Resilience of millions at breaking point - WFP

A World Food Programme (WFP) official in Afghanistan on Monday warned that the resilience of millions of Afghans facing malnutrition could soon break down, leaving the assistance community unprepared.

“Nobody really understands the resilience of Afghans except that everybody is in awe to what depth they can go,” the WFP deputy country director for Afghanistan, Peter Goosens, told IRIN in the Afghan capital, Kabul. “Nonetheless, there must be an end, and there are far too many people close to that line now,” he maintained.

Commenting on why malnutrition figures were not worse than expected, Goosens said: “If you take the percentages, they are very, very low in comparison with the seriousness of the situation.” Nobody had been able to come up with a very good explanation for this other than that there remained a real lack of understanding of the various coping mechanisms there were to which Afghans resorted, he added. According to Goosens, in addition to remittances and migrant labour, there is a sophisticated sharing tradition among Afghans, which acts as a critical coping mechanism. Thus by sharing resources among large groups and extended families, many Afghans are kept alive, albeit at an absolutely minimal level of subsistence.

Goosens said: “It is extremely worrisome that all these people grouped right above that line [of tolerance] may en masse start passing through it. This to me is the biggest danger we face in Afghanistan today. If logic would prevail, a lot more people would have dropped through that line already, but they are keeping themselves just above it.”

He added that this was probably the most significant deciding factor for people to leave their places of origin, thereby adding to displacement within the country. “People’s tolerance is slowly being chipped away, and sooner or later it will break,” he warned.

Goosens said it was too early to say when this was going to happen, but the overall situation “gives a lot of reason to be worried.”