STOCKHOLM, Sept. 28, 2021 (EIRNS)—Norwegian Refugee Council Secretary-General Jan Egeland, when he visited Kabul on Monday Sept. 27th, stated, according to Norway Today: “Winter is coming. Hundreds of thousands of displaced people need immediate shelter, warm clothes, and food to survive.” “Afghanistan’s economy is on the brink of collapse, and the situation could worsen the country’s humanitarian catastrophe,” Jan Egeland warns. “I have talked to families who say that they have survived on tea, leftovers, and stale bread.” “Donors must focus on facilitating quick and effective solutions to deliver emergency care to children, women, and men who simply can’t wait any longer,” Egeland said in statements that were covered in many Western media in the last two days.
According to his tweet, he said to the BBC: “We are now in the race against the winter, soon it will be not be 20 plus Celsius, it will be 10 minus; it is the same civilians, the teachers are not paid, the nurses, doctors, we see a collapse around us.” https://twitter.com/BBCYaldaHakim/status/1442795235424317444
To CNN he said: “I hope the UN & @WorldBank set up trust funds to directly pay public sector workers like teachers, nurses & water engineers in Afghanistan. If that doesn’t happen, there will be a collapse like none we have seen in this part of the world before.”
Flying out from Kabul Sept. 28th he tweeted: “Leaving Afghanistan with a deep sense of urgency. In weeks these mountains will be covered in snow. The people I met will starve and freeze unless aid money pledged is transferred now to our aid workers on the ground so that girls and boys, women and men can survive this winter.”
According to the Norwegian Refugee Council, more than 664,000 people have been displaced internally in the country since January. Including this increase, the total number of internally displaced persons amounts to 3.5 million people. Every third inhabitant of Afghanistan is “acutely hungry,” according to the organization. According to the NRC’s figures, 16 million of the country’s estimated 32 million inhabitants depend on humanitarian aid to survive. For the past 20 years, the country has been highly dependent on funding from abroad. 75% of the country’s state budget consisted of funds from abroad. This aid ceased when the Taliban seized power. The result is now rising unemployment and high levels of poverty.
https://norwaytoday.info/news/jan-egeland-afghanistan-is-on-the-brink-of-economic-collapse/