Children and COVID-19 Research Library

Afghanistan is a country defined by the resilience and tenacity of its citizens – of its communities, its families, its children. Despite years of conflict, political changes, economic instability, and natural disasters, hard won development gains were realised, beginning to open doors for new opportunities and brighter futures for Afghanistan’s girls and boys. Today, those gains are at risk and the situation for children is more precarious than ever, in the face of what some class as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Political change, and the impact of this on the policies, decisions, and investments of the international aid community, coupled with the compounded effects of displacement, climate shocks, and lingering impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, are pushing food insecurity to levels not seen before. This is challenging the ability of families to survive daily life, contributing to the rapid deterioration of the public health system, and ultimately, placing the rights and protection of Afghanistan’s children at risk. This report highlights how children and their families have been impacted by recent changes to the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan. It provides an analysis of new primary research from four provinces, secondary data, and the testimonies of children and their families, who describe, in their own words, how the worsening situation in Afghanistan is impacting them.

Afghanistan experienced an extraordinary situation in 2021 that presents a complex example of how an intensified level of conflict and the global COVID-19 pandemic of added to an increasing prevalence of drought due to climate change has been affecting people’s livelihoods from different angles. In pre-August 2021, the country experienced record-level violence across the provinces. This was followed by the gradual fall of districts, provinces and finally the capital Kabul into the hands of the current de facto authorities, the Taliban. Meanwhile, like any other part of the world, Afghanistan also experienced the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, which hindered people’s access to jobs, health care and different sources of revenue. Alongside this, the second-worst drought in 4 years (IFRC, 2021) has widely affected the livelihoods of the majority of people who rely on agriculture and livestock as the sole source of income. There has been limited research into how these situations have combined to affect livelihoods and wellbeing in Afghanistan. This article by the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit attempts to advance understanding of this issue and promote research that investigates overlapped crises.

In Afghanistan, 93% of children cannot read a simple text by the age of 10. Education is not available to everyone, especially for girls and children in remote areas. A form of community-based education, called Accelerated Learning Centers (ALCs), can help close the distance barrier and meet the needs of out-of-school children and girls. In May 2021, an assessment of foundational literacy and numeracy skills of ALC students and nearby government school students was conducted. Results show that children at ALCs are learning at similar levels or better compared with children who attend government schools. This report provides insight into practices to improve education in rural areas in Afghanistan.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted every aspect of society. In mid-April 2020, 192 countries had closed their schools, putting 9 out of 10 enrolled children out of school.

These closures disproportionately affected marginalized children, worsening existing inequities across education systems worldwide.

This brief draws on the experience of five UNICEF education country programmes supported by the Let Us Learn (LUL) initiative, to document tangible lessons in adapting education programmes to support the most marginalized children during school and learning centre closures.

The evidence in this brief stems from a series of semi-structured interviews with Education and Child Protection specialists, as well as a document review of available COVID-19 response studies, in the five LUL-supported UNICEF Country Offices.

The pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) has disrupted immunization programs around the globe, potentially increasing life‐threatening vaccine‐preventable diseases. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only countries, which are still struggling to eradicate wild poliovirus. All vaccination campaigns in Pakistan were suspended in April due to the COVID‐19 outbreak, leading 40 million children to miss out on polio vaccination. Like the climate crisis, the COVID‐19 pandemic could be regarded as a child‐rights crisis because it could have life‐threatening impact over children, who need immunization, now and in the long‐term.

The children of Afghanistan, especially those already suffering from poverty and inequity, are among the most vulnerable to the harsh socio-economic impact of COVID-19. Child mortality, malnutrition, forced marriages, sexual abuse, child labour and other forms of violence and exploitation and are all common challenges for the average child. With the addition of COVID-19 and its immediate and secondary impacts, children are now more anxious and worried than ever before and at greater risk of facing physical, sexual and emotional violence, especially as the economic impacts of the crisis set in with poverty rates and hunger in the country rising.

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has been declared by the World Health Organisation as an international public health emergency. Owing to its high infectivity, countries all over the world implemented nationwide lockdowns with the hope of flattening the epidemic curve. Around the world, this has led to the closure of schools in over 150 countries affecting the education of nearly 1 billion children. India faced total lockdown from 24th March 2020 to May 2020 and even though a phased re-opening of public services has since then been attempted, most educational institutions including schools and colleges remain closed without a clear view regarding their re-opening. This paper discusses the various psychosocial issues that have emerged leading to academic stress amongst children and adolescent students and its potential to lead to short and long-term psychological morbidity.

Polio is a deadly viral disease that has been paralyzing many children in Afghanistan. Despite fundamental efforts, primarily vaccination, to reduce the number of cases in Afghanistan, there are still many children who are deprived of the vaccine every year. Afghanistan is one of the two remaining countries endemic for polio, and the country has undergone various challenges that have hampered the eradication of this disease. The underlying challenges include inaccessibility of unsecured areas, illiteracy, refusal, and, most recently, COVID-19. The country is in the midst of a battle against COVID-19, and polio has almost entirely been neglected.

Between 20-21 May, Save the Children undertook a remote scoping exercise to assess the sentiments of children aged 6-15 across seven provinces of the country. A total of 74 responses, including 32 boys and 42 girls, were collected via phone calls by Save the Children ’s Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEAL) staff. The questions posed to the children were open-ended, simply asking about what they knew about COVID-19 and how it has impacted their lives and those of their families and communities. This approach was employed in order to better ensure objective responses/reflections from children.