Vitorino said that some seven in 10 people nationally had been impacted by drought and flooding. Highlighting the serious impact of climate change on Afghanistan’s people and its role in forcing people to abandon their homes, Mr. This includes more than 670,000 who have been forced to leave their homes so far this year, 60 per cent of whom are children. Latest IOM data indicates that 5.5 million people are now internally displaced inside Afghanistan. Today, the situation has become even worse, with the country’s people now facing “conflict and insecurity…an economy in freefall, severe drought and the COVID-19 pandemic”, Mr. Long before the Taliban takeover on 15 August, humanitarians repeatedly urged the international community not to ignore the plight of ordinary Afghans. Vitorino also maintained that as temperatures plummet with the arrival of winter, yet more people would be forced to leave their homes in search of shelter and support. “We are planning to expand winterization assistance to every province in the country to reach 200,000 people in need.” “We are going door-to-door to see what is needed and are providing shelter, blankets, warm clothing, and cash for fuel and heating,” he said. The top IOM official said that despite the best efforts of humanitarian workers - who are actively searching out the one in two Afghan families who have too little to eat and not enough fuel to stay warm - he remained “profoundly concerned” about the country’s future, as the situation worsened. “Reportedly, one of the children, unknowingly, brought the unexploded device into the home after finding it in the field next to their house”, possibly to play with, or in the hope of selling it. The victims included four girls and two boys, while three other children were injured in the blast, the UN agency said in a statement. The news comes as UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, said that nine members of one family had been killed when an explosive remnant of war, detonated inside a home in the northern city of Kunduz. Millions are living in inadequate shelters with limited access to basic services, including sanitation and health care.” Kunduz blast “People are going to die here in Afghanistan very soon,” Mr Egeland said.“More than half the population is struggling to eat, malnutrition is reaching dramatic levels, especially for many children, and over 80 per cent of the people we have surveyed say they have lost their jobs and livelihoods.
The economic meltdown means the situation is likely now to get worse.Īfghan media reported that in the poor western province of Ghor, some 300 children suffering from malnutrition had been taken to the provincial hospital in the past six months. “The economic freefall in Afghanistan has been abrupt and unrelenting, adding to an already difficult situation, as the country grapples with a second severe drought in three years,” said Mary-Ellen McGroarty, WFP’s Afghanistan director last week.Įven before the current crisis, the country had one of the world's highest rates of stunting in children under five, with a lack of food impairing the growth of development in two-in-five children. Only 10 per cent of households headed by someone with a secondary or university education were able to buy enough food.
The closure of foreign firms and international aid projects, as well as unpaid government payrolls, means the catastrophe is hitting the urban middle classes and not just the rural poor. Half of households reported they had run out of food altogether at least once in the past two weeks. Surveys by the World Food Programme, the food assistance branch of the UN, found just five per cent of families have enough to eat every day. The little income they had in the previous economy is gone. “They have no food at all for the coming weeks. Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said he had toured camps for the poor where residents had no food. Some three-quarters of the Afghan government budget was funded by aid before the Taliban took over and donors put their funding on hold. War and Covid had pitched the country into a humanitarian crisis long before the Taliban ousted Ashraf Ghani's government, but the end of international aid to the country has made it worse. The economic catastrophe engulfing the country means aid agencies are in a race against the oncoming winter to provide food and shelter to millions. Only one Afghan family in 20 has enough to eat as the economy continues to plummet after the Taliban takeover, the United Nations has warned.
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