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The UN has issued ‘the largest ever appeal for a single country(Afghanistan) for humanitarian assistance’
Ever since the Taliban seized power, Afghanistan’s currency has gone on to plummet, which has only exacerbated the economic crisis. Things have gone from bad to worse.
The currency crisis is leaving millions of people at the risk of starvation, with the humanitarian crisis impacting not only Afghanistan's people but even the import-dependent countries.
The United Nations emergency relief coordinator, Martin Griffiths, appealed to the international community to help raise US$4.4 billion for Afghanistan in humanitarian aid, calling this effort “the largest ever appeal for a single country for humanitarian assistance.”
This amount is required “in the hope of shoring up collapsing basic services there,” said the UN. If this appeal is not met, Griffiths said, then “next year <2023> we’ll be asking for $10 billion.”
Under pressure from the US government, the International Monetary Fund also denied Afghanistan access to $455 million of its share of special drawing rights, the international reserve asset that the IMF provides to its member countries to supplement their original reserves.
In July 2020, before the Covid-19 pandemic hit the country hard, and long before the Taliban returned to power in Kabul, the Ministry of Economy in the country said 90% of the people in the country lived below the international poverty line of $2 a day.
This unraveling humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan is the reason for the January 11 appeal to the international community by the UN.