In a new alert on Tuesday, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said that one in three Afghans is now experiencing acute food insecurity, and the organization lacks the resources to contain the deepening crisis. The dire hunger crisis in Afghanistan affects 14 million people, including babies who are fed weak tea and a little bread by their despairing, dirt-poor parents.
WFP said that child food insecurity rose to impact 47 percent of the population in the first quarter of this year. Currently, 12 provinces have reached critical levels of acute child malnutrition, which is the highest number ever recorded.
Conflict, widespread unemployment, soaring food prices, shrinking humanitarian funding, and disruption to supply routes are driving the crisis. The return of six million Afghans, mainly pushed back from Pakistan and Iran since September 2023, has increased the strain on the country’s fragile economy.
“In the past three years, close to six million Afghans have been forcibly expelled from neighboring countries,” said John Aylieff, WFP Country Director for Afghanistan.
Briefing journalists in Geneva remotely from Kabul, Aylieff explained that there are "simply not enough jobs to sustain" the returnees.
“Conflict with Pakistan and the Middle East crisis have created trade disruptions, which have pushed up the price of staple foods by 20 to 30 percent […] The poor are being priced out of the market,” he explained.
Due to devastating funding cuts, WFP has only been able to feed one in nine of the 14 million people in Afghanistan who are currently experiencing acute hunger.
As funding shortfalls deepen, lifesaving nutrition programs are being scaled back just as needs are peaking.
Child wasting — the deadliest form of malnutrition — has reached critical levels in one-third of the country's provinces.
“The number of children being rushed to health centers is soaring and we're seeing this visibly. Eighty per cent of the worst cases are children under two years of age and NGOs report that too many of them are arriving too late to be saved,” Aylieff warned.
Shrinking humanitarian funding means that “millions of acutely malnourished Afghan children are being turned away without assistance at the very moment when their lives are at risk”, he added, leading to “deaths, which of course are fully preventable”.
During a recent visit to Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan, WFP staff met Farida, a mother of three whose story reflects the plight of many of the country's poorest families. Her husband is an elderly street vendor who earns less than a dollar a day, leaving the family unable to afford nutritious food, healthcare, and other necessities.
© WFP/Isheeta Sumra
Two of Farida's children suffer from anemia, and her six-year-old son has been too weak to attend school for months because of acute malnutrition.
“When we spoke to Farida, her baby started crying from hunger,” said the WFP Country Director for Afghanistan.
“She reached into her bag and pulled out a child's bottle. Normally, you expect the child's bottle to be full of milk. This one only had weak tea in it. There was simply no money in the household for milk.”
Farida told WFP that she repeatedly has to tell her children that there is nothing more to eat. The family is barely surviving on tea and bread. Without the food assistance they receive through a WFP-supported clinic, she said her children would “undoubtedly die”.
“That's a hard message to hear,” Aylieff stressed.
“But harder still when you realize that WFP is only funded this year to feed one in seven acutely malnourished women and children. Yes, we are turning away six out of seven, and we're turning them away empty-handed with absolutely nothing.”
Nearly 3.7 million children in Afghanistan are projected to suffer from acute malnutrition, and 1.2 million pregnant and breastfeeding women are expected to be malnourished. Without immediate investment, these figures are set to rise.
In partnership with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), WFP treats malnourished children under the age of five and pregnant and breastfeeding mothers in clinics across the country. However, a sharp decline in humanitarian funding has forced the agency to limit food assistance to only a fraction of the most vulnerable people.
In May 2025, the distribution of specialized nutritious foods to prevent malnutrition and stunting halted completely.
The UN agency warned that Afghanistan’s nutrition crisis is spinning out of control. WFP’s operations for emergency food assistance and nutrition programs are costed at about US$900 million for 2026.
“We have not met needs in the first six months because we didn't have money. And when you look at the next six-month window, this critical window, not just because of the current crisis, but also in the run-up to winter, which is the real flashpoint of hunger, WFP still needs $500 million to address the acute food needs in the country,” said Aylieff.
Humanitarian organizations continue to emphasize that deepening hunger fuels migration, radicalization, and ultimately, instability with consequences that extend beyond Afghanistan's borders.
The WFP alert report comes as Afghanistan continues to experience one of the world's most severe humanitarian crises. Nearly half of the population, or almost 22 million people, need assistance this year. Of those in need, over 11.6 million are children.