UN launches over $5b aid appeal for Afghanistan
KABUL (Pajhwok): The United Nations on Tuesday launched a more than $5 billion funding appeal for Afghanistan, the biggest fundraising effort in the world body’s history for a single country.
The UN humanitarian aid chief, launching the appeal in Geneva, said 23 million Afghans were in desperate need of humanitarian aid.
Martin Griffiths warned the Afghans faced a crisis of exceptional gravity, including up to a million children suffering severe and acute malnutrition unless aid was delivered this winter.
He added: “We need to get food to the families where they live, we need to get seeds to the farmers where they plough, we need to get health services to the clinics throughout the country.”
Last month, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution enabling aid flows into the war-torn country, which is in the thick of a grave economic crisis. The resolution eased sanctions on the country’s new rulers.
The aid chief welcomed what he called groundbreaking exemptions for humanitarian operations from the Security Council and similar steps by the US had removed the chilling effect that kept some aid agencies out of Afghanistan.
The US and its allies have frozen billions of dollars in Afghan central bank assets. The Biden administration has maintained sanctions on Taliban leaders despite calls for help to ward off a humanitarian disaster.
The UN and partners launched a more than $5 billion funding appeal for Afghanistan on Tuesday, in the hope of shoring up collapsing basic services there, which have left 22 million in need of assistance inside the country, and 5.7 million people requiring help beyond its borders.
Griffiths said a sum of $4.4 billion was needed for the Afghanistan Humanitarian Response Plan alone to pay health workers and others, not the Taliban.
Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, sought $623 million to support refugees and host communities in five neighbouring countries, for the Afghanistan Situation Regional Refugee Response Plan.
Griffiths remarked: “This is an absolutely essential stop-gap measure that we are putting in front of the international community today. Without this being funded, there won’t be a future. We need this to be done; otherwise there will be … suffering.”
PAN Monitor/mud
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