Michael Keating

Photo by Staff Sgt. William Greeson

The UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Afghanistan, Michael Keating aims to use a 12-day trip to Europe and the United States to highlight to some of Afghanistan’s key Western partners a funding shortfall of nearly 300 million US dollars in aid.

Interviewed prior to his departure from Kabul, Keating said his trip had three objectives. The first was to draw attention to the evolving landscape in Afghanistan after the series of meetings on Afghanistan (in Chicago and Tokyo among others) that had taken place this year, and what that meant in terms of the partnership between the Afghans and the international community, as well as for those in the international community who want to support Afghanistan.

In July an international conference on Afghanistan in Tokyo, brought together 70 countries and international organizations who committed US$ 16 billion for Afghanistan’s economic and development sectors through 2015, and at a NATO Summit in May in Chicago, firm commitments were made to support the Afghan security forces.

Keating said that his second objective was to draw the attention of the international community to the fact that Afghanistan still has “one of the largest numbers of people in need of humanitarian assistance in the world”. And, the third objective was to discuss the role of the UN family in “this changing, rapidly evolving environment”.

One of the major characteristics of the last year, Keating said, had been first the heavy winter resulting in floods all over the country, which had drawn attention to a deeper phenomenon, which was the increasing number of disasters, drought, floods, avalanches, and earthquakes.

Keating also said was there had been more internally displaced people being generated in the last year than in any year since 2001.

Source: UNTV