La Nina could make food insecurity worse in Afghanistan: UN

UNITED NATIONS, April 22 (Xinhua) -- Cyclic La Nina threatens to make matters worse for the one-third of Afghanistan's 40.4 million people already food insecure, UN humanitarians said on Thursday.

"La Nina weather patterns that may develop into drought are compounding food insecurity," the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said. More than 14 million people face acute food insecurity due to conflict, COVID-19, high food prices and rampant unemployment.

"Out of this number, 4.2 million people, one in 10 Afghans, are facing emergency food insecurity levels requiring urgent response to save lives and protect livelihoods," the humanitarians said, citing the latest Integrated Phase Classification (IPC) Food Security analysis.

It's projected that nearly half of all children under 5 years of age will face acute malnutrition in 2021, OCHA said. While this represents a slight improvement in the food security situation, the full impact of low rainfall won't be evident until later this year.

The United Nations and humanitarian partners in Afghanistan said they need 1.3 billion U.S. dollars to help 15.7 million of the 18.4 million people in need, mainly because of food insecurity. They received only 113 million U.S. dollars, or 9 percent, of the funding, forcing some aid organizations to consider discontinuing critical activities.

La Nina is the opposite of the El Nino ocean-atmosphere warming phenomenon.

The IPC is a set of tools and procedures to classify the nature and severity of food insecurity, hosted by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization.