Afghanistan is on the brink of becoming the world’s worst humanitarian crisis the United Nations has warned, as reports emerge of a family of eight orphaned children who recently starved to death.
Unnamed children aged 10 were found dead in the capital, Kabul . These kinds of stories are likely to become more common as more than half the population of Afghanistan are now short of food, and the looming catastrophe will soon eclipse crises in Yemen and Syria, according to the latest assessment by the UN’s food body.
A small group of brave women were seen protesting in Kabul today , demanding the rights to education , work .
A long-brewing crisis caused by drought, war and poverty has now been accelerated by the Taliban’s shock takeover in August. The militants’ resumption of their Islamic emirate in one of the world’s poorest countries has been accompanied by a suspension of aid and now economic collapse .
The World Food Programme (WFP) estimates nearly 23 million of the country’s 39m population are now unable to get regular access to enough food. That figure has risen from 14m only two months ago. David Beasley, executive director of WFP, said: “Children are going to die. People are going to starve. Things are going to get a lot worse.” “I don’t know how you don’t have millions of people, and especially children, dying at the rate we are going with the lack of funding and the collapsing of the economy.”
The country’s economy has been largely reliant on aid and government workers have not been paid since Ashraf Ghani’s government collapsed. The cost of food staples like oil, wheat and rice have soared by up to 55 per cent in the past year.
Orlaith Minogue, the charity’s senior conflict and humanitarian advocacy adviser, said: “It seems there is no end to the agony for Afghan children. After decades of war and suffering, they now face the worst hunger crisis in their country’s history.
“The situation is already desperate. We see young children in our clinics every day who are wasted from severe malnutrition because they have nothing but scraps of bread to eat. When winter sets in we’re going to see more children going hungry than ever before.”
