Funding collapse leaves 22.9 million Afghans in need, UN agency warns

A dramatic shortfall in international funding has left nearly 23 million Afghans — nearly half the country’s population — in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, said on Wednesday, warning that hard-won humanitarian progress is now at risk of unraveling.

According to OCHA, an estimated 22.9 million people — including 5.7 million women and 5 million men facing acute vulnerabilities — will require aid in 2025. But humanitarian actors are now scrambling to reprioritize their response plans after the suspension of U.S. foreign assistance, which accounted for nearly half of all humanitarian funding in 2024.

The United States, which contributed $735.7 million last year, halted nearly all support in January, triggering a cascading funding crisis. As of the end of March, only $322.4 million — just 13 percent of the required $2.42 billion — had been received for the 2025 Humanitarian Response Plan.

OCHA said aid organizations have been forced to narrow their focus to 145 of Afghanistan’s 401 districts, targeting 12.5 million people instead of the originally planned 16.8 million. The reprioritized plan now carries a revised funding requirement of $1.62 billion.

The reduced scope means difficult choices: “Hard decisions will have to be made about who receives assistance — and who does not,” the report said.

Between January and March, humanitarian agencies reached 7.6 million people with at least one form of assistance — a decline from 9.4 million during the same period in 2024. The impact of underfunding is already evident:

220 health facilities have closed, affecting access for 1.8 million people.

400 nutrition sites have been suspended, leaving 80,000 children under five and pregnant or lactating women without critical care.

Protection services, particularly for survivors of gender-based violence, have been heavily disrupted.

Water, sanitation, and hygiene programs have been scaled back, increasing the risk of malnutrition and disease outbreaks.

In addition, humanitarian flight services have been reduced, further limiting access to remote communities. Hundreds of aid workers are being laid off or are at risk of job loss, with 78 percent of coordination roles at the national and sub-national levels expected to be impacted.

The humanitarian emergency is being compounded by a surge in climate-related disasters, particularly flash floods, which are now striking year-round.

In 2024 alone, floods affected all 34 provinces, displacing more than 170,000 people, destroying homes and farmland, and pushing families deeper into poverty. In Sholgara district of Balkh Province, residents like Siyah Moy, a 50-year-old widow raising eight children, described waking up to floodwaters tearing through their homes.

“We quickly ran outside, barely managing to escape,” she recalled. “Everything was lost — our food, livestock, everything.”

Agriculture, the economic lifeline for rural communities, has been devastated. “Farmers can no longer hire daily workers,” Moy said. With livelihoods collapsing, local economies are grinding to a halt.

OCHA and its partners warn that without early warning systems, flood control infrastructure, and climate-resilient agriculture, communities will remain trapped in cycles of loss. The agency urged donors to integrate disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation into ongoing humanitarian efforts.

“This is not only about emergency relief,” the report said. “Now is the time for decisive, climate-conscious investment.”