Afghanistan
Update - UNICEF Activities for Children
15 January 2002

In the first quarter of 2002, UNICEF's immediate priorities are to:

- Support the return to school of 1.5 million children by 22 March
- Reduce malnutrition through targeted and blanket supplementary feeding
  campaigns with particular focus on the north and west
- Support the nation-wide measles campaign
- Continue life-saving humanitarian assistance

Placing children, youth and women at the centre of the peace, recovery and
reconstruction process is a key investment in Afghanistan's future, and a
unique opportunity to unite Afghans from various backgrounds behind the
common aim of ensuring a positive future for their children. UNICEF seeks
to promote and protect the rights of Afghan children and women at this
crucial time in their history.


Background

Afghans have commenced the process of rebuilding their lives, but years of
conflict, the ensuing drought and harsh conditions of winter mean that
large scale emergency relief efforts are required accompanied by external
assistance in reconstruction and capacity building. A window of
opportunity to reduce the future threat of conflict and increased
protection of the rights of Afghan children and women has emerged. UNICEF
and its UN partners, as well other humanitarian actors are increasing
their operational capacity within Afghanistan in order to support the
Interim Administration.

Soon after reducing our humanitarian activities inside Afghanistan in
September 2001, UNICEF mounted a cross-border operation from Pakistan,
Iran and through a joint programme in Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and
Uzbekistan to deliver emergency supplies to internally displaced people
and other vulnerable groups located at the borders or within Afghanistan.
UNICEF ensured that 78 convoys moved into Afghanistan from September 2001
to 9th January 2002.


UNICEF Strategies and Response

The central strategy of UNICEF in Afghanistan is to enhance the capacity
of the Interim Administration and other national partners (a) to ensure
the survival of children and women, especially the most vulnerable; (b) to
rapidly implement recovery and rehabilitation activities in key sectors of
direct benefit to children and women; and (c) to ensure effective
management, equitable allocation of budgetary resources, and devolution of
responsibility for implementation of humanitarian assistance,
rehabilitation activities and service outreach to women and children.

UNICEF will send technical specialists to administration departments at
central and sub- national levels in order to enhance national capacity to
establish policy and action strategies, establish guidelines and
standards, co-ordinate partner activities, assure efficient/effective
programme implementation and service delivery, and monitor progress.



UNICEF Action to Date

Education

- Gross enrolment rates for primary school are only 3% for girls and 39%
  for boys
- Primary school completion rates are very low
- Recent uptake of home based schools suggests that demand for education
  is high, particularly for girls.



UNICEF Strategies:

- March 21st new school year opening – The Interim Administration is
taking the lead, supported by UNICEF, in ensuring that at least 1.5
million children and their teachers go "Back to School".

- To support the Afghan ministries to lead, manage and co-ordinate
education policy, systems development and implementation.

- Support the development of a rapid multi-media orientation programme to
train teachers in the use of the competency-based materials.



Key Actions to Date:

- Since September 2001, UNICEF has made education a key priority and in
the first major shipment of supplies the children's winter convoy carried,
among other relief supplies, education material for 70,000 children in
primary schools, and continued to expand support to home based schools.
With the Interim Authority in place, formal schooling is being supported
to ensure all children go back to school.


Nutrition

- Prevalence of acute malnutrition estimated to be 10%
- High prevalence of stunting (45-59%)
- Household capacity to access food has been severely reduced - loss of
  livestock, reduced food production, and displacement.



UNICEF Strategies:

- Reduce morbidity and mortality among -five children and women due to
malnutrition

- Support emergency nutrition, and address the problem of micronutrient
deficiency disorders

- Provide technical support to the Ministry of Public Health, Ministry of
Industry and Ministry of Trade on nutrition policy, salt iodisation,
infant feeding, childcare practices, and formative research.



Key Actions to Date:

- In co-ordination with WFP and NGOs, northern and western regions have
been specifically targeted (150,593 children and women in the northern
region and 56,796 in the west) due to concerning reports of increased
malnutrition. To ensure overall levels of malnutrition are reduced,
blanket feeding is also being provided to 522,123 children and women.

