Following 20 long years of brutal war on Afghanistan by the US-led military coalition, which ended up in delivering the country to the Taliban in August 2021, 23 million Afghans now face severe and acute hunger, economic bankruptcy, healthcare system collapse, unbearable family indebtedness, and devastating humanitarian crisis.
People in Afghanistan are today facing a food insecurity and malnutrition crisis of “unparalleled proportions,” Ramiz Alakbarov, Deputy Specia. l Representative for the Secretary General, reported. “The rapid increase in those experiencing acute hunger – from 14 million in July 2021 to 23 million in March 2022 – has forced households to resort to desperate measures such as skipping meals or taking on unprecedented debt to ensure there is some food on the table at the end of the day.”
In Afghanistan, a staggering 95 per cent of the population is not eating enough food, with that percentage rising to almost 100 per cent for female-headed households. An Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report co-led by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP), revealed by the end of last October that the lives, livelihoods and access to food for 22.8 million people will be severely impacted.
Hospital wards are filled with children suffering from malnutrition: smaller than they should be, many weighing at one year what an infant of six months would weigh in a developed country, and some so weak they are unable to move. Acute malnutrition rates in 28 out of 34 provinces are high with more than 3.5 million children in need of nutrition treatment support.
“Afghanistan’s health system is on the brink of collapse. Unless urgent action is taken, the country faces an imminent humanitarian catastrophe, warned the UN top humanitarian official, Martin Griffiths.
A banking and financial crisis so severe that it has left more than 80 percent of the population facing debt, and an increase in food and fuel prices, we cannot ignore the reality facing communities.
Hunger is rising and children are dying”, said the WFP Executive Director David Beasley. “We can’t feed people on promises...“This winter, millions of Afghans will be forced to choose between migration and starvation unless we can step up our life-saving assistance and unless the economy can be resuscitated”.
This has been the horrifying cost of another brutal war on unarmed human beings. We can fully accept Ukrainian war will eventually result in a similar tragedy.
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