Women displaced in eastern Afghanistan face hunger, insecurity, and trauma amid renewed conflict
Source: UN Women
It was during an air attack in eastern Afghanistan that 30-year-old Najeeba* felt her labour pains begin. Around her, families were already on the move, fleeing renewed hostilities along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. But her baby wasn’t going to wait.
Just six months earlier, the ground had shaken beneath her feet when a massive earthquake devastated the region. Now, it was the skies that she feared.
“There was no safe place”, she recalled, as the conflict reached the camp where she had been living with other families displaced by the earthquake. “Aircraft were flying overhead, and my children were extremely frightened; whenever they heard the sound, they would cry and scream.”
With her husband, she packed up their tent and few remaining belongings. Najeeba gave birth in a Red Crescent clinic, then climbed into a rented mini truck with her newborn daughter, six other children aged two to 11, and her husband, and escaped to a new camp in the Maza Dara Valley, in Nurgal district.
It was during an air attack in eastern Afghanistan that 30-year-old Najeeba* felt her labour pains begin. Around her, families were already on the move, fleeing renewed hostilities along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. But her baby wasn’t going to wait.
Just six months earlier, the ground had shaken beneath her feet when a massive earthquake devastated the region. Now, it was the skies that she feared.
“There was no safe place”, she recalled, as the conflict reached the camp where she had been living with other families displaced by the earthquake. “Aircraft were flying overhead, and my children were extremely frightened; whenever they heard the sound, they would cry and scream.”
With her husband, she packed up their tent and few remaining belongings. Najeeba gave birth in a Red Crescent clinic, then climbed into a rented mini truck with her newborn daughter, six other children aged two to 11, and her husband, and escaped to a new camp in the Maza Dara Valley, in Nurgal district.