KABUL — The international community has provided nearly $13 billion in assistance to Afghanistan since the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021, Roza Otunbayeva, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative in Afghanistan, told the UN Security Council on 17 September.
The head of UNAMA said roughly $7.9 billion was delivered as humanitarian aid and about $4.9 billion targeted basic needs under the UN’s joined-up approach.
Otunbayeva stressed that the UN and partners took extraordinary measures to keep aid flowing as Afghanistan faced a severe liquidity crisis.
“Without these early cash shipments, the humanitarian response would have collapsed, with catastrophic consequences for the Afghan people,” she said, describing UN-led cash transfers that were coordinated to stabilize markets and sustain life-saving operations.
Otunbayeva told the Security Council that, “while there have been some instances of interference in aid delivery, [Taliban] in Kabul and in the provinces have generally cooperated with the UN and partners to enable provision of assistance and resolve cases of interference.”
She also highlighted steps the UN has taken to strengthen risk-management and monitoring systems to reduce diversion.
That account sits alongside UN humanitarian reporting that documents a rising incidence of interference by the Taliban.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) recorded 104 incidents of interference in July 2025 alone, 95% attributed to the Taliban, including attempts to influence procurement, hiring, beneficiary selection, demands for staff lists and data, program obstruction and restrictions on women’s access to services.
OCHA said interference was the most frequently reported access constraint in recent months.
Separately, the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) has published a lengthy investigation concluding that the Taliban have used coercive and regulatory means to redirect and control aid flows, at times favoring certain communities, pressuring NGOs to block assistance to Hazara- and Tajik-populated areas and have even demanded the dismissal of Hazara staff from these organizations, extorting staff and, according to some interviewees, colluding with corrupt actors.
SIGAR’s report documents multiple mechanisms of diversion and warns of systemic risks in the aid architecture while noting that UN cash shipments helped stabilize the exchange rate but created operational complexities and vulnerabilities.
SIGAR’s reporting has provoked denials from Taliban spokespeople and raised concerns among donors about oversight and the protection of vulnerable and minority communities.
Humanitarian needs in Afghanistan have soared while donor funding has fallen.
The UN and partners say that the number of people requiring assistance remains extremely high (tens of millions), and funding shortfalls have already forced the closure of health facilities and cuts in nutrition programs, affecting millions of people.
The recent earthquake in eastern Afghanistan and large returnee flows this year have increased pressure on already strained services and widened protection risks, especially for women and girls.
