WASHINGTON (AFP) - Afghanistan is the worst place in the world
to be a mother and Norway is the best, with stark differences in
conditions for women and children in the two countries, a report
released Tuesday says. In Afghanistan and the nine other
countries at the bottom of the Mothers' Index, compiled by the
nonprofit group Save the Children, mothers and their children
endure "grim conditions," with one in six kids dying before age
five and one in three suffering from malnutrition. Nearly half
the population in the worst countries to raise kids lack access
to clean water, and only four girls for every five boys are
enrolled in primary school. Most of the other bottom-ranked
countries in the index are in sub-Saharan Africa. From worst to
less bad, they are Niger, Guinea-Bissau, Yemen, Chad, Democratic
Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Mali, Sudan and the Central African
Republic, the index says. The top 10 countries, in order, were
the five Nordic nations of Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark and
Finland; followed