Permalink: https://media.greenpeace.org/archive/Girls-in-Afghanistan-27MZIFL2YA9W.htmlConceptually similarChildren in AfghanistanGP01X36Completed★★★★Girls in AfghanistanGP01X31Completed★★★★Child in AfghanistanGP01X3ICompleted★★★★Children in AfghanistanGP01X3OCompleted★★★★Mother and Son in AfghanistanGP01X49Completed★★★★Girl in AfghanistanGP01X47Completed★★★★Schoolboys in AfghanistanGP01X4RCompleted★★★★Farmers in AfghanistanGP01X33Completed★★★★Family in AfghanistanGP01X35Completed★★★★View AllGP01X4EGirls in AfghanistanSisters Zira Gul and Haqiqa in Shikhan. Their mother Acha Jan hides behind a wall to avoid being seen by the unrelated strangers from abroad. "Thank god, the girls have survived", she says from behind the wall. Acha Jan's family now has four children. Zira Gul and Haqiqa have another sister of four years old and a one year old baby boy. There were two other boys but they died three years ago when they were only one and five years old. The mother does not know why they died. Haqiqa and Zira Gul go to the new village school every afternoon. The school is so overcrowded that, like most schools in Afghanistan, it runs two shifts. The family's kitchen has collapsed due to the heavy rainfalls and floods.Locations:Afghanistan-Asia-Shahr-e Bozorg-South AsiaDate:1 Jul, 2009Credit:© Robert Knoth / GreenpeaceMaximum size:5000px X 5000pxKeywords:Climate (campaign title)-Climate change impacts-Day-Full length-Girls-KWCI (GPI)-Local population-Outdoors-Storms (climate change)-Two peopleShoot:Climate Voices from AfghanistanIn the summer of 2001 photographer Robert Knoth and writer Antoinette de Jong traveled for weeks around the remote areas of northern Afghanistan where the population was suffering from a severe drought. In 2009, they revisited the same district of Shahr-e-Bozorg to try and find the families they had met eight years earlier. They found many of the people they interviewed and portrayed earlier and saw how rehabilitation programs had made a huge difference to their lives. But this spring, as northern Afghanistan was hit by extreme storms, rainfall and flooding for many weeks, much of the hard work that was done in recent years was falling apart yet again. Houses and schools collapsed, roads were disrupted or completely disappeared by landslides, and drinking water systems were polluted and destroyed. Climate change and overpopulation are causing erosion and a collapse of the fragile livelihoods for the majority of rural Afghans.
