Afghanistan / 82 percent of Afghans are illiterate

The International Labor Organization report, released last year, offered several grim statistics: nearly half of Afghans don’t have enough to eat; 18 percent of children under 15 years old are working; and 82 percent of Afghans are illiterate.

Most businesses are not registered and thus do not pay taxes. That means the government, riddled with corrupt officials, is heavily dependent on international aid as well as on the black market — most often linked to the country’s flourishing drug trade.

Ten years ago the International Labor Organization warned that long-term stability and prosperity would elude Afghanistan if employment, the kind that guarantees a regular income, wasn’t made a key component of projects to reconstruct this war-ravaged country.

But aid organizations were reluctant to get involved in job creation, the private sector remained stagnant despite significant investment in telecommunications, and many wealthy Afghans chose to put their money in other countries.

Nowadays, the report said, most Afghans cannot find permanent work, and even temporary work is drying up as international aid money dwindles ahead of the 2014 deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO combat troops from Afghanistan.

“There is a serious looming problem with unemployment in Afghanistan,” said Graeme Smith, senior Afghanistan analyst for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at 

via Despite Billions in Aid, Afghans Can’t Find Work – ABC News.