KABUL — A senior NATO official said Monday that children in New York or other major Western cities face a greater risk of violence than those in Kabul, where lack of clean water, open sewers and disease pose a greater threat than insurgents.
The remarks by Mark Sedwill, NATO’s top civilian representative in Afghanistan, drew fire from children’s advocacy groups that say Afghanistan is one of the worst places in the world to be born.
With few bombings and low levels of crime against children in Kabul, youngsters in the Afghan capital probably are safer than in other big cities like London or New York, Sedwill said on a taped program for the BBC’s “CBBC Newsround,” a daily current-events show aimed at children.
He later clarified his remarks in a statement Monday. Sedwill said he was trying to explain to an audience of British children how uneven violence is across Afghanistan. The Associated Press
