The number of Afghans in poverty has nearly doubled to 34 million as the nation has been wracked by the fall of a US-backed government and the Taliban’s takeover, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
After the fall of the US-backed republic in 2021, large-scale foreign subsidies were halted and aid programs were dramatically reduced as many countries refused to deal with the Taliban authorities in Kabul.
These NGOs, which still provide vital aid to Afghans, were dealt another blow last December when the Taliban government banned Afghan women from working for them.
UN releases data on Afghans lives
The restriction was extended to Afghan female UN staff this month, and the organization said it faced a “stark choice” whether to continue its aid programs.
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) on Tuesday released a brand new assessment of data for 2022, which estimates that 34 million Afghans live below the poverty line.
The figure represents a staggering 15 million increase from 2020, the last full year of rule by the Western backed government, which collapsed within weeks the following summer.
There is no current census data for Afghanistan, but the UN uses a population estimate of 40 million, which means 85 percent of the nation is projected to be in poverty.
34 million Afghans lives in poverty
UNDP report said “Some have been forced to sell their homes, land or income-generating assets, others resorted to the depressing practice of commodifying their own family members, turning children into laborers and young daughters into brides.”
The UN is funneling huge sums of US dollars into Afghanistan to pay for staffing and operational costs – cash injections that have also been essential to prop up the country’s faltering economy.
According to the UN mission in Afghanistan, about $1.8 billion was imported this way between December 2021 and January 2023. The UN warned that the restrictions could turn off the aid tap at the source, with donors wary of putting cash into projects that cannot be implemented.
The UN’s 2023 appeal for Afghanistan has so far raised only five percent of its $4.6 billion target.
“If foreign aid is cut this year, Afghanistan may fall off the edge of the cliff into the abyss,” UNDP’s resident representative in Afghanistan, Abdullah Al Dardari, said in a statement.
Many organizations have suspended their activities in protest of a December ban on NGOs employing Afghan women. After days of scrambles, an exemption was granted to those working in the health sector, but the UNDP said 150 NGOs and aid agencies had “suspended all or part of their work”.
Aid officials say they need female workers to help identify and support Afghan women recipients across the country.
Negative influence on Afghans
The United Nations has told all Afghan citizens, male and female, to stay away from its offices since Taliban authorities banned Afghan women UN staff from working two weeks ago.
“For now, they are working from home and will continue to be UN employees and will continue to be paid,” Dardari said.
The order is the latest in a series of creeping restrictions on women’s freedoms since 2021, when teenage girls were excluded from schools and women were pushed out of many government positions.
Qatar, traditionally a major donor that has pressed Taliban authorities to end a ban on women workers, said on Tuesday it sent its first aid flight to Afghanistan in 10 months with food, medical supplies and books.
written by: Vaishali Verma
