Prevent mass starving in Afghanistan, UN aid chief urges G20

The UN 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 the 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 four million people in Afghanistan now, but the UN predicts that because of the dire 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.”
Griffiths stressed that the current crisis is the result of two major 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.