The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says 3.7 million children in Afghanistan are suffering from acute malnutrition, as worsening drought and funding shortages threaten to deepen the crisis amid the COP31 climate summit in Türkiye.
A further 1.65 million children are in critical condition, according to UNICEF.
In a video shared on UNICEF’s official X account, Daniel Timme, the agency’s chief of communication and advocacy in Afghanistan, warned of the devastating effects of climate change on one of the world's most vulnerable countries.
“Afghanistan contributes very little to global greenhouse gas emissions, yet its people are disproportionately affected by the consequences of climate change,” Timme said.
Water sources are drying up and orchards are withering as prolonged drought pushes more families towards hunger, UNICEF said.
A father identified under the pseudonym Mirwais told Save the Children that the drought had devastated his family’s livelihood.
“The drought has made our situation much worse over the past several years,” he said.
According to a UN-backed assessment, 15.9 million Afghans faced crisis-level food insecurity or worse in September and October. The number is expected to climb to 19.2 million between November and April.
UNICEF warns that more than four million children will need treatment for acute malnutrition in 2027, including 1.09 million suffering from its most severe form.
Although UNICEF and its partners are delivering life-saving treatment, continued funding is essential to ensure access to therapeutic food, health services, safe water and sanitation.
“But without urgent and sustained funding, acute malnutrition will likely worsen further,” UNICEF said in a statement.
“We know what works, and we know that early action saves lives,” UNICEF Afghanistan Representative Tajudeen Oyewale said in an October statement.
With COP31 taking place in Antalya, Türkiye, from 9 to 20 November, UNICEF has called on delegates to prioritise investment in protecting communities most vulnerable to climate change.
Melting glaciers, recurring droughts and dust storms are putting growing pressure on Central Asia’s water resources, agriculture and public h...
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says 3.7 million children in Afghanistan are suffering from acute malnutrition, as worsening drou...
Jensen Huang’s abrupt resignation as Nvidia’s chief executive has rattled global technology markets, sent Chinese AI stocks tumbling an...
European leaders gathered in Dublin on Thursday, 12 November, for the ninth European Political Community (EPC) summit, with security, defence and energy high on the agenda. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev held talks focused on peace, trade and regional cooperation.
Iran will not let a single particle of its enriched nuclear material leave the country, and any new U.S. attack would be met with strikes on distant American bases, Iranian security chief Mohsen Rezaei has said.
Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang is stepping down amid reports linking him to a woman suspected by U.S. authorities of spying for China, throwing the future of the $4 trillion chipmaker into uncertainty.
Four million workers across Spain joined a general strike on Wednesday over the country’s deepening housing crisis, unions said, bringing disruption to factories, ports, shops and public transport just weeks before a snap general election.
Kazakhstan’s security service has arrested Nurlan Zhakupov, CEO of Samruk-Kazyna, the country’s sovereign wealth fund, on suspicion of corruption. Yelzhas Otynshiyev, Chairman of KTZ, Kazakhstan’s national railway firm has also been detained.
A consortium of Türkiye’s Limak and Qatar’s HBK Contracting has won an international tender to build and operate a new airport terminal in Bukhara, Uzbekistan, under a 23-year public-private partnership, with the project potentially costing up to $300 million.
Spain’s parliament has approved a government package aimed at easing the country’s housing crisis, a day after workers staged the first general strike in 14 years over soaring housing costs.
Here's your AnewZ Technology Daily Brief for the 13th of November. This week, a Microsoft outage hit Australian agencies, Google restricted mapping data in South Korea, a lawsuit targeted advanced AI development, and Nvidia faced a leadership crisis after Jensen Huang's resignation.
Microsoft struggled to restore its services on Friday after a major outage disrupted Outlook, Teams and Copilot across the United States and Asia-Pacific region.
President Vladimir Putin agreed on Thursday to let European representatives join the next round of Ukraine peace talks while the United States continues to work towards what could become the largest prisoner exchange of the Russia-Ukraine war.
You can download the AnewZ application from Play Store and the App Store.
What is your opinion on this topic?
Leave the first comment