Afghanistan\u2019s economy risks falling into a \u201cdeath spiral\u201d without urgent aid, with some Afghans already forced to sell their children and body parts to survive, UN chief Antonio Guterres said Thursday.
\nThe United Nations has reached less than 13 percent of its $4.4 billion fundraising goal for Afghanistan this year, the secretary-general told a virtual conference of donors co-hosted by the UN, Britain, Germany, and Qatar.
\n\u201cWealthy, powerful countries cannot ignore the consequences of their decisions on the most vulnerable,\u201d he said after Western nations withdrew from Afghanistan last year and allowed the Taliban back to power.
\nSince then, the international community has frozen nearly $9 billion in Afghan assets overseas.
\nGuterres lambasted actions by the Taliban including barring girls from secondary education.
\n\u201cThere is simply no justification for such discrimination,\u201d he said, calling on the fundamentalist militia to deliver \u201can inclusive and representative government.\u201d
\nBut foreign donors must not abandon the Afghan people, Guterres warned, stressing that some 95 percent of Afghans do not have enough to eat and nine million are at risk of famine.
\n\u201cWithout immediate action, we face a starvation and malnutrition crisis in Afghanistan. People are already selling their children and their body parts, in order to feed their families,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cThe first step in any meaningful humanitarian response must be to halt the death spiral of the Afghan economy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Afghanistan\u2019s economy risks falling into a \u201cdeath spiral\u201d without urgent aid, with some Afghans already forced to sell<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":4224,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[120,318],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-afghan-news","category-news-2"],"yoast_head":"\n