The United Nations (UN) food agency said on April 10 that it urgently needs 800 million USD in the next 6 months to help Afghanistan , a country at the highest risk of famine in a quarter of a century.
Aid agencies have been providing food, education and health care to Afghans since the Taliban took over in August 2021 and the subsequent economic collapse. But distribution has been severely affected by a Taliban decree last December banning Afghan women from working at national and international NGOs.
The UN is not part of the ban, but last week it said the Taliban-led government was preventing Afghan women from working at its agencies in the country.
The World Food Programme (WFP) said that female aid workers play a vital role in providing food and nutrition assistance to the agency and it will do its best to maintain this, while also trying to ensure the active participation of female staff.
“WFP urgently needs $800 million over the next six months to continue providing assistance to people in need across Afghanistan,” the UN agency said. “A devastating famine is knocking on Afghanistan’s doors, and unless humanitarian assistance is sustained, hundreds of thousands more Afghans will need assistance to survive.”
“Ultimately, it is women and children who are the most vulnerable,” WFP Director Hsiao-wei Lee said in late March.
Afghan women sit after receiving food aid distributed by a charity during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan in Kandahar, March 28, 2023. Photo: RFE/RL
The UN said on April 10 that its operations in Afghanistan remain severely underfunded, with only $249 million confirmed for 2023, or nearly a third of the amount received for the same period in 2022.
Afghanistan is in its third consecutive year of drought-like conditions, its second year of economic paralysis, while still suffering from decades of conflict and natural disasters, according to the UN.
The total “immediate” funding requirement to address critical gaps over the next three months is $717.4 million, according to the UN humanitarian office, and this is just part of an overall funding gap of $4.38 billion for the humanitarian response for 2023 in the South Asian country.
As a result, the UN found that fundraising for Afghanistan is the least effective globally, even though the South Asian country is suffering the world's largest humanitarian crisis.
The Taliban takeover has plunged millions of Afghans into poverty after foreign aid stopped almost overnight. Sanctions on Taliban officials, halting bank transfers and freezing billions of dollars in Afghanistan’s foreign reserves have limited access to global institutions and outside money that supported the country’s aid-dependent economy before US and NATO forces withdrew.
The country's acting foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, said Afghanistan's assets had been frozen illegally and unfairly. He called for Afghanistan's seat at the UN to be handed over to a Taliban-led government, which is currently held by the government of former President Ashraf Ghani.
In a video statement shared by Taliban representatives on April 10, Mr. Muttaqi said that the offices of the United Nations and other international organizations are open in Kabul. He did not directly mention the ban on female Afghan UN staff in his remarks.
“They are operating here, so our relationship is good so far,” Mr. Muttaqi said. “We are trying to represent Afghanistan at the UN, which is the right of Afghans. But now (Afghanistan’s UN seat) is in the hands of someone who does not represent Afghanistan, does not represent the people, and no other group represents them . ”
Minh Duc (According to AP, Yahoo! News)
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