The United Kingdom pledged an additional £286 million (338.5 million euros) for Afghanistan on Wednesday March 30, on the eve of a donors’ conference co-organized with the UN on Thursday to raise more $4 billion.
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“This new funding will be distributed through trusted UN and NGO partners. No funding will go directly to the Taliban.”, British Foreign Minister Liz Truss said in a statement. The United Kingdom, which had already released 286 million pounds for Afghanistan for the 2021-2022 fiscal year, is thus renewing its contribution.
According to the head of British diplomacy, aid from the United Kingdom has already made it possible to support more than 60 hospitals, provided support for health services for more than 300,000 people, enabled nearly 4.5 million people to receive emergency food aid through the World Food Program (WFP), and assisted 6.1 million people through the UN Humanitarian Fund for Afghanistan.
During the conference, she will pledge to put girls’ education at the heart of the UK’s response, and urge the Taliban to reverse their decision to keep girls out of secondary school, a statement said. of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
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The British government has been roundly criticized by humanitarian organizations and its opposition for having reduced the amount of its budget intended for international aid because of the Covid-19 pandemic and for its chaotic operation to evacuate its nationals and ‘Afghans who worked for the British when the Taliban returned.
The UN announced in January that it needed $4.4 billion from donor countries to fund humanitarian needs in Afghanistan this year, the largest amount ever requested for a single country. According to London, the United Nations estimates that around 10 million children need urgent humanitarian aid in Afghanistan.