The World Food Programme (WFP) recently confirmed that some 23 million people were marching towards starvation in Afghanistan, facing ‘hell on earth’ as winter looms, and Prime Minister Imran Khan wants the world to act ‘now’ to avert a ‘humanitarian disaster’ in the war-torn country.
While sharing a BBC report on Twitter, the premier said on Tuesday that he had been warning of this “humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan” and now the WFP chief also issued an alert.
Executive Director of the WFP, David Beasley told BBC that the situation in Afghanistan was “as bad as you possibly one could imagine.”
“…we’re now looking at the worst humanitarian crisis on Earth. Ninety-five per cent of the people don’t have enough food, and now we’re looking at 23 million people marching towards starvation,” he added. “The next six months are going to be catastrophic. It is going to be hell on Earth.”
“It [the international community] has [a] moral obligation to avert this humanitarian disaster confronting the Afghan ppl (sic),” said the premier.
Three million people facing famine in Afghanistan
In a separate report, the UN’s food agency WFP said on Monday that the number of people on the edge of famine in 43 countries had risen to 45 million, as acute hunger spikes around the world.
The jump from 42 million people earlier in the year was largely down to a food security assessment that found another three million people facing famine in Afghanistan, it added.
“And the latest data show there are now more than 45 million people marching towards the brink of starvation,” he had said after a trip to Afghanistan, where the WFP is upping support for almost 23 million people.
“Fuel costs are up, food prices are soaring, fertiliser is more expensive, and all of this feeds into new crises like the one unfolding now in Afghanistan, as well as long-standing emergencies like Yemen and Syria,” he had added.
“Meanwhile media reports from Afghanistan point to families reportedly being forced to sell their children in a desperate attempt to survive,” the WFP had said.
Multiple droughts in Afghanistan were combining with an economic meltdown to push families to the edge, while some 12.4 million people in Syria do not know where their next meal will come from — more than any time during the decade-long conflict, it added.