ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Saturday once again called upon the international community to provide immediate humanitarian relief to the millions of Afghans who were facing an imminent danger of starvation.
Taking to Twitter, the prime minister wrote: “There is an urgency for the international community, as well as their obligation under the unanimously adopted UN principle of Responsibility To Protect (R2P), to provide immediate humanitarian relief to millions of Afghans on the brink of starvation.”
There is an urgency for the international community, as well as their obligation under the unanimously adopted UN principle of Responsibility To Protect (R2P), to provide immediate humanitarian relief to millions of Afghans on the brink of starvation. https://t.co/td3q3vu3F4
— Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) January 22, 2022
The prime minister also shared a news story published in the Guardian daily, carrying excerpts from an article written by former British premier Gordon Brown to UK foreign secretary, Liz Truss, calling on her to help convene a donor conference to raise $4.5bn (£3.3bn) for Afghanistan.
Brown, in his article, had warned that more than 23 million people were at risk of starvation if aid did not materialize. “We are witnessing a shameful but also self-defeating failure to prevent famine”, he said, adding that the UK should urgently take a lead in resuming the delivery of aid dramatically halted after Taliban announced their government.
The UN agencies had launched a call for $4.5bn in aid for 2022, its biggest-ever international appeal. The US responded with a donation of $308m, to be channeled through independent humanitarian organizations.
“The devastation the world was warned about months ago is no longer a distant prospect,” Brown said, adding, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator Martin Griffiths, Brown wrote, “forecasts that if we do not act, 97% of Afghans will soon be living below the poverty line”.
