People in Afghanistan are offering to sell their organs to make enough money to survive, as the cost of living crisis plunges the country into deeper poverty.
Christian Aid warned that rocketing fuel and food prices were forcing families to make desperate decisions and may soon begin to sell their children.
One cannot imagine the situation of poor families. People are openly offering to sell their body parts to manage the price hike, said the charitys Afghanistan country manager Subrata De.
Very soon Afghanistan will experience another round of an extreme humanitarian situation where families will be forced to sell their children.
Aid workers in Herat found that the cost of a 16L oil pack has risen from 3000 Afghani (27) to 4300 Afghani (39) in just one week.
The size of bread in Herat bakeries has also reduced significantly after flour prices doubled in the last month.
Other living costs have been on the rise since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August, which destabilised the country and caused mass job losses.
International aid to Afghanistan, including from the UK, has also been slashed or diverted away from government-controlled programmes.
The cost of public transport has risen from 10 Afghani or 20 Afghani (less than a penny) per journey to between 30 and 50, Christian Aid reports, while the price of a 50kg sack of wheat flour has risen from 2,000 Afghani (18) to 3,500 (32).
But in a new report seen by i, Christian Aid also warned that soaring costs were leaving aid agencies struggling to meet the growing demand.
Ray Hasan, Head of Asia, Middle East, Latin America, Caribbean and Global Programmes said that the cost of living crisis was having serious impacts on our work.
The food we distribute is more expensive now and sometimes we have to cut back on certain items like oil so that we can help more people with the basics. Cash distributions are less meaningful than they used to be, he told i.
The cost of our supplies is going up. We are identifying those that are most in need but the numbers are growing rapidly as more and more people are struggling to get enough food to eat.
The global hunger crisis has been partly driven by the war in Ukraine, which has disrupted essential food supplies from both Ukraine and Russia.
Both countries are large-scale producers of wheat and oil; prior to the war, Ukraine exported an average of 6 million tons of grain and oilseed a month, falling to just 200,000 in March.
And the shortages are hitting some of the worlds poorest countries.
Russia and Ukraine account for 100 per cent of Somalia and Benins wheat imports, and more than 90 per cent in Laos, according to the Christian Aid report.
They also constitute more than 80 per cent of Egypts wheat imports and 75 per cent of Sudans, as well as 95 per cent of sunflower imports to China and India.
But the crisis had been unfolding before the renewed conflict in Ukraine, largely as a result of repeated and severe droughts in countries including Ethiopia.
In the Dawa zone of the Somali region, admission rates for malnutrition at Save the Children nutrition centres increased by more than 320 per cent from September 2021 to January 2022.
Items the charity distributes in Afghanistan, such as flour, vegetable oil, soya, sugar, soap and shampoo have become much more expensive, head of humanitarian Michael Mosselmans said.
We are therefore buyingfewer, and more people are at risk without our support.
And it is a picture the agency is seeing beyond Afghanistan.
The situation is also worsening in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the $14 a month that was previously given to families to help them buy food can no longer cover the same number of supplies.
In Zimbabwe, food prices in May were 154.6 per cent higher than the previous year, with year-on-year inflation at 131.7 per cent.
Christian Aid workers in Burundi reported cities and rural areas running out of fuel, causing tensions in local communities and preventing farmers from taking their goods to market.
But despite the scale of the problem, Christian Aid are concerned that the crisis is not receiving enough international attention or action.
The alarms are sounding, and urgent action is needed now, wrote Mr Mosselmans. This is a point reinforced by polling we commissioned which showed only 23 per cent of those the British public are aware of the crisis in the Horn of Africa, compared to 91 per cent for the war in Ukraine.
The charity is calling for an urgent shift towards a more sustainable food system in which countries are less dependent on imported goods and on fossil fuels.
It urged the UK Government to accelerate its path to net zero, push all G7 countries to uphold their famine commitments, and to raise its aid commitment back to 0.7 per cent of gross national income, in addition to its Ukraine aid.
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Afghans offer to sell their organs for money as inflation soars, charity warns - iNews