Due to drastically reduced funding, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) is warning of famine in Afghanistan. “The situation is pretty hopeless,” said WFP regional director for Asia and the Pacific, John Aylieff, to the editorial network Germany (RND). Humanitarian aid programs are “drastically underfunded.”
The WFP has 80 percent less money for Afghanistan than last year, said Aylieff. Instead of 1.6 billion US dollars (around 1.5 billion euros), only 340 million US dollars (around 320 million euros) would be available for Afghanistan. “15 million people in Afghanistan are currently suffering from hunger, we wanted to reach at least 13 million. Due to a lack of funding, we had to cut off aid to ten million people,” he told the RND.
“They can’t survive without supplies”
The approaching “brutal” winter in Afghanistan is making things “particularly critical”: “Some mountain villages are cut off from the outside world by the snow for up to six months. They cannot survive without supplies,” said Aylieff. He expects drastic consequences: “Of course people will flee. But above all, more people will die.”
The UN representative called on the international community to increase its support for Afghanistan. “Even if the Taliban make many highly problematic decisions, humanity must come first,” he said. The support for Afghanistan has fallen significantly more compared to the aid for other countries. “That doesn’t meet the need in any way.”
According to media reports, almost 2,500 people died after several earthquakes in the Afghan border province of Herat near Iran last weekend. More than 2,000 other people were injured. The UN emergency relief office OCHA assumed more than 1,000 deaths on Sunday.
