95% Afghan
children do not
go to school

DAWN,
July 22, 2000

PESHAWAR, July 21 (Dawn) -- The sources of the United Nations have estimated that over 95 per cent Afghan children do not go to school, which depicts the total collapse of the education system in the war-ravaged country.

According to reports as a result of 21 years of war an entire generation of Afghan children is growing without education.

Girls are most affected as they are prevented from going to school while boys have also suffered as a significant proportion of qualified teachers, in major cities such as Kabul, Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif, used to be women.

Until 1996, 70 per cent of the teachers in Kabul were women, 8,000 women were enrolled at Kabul University, 40 per cent of the children enrolled at the Afghan capital's 63 schools were girls but as a result of the prolonged civil strife things have turned upside down.

Now teachers are unable to work and are gradually leaving Afghanistan.

Thus, experts say, the outlook in a country which had one of world's worst literacy rates the situation has turned extremely bleak.

The United Nations has estimated female literacy to be at 15 per cent and 32 per cent for males.

Both Afghan experts and those of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees describe the bleakest possible prospects of improvement for the future generations of Afghanistan, which is one of the word's poorest, most devastated and least developed nations with no visible signs of improvement in the prevailing situation as fighting is continue between Taliban militia and forces of Afghan commander Ahmed Shah Masood.

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