By Emmanuel Nduka
Hope seem to be in the pipeline for Afghans, as the United Nations and its partners on Tuesday launched over $5 billion appeal fund to help overcome the humanitarian crisis that emerged after the Taliban takeover.
According to the UN in a statement, “the appeal was launched in the hope of shoring up collapsing basic services in Afghanistan, which have left 22 million people in need of assistance inside the country, and 5.7 million people requiring help beyond its borders.”
The statement adds that the Afghanistan Humanitarian Response Plan alone requires $4.44 billion funding, which makes it the largest ever appeal for a single country for humanitarian assistance.
Martin Griffiths, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator said in the statement that “this is a stop-gap, an absolutely essential stop-gap measure that we are putting in front of the international community today.
“Without this being funded, there won’t be a future. We need this to be done otherwise there will be an outflow, there will be suffering,” he said.
While stating that the Afghanistan Situation Regional Refugee Response Plan requires $623 million funding, the UN said the funds would be distributed among 40 organisations working in protection, health and nutrition, food security, livelihoods and resilience, education, logistics and telecoms.
The UN further stressed that Afghanistan had been suffering the world’s most rapidly growing humanitarian crisis.
According to UN humanitarian coordination unit, Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), half of the population now faces acute hunger.
“Over nine million people have been displaced and millions of children are out of school,” the statement added.
