A young child sits alone in a rubbish-strewn gutter of Nairobi’s huge Matahri slum, arguably Africa’s biggest slum township. Matahri has no potable running water and no sanitation. The child mortality rate is one of the highest in Africa. This slum is in the very centre of Nairobi, Kenya and little known, if at all, to tourists passing through the capital on the way to their safaris.  

Poverty is on the rise in Kabul Afghanistan, the government is less than sympathetic. A resolution by the ministers' council - chaired by Afghan President Hamid Karzai - has outlawed street begging and instructed the Interior Ministry to arrest beggars and send them to orphanages and care homes run by the Afghan Red Crescent Society. Most of the beggars on Kabul streets are children, women, disabled or the elderly. they are prone to crime and exploitation. Afghanistan is ranked by the UN Development Programme as the fifth least developed country in the world; almost half of its estimated 26.6 million people live on less than US$2 a day.

Image for UNICEF