ISLAMABAD, Oct 11: About 100,000 children are likely to die in Afghanistan in the coming winter due to diarrhoea, pneumonia and other diseases, according to the Unicef estimates.

Briefing reporters on the Unicef’s humanitarian assistance programme here at a local hotel, Caroll Long, the Unicef representative in Pakistan, and Eric Laroche, the Unicef man in Afghanistan, said the Afghan children were malnourished, went bare-footed and lacked warm clothing.

These children would be frozen to death within six weeks if nothing was done to save them, they said and added, the Afghan children had been traumatized by war, drought and poverty and were therefore prone to sickness.

They said Unicef had already dispatched 80 tons of educational material to Hazara Jath to ensure that educational activity was not disrupted by war.

About a question whether the international donor agencies were converting the Afghans into beggars, he said Afghans were getting three times less aid than the Africans and five times less than the Costa Ricans.

Ms Long said the Unicef had already sent $5.5 million of aid to Afghanistan while another batch of humanitarian assistance, worth $20 million, would be sent to Afghanistan in the coming weeks.

The Unicef representatives informed reporters that about 70 per cent of the Afghan refugees in Pakistan were women and children.

About the success of polio campaigns in Pakistan in the wake of a fresh influx of Afghan refugees in cities like Karachi and Peshawar, Ms Long conceded that the future immunization campaigns would have to be intensified. Pakistan’s ministry of health is taking steps in this regard, she added.

About the challenge being faced by Pakistan due to the heavy influx of refugees, the Unicef representatives urged that an immediate response be devised to safeguard the basic human rights of the refugees as well as the rights of those who were being affected by the civil disturbances in Pakistan.

Unicef also urged that all decisions in the conflict be guided by the human rights standards to which almost every state in the world legally subscribed.