Richard Trenchard, the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Representative in Kabul, calls for urgent action to prevent a humanitarian crisis
Kabul: Afghanistan is experiencing a humanitarian crisis on an unprecedented scale, with unprecedented speed. In Afghanistan today, worsening drought and recent economic upheaval are having a severe impact on the country with 18.8 million people now facing acute food insecurity. That means they are experiencing hunger on a daily basis, as the projections show. This is a dramatic increase on just six months ago.
Worryingly, the Afghans haven’t seen the worst of it yet. By the end of the year, that number is expected to rise to 22.8 million people. “We must always remember that behind every single number lies a person, whether it’s a man, woman or a child, facing acute food insecurity, that is to say, hunger on a daily basis,” Richard Trenchard, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ Representative in Afghanistan, warns. Urgent international action is required to prevent a catastrophe, he says.
Why has the crisis worsened in recent months?
What started off earlier this year, or even late last year, as a drought-driven crisis, has been transformed in the last few months into something far bigger and far more complex, a national crisis fuelled by the economic implosion and the suspension of the international development assistance that has underpinned the provision of basic services, such as primary healthcare, for so many years. Absent safety nets have become even more important as the crisis deepens.
Afghanistan’s remarkable farmers, livestock owners and herders have always had a key role in bringing Afghanistan back from the brink of catastrophe. It will be the same this time. “Let us remember 70 percent of Afghanistan’s people lives in rural areas,” Trenchard said.
Agriculture makes an enormous contribution and accounts for at least 25 percent of the country’s GDP and is the backbone of Afghan livelihoods and the country’s economy. An estimated 80 percent of all livelihoods depend directly or indirectly on agriculture. This is why the impact of the drought is so destructive and agriculture is so critically important. It is expected that agriculture, including livestock, will play a vital role in bringing Afghanistan back from the brink of catastrophe.
“When farmers cannot grow crops and livestock owners see their herds die or are forced to sell, their livelihoods will just disappear. They will leave rural areas and have no other choice than to migrate to urban centres and beyond, making the crisis worsen with further decreased domestic production of food and increased needs. This will make it so much harder for them and will make it so much harder for Afghanistan to avert catastrophe,” Trenchard said. This is why, he said, urgent humanitarian assistance is so important now to support Afghanistan’s farmers and livestock owners and herders.
“We risk catastrophe if agriculture collapses. Alarmingly, the drought we have seen in Afghanistan since late 2020 is forecast to continue well into next year and it has already had a severe impact in 25 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces,” he said. According to him, it’s absolutely vital that Afghanistan’s rural households, farmers and livestock owners, who account for such a large part of the population, are able to carry on farming and carry on growing food, keeping livestock alive.
FAO stated that it is currently distributing wheat seeds in 30 provinces but it is a race against the clock to get these seeds to 1.3 million people this winter. And humanitarian assistance needs will continue to grow. The massive humanitarian response needed in the coming months is focused on saving lives and protecting critical livelihoods. If rural livelihoods collapse, the risk is that the country will too.
“If agriculture collapses we’ll see ever diminishing food supplies domestically, we’ll see ever diminishing incomes, and we will inevitably see fast accelerating displacement. Let’s remember too that winter is a critical factor both for the snow and the water that it provides, and also for the conditions that people will be facing,” Trenchard said.
Weather too is critical for farmers, pastoralists and their families in Afghanistan. The fast-advancing winter – and the continuing drought – is a challenge for farmers, pastoralists and many others across Afghanistan, including the displaced. But it also presents challenges for humanitarian organizations like the FAO. Many areas of the country will become inaccessible in the coming weeks and months as winter advances and the situation will become far harder for those already caught up in the vortex of crisis.
Afghanistan is now coming to the end of the winter wheat planting season. This is the foundation for rural livelihoods across vast swathes of Afghanistan. “We are distributing wheat cultivation packages, including high quality and locally-supplied seeds, fertilizers and training. This campaign will benefit 1.3 million people and keep their livelihoods going in 30 of the 34 provinces of the country in the coming weeks. It will decrease the need for food assistance, including in hard to reach areas.
To turn the situation around, experts say a massive increase in humanitarian assistance across the whole country, at scale and now. “There is a very real risk of catastrophe if we don’t see a massive uplift in humanitarian assistance in the coming weeks and months and into next year. And for millions of Afghan men, women and children there is no Plan B,”.
FAO stated it immediately needs $11.4 million until the end of the year, but it is clear its humanitarian needs for next year will be substantially higher than in recent years. With the worsening drought FAO is seeking a further $200 million for 2022.
The economic implosion too is required to be addressed. There is a massive liquidity crisis, near paralysis of the banking system and major impact on business and domestic trade as well. It is not only driving the crisis, it also affects the humanitarian response.
Finally, it is needed for Afghanistan to find ways of unlocking the large amounts of international development which has been so important in the last few years for providing basic services in agriculture, health and education and across all sectors. “We need to see that unlocked in the coming months and into next year,” Trenchard said.
Is the Taliban stopping assistance from getting to those in need?
According to FAO, there is not a single person in Afghanistan that does not recognize the need for massive humanitarian assistance in the coming weeks and months, particularly as winter approaches. Many humanitarian organizations, including FAO, have been working in Taliban areas for years. The need for operational independence, needs-based assistance and the core humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality, independence and humanity are well established, understood and respected, here as they are in every other country where humanitarian work is ongoing.
For many years, including earlier this year, physical access, due to insecurity, was a major constraint in many areas. Conflict and other access challenges stopped FAO reaching many people in need of humanitarian assistance. However, access has improved enormously in recent months. “We can access all Afghan provinces and in most districts in these provinces. That wasn’t the case a few months ago. But the challenges of access have now been replaced by the challenges driven by the economic implosion,” FAO stated.
Along with the continuing drought, it is the economic implosion that has driven the dramatic worsening of the crisis in the last few months and fuelled its increasingly urban character. The economic situation has also made humanitarian response much harder. But not impossible.
“Like all humanitarian partners, we have continued to work flat-out to find solutions to these new challenges and have continued to deliver vital humanitarian assistance as the crisis has evolved,” FAO stated. It reached almost 350 000 people between August and October and in November, 2021 alone it is looking to reach over a million farmers, with urgent humanitarian assistance to protect critical livelihoods. “We are now distributing enormous quantities of wheat seeds, livestock feed concentrate and other vital inputs. But so much more is needed,” Trenchard said.
– global bihari bureau
