Investigating the begging situation of girls and women in Afghanistan

What is begging?
A beggar is a person who takes money from people by asking for material help by creating a feeling of pity. There are different types of beggars inside and outside the country, beggars are widely discussed among the people of the world, because this issue is mostly related to poor and backward countries, and our country is one of the most backward.

Although beggars are at a higher level in our country and men make up the majority of beggars in the country, because the subject of our discussion is the begging of women and children, and it has painful and shocking aspects, I want to briefly discuss the roots and effects of this issue here. 

I will discuss the negatives of the above society members, especially children. Since the infrastructure of every country is made up of the economy, which is the foundation of the society and determines the political, social and cultural history of every society, it plays a fundamental role in the high standard of living of the citizens of that country.

We root the beggars of women and children in the country in the following boards:

War and lack of peace in the country, lack of provision of social justice, internal migrations and displacement of people, lack of production institutions and unemployment, economy and poverty, use of beggars by mafia groups, profession and habit, administrative corruption.

- War and lack of peace in the country:
The war that has been going on in our country for the past few decades has destroyed all public property and private national and state production institutions. It has turned our country into a ruin and the number of people killed, especially the most men (the breadwinners of the family have lost at least six people, or they have died due to suicide and bombs, etc.)

A mother who does not have any equal social and legal educational rights in the country, after losing their husbands and family breadwinners, they are forced to share with their children in order to continue their lives and become beggars.

- Failure to provide social justice
Social justice, which assumes all human beings to be equal in today's modern thought, and aims to equalize opportunities, incomes, and wealth.

Social justice, which is one of the main slogans of all socialist and democratic ideologies and movements. They believe that until social (economic) justice is not established, justice in its true sense will not be realized.

Therefore, our people need a powerful democratic government that is based on the honest idea of equality among the members of the society in providing legality. Unfortunately, our people are far away from this issue in the current state of the country, which forms the poor condemned classes and the rich ruling classes in the society, and the beggars are also considered as the deprived class of our society.

In a democratic society, the rights of men and women are equal, they have all the scientific, educational, social, political, and economic facilities, and women, like men, play an active role in all the affairs of the society, so that the absence of one of the parents does not cause the collapse of the family's life. Children are protected from begging. And at the same time, the government's help and care for such classes, which do not face collapse with the loss of one of them, and prevents children from becoming beggars.

- Internal migrations and displacement of people
As a result of civil wars, people lose their identity and are displaced in other parts of the country in order to continue their lives. It is difficult for the residents of the region that all of them, far from the cooperation of the government, are living independently in the wage frames, where there are no job opportunities, and more of them resort to begging and becoming beggars in order to continue their lives.

- Absence of economy and production and agriculture institutions
Afghanistan is an agricultural country, of the total area of Afghanistan (652 thousand square kilometers), only 12% of the land (8 million hectares) is arable and 4% of this land is under irrigation.

46% is pasture and 3% is covered by forests. Geographically, about 75% of Afghanistan's arable land is located in three of the country's eight agricultural areas, which are the north, northeast, and south.

Due to the lack of water, only about half of all cultivable areas are cultivated annually. Lack of modern moods and expressions is another problem that people cultivate and make a living with the most basic tools. Currently, most of the cultivation of coconut oil is done by the global mafia, and all the profits go to the pockets of drug dealers and carpenters, which the people do not take advantage of and do not know about.

One of the important exports of the country, which used to be carpets and dried fruits, is currently not as significant as it should be in order to meet the needs of the society, because many fruit trees and gardens have been destroyed due to wars or due to accidents.

Unfortunately, due to droughts, floods, etc., agriculture and horticulture have also faced high tensions. Production institutions in the country have fallen by 80% as a result of these wars and unemployment has reached its peak, although it is said that the country's products have increased after the fall of the Taliban, but the necessary structures for collection, storage, packaging and facilities in the production process, especially Providing acceptable facilities for post-harvest stages and technological production process and production criteria is also one of the other challenges facing these products in the country. 

Based on this, the level of poverty has increased day by day and beggars have grown in the country, most of them are women and children.

- Abuse of beggars, especially women and children, by the domestic mafia, drug dealers, and traffickers of women and children in the country by using beggars to commit various crimes such as theft, homosexuality, sex, drugs, etc., and also by selling and Hiring children, hiring women, and trading with the country's border markets earn huge amounts of money.

Begging in the country has become a number of free-traders. According to the information of the Independent Human Rights Commission of Afghanistan, currently about 60 thousand children in Afghanistan are addicted to drugs, one of the factors of which is the use of children for begging and giving drugs to it is them

They hire a number of children in the cold and heat by giving these children opium drugs and making them sleep during the day, carpenters earn huge money even with children from a few months to one year old because these children are used to taking drugs every day and if a day Don't let these substances reach them, they make them cry, even at that time, they gather people's pity and collect money with the crying of children, which is very painful and touching. 

These children are all addicts. When they grow up, they choose this work as a profession. It is automatically added to the beggars.

This is despite the fact that the war and the existing challenges of this social problem are very worrying, and children and women have always been innocent victims of this land, and the women who are the mothers of these children have not only shouldered the burden of begging for the livelihood of their families. They carry more pain than their addicted children with them until the end of their lives.

Administrative corruption:
According to the official published; One of the officials of the commission for collecting beggars says that only one out of 10 people who beg in Kabul is a real beggar. According to him, 90% of the beggars collected by the said commission were not willing to be kept in shelters and some of them were running away.

He added: "A beggar who is really poor and is introduced to the shelter is not worthy of running away from the shelter and its walls; because all their needs were provided here; But most of them were released from the house gathering by guaranteeing and presenting documents, some of them went to their families and some of them came back to the market. So the ways out of this debatable social problem are explained below.

1- Creating a national and progressive government with common foundations from all ethnic groups and tribes and ensuring peace and stability in the country.

2- Ensuring legality and social justice, eradicating administrative corruption, banning looting, banning the use of public property, etc. in the country

3- The development and growth of the country's economy in the framework of international relations

4- Creation and growth of production, agriculture and agriculture institutions, growth and development of import and export of the country's products

5- Creating working conditions and eradicating unemployment as much as possible

6- Establishing educational institutions and attracting children and young people to these institutions up to a certain age.

7- Establishing nursing homes, orphanages, kindergartens, shelters for women and their children, and taking care of orphaned children and orphaned and destitute women, etc. We know that if we start tomorrow, overcoming these problems will take time; But if we miss the opportunity today, from this moment, we will need more time to achieve these human goals.

So, the national, political, social elites and finally the people of Afghanistan, on our beautiful land, put aside hypocrisies from being (me) to becoming (us) among yourselves and the vast masses of people and keep this process away from linguistic and ethnic prejudices. 

Develop the union of solidarity and coincidence. Please save our nation and especially our innocent children and the violent ones from this misfortune. There will be a great punishment for this nation.

Mahshid Mahshid