- UNICEF is supporting therapeutic feeding centres throughout affected
areas - 1.4 metric tons of therapeutic feeding milk has been distributed,
ensuring sufficient supplies to treat those children severely
malnourished.

- A supplementary feeding campaign has commenced for children under 5 and
pregnant and lactating women. 3000 metric tons of Wheat or Corn Soya blend
is under distribution for a total of 1.1 million beneficiaries for 3
months.

- A baseline nutrition, food security and livelihood survey is being
prepared. UNICEF has deployed surveillance staff to various locations,
focussing on the northern region.

- An orientation for Government Public Health staff was conducted on
supplementary feeding management, referral to therapeutic feeding centres
and patient follow-up.

- As part of a joint campaign to prevent polio and reduce the risks caused
by insufficient vitamin A, nearly 3 million children were provided with a
Vitamin A supplement (1,482,812 boys and 1,460,955 girls).



Immunisation

- Measles coverage very low (37-40%) for the last 8 years
- Measles mortality rate is the second highest in the world



UNICEF Strategies:

- Reduce measles mortality through nation-wide vaccination campaign;
- Eradicate polio through 4 rounds of national and sub-national NIDs;
- Increase access to retain EPI services for children.



Key Actions to Date:

- In co-ordination with WHO, a measles immunisation campaign was launched
on January 2nd targeting 10.7 million children nation-wide.

- During the first 2 weeks of 2002, 572,000 children were immunised in
Kabul City - six times higher than total immunisation coverage in 2001.

- 139,993 children have been immunised in the southern region. The present
target of 288,244 will be extended to a total of 750,000 children as
accessibility improves.

- Campaigns in the Eastern and Western regions will start on 20 January
and this initial phase of vaccinations is expected to be completed by end
of February.

- Two successful rounds of Polio immunisation covered 5.4 million children
in September 2001 and 4.5 million during a second round in November.

- UNICEF in collaboration with WHO plans to continue the campaign approach
while rebuilding the health system based routine EPI programme.



Child and Women's Health

- 6.5 million Afghans have either no access or poor access to basic health
care

- Over 1 quarter of all children die before the age of 5 years

- The Maternal mortality rate of 1,700 per 100,000 deliveries, is among
the highest in the world

- 90% of births take place at home, with 50% of all births being assisted
by an untrained relative or friend.



UNICEF Strategies:

- Provide essential drugs and medical supplies for the treatment and
prevention of malaria, diarrhoea and acute respiratory infections

- Improve the availability and quality of emergency obstetric care
services

- Mobilise communities for behavioural change to ensure emergency care for
women.



Key Actions to date:

- In order to respond to 2 million displaced people, 200 health kits were
distributed.  Each kit is sufficient to establish a health facility and
treat a population of 10,000 for 3 months.

- Additional kits were sent to Herat (250,000 beneficiaries), Mazar
(130,000), Kabul (240,000), Jalalabad (100,000) and Faizabad (40,000
beneficiaries).

- Drugs for management of obstetric emergencies have been distributed to
over 8 hospitals and 12 health centres for 6 months.

- The Ministry of Public Health was supported to deploy increased staffing
to health centres. An additional workforce of 400 doctors and mid-level
medical staff were organised as outreach teams.

- Further stocks are under procurement including equipment for 8
hospitals, sufficient for 800,000 people.



Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Promotion

- Only 35% of urban and 19% or rural population have access to safe water
- Only 23% of urban and 8% of rural population have access to adequate
  sanitation
- Severe water shortages are being experienced due to prolonged drought
- Annual outbreaks of cholera are experienced.



UNICEF Strategies:

- Increased access to safe drinking water and sanitation facilities for
the under-served through investment in training service providers,
creating awareness among communities, providing supplies and building
minimum requisite water and sanitation facilities.

- Improved quality of Water & Environmental Sanitation (WES) services and
agreement on standards through policy development, in partnership with
NGOs and community based organisations.

- Support to community mobilisation efforts to create demand for safe
water and sanitary latrines.

- Introduction of appropriate technologies and approaches for
sustainability of WES facilities to reduce disparity among communities.

