KABUL: Children are probably safer growing up in Afghanistan’s major cities, including the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, than in London, New York, or Glasgow, NATO’s top civilian envoy to Afghanistan has said.
Mark Sedwill’s comments were made during an interview to be aired on Monday on Children’s BBC Newsround, a popular British daily current affairs programme aimed at children.
Children living in the Afghan capital Kabul had told the show’s presenter they felt unsafe on the streets because of the risk of bombs. But Sedwill dismissed their fears.
“Here and in Kabul and the other big cities, actually, there are very few of those bombs,” he said. “The children are probably safer here than they would be in London, New York or Glasgow or many other cities,” he said, according to comments released by CBBC before the show was aired.
“It’s a very family-orientated society, so it is a little bit like a city of villages,” he said.
His remarks, which will feature in a two-part series exploring the lives of children in Afghanistan, were rejected as misleading by an official from the aid group Save the Children.
“One in five children die before they get to the age of five. So to say it’s safer to live in London, New York or Glasgow is daft,” said the representative from Save the Children, who requested anonymity so he could speak freely.
“Sedwill’s overall message that life is village-like gives a sense of comfort or of a safe environment. It is not like that in Afghanistan, it is dangerous for children, it’s an insecure place,” he said.
Sedwill said he had been trying to explain that violence was not at the same level in every part of Afghanistan and that in cities like Kabul, where security had improved, violence was comparable to what many Western children might experience.
“Any comment you have to clarify obviously wasn’t very well put and the comparison I made with Western cities distracted attention from the important point I was seeking to make,” Sedwill said in a statement later on Monday. UN figures show Afghan children are often the victims of a worsening conflict, with 1,795 children killed or injured as a result of the war from September 2008 through August 2010.
Violence across Afghanistan is at its worst since the Taliban were overthrown by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in late 2001, with civilian and military casualties at record levels.
A report from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in November 2009 said Afghanistan was the most dangerous country to be born in. It has the highest infant mortality rate in the world and two-thirds of the population lacks access to clean water.
Forty-three percent of the country was virtually off-limits to aid agencies due to poor security, the UNICEF report said, making it difficult to carry out health campaigns for children. Another U.N. report on Afghanistan in September said casualties among women increased 6 percent, while those among children jumped by 55 percent.
A total of 74 children were killed in the first half of the year by homemade bombs or in suicide attacks, an increase of 155 percent for the same period in 2009.
