97% of Afghan families are desperately trying to get enough food to feed their children. Nearly 80% of children reported having gone to bed hungry in the last thirty days, a probability that now involves twice as many girls as their male peers. Save the Children's new report Breaking Point: Life for Children a Year after the Taliban's takeover highlights the very serious conditions in which Afghan children find themselves a year after the Taliban took control of the Asian country, raising the alarm about the situation of girls: almost totally excluded from society, most of them suffer from hunger and a quarter show signs of depression.

It is the lack of food that emerges most clearly. Nine out of ten girls stated that their number of meals had decreased over the past year and that they were worried because they were losing weight and did not find enough energy to study, play or work. The impact of the crisis also has strong repercussions on the mental and psychosocial wellbeing of young women: according to interviews with their reference adults, 26% of girls show signs of depression compared to 16% of boys and 27% of them show signs of anxiety compared to 18% of their male peers.

The report also reveals the serious increase in early marriages in communities, fuelled by the terrible economic crisis families are experiencing and the deprivation of necessities. This phenomenon, that of early marriages, is having a very strong impact on girls, more so than on boys.

Breaking Point: Life for Children one year after the Taliban takeover is available on the Save the Children website, in the "Publications" section.
Other materials and news can be found on this site under the themes Children in armed conflicts and Gender discrimination, accessible from the "Topics" navigation menu.