Jan Egeland, the Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), has criticized NATO member countries for not providing funding for food aid to starving children in Afghanistan.
In a tweet on Monday, Egeland stated that NATO countries spent trillions of dollars on their military operations in Afghanistan for decades, but they are now not even providing basic humanitarian assistance to the hungry children they left behind in 2021.
In a separate tweet, he stated: “The biggest story of our time is not the constant coverage of US domestic politics. It is the little reported fact that food aid is now cut for millions of children from Afghanistan and Syria to South Sudan and the Rohingya – because aid funding has dried up.”
The humanitarian situation in Afghanistan has worsened since the Taliban took over the country in August 2021. Over two-thirds of the population, approximately 29.2 million people, are now in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.
The country is also grappling with one of the highest rates of malnutrition, affecting approximately 2.3 million children and 840,000 pregnant and nursing mothers, who are suffering from severe acute malnutrition or moderate acute malnutrition.
The UN has appealed for $3.23 billion to assist 21.3 million people in Afghanistan. However, only 23% of the required funding has been received so far.
