Dear Parents and Teachers:
President Bush has asked each child in America to send one dollar to the White House to help Afghan children. However, the President is already spending billions of dollars to bomb Afghanistan. These bombs have hit villages, hospitals and a Red Cross relief storage building. They have already killed many Afghans, including children.
Our government has provided some emergency food relief, but it is far from adequate. According to aid workers in Afghanistan, some 7.5 million Afghans may be threatened with starvation this winter unless the bombing is halted to allow food to reach the Afghan people.
Recognizing that sending a dollar to President Bush's effort will do very little to prevent mass starvation in Afghanistan this winter, we suggest that children send one dollar or more to the United Nations agency in charge of relief efforts for Afghan children at this address: UNICEF, 333 East 38th Street, New York, NY 10016.
We also suggest that children write to President Bush to ask him to stop the bombing so that relief workers can get food through to the Afghan people to prevent millions of them, including children, from starving this winter.
The President's address is: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC 20509-1600. You can also email him at president at whitehouse.gov. Copies of emails can be sent to the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation at wagingpeace at napf.org.
It is time for the children of the world to unite in calling for an end to all violence and for a global effort to provide food, shelter, clothing, health care and education for every person on the planet.
We encourage you to share these ideas with your children, and to pass on this message.
David Krieger, President, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation www.wagingpeace.org
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"The United Nations believes that 7.5 million Afghans will need food over the winter; 2.5 million more than on September 11. Relief groups said today that the 275,000 packets of food dropped in the country so far are at best a minor public relations gesture and at worst a source of mistrust." -- New York Times (10/17/01)
"Aid officials estimate that up to 7.5 million Afghans might be threatened with starvation.... 'Unless the [US air] strikes stop, there will be a huge number of deaths,' one UN source said." -- Observer of London, (10/21/01)
www.wagingpeace.org www.nuclearfiles.org