An international think-tank says it found starving children and little evidence that Canadian aid is helping people in Kandahar's main hospital and a sprawling refugee camp.

Ottawa should drastically overhaul how it directs and tracks aid to the volatile southern region of Afghanistan, the Senlis Council said.

"This apparent lack of impact on the suffering of the Afghan people in Kandahar not only neglects our humanitarian obligations," says a report released Wednesday. "It creates a climate that fuels the insurgency and undermines the already dangerous work of Canada's military in this hostile war zone."

Canada's new development minister, Bev Oda, swiftly played down the Senlis findings as simplistic and lacking context.

Senlis has "an agenda of its own," Oda said, but did not elaborate.

Ottawa is sending more than $1 billion in aid over 10 years to experienced partners on the ground who are accountable for the money, she said in an interview.

That money — plus another $45 million just announced by Oda — is for security, governance and rebuilding in Afghanistan.

Group supports poppy projects

Canada has more than 2,300 soldiers in Afghanistan, where a U.S.-led coalition ousted the Taliban government in 2001. Canada first sent a battle group to Afghanistan in 2002, and since then, 69 soldiers and one diplomat have been killed in the country.

Leaders for the Bloc Quebecois, the Liberals and the NDP have all stressed their opposition to keeping Canadian troops in Afghanistan beyond February 2009, the current commitment.

Senlis, supported by 12 European foundations, is best known for its well-heeled campaign against the forced, U.S.-led destruction of Afghanistan's burgeoning poppy crops.

Senlis instead supports poppy-for-medicine projects that would see village-cultivated poppy turned into morphine tablets rather than heroin. The group has denied reports that it is backed by the pharmaceutical industry.

Senlis president and Canadian lawyer Norine MacDonald says her group visited Kandahar's main treatment centre, Mirwais hospital, and the region's largest refugee camp in an effort to trace spending.

The group on Wednesday showed video it had taped at the hospital earlier this month.

Commit more ground troops: Senlis

A three-year-old girl, ribs jutting, rocks back and forth in one frame. Another shot pans across crying youngsters who literally spill out of overcrowded beds in the ward for starving children.

Senlis said there were 28 children sharing eight beds during its visit.

A man living in a large refugee camp in Kandahar's Zhari district told the group's interviewers that residents lack clean water, food and medical care.

"They are all working," the man says in the video when asked if his children are in school. "We can only go to the doctor when we have money."

MacDonald told a news conference that Canada and other NATO countries must commit more ground troops — beyond any scheduled 2009 pullout — "so battles can be won without bombing campaigns." Otherwise, the Taliban will find it easy to recruit suffering Afghans, she said.