Berlin, Apr 01: Afghanistan has not done enough to improve women's rights and must tackle gender inequality if the country is to develop, the United Nations said. ''We have to ensure the government takes the issue far more seriously,'' Sultan Aziz of the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) said during an international conference on Afghanistan in Berlin. Afghanistan is seeking backing for a 27.5 billion dollars reconstruction plan, but Aziz, regional director of the UNFPA in Asia and the pacific, said women's issues were sidelined as discussions focused on western concerns of drugs and security. Afghanistan's maternal mortality rate of about 2,000 per 100,000 births is the highest in the world, said Aziz. ''It shows being pregnant is a curse,'' he said. UNFPA has found in a population survey that 55 per cent of Afghans are 18 years old or younger, a fact described by Aziz as a ''social time bomb'', with more pregnancies stretching an already strained health service. A new report from another United Nations body, the UN Development Programme (UNDP), also highlighted women's rights, saying that gender equality was critical to achieving development goals in Afghanistan. ''Despite last year's surge, the primary (school) enrolment rate (for girls) is amongst the lowest in the world,'' the report said, adding that in certain southern provinces just 15 per cent of pupils enrolled at primary schools were girls. Forty per cent of health facilities had no female staff, while 70 per cent of those affected by tuberculosis, a growing health threat in the country, were women. However, David Lockwood, Asia and Pacific regional director of UNDP, said the government was making some progress, particularly in the electoral role, saying a third of those registered to vote were women. ''The constitution is fundamental to that. All of the delegates of the Loya Jirga have gone back in the knowledge that it was essential,'' Lockwood said, referring to the grand assembly that approved the new constitution in January. He said that communities were likely to register greater numbers of women to increase their proportion of the overall electorate, even in traditionally conservative areas. Bureau Report