11m Afghans need urgent food assistance

KABUL (Pajhwok): Eleven million Afghans, including 3.5 million children, are in urgent need of emergency food assistance, a coalition civil society groups says.

Research shows that the number could top 15 million in the future, the Afghanistan civil Society Coalition for Food and Nutrition said. 

In a statement on World Food Day on October 16, the alliance said UN Development Goals recommended that no one should sleep hungry at night or die of hunger by 2030.

But millions of people in Afghanistan are still face with poverty and lacked access to healthy food, according to the statement from the alliance.

The government should take Afghanistan's food security issue seriously and highlight it in an effective way at the forthcoming Geneva Conference.

Alliance leader Lal Gul Lal said that in addition to the lack of food in Afghanistan, people had been forced from their homes by the ongoing conflict.

"I urge the government, international donors, NGOs, especially the United Nations, to continue to aid the needy Afghans in these difficult times," he said.

More than half of Afghanistan's population earns less than a dollar a day and lives below the poverty line, according to other reports.

pr/mud