- Strengthening capacity of Afghan technical departments, provincial and
community based authorities, NGOs and other civil society institutions to
develop and adopt mechanisms to ensure vulnerable groups have access to
safe drinking water and sanitary facilities.



Key Actions to Date:

- UNICEF with partners conducted assessments in IDP centres. Further
assessment will continue.

- To ensure safe water, 700,000 purification tablets and 30 mt of chlorine
were distributed to displaced populations. Buckets and purification units
were placed within IDP centres.

- 1,600,000 people have benefited from 2,300 hand pumps that have been
installed.

- Hygiene kits and supplies have been distributed to over 70,000 families.

- Over 300 wells have been built. A further 450 are under construction.
UNICEF is also assisting the co-ordination of partners to increase water
supply coverage.

- To prevent disease outbreak in internally displaced and refugee centres,
UNICEF has supported clean-up activities.

- Support has been provided to regional hospitals - cleaning of all septic
tanks, rehabilitation of central heating systems, provision of
wheelbarrows and shovels.

- Plans for the rehabilitation of waste supply and sewage systems of
regional hospitals will commence soon.

- Hand pumps and latrines have been installed in some schools.



Humanitarian Assistance

- Some 40 to 70% of urban population left to rural areas during bombing
  campaign.
- Largest IDP concentrations remain in the north (300,000), south
  (200,000) and west (150,000).



UNICEF Strategy:

- Ensure the survival of the most vulnerable children and women in
Afghanistan through the delivery of life-saving humanitarian assistance;



Key Actions to Date:

- UNICEF's emergency convoys into Afghanistan as of 9 January:

- Winter items such as blankets, children's clothing, family kits,
heaters/fuel were provided through the winter season, along with essential
emergency medical supplies, therapeutic foods and nutritional
surveillance, and equipment for provision of safe drinking water
particularly for the drought affected and internally displaced people.

- 200,000 children received blankets and clothes. 2,000 tents (over 20,000
people), 125,000 blankets, 140,000 pairs of children's footwear and
190,000 sets of children's clothing. More than 2,000 tents giving shelter
to over 20,000 people. Graph below shows clearer picture of the supplies
distributed. Done in close collaboration with IoM and other partners.



Child Protection

- Prolonged conflict has left families without additional support and
weakened their coping mechanisms

- Displacement has increased sense of fear and anxiety and physical
danger.



UNICEF Strategies:

- Strengthen the capacity of Afghan institutions to protect children;
address legislative and policy frameworks for the protection of children
and promote service delivery.



Key actions to Date:

- First round of discussions held with the Ministry of Justice to promote
the establishment of appropriate protection and justice systems for
children in conflict with the law.

- In collaboration with the National Institute of Mental Health and
international partners, initiated the process of providing wide scale
psycho-social assistance to child victims of violence and war.

- Plans under development to support the reintegration of various groups
of children/youth in need of special protection, including child soldiers,
street and working children and other out of school youth.

- Supported the Mine Action Programme for Afghanistan (MAPA) with new
training to deal with the stoppage of mine/munitions clearance activities.



Funding

Under the UN Donor Alert, October 2001 to March 2002, UNICEF appealed for
US$ 108 million, of which USD 54.2 million has been received as of
mid-January 2002. UNICEF and other UN agencies are developing the
"Immediate and Transitional Assistance Programme for the Afghan People",
and UNICEF will be revising funding requirements upward to around USD $140
million.


BILATERALS & OTHERS (USD)

UNICEF NATIONAL COMMITTEES (USD)
Belgium        1,545,195
NatCom Total  11,302,920

Canada           443,037
Denmark        2,132,800


DONATIONS-IN-KIND

ECHO                   902,115
Korea Govt           1,000,000
Finland                764,500
Norway Govt          1,266,116
France                 559,960
Italy                6,103,630

GRAND TOTAL         55,049,269

Japan                7,840,000
Luxembourg              68,290
Netherlands          3,427,562
Norway                 885,990
Sweden               1,897,600
UK Govt              8,759,610

USA/OFDA-USAID       4,150,000

USA/BPRM             2,000,000

American Red Cross     125,000
Bilaterals          41,480,233
& Others Total

* These are not necessarily an extract of UNICEF's financial records


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