GENEVA – Aid agencies working in Afghanistan said Tuesday lack of funding was forcing them to cut back on urgent work, running the risk of further suffering for the country's inhabitants.
"Without new contributions, the World Food Program will have nothing to distribute in June," said U.N. food agency spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume.
"We have averted one famine. We don't want to go back to that."
WFP needs more than dlrs 585 million to feed around 9 million people in Afghanistan, and most of the money is needed in the first half of the year before July's harvest, Berthiaume said. So far, the agency has received less than 60 percent of the sum it appealed for.
The agency needs 75,000 metric tons of food, at a cost of dlrs 28 million, to keep its programs going until the end of July, Berthiaume said.
The International Organization for Migration said it was suspending programs to transport internally displaced people back to their homes and provide them help to get re-established in the west and north of Afghanistan.
Spokesman Jean-Philippe Chauzy said the agency's costs had skyrocketed because of a cartel of truck owners in the western city of Herat. IOM has to pay 17 times more to rent trucks in Herat than in other parts of the country.
"The cartels are imposing extortionate prices, and this is bleeding us dry," he said.
Chauzy said the agency had received less than half of the dlrs 74.8 million it appealed for to cover Afghanistan operations during 2002.
Around 150,000 people in the north of Afghanistan have registered with the IOM for help in returning to their homes, while 20,000 of the 100,000 people estimated to be in camps in western Afghanistan want to go home, Chauzy said.
"If people cannot leave the camps at the moment, there is a risk that they will be institutionalized in camps probably for another winter – and we know how difficult it was last year to bring assistance to these camps," he said.
U.N. agencies and others working in Afghanistan jointly appealed for dlrs 1.76 billion for their operations this year. According to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, donors have so far provided just under dlrs 762 million, or 48.4 percent.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said it was trying to step in to take over some of the IOM's programs and would increase its travel grants to people returning from Iran to make up for the absence of IOM transport, but that was no real substitute.
"The international community absolutely has to come through," said spokesman Peter Kessler. Pakistan and Iran are both under a tremendous pressure from around 3 million refugees. It is urgent that we have to move people out of their camps and back to home areas."
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