LettersAfghanistan’s hunger crisis: don’t look away as starving Afghans sell their children
- Afghanistan is facing its worst hunger crisis in living memory and needs humanitarian help. More than half the population have acute malnutrition, and children are starving to death
If you were starving and you knew the sale of one of your children would prevent the rest of your children from dying, would you do it?
For a moment, let’s put aside the shocking reality that in Afghanistan you can buy a child, a practice which is increasing in response to the dire hunger situation in the provinces where my national emergency response staff work.
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‘No other choice’: Afghan parents sell young daughters into marriage amid starvation and poverty
Winter is now what everyone fears, as things will get much worse, quickly. Soon, snowfalls will prevent access to remote areas which could then be cut off for up to four months. We are very quickly running out of time to get food aid into villages that will soon become inaccessible.
My organisation, World Vision, has been on the ground for 20 years undertaking a range of humanitarian and development work, but the activities that are most critical at this moment are providing emergency nutrition via 15 mobile health clinics.
The other thing we do is provide the food that the UN’s World Food Programme gives us to distribute in Western Afghanistan. We have reached more than 120,000 people since October, but many more need to be reached.