People forced to sell their children as crisis deepens in Afghanistan

Acceptance, Afghanistan: The situation in Afghanistan is worsening with each passing day as they do not have funds to run the country and the people and children are sleeping hungry and country do not have enough food which gives birth to food crisis.

The severe lack of funds and an unprecedented rise in food prices have left dozens of Afghans starving and some people have been forced to sell their children to survive, according to the Canadian think tank International Forum for Rights and Security (IFFRAS).

“There are reports that 95% of Afghans do not have enough food to eat, while half the population is expected to face acute levels of hunger as winter arrives in early November,”; IFFRAS said.

More than half of Afghanistan’s population – a record 22.8 million people – will face acute food insecurity by November, a UN humanitarian organization said Monday.

This acute hunger data was revealed in a new report published by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) of the Food Security and Agriculture Cluster of Afghanistan, co-led by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the United Nations World Food Program (WFP).

A WFP statement said the combined impacts of drought, conflict, COVID-19 and the economic crisis have severely affected people’s lives, livelihoods and access to food.

The report’s findings come as Afghanistan’s harsh winter looms, threatening to isolate areas of the country where families desperately depend on humanitarian assistance to survive the frigid winter months.

The IPC report found that more than one in two Afghans will face crisis or emergency levels of acute food insecurity from November 2021 to March 2022, the lean season, which requires urgent humanitarian intervention to meet basic food needs. protect livelihoods and prevent a humanitarian catastrophe.

The report also notes that this is the highest number of people with severe food insecurity ever recorded in the ten years that the United Nations has conducted IPC analyzes in Afghanistan. Globally, Afghanistan is home to one of the largest numbers of people with acute food insecurity in both absolute and relative terms

“It is urgent to act efficiently and effectively to accelerate and increase our deliveries to Afghanistan before winter disrupts much of the country, with millions of people – including farmers, women, young children and the elderly – starving in l freezing winter. It’s a matter of life and death. We can’t wait and see the humanitarian disasters unfolding before us – that’s unacceptable! ” said QU Dongyu, FAO Director-General.

“Afghanistan is now among the worst humanitarian crises in the world – if not the worst – and food security has nearly collapsed. This winter, millions of Afghans will be forced to choose between migration and hunger unless we can step up our own. life-saving assistance, and unless the economy can be revived. We are on the countdown to catastrophe and if we don’t act now, we will have total disaster on our hands, “said David Beasley, WFP Executive Director.

“Hunger is increasing and children are dying. We cannot feed people with promises: funding commitments must turn into cash and the international community must unite to address this crisis, which is rapidly spiraling out of control,” Beasley warned.

The CPI report reflects a 37% increase in the number of Afghans suffering from acute hunger since the last assessment issued in April 2021, WFP said.
Among those at risk are 3.2 million children under five who are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition by the end of the year. In October, WFP and UNICEF warned that one million children were in danger of dying from severe acute malnutrition without immediate life-saving treatment.