Afghans Starving Amid Food: Daily Brief

Children are dying of starvation in Afghanistan, even though food is readily available in the country’s markets. There’s no shortage of goods but rather a shortage of cash. Afghanistan is suffering from a major liquidity crisis and lack of banknotes, because its central bank remains unable to access its foreign currency reserves or process or receive most international transactions. The US and others have taken some action to license banking transactions with Afghan entities, but businesses, humanitarian groups, and private banks continue to report extensive restrictions on their operational capacities. At the same time, because outside donors have severely cut funding to support Afghanistan health, education, and other essential sectors, millions of Afghans have lost their incomes. The result is acute malnutrition, entrenched across Afghanistan, even as food and other basic goods are sitting right there. Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis cannot be effectively addressed unless the US and other governments ease restrictions on the country’s banking sector to facilitate legitimate economic activity and humanitarian aid.

“F***, she got off the plane!” a man in China yells, as he smashes chairs in a video posted on the popular Chinese microblog platform Weibo. “She” refers to Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the US House of Representatives. The man is upset that the Chinese government allowed her plane to land in Taiwan instead of shooting it down. Chinese social media is awash with similar videos and posts calling for violence against Taiwan. Of course, what’s said on Chinese social media might not be representative of the thinking of the average person in China, but the volume of hate suggests an upswing in ultra-nationalism in recent years. This reflects in part incessant state propaganda and censorship over territorial, ethnic, and human rights issues.

It’s rare to see good news for Syrian refugees, but a court in the Netherlands recently ruled that Syrian refugees cannot be automatically transferred to Denmark because of Copenhagen’s decision threatening to return some refugees to Syria. The Netherlands’ Council of State ruling bars their transfer under the European Union’s “Dublin” arrangement, because it cannot be assumed that, “the prohibition of inhuman treatment is respected by the Danish authorities.” It’s a small, but important victory, and one that suggests Denmark’s inhumane policy is losing ground.

Mexico is facing a massive drought, with water shortages hitting almost two thirds of municipalities around the country. Some people are waiting in line for hours to collect state water deliveries. According to the New York Times, “The lack of water has grown so extreme that irate residents block highways and kidnap municipal workers to demand more supply.”

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference later today. This is a man who jokes about Nazi gas chambers, who wants to prevent "mixed-race" marriages, who has rigged the electoral system in his country, and who has crushed dissent and free media. Is this CPAC’s vision for the US?

Later today, HRW’s outgoing executive director Ken Roth will chat with Anthony D. Romero executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union about the situation of rights in the United States, live in a new Twitter Space. Join us!