Children Safe in Kabul, Says NATO Ambassador; Aid Groups Disagree, VOA News, 22 November 2010

EXCERPT: "A comment by NATO's Ambassador to Afghanistan, Briton Mark Sedwill, that Kabul is safer for children than New York or London has angered children's aid organizations which say Afghanistan is one of the worst places on the planet to be a child. Ambassador Mark Sedwill was talking to a BBC News program aimed at children in an interview he did in the Afghan capital several weeks ago. 'Here in Kabul and in the other big cities actually there are very few of those bombs and children are probably safer here than they would be in London or New York or Glasgow or many other cities,' he said. But when the comments were aired publicly Monday they caused an uproar in the aid community. The head of Save the Children called the comments misleading or wrong. Sarah Crowe is South Asia spokeswoman for the United Nations Childrens agency, UNICEF. 'UNICEF continues to regard Afghanistan as being one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a child,' she says. [...] NATO's Sedwill issued a statement clarifying his remarks, saying he was trying to point out that violence was prevalent in only a minority of places around Afghanistan and that in cities like Kabul, the total levels of violence are comparable to those western children would experience."

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Related articles:
Nato official clarifies Kabul child safety comment, BBC News, 22 November 2010
Are children safer in Kabul than in London or New York?, BBC World Service, 22 November 2010

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