KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – The World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that it can only assist one million people this summer due to an acute shortage of funds, leaving two million others at risk despite their urgent need for life-saving food aid.
In a post on X, WFP said that without immediate financial support, many vulnerable Afghans could face catastrophic levels of hunger in the coming months.
The agency says it requires $451 million over the next six months to continue providing emergency food assistance to the country’s most at-risk families.
At the same time, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that Afghanistan’s overall aid response has been severely scaled back due to a dramatic drop in donor funding. Of the 22 million Afghans in need of humanitarian support, only 12.5 million are currently prioritized for assistance.
OCHA estimates that a minimum of $1.62 billion is urgently needed to reach the most vulnerable populations.
The crisis is further compounded by the ongoing deportations and forced returns of Afghan migrants from Iran and Pakistan, which are adding significant strain to already fragile aid efforts and worsening the humanitarian outlook across the country.
