UN engaging with Islamic Emirate on humanitarian aid and other ‘concerns’

Marking the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the United States on Saturday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the organization is working with the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan to ensure much-needed humanitarian aid gets to needy Afghans across the country.

Guterres said: “The UN has a key role to play in humanitarian aid to a people that is now in a desperate situation. Desperate situation.

“And so, we decided that it was our duty to engage the Taliban (Islamic Emirate), to create the conditions for the possibility of effective humanitarian aid, impartial, to reach all areas and to take into account our concerns in relation to women and girls, for instance, to engage the Taliban, he said.

“What would be positive is to have simultaneously the formation in Afghanistan of an inclusive government – the fact that that government respects international commitments made by the Afghan State, and that a number of the concerns that we have expressed about terrorism, human rights, etc., are taken into account, and that that leads to a normalization of the relations of the international community with Afghanistan.”

Guterres also said he thinks it is essential to find ways “to inject some cash in the Afghan economy to avoid its meltdown”.

He stated that “the war must end; it doesn’t make any sense; there is no military solution. Humanitarian aid needs to reach everybody, everywhere, and it’s not the case at the present moment”.

Guterres’ comments come a day after the World Food Programme stated that 93% of Afghan families are not consuming sufficient food and that three out of four households are using extreme coping mechanisms, such as skipping meals or preferring to give food to children instead of adults.

The WFP conducted a telephone survey from June 17 to September 5, asking 1,600 random households per month about their food habits. The agency reported a “marked difference” between the period up to August 15 and then following August 20.

“The portion of families resorting to extreme coping mechanisms, those are things like skipping meals or preferring to give food to children instead of adults or limiting portion sizes to make food last longer had almost doubled”, WFP’s deputy regional director for Asia and the Pacific, Anthea Webb said.

Afghanistan is facing economic collapse after foreign countries and institutions said they would withhold aid and monetary reserves after the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan took control of Kabul last month.

“It’s now a race against time and the snow to deliver life-saving assistance to the Afghan people who need it most. We need to be reaching nine million people per month by November if we are to meet our planned target of 14 million by the end of the year,” Webb said, urging donors to fill the 200 million dollars’ appeal ahead of an international aid conference for Afghanistan on September 13.