who won the powerball lottery: Delivering for the children of Afghanistan
UNICEF continues to work with partners to support children and their families across the country.
how much is the lottery tonight www.kevlarkennels.net 11 August 2023
Two years since the Taliban seized power, relief for people in Afghanistan – a country already marked by decades of insecurity and natural disasters, and now distanced from the global community – has fallen further from reach. The country is in crisis, and it’s a child rights crisis.??
Two thirds of Afghanistan’s population need humanitarian assistance in the face of drought, hunger and disease. Millions of children – girls especially – risk being permanently shut out of education, denied the skills and hope they need for the future.
On the ground for over 65 years, UNICEF has pledged to stay and deliver, with offices nationwide and a range of partners that support us in reaching the most vulnerable children. We've scaled up our life-saving programmes – including in health, nutrition and safe water.
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What’s happening in Afghanistan??
More than 28 million people in Afghanistan cannot meet their basic needs due to cascading crises that have shifted from conflict to economic shock, drought and a gender crisis. The situation for women and girls has deteriorated: restrictions have created barriers to accessing services, curtailed basic freedoms and deprived many women of income-earning opportunities.
But while levels of aid in 2022 largely averted catastrophe, millions of children continue to need essential services. The health system has narrowly avoided collapse, but around 13 million people have no access to health care, largely due to the lack of infrastructure, coupled with high costs. Facilities remain understaffed and under resourced and many are consistently short of medicines and supplies. UNICEF therefore requires urgent funding to ensure the country’s health systems don’t collapse.
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How is UNICEF responding?
This is a pivotal juncture for a generation of children in Afghanistan. Their rights are increasingly under attack, while their childhoods are marred by deprivation.?UNICEF is on the ground expanding into areas that were, for two decades, previously inaccessible due to conflict and remoteness, to reach more children and mothers.?
Although the potential costs of not educating boys and girls alike are high in terms of lost earnings, not educating girls is especially costly because of the relationship between educational attainment and girls delaying marriage and childbearing, participating in the workforce, making choices about their own future and investing more in the health and education of their own children later in life.
Girls across Afghanistan have been denied their right to learn for more than three years – first, due to COVID-19, and then because of the ban on attending secondary school. The cumulative toll of these absences is taking a terrible toll on girls’ mental health and overall well-being and putting them at greater risk of exploitation and abuse.
We want to see every girl and boy across Afghanistan in school and learning. UNICEF will continue to advocate to get all children back in school – for as long as it takes – because demand for education nationwide is at an all-time high, particularly in areas where there are no schools and children have been deprived of education for years.?
UNICEF is responding to the commitment from communities to keep schools open for high school age girls by providing, amongst other things, textbooks in schools, training for female teachers, and expanding Community-Based Education classes. UNICEF is also exploring alternative pathways to education, including financial support to small-scale education initiatives and digital learning.?
UNICEF is supporting water, hygiene and sanitation (WASH) services, including delivering safe water through water trucking, construction and repair of hand pumps, as well as providing supplies and hygiene promotion.
UNICEF is prioritizing primary and secondary health-care services, including maintaining critical human resources, medical supplies and equipment. During January 2023, with the support of UNICEF and partners, more than 5.3 million people received essential health and nutrition services through static and mobile facilities.
Too many of Afghanistan’s children have witnessed scenes that no child should ever see. Children and adolescents are struggling with anxieties and fears, with many in desperate need of mental health support. UNICEF has, therefore, scaled up its child protection response by providing immediate and life-saving services to children affected by conflict and displacement, including providing child-friendly spaces and psychosocial support to children and their caregivers or parents.
Around 2.3 million children are expected to face acute malnutrition in 2023, while 875,000 of them will need treatment for severe acute malnutrition – a life-threatening condition. UNICEF and partners are working to identify and treat severely wasted children, including through nutrition counselling and treatment services. UNICEF also supports multiple micronutrient supplements and multiple micronutrient powders programmes.
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Results for Afghanistan’s children in 2022:
In 2022, Afghanistan has experienced worsening disease outbreaks, economic decline, acute food insecurity, and devastating natural disasters. During the first half of the year, UNICEF scaled up its humanitarian response in the face of increasing needs. In the first six months of 2022, UNICEF and partners:
- Treated more than 300,000 children age 6 to 59 months for severe acute malnutrition.
- Provided humanitarian cash transfers to around?100,000 unique households.
- Reached more than 3.5 million people with safe water for drinking, cooking and personal hygiene.
- Provided 17.3 million people with out-patient health care.
- Reached 1.7 million children and their caregivers?with a range of urgent child protection services including mental health and psychosocial support services.
