Japan has contributed an additional $5 million to the emergency response program of the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) in Afghanistan as the UN agency was recently forced to reduce its assistance for 4 million in needs across the country due to lack of funds.
“The Government of Japan has been a consistent and strong supporter of the Afghan people and of the WFP over the past years,” the WFP quoted Japan’s Ambassador to Afghanistan Takashi Okada as saying in News Release issued on Monday. “Japan sees food assistance as one of the primary ways to reach sustainable development and human security.”
According to the WFP, this latest contribution by Japan will be used to provide food assistance for the vulnerable people in Afghanistan.
Thanking Japan for its latest contribution to WFP in Afghanistan, Hsiao-Wei Lee, the Program’s country director, said WFP’s food assistance was the last lifeline for millions of Afghans in a country at the “highest risk of famine” in a quarter of a century.
“Catastrophic hunger knocks on Afghanistan’s doors and unless humanitarian support is sustained, hundreds of thousands more Afghans will need assistance to survive,” he warned.
The UN agency further highlighted that nearly 20 million Afghans do not know where their next meal will come from with six million of them one step away from famine. “WFP urgently needs US$93 million to assist 13 million people in April and US$800 million for the next six months,” the WFP said.
With the lates contribution, Japan has contributed a sum of $96.57 million over the past five years to the WFP response program in Afghanistan.
On Monday, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that only 4.2% of the $4.4 billion needed for humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan in 2023 had been funded so far.
