Kabul (dpa) – Four hundred people are displaced daily in the Afghan conflict and face hunger and destitution, Amnesty International said Thursday. “Half a million Afghans who fled fighting have been abandoned to starvation and death as they subsist in makeshift shelters, let down by their government and international donors,” the London-based rights group charged. “Conflict affects more Afghans now than at any point in the last decade,” it said. Civilian deaths have increased each year since the war started in 2001. Last year, more than 3,000 Afghan civilians died in the conflict, the highest yet, according to a UN report. The rights group called the situation of internally displaced Afghans “a largely hidden but horrific humanitarian and human rights crisis.” “Thousands of people are finding themselves living in freezing, cramped conditions and on the brink of starvation while the Afghan government is not only looking the other way but even preventing help from reaching them,” said Horia Mosadiq, the group's Afghanistan researcher. At least 30,000 displaced Afghans live in more than 30 camps in Kabul alone and are now enduring the worst winter the mountainous capital has seen in 17 years. The Amnesty report found children were prone to illness because of “unhygienic conditions” in the camps. The children also had little access to education. The report found displaced families were under constant threat of forced eviction in the makeshift camps. “In some cases, families have had to scramble to move belongings before bulldozers level their shelters,” the report said. Amnesty International said Afghan government initiatives were “inconsistent, insufficient and ineffective, suggesting that it essentially has no plan to address internal displacement.” It asked the government to provide basic needs for the refugees, including shelter, food, water and health care. It also requested that foreign and Afghan militaries and Taliban militants protect civilians and asked the Taliban to allow aid groups access to the areas they control. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/zz6Qn Tags: Afghanistan, Amnesty, Displaced, Violence, War Section: Asia, Human Rights, Latest News
