HERAT. March 19. KAZINFORM Afghanistan is the hardest place in the world to be a child, the South Asia regional director for UNICEF said, with high child mortality rates, poor levels of nutrition and rampant sexual abuse; Kazinform refers to the Arab News.

"The situation in Afghanistan as a whole is one of the most dramatic in South Asia and also in the world. Afghanistan is the most difficult place to be born as a child," Daniel Toole said on a visit to Afghanistan this week.

"If I could take one challenge, it's survival." Three decades of war and a worsening insurgency have made it ever tougher for an Afghan child just to survive, Toole told Reuters during a visit aimed at highlighting what UNICEF calls the worst conditions for children on earth.

One of the girls he had just met in a woman's shelter was only nine years old when she was forced to marry a total stranger. Another was just 11.

More than a quarter of Afghan children - 257 out of 1,000 - will die before they reach their fifth birthday and 165 out of every 1,000 will die in the first year of their lives, more than any place in the world, according to UNICEF data from 2008.

Afghanistan also has the second highest maternal mortality rate in the world after Sierra Leone, with 1,800 women per 100,000 live births dying during child birth, according to UNICEF estimates from 2005; Kazinform cites the Arab News.

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