The UN is convening an aid conference in Geneva in an effort to raise more than $600 million for Afghanistan.
An abrupt end to billions of dollars in foreign donations following the collapse of Afghanistan’s Western-backed government and the ensuing victory of the Taliban has heaped more pressure on UN programmes.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says his organisation is struggling financially: “At the present moment, the UN is not even able to pay its salaries to its own workers.
About a third of the $606 million being sought would be used by the UN World Food Programme (WFP), which found that 93 per cent of the 1,600 Afghans it surveyed in August and September were not consuming sufficient foods, mostly because they could not get access to cash to pay for it.
It’s now a race against time and the snow to deliver life-saving assistance to the Afghan people who need it most,” said WFP deputy regional director Anthea Webb added.
The World Health Organisation, another UN agency that’s part of the appeal, is seeking to shore up hundreds of health facilities at risk of closure after donors backed out.