UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan urged the international community on Wednesday not to allow politics to deny the right to life to the people of Afghanistan.

“The Afghan people need massive and unconditional humanitarian assistance from the international community to avoid a major human catastrophe,” said Pakistan’s UN Ambassador Munir Akram while urging the world body to act now.

“Financial liquidity must be provided to Afghanistan, including by releasing its frozen assets, to prevent its economic collapse and the destitution of its suffering people,” he added. “Politics must not deny the right to life of the Afghan people.”

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Imran Khan appealed to the international community to help avert a humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan as it faces multiple challenges.

Prime Minister Khan also drew attention to the World Food Programme’s (WFP) alert about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, saying the world community has “moral obligation” to ward off the disaster confronting Afghan people.”

In a report issued this week, WFP warned that Afghanistan was becoming the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with the country’s needs surpassing those of the other worst-hit countries — Ethiopia, South Sudan, Syria and even Yemen.

WFP recently sent a fact-finding mission to Afghanistan and is now ramping up its support to assist almost 23 million people in the country that need immediate food supplies.

“Fuel costs are up, food prices are soaring, fertilizer is more expensive, and all of this feeds into new crises like the one unfolding now in Afghanistan,” said WFP Executive Director David Beasley while sharing the findings during a virtual new briefing.

WFP estimates that as many as 22.8 million people now face acute food insecurity in Afghanistan — including 8.7 million facing emergency levels of food insecurity.

“WFP has never seen these many people facing emergency levels of food insecurity in the country, in the 10 years” that the UN agency has been conducting food surveys in Afghanistan. The WFP report also warned that across the globe, a total 45 million people were on the brink of famine across 43 countries. And 15 million more people were added to this list of at-risk population after the COVID-19 pandemic. This number has risen from 42 million earlier in the year, and 27 million in 2019.

Published in Dawn, November 11th, 2021