Devex Newswire: Should a Taliban-led Afghanistan get development funds?

Top aid donors to Afghanistan such as the EU and the U.K. are struggling with how to continue providing assistance to Afghanistan — and even whether they should — now that the country is under Taliban control.

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The EU cut off development funding and government assistance to Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover, according to Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat. The U.S., which has led aid donations to the country for nearly a decade, remains reserved about the continuity of its aid.

“No payments are going to Afghanistan right now until we clarify the situation,” he says. “We have to see what kind of government the Taliban is going to organize.”

The EU has pledged €1.2 billion ($1.4 billion) in emergency and development assistance to Afghanistan between 2021 and 2025. But that funding is contingent on conditions that they be used for the promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms, especially of women and children.

Borrell says that Europe could maintain humanitarian aid and potentially increase it, Andrew Green reports. EU spokesperson Peter Stano later told Devex that the funding situation remains fluid and that the EU and its member states are still “assessing the developments in Afghanistan” to help determine future engagement.

German Development Minister Gerd Mueller confirmed earlier this week that Germany was freezing €250 million in development funding earmarked for Afghanistan this year.

Read: EU, Germany cut off development aid to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan

Meanwhile, the United Kingdom has announced it will double aid to Afghanistan to £286 million ($394 million) in response to the crisis, while Prime Minister Boris Johnson called for a regional humanitarian response led by the U.N.

“We will do everything we can to avert a humanitarian crisis,” Johnson told members of Parliament in an emergency debate held Wednesday. Still, the promised aid is less than that budgeted for 2019, before the U.K.’s drastic aid cuts were implemented.

Cash flow problems

The International Monetary Fund suspended Afghanistan’s access to IMF resources Wednesday, including a new allocation of Special Drawing Rights reserves. Ajmal Ahmady, the former head of Afghanistan's central bank, says that Afghans face “dire” financial prospects given the country’s dependence on bulk shipments of dollar reserves from the U.S., which are now running short. The military phase of the Taliban’s takeover may have ended, but the economic impact has just begun, he tells the Financial Times.

Looking ahead

What's better than containing a disease outbreak? Preventing it in the first place. Jenny Lei Ravelo speaks to Dr. Aaron Bernstein, chair of the Scientific Task Force to Prevent Pandemics at the Source, about a new report that discusses how to prevent the spillover of pathogens from wildlife to people, a topic that he says has been largely ignored.

Q&A: What it will take to prevent another virus 'spillover' [PRO]

Games of chance

Fundraising giant Omaze has raised millions of dollars for charities in the U.S. and U.K. But its hugely successful fundraising model is also controversial. Omaze is currently facing a class-action lawsuit that accuses it of operating “illegal lotteries” and misleading the public about its fundraising credentials, Abby Young-Powell and Jessica Abrahams report. Watch this space for more as Devex hears from those on both sides of the debate over Omaze's self-declared mission to transform fundraising for the better.

Read: Luxury fundraiser Omaze confronts ‘illegal lottery’ allegations

And booster makes three

With the U.S. being the latest high-income country to announce plans for the provision of a third dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, World Health Organization officials are worried about how supplies for low- and middle-income countries will be affected. If all high-income countries decide to give booster doses to people above 50 years old, that would consume close to 1 billion doses, says WHO Chief Scientist Dr. Soumya Swaminathan during a news briefing.

Read: 1 billion doses: The cost of COVID-19 booster shots

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Crowdsourcing

Meme artist Tommy Marcus is donating a portion of over $5 million raised from a GoFundMe campaign to the International Women’s Media Foundation to assist humanitarian and media workers, as well as LGBTQ and women’s rights activists in Afghanistan. “All funds raised will either pay for flights, or support Afghan women journalists and their families through the IWMF,” Charlotte Fox, an IWMF spokesperson, tells me. She did not specify how much IWMF would receive.

In other news

The U.N. has relocated about 100 international staff from Afghanistan to a temporary office in Kazakhstan. [VOA]

The Biden administration has proposed a major overhaul of the U.S. asylum system that would speed up processing, as migrant apprehensions at the U.S. southern border reach a 21-year high. [Politico]

Myanmar’s security forces have killed more than 1,000 civilians since the military ousted Aung San Suu Kyi from power six months ago, according to an advocacy group. [The Guardian]

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