PM Imran Khan asks world to provide immediate humanitarian relief to Afghanistan

ISLAMABAD (92 News) – Prime Minister Imran Khan has appealed to the international community to provide immediate humanitarian relief to millions of Afghans on the brink of starvation.

In a tweet on Saturday, he said: "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."

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

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Imran Khan has welcomed UK former prime minister Gordon Brown's demand for help to raise funds for Afghanistan.

Brown has written to the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, calling on her to help convene a donor conference to raise $4.5bn (£3.3bn) for Afghanistan as he warned that more than 23 million people were at risk of starvation if aid did not materialise.

He said: “We are witnessing a shameful but also self-defeating failure to prevent famine”, adding that the UK should urgently take a lead in resuming the delivery of aid dramatically halted after the Taliban takeover.

Cash was available, said Brown in an article for the Guardian, but donor countries needed confidence they would not be hit by existing international sanctions, which he also argued could be relaxed if the Taliban made genuine progress on the rights of women and girls.

On Tuesday, UN agencies launched a call for $4.5bn in aid for 2022, its biggest ever international appeal. The US responded with a donation of $308m, to be channelled through independent humanitarian organisations.