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About two million students in Afghanistan do not have access to safe drinking water and about 75 percent of these schools do not have safe sanitation facilities.

Over six million students are enrolled in over 10,000 schools across the country; some 34 percent of the students are female, according to the Ministry of Education (MoE). About five million school-age children are out of school, according to aid agencies such as Oxfam.

Zahida Stanikzai, UNICEF’s water and sanitation expert, states:

“[School] toilets are not clean and well maintained. The current design and location of toilets are not acceptable for children, particularly girls… There are no facilities for grown-up girls.”

Washing hands with soap, particularly after visiting the toilet and before eating, can reduce child morbidity rates caused by diarrhoeal diseases by almost 50 percent, according to UNICEF.

“In most of the schools hand washing facilities are not placed in a proper place. There is a lack of resources to provide soap for hand washing,” said UNICEF’s Stanikzai.

Read more about the sanitation situation in Afghanistan here.