U.N. urges world leaders to prevent mass starvation

UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. humanitarian chief had a dire message for leaders of the world’s 20 largest economies meeting this weekend: Worry about Afghanistan because its economy is collapsing and half the population risks not having enough food to eat as the snows have already started to fall.

Martin Griffiths said in an interview Friday with the Associated Press that “the needs in Afghanistan are skyrocketing.”

Half of Afghan children under age five are at risk of acute malnutrition and there is an outbreak of measles in every single province which is “a red light” and “the canary in the mine” for what’s happening in society, he said.

Griffiths warned that food insecurity leads to malnutrition, then disease and death, and “absent corrective action” the world will be seeing deaths in Afghanistan.

He said the World Food Program is feeding 4 million people in Afghanistan now, but the U.N. predicts that because of winter conditions and the economic collapse it is going to have to provide food to triple that number — 12 million Afghans — “and that’s massive.”

WFP appealed last week for $200 million to finance its operations until the end of the year, and Griffiths urged countries that suspended development assistance for Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover on Aug. 15, including the United States and European countries, to transfer that money for desperately needed humanitarian aid.

Griffiths noted that the European Union already shifted about 100 million euros to humanitarian work, and the U.S. announced more than $144 million in humanitarian aid on Thursday, raising its total aid to Afghans in the country and refugees in the region to nearly $474 million in 2021.

Griffiths said the current crisis is the result of two large droughts in the past few years, the disruption of services during the conflict between the Taliban and the Afghan government and the collapse of the economy.

“So, the message that I would give to the leaders of the G-20 is worry about economic collapse in Afghanistan, because economic collapse in Afghanistan will, of course, have an exponential effect on the region,” he said.

Griffiths said it’s also critical that frontline health workers, teachers and others get their salaries paid.