UN to raise more than 600 million dollars in aid for Afghanistan

The United Nations is seeking to raise more than 600 million dollars in aid for Afghanistan, warning the country is facing a major humanitarian crisis. It is calling for international support at a conference in Geneva, following the Taliban's takeover last month.In his opening remarks, UN Secretary General  Antonio Guterres called the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan a looming catastrophe and said the people of Afghanistan are in desperate need of a lifeline. 
Guterres warned, one in three Afghans do not know where their next meal will come from, the poverty rate is spiralling and basic public services are close to collapse. He said, hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes and at the same time Afghanistan faces a severe drought - the second to hit the country in four years. Many people could run out of food by the end of this month just as winter approaches, he added. The UN has appealed to the Taliban to give aid workers unimpeded access. Even before the Taliban's seizure of Kabul last month, half the population of Afghanistan—or 18 million people—was dependent on aid. The figure looks set to increase due to drought, shortages of cash and food, with the United Nations officials warning about an impending crisis since the US withdrew its troops from the country.

According to a survey by the UN World Food Programme in August and September, 93 per cent of the 1,600 Afghans polled were not consuming sufficient foods, mostly because they could not get access to cash to pay for it. "It's now a race against time and the snow to deliver life-saving assistance to the Afghan people who need it most. We are quite literally begging and borrowing to avoid food stocks running out,” Anthea Webb, deputy regional director of the World Food Programme, said earlier.