People & Power uncovers the harrowing stories of Afghanistan's prison children.

Hundreds of young children in Afghanistan are being forced to share a jail cell with their mothers; women who in many cases are protesting their innocence or have been convicted of so-called moral crimes.

Many of those children are facing years behind bars, cut off from the outside world yet themselves completely innocent of any offence.

The frequently appalling treatment of women in Afghanistan is a subject that has been well covered by the international media, and quite rightly so: Earlier this year for example, my British-Afghan colleague Najibullah Quraishi and I interviewed women who had been badly beaten and abused by their husbands and their families (including other women), and had no other option but to live secretly in a women's shelter in Kabul.

One young woman had been stabbed in the head by her husband and had had her fingernails pulled out. When she tried to escape, she was imprisoned for four years by the authoritie