Children

About half of the Afghan population are children under the age of 15. Children as the most vulnerable group of society faces some serious health problems. In every 1,000 children, 50 of them die before age 5. Hundreds of thousands of children are malnourished due to poverty.

More than 4 million children are out of school and a majority of them are girls. Secondary schools for girls have been closed after the change of government in 2021. Children with disabilities and children of the nomadic Kochi people are also often denied their right to education.

For 40 years, the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan provided educational services for children in rural areas, mostly in remote villages where no other education was available. Preschool educational training was offered to children with disabilities who could then be enrolled in mainstream schools.

In 2022, 130,000 children, 65 percent of them girls, attended SCA schools. In 2023, all SCA schools were handed over to provincial education authorities.