Afghanistan hunger crisis intensifies as millions left without food aid — UN News

Afghanistan’s dire hunger crisis now affects 14 million people including babies fed on little more than weak tea and bread by their despairing and dirt-poor parents. In a new alert on Tuesday, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said that one in three Afghans is now in the grip of acute food insecurity and that it lacks the resources to contain the deepening crisis Today, 12 provinces have now reached critical levels of acute child malnutrition, the highest number ever recorded. Conflict, widespread unemployment, soaring food prices, shrinking humanitarian funding and disruption to supply routes are fuelling the crisis, WFP said. The return of six million Afghans pushed back mainly from Pakistan and Iran since September 2023, has increased the strain on the country’s already fragile economy. “In the past three years, close to six million Afghans have been forcibly expelled from neighbouring countries,” said John Aylieff, WFP Country Director for Afghanistan. Briefing journalists in Geneva from Kabul, he explained that there are “simply not enough jobs to sustain” the returnees. “Conflict with Pakistan and the Middle East crisis have created trade disruptions, which have pushed up the price of staple foods by 20 to 30 per cent….The poor are being priced out of the market,” he explained. Because of crippling funding cuts, WFP has been able to feed only…