Prime Minister Imran Khan once again called upon the international community on Saturday to provide immediate humanitarian relief to millions of Afghans, who were facing an imminent danger of starvation during the ongoing winter.
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
In a tweet, the prime minister also reminded the world that providing immediate relief to impoverished Afghanistan was also obligatory under the unanimously adopted UN Principle of Responsibility to Protect (R2P).
The prime minister also tagged a news story published in the London-based Guardian daily, carrying excerpts from an article written by former British prime minister 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.
“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,” Imran wrote on social media platform.
Brown, in his article, had warned that more than 23 million people were at risk of starvation if aid did not materialise. “We are witnessing a shameful but also self-defeating failure to prevent famine”, Brown said, adding that the UK should urgently take a lead in resuming the delivery of aid to Afghanistan.
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The UN agencies had launched a call for $4.5 billion in aid for 2022, its biggest-ever international appeal. The US responded with a donation of $308 million to be channeled through independent humanitarian organisations.
Brown said that this was not enough. “The 35-country, American-led coalition that ruled Afghanistan for 20 years under the banner of helping the Afghan people has still put up only a quarter of the money that would allow UN humanitarians to stop children dying this winter.”
Brown further wrote that he had written to Truss and to the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to ask them to host an international donor conference “in January or at the latest in February” to break the impasse.
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