25000 Children Still in Tents after Kunar Quake

DID Press: Afghanistan office of Save the Children said that six months after the deadly earthquake in eastern Afghanistan, around 25,000 children in Kunar Province are still living in tents and continuing their education in temporary spaces, as homes and schools have yet to be rebuilt and no timeline for reconstruction.

The Aug. 31 earthquake in eastern Afghanistan was among the deadliest in the country’s history, killing more than 2,000 people and destroying or severely damaging over 8,000 homes. Thousands of families were forced into tents, many of which have since been damaged by heavy snowfall in mountainous areas.

The organization said families are using traditional wood- or charcoal-fired stoves to heat their tents, significantly increasing the risk of fires. Reconstruction in some villages is proceeding slowly, while the scale of destruction in others is so extensive that rebuilding may never fully take place.

In education, more than half of the roughly 1,300 classrooms assessed were either fully or partially destroyed. Even before the quake, nearly 50,000 primary school–age children in Kunar were out of school. With reconstruction of damaged schools yet to begin, around 17,000 students in quake-affected areas are studying in temporary facilities.

Save the Children has established 30 temporary learning spaces for nearly 1,500 children and is providing health services, water and sanitation support, shelter, household and hygiene kits, multi-purpose cash assistance, and psychosocial support through child-friendly spaces. The organization said it has so far reached nearly 89,000 people, including about 34,000 children, in affected areas.

Bujar Hoxha, Save the Children’s country director in Afghanistan, warned that as needs rise nationwide and funding declines, earthquake-affected communities must not be forgotten. Families, he said, need sustained financing to rebuild their shattered lives.