Pravaran Mahat, a communication specialist at UNICEF’s South Asia regional office, after his visit to the Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital in Kabul on Sunday has called for ‘Urgent Action.’
“UNICEF estimates that without urgent action, more than one million children [in Afghanistan] can suffer from severe acute malnutrition this year,” he said in a statement posted on Twitter.
“That’s why we, as UNICEF, urge and request our countries’ partners and donors to rally support behind the children in Afghanistan,” he added, stressing “They need help. They need it now.”
Almost five months after the US-led international coalition hastily abandoned the South Asian country, millions of Afghans are teetering at the brink of starvation, with no food and no money.
Soon after the Taliban laid siege to Kabul mid-August, US and its international partners raced to cut off Afghanistan’s access to international aid and froze roughly $10 billion in assets belonging to the country’s central bank.
UN aid agencies have described the country’s situation as one of the world’s most rapidly growing humanitarian crises. According to the UN humanitarian coordination office, half the population is now battling acute hunger, and over nine million people have been displaced.
