WASHINGTON —
Rural Afghanistan is “facing a very concerning situation,” where households live in a “quite desperate’” situation facing extreme food shortages and acute malnutrition, said a U.N. official who visited Afghanistan in recent weeks.
Rein Paulsen, the director of the Office of Emergencies and Resilience at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, told VOA “the situation is concerning. Households lack basic supplies. They lack often seeds to produce staple foods. They may lack animal feed to keep animals alive.”
The U.N. Food agency, World Food Program, said Monday it in the next six months to help Afghans in need as a “catastrophic hunger knocks on Afghanistan’s doors.”
Paulsen said beyond immediate needs, the agriculture sector in Afghanistan has to be supported to help people produce for themselves as it is “one of the most effective ways to make sure people have food at a precarious time.”
In a Skype interview, Paulsen told Shaista Sadat Lami of VOA’s Afghan Service that all their programs “benefit either directly or indirectly” women in the country in addition to having some activities that are focused on households headed by women.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Could you please shed some light on Afghanistan's need, as we know the situation is dire in the country, when it comes to food shortages and malnutrition?
Afghanistan's rural populations are facing a deep crisis and the risk of a collapse of rural livelihood is real. The situation is deteriorating. Obviously, the winter months have been difficult. We're in a lean season, but just to put some numbers around this, the latest estimation we have that approximately 20 million people are facing what's called acute food insecurity. This is in the range of about 46% of the total population. So, this means that we have a population at risk with rising levels of malnutrition, acute malnutrition and situations that are quite desperate, families facing extreme food shortages and acute malnutrition, like I said, disease levels are high. So, the situation is concerning. Households that are in this type of a situation lack basic supplies. They lack often seeds to produce staple foods. They may lack animal feed to keep animals alive, which are vital for protein and for access to milk. So, all in all, we're facing a very concerning situation, which is why the FAO has been expanding its response in Afghanistan to address the needs of some of the most vulnerable people in rural areas.
Just last year in 2022, the FOA directly supported more than 6 million Afghans, and this was spread across all 34 provinces in the country, and we do it through different packages of what we call emergency agricultural assistance. Some of those are focused on protecting livestock. So, this is concentrated animal feed and it's about animal health, veterinary support to keep animals alive. Some of it is focused on allowing people to plant key crops. We had a very large campaign for the winter wheat season as well as now for the spring cropping season, where we give seeds and fertilizers, but also training to help farmers. We also give cash to vulnerable families who may not have an opportunity to grow for themselves. These are then the most food-insecure households. And indeed, we also support women directly, female-headed households, and this can be through poultry support programs, provision of chickens to allow access to protein or indeed to allow cultivation of vegetables at a backyard garden level. So, we're talking here about tailored packages that respond to vulnerable households' particular needs.
How do you determine who should be helped? And how do you set your priorities?
As a specialized technical agency of the United Nations, one of our strengths is on a needs assessment on understanding vulnerabilities and resilience and doing surveys and assessment within communities that identify the families that are in most need of urgent support. And then we triangulate that information through speaking to key stakeholders, even using independent monitors to verify the information. We want to make sure that the people we support are really those that are most vulnerable, most in need of support. And this is an experience that we have in Afghanistan over years and decades and, indeed, globally over years and decades, so people can have confidence in the impartiality of the activities that we implement.
How does supporting the agriculture sector help with the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan?