Famine may have been averted, but Afghan economic crisis deepens -U.N. envoy

FILE PHOTO: Members of Taliban security forces stand guard as crowds of people walk past in front of a money exchange market in Kabul, Afghanistan September 4, 2021. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo

(Reuters) - Humanitarian agencies may have distributed enough aid in Afghanistan to avert famine and large-scale starvation, but the country's economic collapse is "approaching a point of irreversibility," the U.N. envoy to Kabul said on Wednesday.

U.N. Special Representative Deborah Lyons told the U.N. Security Council that it is "most urgent" to resolve the root problems of the economic crisis, but doing so will require cooperating on all issues with the Taliban who seized power in August.