To avert a humanitarian crisis, the UK has doubled its aid to Afghanistan and the region to roughly $380 million (286 million pounds) this year…reports Asian Lite News.
The government is planning to allocate 99.5 million humanitarian aid to Afghanistan.
Foreign Secretary Liz Truss plans to allocate another batch of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, in the amount of 75 million pounds, the British Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office informs.
The foreign office specified on Saturday that out of the total aid package, 34 million pounds will go to the UN World Food Programme (WFP).
Truss welcomed the Group of Seven (G7) foreign ministers on Saturday in Liverpool, where they discussed global conflicts and regional crises, including Afghanistan, reported Sputnik.
The UK foreign secretary called for the broadening of international cooperation in order to prevent humanitarian catastrophes and avoid high risks of migration.
To avert a humanitarian crisis, the UK has doubled its aid to Afghanistan and the region to roughly $380 million (286 million pounds) this year.
In September, the UK sent 30 million pounds in assistance to countries neighbouring Afghanistan. Another 50 million pounds were allocated in October.
Earlier this month, Truss discussed Afghanistan and related humanitarian issues with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Ministerial Council in Stockholm.
World Bank’s help arrives
The Afghan central bank has announced that the third batch of cash assistance from the World Bank has arrived as part of the global lender’s humanitarian pledges to the war-torn nation, the media reported on Monday.
In a statement on Sunday, the De Afghanistan Bank said the assistance worth $19.2 million was was given to the Kabul-based Afghanistan International Bank (AIB), which is the largest bank in the country and the only one with international transfer to all other nations, Khaama Press reported.
The cash assistance comes at a time when the local currency (Afghani) is in its unprecedentedly lowest value. On Sunday, one US dollar amounted to 114 Afghanis.
The Khaama Press said that the fresh batch of cash will help stabilise the Afghani.
On Friday, the World Bank allowed $280 million to be transferred to Afghanistan so that it be used in health and food sectors by World Food Programme and the Unicef.
The next day, the US State Department announced that they have made a regulation based on which people will be allowed to transfer money to Afghanistan, as well as lift sanctions on all those who are involved in the transfer.
MoneyGram and Western Union are the only means of money transfer to Afghanistan that resumed their operations in September.
Since the August 15 takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban and the formation of the Taliban-led caretaker government on September 7, the country’s humanitarian situation has worsened.
In response, world governments cut off Afghanistan’s access to international funding and froze the central bank’s roughly $10 billion in assets held abroad, in a bid to stop Taliban from accessing that money.
According to UN estimates, some 23 million people are in desperate need of food, the $20 billion economy could shrink by $4 billion or more and 97 per cent of the 38 million population are at risk of sinking into poverty.
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