HALF OF AFGHANS ARE STARVING: UN

Tue 26 October 2021:

According to the United Nations (UN), around half of Afghanistan’s population is facing one of the world’s worst food crises, both in absolute and relative terms.

Richard Trenchard, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) representative in Afghanistan, told media at the UN headquarters here via Zoom that 18.8 million Afghans are facing acute hunger and don’t know where their next meal would come from.

Between November and March next year, 22.8 million people in the country are expected to be in crisis and emergency levels of severe hunger, according to Trenchard.

“The damage will be irreversible for the millions of children that will fall sick because of hunger and malnutrition — many, many innocent Afghans are at risk of dying this winter alone,” she warned.

She noted that, although one out of every three Afghans was categorized as highly food insecure in August, roughly one out of every two individuals in the country now suffers from acute hunger.

The crisis is escalating at a rate and magnitude she hasn’t seen in her 20 years with the World Food Programme.

Afghanistan has lost 40% of its gross domestic output, according to UN data (GDP). The suspension of international grant support has caused a cash crisis, resulting in unpaid salaries and job losses in both the formal and informal sectors.

According to the United Nations, approximately 700,000 people were internally displaced in the first seven months of 2021 alone.

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