LONDON: The world is once again turning a blind eye to Afghanistan, and the consequences are measured in starving children and desperate migrations. According to the World Food Programme (WFP), United Nations and Nongovernmental Organisations, the country is facing a brutal convergence of growing hunger, severe poverty, a spiralling refugee crisis and the relentless pressure of climate change. This quadruple threat has pushed the nation’s already fragile population to the very brink, creating one of the world’s most acute humanitarian emergencies, compounded by the Taliban’s repressive governance and legacy of terrorism.
In its most recent reports, including “A Lifeline at Risk: Food Assistance at a Breaking Point,” the WFP issues a chilling warning: the lifeline that sustains millions is disintegrating. Due to dramatic cuts in global humanitarian funding, assistance in Afghanistan is now reaching less than 10% of the people who are severely food insecure. This massive shortfall means that millions are being cut off from aid, pushing entire communities toward an emergency level of hunger (IPC Phase 4)—just one step away from famine. Driven by severe poverty, mass displacement and the escalating impacts of climate change coupled with military attacks and aerial bombings by neighbouring countries such as Pakistan means that the country now requires urgent humanitarian assistance. Women, minorities and the children are the worst affected.
Hunger and the Aid Cliff
The raw statistics are a devastating indictment of the international community’s withdrawal of support. Even as hunger soared, the WFP has been forced to drastically scale back its operations. In 2025, the agency in Afghanistan received a fraction of the funding it did in previous years, forcing it to focus only on famine prevention efforts and significantly reduce the number of people it can reach.
Today, 23 million Afghans – more than half of the country’s population need urgent help. Around 9.5 million Afghans are severely food insecure. The impact on the most vulnerable is immediate and irreversible. The country is grappling with the sharpest surge in malnutrition ever recorded, with an estimated 3.5 million children under five and 1.2 million pregnant and breastfeeding women projected to suffer from acute malnutrition. Due to funding cuts, the WFP must now turn away thousands of malnourished mothers and children from its nutrition centers, denying them the life-saving specialised food they desperately need. For these families, many of whom are headed by women who have lost their jobs under restrictive policies of the Taliban, the choice is increasingly stark: migrate, starve, or resort to unthinkable measures. The desperate poverty has been so extreme that women in poverty-stricken areas have reportedly been forced to sell their bodies for sex, sell their kidneys and even little daughters to pay off debts and feed their remaining family members.
“People are in a very difficult situation,” says Mona Shaikh, Head of Nutrition for WFP Afghanistan. “Eight out of ten families cannot afford a minimally nutritious diet, and three out of four are borrowing money just to buy basic groceries”
Poverty, Displacement and The Cruel Political Hand
The hunger crisis is not a lone phenomenon; it is inextricably linked to Afghanistan’s severe economic and environmental collapse. The political transition in 2021 triggered an economic paralysis, mass unemployment and the freezing of national assets. Today, an alarming 70% of the population lives below the poverty line.
This economic catastrophe is made worse by one of the region’s largest refugee crises. The forced return of over 1.5 million Afghans from neighbouring countries like Pakistan and Iran has placed an overwhelming burden on a country with no capacity to absorb them. These returnees arrive with no assets, no jobs and in need of immediate humanitarian support, further draining the already meagre resources available for all vulnerable Afghans. If that was not bad enough, Pakistan carried out military strikes and jets bombed the capital Kabul, Kandahar, Konar, Paktia and Nangarhar province, killing and injuring hundreds of people only last week.
Compounding all of this is the silent, pervasive menace of climate change. Afghanistan, though a minimal contributor to global carbon emissions, Afghanistan ranks among the top ten countries most affected by the climate crisis. Climate hazards, such as drought and floods, have become a greater cause of internal displacement than conflict, with nearly 9 million individuals impacted by climate hazards in the last 12 months.
The nation has endured its third consecutive year of severe drought, with 25 out of 34 provinces experiencing severe or catastrophic conditions. Agriculture, which employs approximately 80% of the population, has been ravaged. Failed wheat harvests, withered crops, and dead livestock mean that the primary source of livelihood for millions has vanished, directly fuelling the migration of farming families who can no longer survive on their land.
The flip side of the drought is unprecedented flash flooding. Erratic and heavy rainfall, often due to rapid snowmelt caused by rising temperatures, destroys homes, infrastructure, and the remaining agricultural land. As climate-driven disasters displace hundreds of thousands, people seek refuge in already overcrowded cities like Kabul, where they join the estimated 6.3 million internally displaced persons (IDPs)—the largest number in South Asia.
John Aylieff, WFP Country Director, warns that “rising acute malnutrition” is becoming worse. “We need to do everything we can to avoid famine,” he says. “It could be unprecedented, especially during the harsh winter months.”
Afghanistan faces mass murder of its people due to an upcoming wave of malnutrition, famine, climate disaster and conflict internally and externally due to Taliban’s links with terrorist groups and its repressive policies.
Call for Action
As the harsh Afghan winter approaches, the crisis threatens to become a full-blown catastrophe. Many areas will soon become snow-bound and inaccessible, cutting off humanitarian supply lines just as families’ need for food, fuel and shelter spikes. Despite the scale of the crisis, international support is waning.
Afghanistan’s crisis is no longer just a humanitarian issue; it’s a testament to the devastating global impact of funding cuts, oppressive government policies, refugee crisis and the brutal reality of climate injustice.
The Taliban’s history as a terrorist organisation continues to isolate Afghanistan from international support. Their refusal to form an inclusive government and their ties to extremist groups have led to sanctions, frozen assets, economic collapse, donor fatigue and more recently direct military strikes on the country by Pakistan. UN experts, global Afghan intellectual and political community, Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and Muslim scholars have condemned the Taliban’s “violent and authoritarian rule,” warning that their governance model is incompatible with human rights, Islam, international relations and sustainable development.
Without an immediate and substantial influx of funding from the international community, trade for food programs by the private sector and an inclusive elected government, millions of Afghans – the least responsible for the crisis and the most vulnerable to its effects – will be forced into a winter of starvation, migration and death. The time to act is not after the catastrophe, but now.
The author Wagma Omar is a strategy and economics consultant with a special interest in the role of women in economy. She is based in United Kingdom. The views expressed are her own and do not reflect those of our organisation.