Association for Defending Victims of Terrorism – The international community must urgently ease existing financial restrictions on Afghanistan that are blocking the provision of healthcare, food and other essential services, and expedite delivery of scaled-up humanitarian assistance to avert a mounting crisis that threatens the lives of tens of millions of people, said Amnesty International.
A combination of a suspension of foreign aid, the freezing of Afghan government assets, and international sanctions on the Taliban, have plunged a country already suffering from high poverty levels into a full-blown economic crisis. According to the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), 22.8 million people (of a population of approximately 39-40 million) are facing acute food insecurity and hunger, while the World Food Programme estimates that at least a million children are already suffering from acute malnutrition. According to the UN, more than $200 million of humanitarian aid a month is needed to avert disaster.
