UNHCR warns of Afghanistan's worsening humanitarian crisis, calls for emergency funding

The humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan is worsening and funding for emergency aid is urgently needed to help 20 million people there, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said on Tuesday, 12 October. This comes after the UN had led an appeal for solidarity for the people of Afghanistan, seeking $606 million for the war-ravaged nation. In a press release, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees informed that out of the total, only 35 per cent of the funds it needed to fund operations for the next two months had been received. 

On Tuesday, UNHCR spokesperson Babar Baloch said that the agency was trying to establish a logistics hub just outside Afghanistan’s border to distribute aid to the country’s many hundreds of thousands of internally displaced. He explained that Afghan’s economy was at “breaking point”. He said that this collapse had to be avoided at all costs, particularly as temperatures were now plunging at night with the approach of winter. 

“So, resources are really needed to reach more and more Afghans, I mean, when you talk about half of the population relying on humanitarian assistance; 20 million, that number is rising day by day,” he said, adding “We need those resources as immediately as possible.”

Airlifts to scale up supplies

Baloch said that UNHCR has planned to conduct three airlifts to scale up supplies to Afghanistan in the coming period. He informed that consignments will be airlifted to Termez, Uzbekistan, and subsequently trucked through the Hairatan border point into Mazar-i-Sharif. These airlifts will deliver urgently needed humanitarian relief items, with the first flight expected to arrive mid-October, Baloch said. 

According to UN News, the officials insisted that the “window to assist is narrow” as only five per cent of Afghan households have enough to eat every day. The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs separately said that severe drought and disruptions to farming have increased the risk of food insecurity as the winter approaches. The UN has also warned that more than half of all Afghan children under five are expected to become acutely malnourished in the next year. 

Meanwhile, at the G20 Extraordinary Meeting on Afghanistan UN Secretary-General António Guterres stressed there are three areas for essential action: ensuring a lifeline of help to the Afghan people, avoiding a total meltdown of the country’s economy and a "constant commitment" to move things in the right direction, for the Afghan people. The World Food Programme (WFP), on the other hand, warned that there is no money to pay wages or buy food, medicine or clean water. The agency stressed that deaths can be prevented if further funds are freed up for Afghanistan now. 

(With inputs from ANI)