Children in Afghanistan are rummaging through bins looking for plastic to sell while women sit in the middle of busy roads begging for food, spurring fresh calls for the Australian government to ramp up assistance to the poverty-hit country.
Fiona McSheehy, an aid worker currently based in Afghanistan, told Australian senators on Wednesday she had witnessed “desperately heartbreaking” scenes over the past three months, as humanitarian groups warn of rising poverty and famine.
The acting country director for Afghanistan at Save the Children, addressing a Senate hearing in Canberra by videoconference, said half of Afghanistan’s population was aged under 18 and “they have no real future at the moment”.
“I’ve been involved in humanitarian work for more than two decades now and this is by far and away the most complicated and also deeply saddening situation I’ve ever been in,” McSheehy said.
“I’ve been here for about three months. Since I arrived, I have seen the number of children on the street increase dramatically. You see them rooting through things like rubbish bins to try to find things that they can then sell – plastic and things like that.
“We see them lined up in streets begging as people try to get to the airport, and they’re selling face masks one by one – that’s how desperate they are for an income.”
McSheehy, who has also travelled to some of the provinces, said during her time in Afghanistan she had seen “more poverty and more desperation”.
“Every now again you’ll see a woman and her children just sitting in the middle of the road begging for food and money, while cars and lorries drive either side of them. It is desperately heartbreaking,” she said.
McSheehy also told the hearing that each morning the streets of Kabul were lined with men sitting in wheelbarrows waiting for a day of work. She said if she went back three hours later, most of those men were still there waiting – because there was no work.
That meant it was hard for parents to feed their children, she told the Senate’s foreign affairs, defence and trade references committee, which is continuing its inquiry into Australia’s engagement in Afghanistan.
The Senate committee last month published an interim report that said former Afghan interpreters and other colleagues left behind by the Australian government after the Taliban takeover in August now faced a high risk of brutal reprisals.
Mat Tinkler, the acting chief executive of Save the Children Australia, described the situation in Afghanistan as a “living hell”. He said on Wednesday there were now 13.1 million children in need of humanitarian aid – an increase of 3.1 million children in just three months.
“Senators, we are watching the world’s largest humanitarian crisis unfold right now and every day the risk to an increasing number of children’s lives becomes both more severe and more urgent,” he said.
Tinkler said 22.8 million people – almost the entire population of Australia – were “on the brink of famine”. By the middle of the year, more than 95% of the population could be living in poverty.
He asked what it would take for the Australian government to do more to try to avoid this catastrophe.
Tinkler said his organisation welcomed Australia’s funding commitment of $100m to Afghanistan, but $52m of that was already funded in 2021-22 and $35m would be spent across the four-year budget period. That left about $13m in new funding dedicated to the crisis this year.
“I think the world and Australia needs to ask itself, are we comfortable watching this tragedy unfold, are we comfortable watching a projected 1 million children die this year of malnutrition?”
Tim Watkin, the head of government relations at the Australian Council for International Development, described it as an “escalating humanitarian crisis”.
Nadine Haddad, a senior policy adviser to World Vision Australia, said the severity of the situation in Afghanistan was “far too much for anyone to comprehend”.
She emphasised the importance of aid to directly help people in need, with safeguards to ensure money did not go to the Taliban leadership, but added: “The priority of humanity must take over.”
The Australian government does not recognise the Taliban regime, but Australian officials say they are involved in “cautious” discussions.
Those talks are done in group settings alongside other like-minded countries “where we judge it’s worthwhile” – including to press the Taliban to allow “safe passage” to people who wish to leave Afghanistan.
Daniel Sloper, Australia’s special representative for Afghanistan, joining the hearing by videoconference from Doha, said the Taliban had largely honoured a commitment to allow the delivery of humanitarian assistance, with some “very concerning” exceptions.
Sloper said there had been “localised incursions or seizures of goods or interference, particularly with women associated with the delivery of assistance”.
“Since the end of last year, we’ve seen a rise in reports of interference, including most recently a suggestion that in one province women who were unaccompanied – that is, working alone – were threatened with shooting,” he said.
Sloper said Australia’s assistance was being channelled through international partners with experience on the ground, a method that “has restricted some of what we have provided to date”. He hinted that the government was considering expanding that approach.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it was aware of 35 Australian citizens and 26 Australian permanent residents who remained in Afghanistan, plus 148 foreign citizens who are immediate family members of Australian citizens or permanent residents.
