It is necessary to raise 5.063 million dollars to help half the country
“We owe it to him.” That is the phrase with which the UN seals its cry for help for Afghanistan, the recipient of the largest humanitarian fundraising campaign the UN has ever launched for a single country. It takes 5,063 million dollars (4,422 million euros) to help half the country, which these days burns its belongings to warm itself, and the six million refugees who have overflowed at all its seams.
“If not, a full-blown humanitarian catastrophe is coming,” warned the UN Secretary-General’s special envoy, Martin Griffiths. When it comes to Afghanistan, everything is liable to get worse. The dizzying withdrawal of the international community in August, which left the government in the hands of the Taliban, has since then has all the teachers unpaid. That means that, in addition to the one million children who will suffer acute malnutrition if the UN fails to raise the money it seeks, the rest are going to stay without education, because their teachers are leaving the classrooms.
Those who have fled to neighboring countries, where they have been hosting Afghan refugees for 40 years, are also in dire straits. They are poor countries, with their own problems, which last year received 700,000 people. Pakistan, Uzbekeistan, Turkmenistan or Tajikistan, to name a few, also need the help of the UN to alleviate this situation. “The generosity of host countries cannot be taken for granted,” Griffiths cautioned. “They need support, and they need it now.”
As if that weren’t enough, Afghanistan suffered the worst drought in 27 years last year, helping the Taliban to come to power, but not its people. The sum of all these factors has caused the number of Afghans in need this year to be 30% higher than last year, so the international organization fears that without a humanitarian response the crisis will spill over into the entire region and reach incalculable dimensions. , warned Filipo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
To comply with the requirements established by the Security Council, no funds will be transferred to the Afghan government or its institutions, but will be paid directly to teachers, nurses and humanitarian workers through 160 NGOs that continue to operate in the country.
It is a life and death situation. Without the generosity of the world, an estimated 131,000 Afghan children will die this year from malnutrition, in a country in which the Gross Domestic Product has suffered a steep contraction of 40%. The economy is in free fall, but Afghanistan’s future “simply does not exist” if the most immediate humanitarian goal is not achieved, Griffiths said.
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