WFP Warns Millions of Afghans Face Hunger as Aid Shortfall Deepens

Reuters

A doctor measures the upper arm of a three-year-old boy suffering from severe acute malnutrition, at Yaka Dokan health clinic, Herat, Afghanistan, 23 October 2024.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has announced that, for the first time in decades, it is unable to provide effective aid to millions of Afghans suffering from malnutrition — warning that child deaths are likely to rise this winter.

International assistance to Afghanistan has declined sharply since 2021, following the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces and the return of the Taliban to power. The crisis has been further compounded by a series of natural disasters, including earthquakes.

“For the first time in decades, WFP cannot launch a significant winter response, while also scaling up emergency and nutrition support nationwide,” the agency said in a statement. It added that more than $460 million is urgently needed to deliver food assistance to six million of the country’s most vulnerable people.

“With child malnutrition already at its highest level in decades, and unprecedented reductions in international funding for agencies providing essential services, access to treatment is increasingly scarce,” the WFP warned. It added that child deaths are expected to rise during Afghanistan’s freezing winter months, when food becomes scarcest.

The organisation estimates that 17 million people in Afghanistan now face hunger — around three million more than last year — a surge driven partly by the mass deportation of Afghans from neighbouring Iran and Pakistan under repatriation programmes. Humanitarian agencies have cautioned that Afghanistan lacks the infrastructure to absorb such a sudden influx of returnees.

“We are only 12% funded. This is an obstacle,” said Jean-Martin Bauer, WFP Director of Food Security and Nutrition Analysis, at a press briefing in Geneva. He noted that 3.7 million Afghan children are acutely malnourished, including one million severe cases. “So yes, children are dying,” he said.



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