Pakistan has said that since the military siege on August 5, 2019, by the Indian government in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), Kashmiris have suffered an economic loss of over five billion dollars.

In a statement at UN Security Council, Pakistan's Special Representative to the United Nations Munir Akram said that conflict is a major source of food insecurity across the world, and Kashmir has become criminally trapped in the same situation.

Highlighting the plight of Kashmiris, Akram said that they had orchards of apples but they could not send out the produce to buyers. Farm products, constituting the entire year’s worth of income for most Kashmiri farmers, had perished without reaching markets, Akram said.

He added that is due to the continued presence of Indian military forces making it almost impossible for Kashmiris to go about daily life without the threat of harassment or checks, The Newsreported.

The desperate economic situation of IIOJK and the people who once earned a reasonable living on the basis of their products and the ability to market them cannot be ignored any longer, he said.

“The complete communications blackout, imposition of shoot-at-sight curfews, and severing of all transport links, imposed now for nearly 600 days, have prevented Kashmiri farmers from reaching their farmlands, resulting in acute food shortages,” the envoy said.