The United Nations' World Food Programme (WFP) warned that millions of Afghan residents could starve to death this coming winter unless other nations take urgent action to assist the war-torn country's population.
The WFP said that more than half of Afghanistan's population, which numbered about 22.8 million residents, are facing acute food insecurity. Officials said that 3.2 million children under five years of age are at risk of acute malnutrition.
Afghanistan's Devastated Economy
In a statement, WFP executive director David Beasley said that Afghanistan was now among the world's worst humanitarian crises, if not the worst. The official said that the rest of the world was counting down to the country's catastrophe.
The situation in Afghanistan came after the Taliban militant group took control of the country's government after conquering its capital city of Kabul in August. The insurrection group's success was largely linked to the complete withdrawal of United States troops from the region.
The Taliban's takeover weakened Afghanistan's already fragile economy that heavily depended on foreign aid for support. Many western nations suspended the sending of aid to the region and the World Bank and International Monetary Fund halted payments after the Taliban took control, BBC reported.
The numbers are also a jump compared to records two months ago where only 14 million people in Afghanistan were suffering from acute food insecurity. Beasley said that "children are going to die." The WFP official said that the situation in Afghanistan was only going to get worse if left alone.
Afghanistan's food crisis was made worse by climate change which already had a firm grasp on the country even before the Taliban took control. The new government has been prevented from accessing assets held overseas as nations worldwide contemplate on how to deal with the insurrection group's government.
Beasley noted that his agency was seeing their predictions coming true at a much faster rate than they had anticipated before. He said that no one expected Kabul to fall so quickly and for Afghanistan's economy to fall so low, Reuters reported.
International Financial Support
The situation comes as the UN has announced that it plans to set up a special trust fund to provide desperately-needed cash support for Afghanistan residents. The funds would be channeled through a system that taps into donor funds frozen since the Taliban group's takeover in August.
The UN's goal is to inject liquidity into Afghan households amid the local economy "imploding" on itself. This would allow residents to survive the winter season and stay in their homeland despite the chaos that has ensued since the insurrection group's takeover.
The UN Development Programme's (UNDP) administrator, Achim Steiner, said that Germany had pledged $58 million as a first contributor. The official said the agency was currently discussing with other donors to mobilize resources in support of Afghanistan.
The UNDP estimated the costs for the first 12 months of providing aid to the war-torn country to be around $667 million. "What we are witnessing is not only a nation and a country in the midst of political turmoil; what we are also witnessing is an economic implosion," Steiner said during a Geneva news conference, Aljazeera reported.
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