Geneva, Switzerland
Reuters
Almost all Afghans do not have enough to eat and a failing economy could tip Afghanistan’s increasingly dire situation under Taliban rule into catastrophe next year, the UN’s World Food Programme said on Tuesday.
WFP surveys showed an estimated 98 per cent of Afghans are not eating enough, with seven in 10 families resorting to borrowing food, which pushes them deeper into poverty, a spokesperson for the agency told reporters.
An Afghan woman buys food left behind by the US military from a peddler in Kabul, Afghanistan, on 17th November. PICTURE: Reuters/Ali Khara.
The abrupt withdrawal of foreign aid following the Taliban victory in August has left Afghanistan’s fragile economy on the brink of collapse, with prices for food, fuel and other basic staples rising rapidly out of reach for many.
“The spiralling economic crisis, the conflict and drought has meant the average family can now barely cope,” Tomson Phiri told a Geneva briefing. “We have a huge amount to do to stop this crisis from becoming a catastrophe.”
The WFP has provided food assistance to 15 million Afghans so far in 2021, and to seven million in November alone. Next year, it plans to ramp up its assistance to 23 million people across all provinces in Afghanistan.
“We cannot waste any moment,” Phiri said. “Our country director describes the situation as quite dire. She says it’s ‘an avalanche of hunger and destitution’.”
Meanwhile, in separate comments, Nada al-Nashif, UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that more than 100 former Afghan national security forces and others have been killed since the Taliban takeover in August, most at the hands of the hardline Islamist group which is recruiting boy soldiers and quashing women’s rights.
In addition, at least 50 suspected members of a local affiliate of Islamic State known as ISIS-Khorasan – an ideological foe of the Taliban – died by hanging and beheading.
In a speech to the Human Rights Council, she described Taliban rule as being marked by extrajudicial killings across the country and restrictions on women’s and girls’ basic rights.
Families face “severe poverty and hunger” this winter amid reports of child labour, early marriages and “even the sale of children”, al-Nashif said.
At least 72 of the more than 100 alleged killings have been attributed to the Taliban, she said, adding: “In several cases, the bodies were publicly displayed. This has exacerbated fear among this sizeable category of the population.”
The Taliban decree earlier this month fails to refer to women’s and girl’s rights to education, work and their freedom of movement and to participate in public life, al-Nashif said.
At least eight Afghan activists and two journalists have been killed since August, while the UN has also documented 59 unlawful detentions and threats to the same groups, she said.
“The safety of Afghan judges, prosecutors, and lawyers – particularly women legal professionals – is a matter for particular alarm”, she added.
Afghanistan’s envoy from the former government accused the Taliban of committing a wide range of abuses including targeted killings and enforced disappearances.
“With the military takeover of Kabul by the Taliban, not only we see a total reversal of two decades of advances…but the group is also committing a litany of abuses with full impunity which in many cases is going unreported and undocumented,” Nasir Ahmad Andisha told the forum.
Andisha, Kabul’s UN ambassador to the UN in Geneva who is still recognised by the world body, said that “credible reports have testified accounts of ethnic and tribal purging in several provinces of the country”.
