Abu Dhabi: A humanitarian project cherished by the UAE diplomats and volunteers who were martyred in Kandahar in Afghanistan, will continue undisrupted to fulfil their dream, a top Afghan diplomat told Gulf News on Thursday.
The UAE delegation visited Kandahar to attend a groundbreaking ceremony of an orphanage that will give hapless children a place to live and study, said Abdul Farid Zikria, Afghanistan’s Ambassador to the UAE.
The $2 million (Dh7.34 million) orphanage project being undertaken by the Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Foundation will house 600 children who have lost their parents, he said.
As the UAE leadership has announced that the Kandahar incident will not interrupt the UAE’s humanitarian missions in Afghanistan, both nations will continue to work together, the envoy said.
He said the preliminary investigations into the incident have found that the bomb was brought from outside the country. It was a type of sophisticated bomb, which had not been used in previous attacks in Afghanistan.
The investigators are yet to identify the perpetrators. “But it is irrelevant who did it. It was a crime against humanity,” Zikria said.
“It is sad that we are losing human beings on a daily basis in Afghanistan,” the envoy said.
The latest incident also proved that there should be a global effort against terrorism. “This fight should not be left to one country. A global approach is needed to face this menace,” the ambassador said.
The orphanage project in Kandahar is one of Khalifa Foundation’s several humanitarian projects in Afghanistan. WAM reported that the foundation had signed a Memorandum of Understanding in 2009 with the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), and more than 15 million people had benefited from this initiative.
The foundation distributed aid to 1,271 Afghan families in 2010. In 2011, it distributed food to 1,500 people in several provinces in Afghanistan and several other forms of aid to more than 500 families. In 2013, it sent four shipments to Helmond province in cooperation with the UAE Embassy in Afghanistan and provided material assistance to several orphanages in Kabul.
A nutrition survey showed that the nutrition sufficiency programme funded by the foundation succeeded in eliminating a huge number of malnutrition cases among women and children.
