This is what hunger does in a country… To its youngest people. The Afghanistan barely survived before the Taliban seized power. But now foreign capital is frozen, threatening the lives of at least one million children.
This is how the BBC report begins, with the shocking images of two babies aged 6 and 3 months. In the hospital ward, from which the shots were taken, one in five children will not make it. Little Usman has half the weight he should be. His father is one of the millions of people who do not have a job.
There are others who have done the unthinkable to be able to feed their children, according to the report. “This little girl has been sold by her family,” she said.
“My other children were dying of hunger, so we had to sell my daughter. How can I not be sorry. She is my daughter. “I wish I didn’t have to sell my daughter,” says the mother. Her husband was picking up rubbish, but that did him no good. “We were hungry. Now we have no flour, no oil at home. We have nothing “, says the father and continues:” My daughter does not know what her future will be like. I do not know how he will feel about it. But I had to do it. “
As soon as the baby starts to walk, the man who bought it will take it. He has paid more than half of the $ 500, for which he was sold. The family said that the girl will marry his son, but no one can be sure.
Afghanistan: “Children will die. People will starve “
A senior UN official warned yesterday that millions of Afghans, including children, could starve to death if immediate action is not taken to help Afghanistan, which is on the brink of collapse, freeing frozen funds to freeze in humanitarian efforts.
United Nations World Food Program Executive Director David Beasley told Reuters that 22.8 million people –more than half of Afghanistan’s 39 million people – face acute food insecurity and are on the verge of starvation compared to 14 million just two months ago.
“Children will die. People will starve. “Things will get much worse.”, warned from Dubai, as broadcast by international agencies and rebroadcast by the Athenian News Agency.
“I do not know how millions of people, especially children, will not die at the rate we are moving at with the lack of funding and the collapse of the economy,” Beasley said.
The food crisis in Afghanistan is already more serious than those in Syria and Yemen. Only the Democratic Republic of Congo is currently in a more desperate situation, UN officials told AFP.
“Afghanistan is now facing one of the worst, if not the worst, humanitarian catastrophes in the world,” Beasley said.
“The countdown before the catastrophe has begun and if we do not act now, we will have an absolute catastrophe in our hands”, warned.
The food crisis in Afghanistan
Afghanistan plunges into crisis in August after Taliban oust ousted Western-backed government in Kabul, which led donors to freeze billions of dollars in aid to the country’s aid-dependent economy.
The food crisis, exacerbated by climate change, was bad in Afghanistan even before the Taliban came to power, and their new government has ruled out access to assets abroad as countries try to find ways to deal with them. of the Islamist movement.
“What we predict is coming true much faster than we expected. “Kabul fell faster than we expected and the economy is collapsing even faster.”
There should be a reprogramming of development aid money to be given to humanitarian aid, something some countries have already done, or frozen funds to be channeled through the UN agency, he added.
“You have to unfreeze these funds so that people can survive,” he said.
The UN World Food Program needs up to $ 220 million a month to provide some food to nearly 23 million vulnerable people as winter approaches.
Many Afghans sell their belongings to buy food while Taliban can not pay the salaries of civil servants and urban communities face food insecurity at levels similar to rural areas for the first time.
The World Food Program used its own resources to help cover food aid until December after some donors failed to meet their commitments, Beasley said.
Aid agencies are urging countries concerned about human rights abuses by the Taliban to work with the new leadership in Afghanistan to prevent a collapse, which they say could trigger a migration crisis similar to the one in Afghanistan. the 2015 exit from Syria that shocked Europe.
“I do not believe that world leaders are realizing what is coming to them,” Beasley said, citing various humanitarian crises in the Middle East, Africa and Central America.
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