ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN – The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says that more than 6 million people face long-term displacement in Afghanistan. According to OCHA, many of them have left their homes in the span of the last decade.
In its latest report released on Monday, February 12, the UN agency stated that Afghanistan has the largest number of internally displaced people in South Asia and the second largest in the world.
According to the OCHA report, prolonged displacement, combined with widespread contamination of explosive ordnance, ongoing restrictions on women’s rights and freedoms, and increased vulnerability to gender-based violence, child labor, and early marriage, highlight Afghanistan as primarily a protection crisis.
Afghanistan has been grappling with a severe humanitarian crisis for years. Even before the Taliban took over the country, conflict, natural disasters, chronic poverty, food insecurity, the COVID-19 pandemic, and most recently political change have intensified instability and violence in Afghanistan – causing even more human suffering and displacement.
Currently, more than 8.2 million Afghans reside as refugees outside the country, while an additional 3.2 million people are internally displaced within Afghanistan’s population of 40 million.
The recent forcible deportation of Afghan refugees from neighboring countries and Turkey has exacerbated the plight of Afghanistan’s already impoverished population. By the end of 2023, there was a significant rise in the number of individuals returning to Afghanistan, following the expulsion of undocumented Afghans from Pakistan and ongoing population movements from Iran. According to the UN, more than 1 million individuals were forced to return from these countries back to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in 2023.
According to the OCHA report, in 2024, around 1.46 million Afghans will return from Pakistan (483,000) and Iran (978,000).
These rising numbers add to already overstretched basic services and resources and place additional stress on host communities.
The UN estimates that in 2024, over 23.7 million people, representing two-thirds of the population, including women and girls, require humanitarian and protection assistance. This shows a decrease from last year’s figure of 29.2 million.
However, according to OCHA’s report, the decrease in conflict since August 2021 and the relative economic stability over the past twelve months have led to a 16 percent decrease in the number of people in need compared to the beginning of 2023.
