Save the Children says almost 50 per cent of the population needs urgent support to survive despite continued food aid.
Around 9.6 million children in Afghanistan have been unable to obtain food daily due to a deepening of the economic crisis in the country, the impact of ukrainian warY continuing droughtSave the Children has said.
In a report published on Tuesday, the international NGO called for “immediate food assistance” to save lives in the short term, adding, however, that the aid alone “was not enough to address the worst hunger crisis on record in the country.” “.
“Despite a significant amount of food aid reaching families in recent months, 19.7 million children and adults, almost 50 percent of the population, are still hungry and in urgent need of support to survive,” it says. The report.
According to the report, some 20,000 people were pushed into famine in the last two to three months alone.
Reflecting the situation of many Afghans, Maryam, a 26-year-old mother of five from Faryab province, complained: “I can only borrow money and buy food for them, but above all I don’t have enough food for them. Sometimes we have food to eat and other days we don’t.”
Maryam told Save the Children that she recently had to borrow money to take her acutely malnourished baby to hospital.
following the Taliban takeover Afghanistan on August 15, the aid-dependent country was cut off from international financial institutions, while the United States froze nearly $10 billion of its assets, triggering a banking crisis.
Millions of dollars in international aid have dried up due to sanctions.
The defenders have beaten the Biden administration’s decision to repurpose $3.5 billion in Afghan assets as compensation to victims of the 9/11 attacks.
Navigate sanctions
For months, the UN and other aid agencies have been trying to get around sanctions to deliver much-needed aid to the country.
“Every day our frontline health workers are treating children who are wasting away before our eyes because they only eat bread once a day, and those are the lucky ones,” said Save the Children. and media, Athena Rayburn.
“Children in Afghanistan have never known a life without conflict and if action is not taken soon, they will not know a world without hunger and empty stomachs,” he added.
Rayburn explained that although 18.9 million children and adults were expected to need food aid during the second half of this year, the funds available for food aid could only support 3.2 million people.
He added that as the world’s attention continues to shift to Ukraine, the situation in Afghanistan will continue to worsen.
“Every day that goes by without the necessary funds, more children lose their lives from preventable causes.”
In March, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres launched the largest single-country funding campaign ever conducted by the UN seeking $4.4 billion to prevent a food crisis in the country. But donor countries have only pledged more than half that amount.