Afghans are growing increasingly “exhausted” by poverty, hunger and climate shocks, as new data shows child food insecurity and malnutrition rising sharply across the country.
"Over the past months, I've travelled across Afghanistan: from Bamiyan and Herat to Paktika, Khost and, most recently, Nuristan following the devastating flash floods. While each of these places is distinctly different from one another, the stories I heard were remarkably similar," Olga Cherevko, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Afghanistan told reporters in New York.
“Mainly people tell me they're exhausted. They're exhausted from being poor, from being hungry, from repeated climate shocks, mounting debt and the daily struggle to provide for their families."
Ms Cherevko said Afghanistan remains among the countries most vulnerable to extreme weather and natural disasters, with floods, droughts, harsh winters and earthquakes repeatedly pushing families deeper into poverty before they can recover from the last disaster.
She said people rarely ask for food handouts. Instead, they request work so they can support their families.
“Mothers tell me they worry less about themselves than they do about their daughters,” Ms Cherkov said. “The danger is that when people become invisible, they risk becoming dispensable.”
The OCHA spokeswoman warned that restrictions preventing women from working, girls from attending school and female aid workers from reaching women and girls have consequences that extend to entire communities and the country's recovery.
The World Food Programme (WFP) said child food insecurity rose to affect 47 per cent of the population in the first quarter of this year, driven by conflict, unemployment, elevated food prices and reduced humanitarian funding.
Nearly 3.7 million children are projected to suffer acute malnutrition this year, along with 1.2 million pregnant and breastfeeding women, WFP said. It added that nutrition programmes had been hamstrung by product shortages linked to the conflict in the Middle East and a nine-month closure of the Pakistan border.
Close to 14 million Afghans are acutely hungry, but funding cuts mean WFP has only been able to feed one in nine of them, the agency said. It has halted famine-prevention food distribution in some hotspots due to a lack of funds, it added.
The UN agency said it needed $900 million at the start of the year but had received only $130 million, and now requires $540 million to address acute food insecurity over the next six months.
“We would like all donors to be returning to Afghanistan to address the humanitarian situation, including the United States and others that have ceased funding Afghanistan,” said John Aylieff, WFP's Afghanistan country director.
