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Contact: Hiram Ruiz
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USCR Says Humanitarian Crisis in Afghanistan Remains Acute
Washington, DC, January 7, 2002 Although U.S. and World Food Program officials recently declared that they have turned the tide and averted famine in Afghanistan, today the U.S. Committee for Refugees (USCR) warned that most Afghans remain in a state of crisis.
"International relief groups have done a tremendous job getting large quantities of food into Afghanistan," said USCR senior policy analyst Hiram Ruiz. "However, food has not reached some of the more isolated regions of Afghanistan, and it has not reached Kandahar, where lack of security makes storage or distribution of food impossible.”
In some places, local warlords have stolen most of the food that has arrived, thwarting efforts to assist the needy even in accessible places. The Red Crescent supervisor in Jalalabad, Afghanistan reported that local warlords recently stole four of six truckloads of food intended to feed hungry civilians. He said many children in the city were very thin and that some had already died due to lack of food. A doctor working with the international relief group Médecins sans Frontières reported similar thefts in Mazar-e-Sharif.
The quantity of food that has arrived in other areas will only meet temporary needs. According to the January 4 Washington Post, a spokesperson for Save the Children, a relief group working in Afghanistan, said, “I don’t think we have averted a famine…I would say that the problem has been averted for two months—no more.”
"Beyond the uneven availability of food,” Ruiz said, “other problems, such as lack of shelter, disease, a shortage of medicines and health professionals, and the widespread presence of landmines and unexploded ordnance also continue to put people at risk.” The UN’s special envoy for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, recently described the public health situation in Afghanistan as “desperate.”
In order to meet the country’s food needs, USCR welcomes the agreement to deploy a multinational security force to Afghanistan, and urges that it be rapidly deployed. “The force should be deployed without delay,” said Ruiz. “Unless a secure environment is established, food cannot be delivered or stocked, and Afghan civilians will go hungry.”
USCR also calls upon the new Afghan administration to establish security throughout the country and to make stopping banditry of relief aid a very high priority. “Afghans must become responsible for ensuring that food reaches their own people,” said Ruiz. “Stopping banditry should be among the highest priorities of the Karzai Administration.”
Founded in 1958, the U.S. Committee for Refugees is a non-governmental, non-profit agency dedicated to defending the rights of uprooted peoples worldwide.