Kabul: Afghanistan's dire hunger crisis now affects 14 million people, including babies fed on little more than weak tea and bread by their despairing and dirt-poor parents.
According to United Nations, 14 million Afghans face acute hunger, with only one in nine receiving World Food Programme (WFP) food assistance. Child malnutrition has reached record levels in 12 provinces, with children under two hardest hit. Funding shortages have forced WFP to scale back lifesaving nutrition programmes nationwide. The agency needs $500 million before winter to avert a worsening humanitarian crisis.
In a new alert on Tuesday, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said that one in three Afghans is now in the grip of acute food insecurity and that it lacks the resources to contain the deepening crisis. Today, 12 provinces have now reached critical levels of acute child malnutrition, the highest number ever recorded. Conflict, widespread unemployment, soaring food prices, shrinking humanitarian funding, and disruption to supply routes are fuelling the crisis, WFP said.
The return of six million Afghans pushed back mainly from Pakistan and Iran since September 2023 has increased the strain on the country's already fragile economy. In the past three years, close to six million Afghans have been forcibly expelled from neighbouring countries, said John Aylieff, WFP Country Director for Afghanistan. Briefing journalists in Geneva from Kabul, he explained that there are simply not enough jobs to sustain the returnees. Conflict with Pakistan and the Middle East crisis have created trade disruptions, which have pushed up the price of staple foods by 20 to 30 per cent, pricing out the poor.
Because of crippling funding cuts, WFP has been able to feed only one in nine of the 14 million people now acutely hungry in Afghanistan. And as funding shortfalls deepen, lifesaving nutrition programs are being scaled back, just as needs are peaking. Child wasting - the deadliest form of malnutrition - has reached critical levels in one-third of the country's provinces. The number of children being rushed to health centres is soaring, with 80 per cent of the worst cases being children under two.
During a recent visit to the province of Kandahar, WFP staff met Farida, a mother of three whose story reflects the plight of many of the country's poorest families. Her husband, an elderly street vendor, earns less than a dollar a day, leaving the family with no chance of affording nutritious food, healthcare, or other basic necessities. Two of Farida's children suffer from anaemia, and her six-year-old son has been too weak to attend school for months due to acute malnutrition.
Farida has to repeatedly tell her children that there is nothing more to eat. The family is barely surviving on tea and bread. Without the food assistance they receive through a WFP-supported clinic, she said her children would undoubtedly die. WFP treats malnourished children aged under five and pregnant and breastfeeding mothers in clinics across the country, in partnership with UNICEF. But a sharp decline in humanitarian funding has forced the agency to prioritize food assistance to only a fraction of the most vulnerable. The distribution of specialized nutritious foods to prevent malnutrition and stunting halted completely in May 2025.
The UN food agency warned that Afghanistan's nutrition crisis is spinning out of control. WFP's operations for emergency food assistance and nutrition programmes are costed at about $900 million for 2026. They have not met needs in the first six months due to a lack of funds, and for the next six-month window, which is critical due to winter, WFP still needs $500 million to address the acute food needs in the country.
Briefing reporters in New York, UN humanitarian aid office (OCHA) in Afghanistan spokesperson Olga Cherevko said she recently travelled around the country and heard from flood victims and people suffering from malnutrition. Despite the end of the 20-year conflict following the Taliban takeover, 3.7 million Afghan children and 1.2 million pregnant and breastfeeding women are projected to be malnourished. Humanitarians continue to highlight that deepening hunger fuels migration, radicalisation and ultimately instability, with consequences that extend beyond Afghanistan's borders.