4mn Afghan children face malnutrition in 2022: UN delegation

United Nations, February 27

Reena Ghelani , the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Director in the operations and advocacy division — who led a UN delegation that recently visited Kabul to assess the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan — said that at least four million Afghan children are expected to be affected with malnutrition, of whom 137,000 will lose their life in 2022.

The delegation made the visit to Afghanistan after many Afghan citizens complained about the unfair distribution of aid provided by the UN agencies, TOLOnews reported.

“We report against our target and deliveries, and we need to be out there talking to people more and hearing their complaints — we certainly need to hear if there are problems out there and this is part of the mission that we went on,” Ghelani told TOLOnews in a special interview.

“…I spent most of my time and all of us… talking to Afghan people about those exact issues and hearing from them directly so that we can make sure that we are targeting correctly,” she added.

Economists believe that giving direct cash to the people would help the Afghan economic system.

“If the aid was provided in cash, it would help the value of the Afghan currency and would solve the cash problems in the markets,” said Abdul Naseer Rishtia, a university professor.

“The government should assess the aid provided by the UN. The contracts of the UN organisations should be shared (with the government) and the government must investigate it to see if the aid is provided to the people who deserve it,” said Muzamil Shinwari, an Economist.

The UN delegation warned that at least 18 million Afghans are facing food insecurity and that nine million of them are in dire need of food.

“The time is now. We have no time to wait. We have to get the economy going and we need to give people hope today,” Ghelani said.

With millions of Afghans suffering from several crises that have hit Afghanistan after the fall of the former government, the UK earlier announced that it will co-host a UN conference on the Afghan humanitarian situation. IANS