UN seeks record $4.4B for Afghans struggling under Taliban

By JAMEY KEATEN and KATHY GANNON
Associated Press

GENEVA (AP) — The head of the United Nations says nearly all Afghans don’t have enough to eat and some have resorted to “selling their children and their body parts” to get money for food. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ statement was part of a virtual pledging conference to help people in Afghanistan. The appeal sought to make progress toward the U.N. aid office’s biggest-ever funding drive for a single country: $4.4 billion. It’s a decidedly ambitious goal when much of the world’s attention is on Russia’s war in Ukraine, and some wealthy nations have frozen billions in assets so the Taliban can’t access them. The U.N. aid office said $2.4 billion was pledged Thursday from 41 countries.