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World bank sets more than $1B in aid for Afghanistan

Bank approves plan to use more than $1 billion from frozen Afghanistan assets to fund urgently needed education, agriculture, health and family programmes, Reuters news agency reports.

Reuters

World Bank decision is set to provide a major boost to efforts to ease Afghanistan's worsening humanitarian and economic crises.

The World Bank has announced more than $1 billion in humanitarian aid for Afghanistan, stating that it will go to UN agencies and international NGOs and will "remain outside the control of the interim Taliban administration."

The funds, to be delivered in the form of grants, aim "to support the delivery of essential basic services, protect vulnerable Afghans, help preserve human capital and key economic and social services, and reduce the need for humanitarian assistance in the future," the Washington-based institution said in a statement late on Tuesday.

The Bank approved a plan to use more than $1billion from a frozen Afghanistan trust fund to fund urgently needed education, agriculture, health and family programmes, a source familiar with the decision told Reuters news agency.

The decision, which will bypass sanctioned Taliban authorities, will provide a major boost to efforts to ease the country's worsening humanitarian and economic crises.

Current @UN estimates suggest more than 24m people – 59 per cent of the population – are in need of lifesaving humanitarian aid, 30 per cent higher than in 2021.

“I had to do it for the sake of my children,” 32-year-old Nooruddin told news agency AFP from Herat. pic.twitter.com/sz0OlGHqVb
— Telegraph Global Health Security (@TelGlobalHealth) March 1, 2022

Millions on verge of starvation

Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF) was frozen in August when the Taliban overran Kabul as the last US-led international troops departed after 20 years of war.

Foreign governments ended financial aid constituting more than 70 percent of government expenditures while the United States led in the freezing of some $9 billion in Afghan central bank funds.

The funding cuts accelerated an economic collapse, fuelling a cash crunch and deepening a humanitarian crisis that the United Nations says has pushed more than half of Afghanistan's population of 39 million to the verge of starvation.

The World Bank statement said that as a first step, ARTF donors will decide on four projects worth about $600 million that will support "urgent needs in education, heath and agricultural sectors, as well as community livelihoods."

There will be a "strong focus on ensuring that girls and women participate and benefit from the support," the statement continued.

Aid money transfers

Afghanistan's new rulers have appealed to the international community to help the country and have pressed for billions of dollars of frozen assets overseas to be released.

The Afghan economy depended on aid before the western-backed government collapsed last year. Taliban is under unilateral sanctions that have made foreign banks reluctant to facilitate aid money transfers.

The United States has sought to allay fears of those providing humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan of falling foul of sanctions and said it would free up $3.5 billion in frozen Afghan central bank assets on US soil to help Afghans.

SOURCE: AFPReuters