With at least 20 per cent of primary school age children in Afghanistan undertaking some form of work, and an estimated 40 per cent of girls married before the age of 18 and thus denied access to education, a new United Nations-backed strategy is focusing on developing community and family-based support for vulnerable youngsters.

Reacting to a recent attack in Afghanistan against relief workers from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and other humanitarian organizations, senior UN officials today mourned the victims and stressed that aid personnel should be able to operate in safety.

Afghanistan’s Pul-i-Charkhi prison, once described by a newspaper as a “kind of Buchenwald,” has become a model for prison reform in the war-torn country, said officials of the United Nations, which is taking a lead role in the difficult task of improving the detention and legal system countrywide.

Social and economic rights to jobs, housing and safe drinking water – not security -- were named as top priorities by a majority of Afghan returnees in a survey conducted with the support of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).