United Nations, Aug. 30 (BNA): The UN Commissioner-General for Humanitarian Affairs warned that Afghanistan faces extreme poverty with 6 million people at risk of starvation, urging donors to refinance economic development and provide $770 million immediately to help Afghans weather the winter.
Martin Griffiths told the United Nations Security Council that Afghanistan faces multiple crises – humanitarian, economic, climate crisis, hunger and financial crisis, Associated Press reports.
Conflict, poverty, climate shocks and food insecurity have “always been a sad reality” in Afghanistan, but he said what makes the current situation “extremely critical” is a large-scale halt in development aid since the Taliban seized power a year ago.
Griffiths said more than half of the Afghan population – some 24 million people – need assistance and nearly 19 million face acute levels of food insecurity.
And we are “worried” that the numbers will soon get worse as the winter weather will send fuel and food prices already high.
Despite the challenges, he said, UN agencies and their NGO partners had launched an “unprecedented response” over the past year, reaching nearly 23 million people.
But he said $614 million is urgently needed to prepare for winter, including repairing and upgrading shelters and providing warm clothes and blankets — and an additional $154 million needed to stockpile food and other supplies before the weather cuts off access to certain areas.
However, Griffiths stressed, “Humanitarian assistance will never be able to replace the provision of system-wide services to 40 million people across the country.”
He said the Taliban “doesn’t have a budget to invest in their future,” and “clearly some development support has to start.”
With more than 70 percent of Afghans living in rural areas, Griffiths warned that if agriculture and livestock production were not protected, “millions of lives and livelihoods would be at risk, and the country’s ability to produce food would be jeopardized.”
He said the country’s liquidity and banking crisis and the extreme difficulty of international financial transactions must also be addressed.
“The consequences of inaction on the humanitarian and development fronts would be catastrophic and difficult to reverse,” Griffiths warned.