary-General: The situation in Afghanistan and its implications for international peace and security, 8 September 2021

“37. During the second quarter of 2021, the country task force on monitoring and reporting on grave violations against children in armed conflict verified 1,179 grave violations against 1,112 children (673 boys, 420 girls, 19 sex unknown) during the reporting period, including 1,085 children killed or maimed (309 killed and 776 maimed) (647 boys, 419 girls, 19 sex unknown). [...]

38. The country task force verified the recruitment and use of 26 children (all boys) aged between 12 and 17 years by the Taliban (16), Afghan National Police (6) and pro-government militias (4).”