Afghanistan Humanitarian Needs and Planned Response 2023 [EN/Dari/PS]

OVERVIEW

Afghanistan remains one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. A massive two-thirds of Afghanistan’s population will be in need of humanitarian assistance in 2023 as the country enters its third consecutive year of drought-like conditions and the second year of crippling economic decline, all the while still reeling from the after-effects of decades of conflict and recurrent natural disasters. It is estimated that a record 28.3 million people will need humanitarian and protection assistance in 2023, up from 24.4 million in 2022 and 18.4 million in 2021.

The main driver of humanitarian need is the extremely high-levels of food insecurity, with 20 million people facing acute hunger, including 6 million people at emergency levels (IPC4).

Afghanistan is also in the grips of a climate-change induced crisis, with 30 out of 34 provinces experiencing extremely low quality of water and six times more households experiencing drought in 2022 than in 2020.

Both the formal and informal economies have suffered dramatically due to disruption to financial and trade mechanisms, depressed purchasing power from lost livelihoods, and the sudden drop in direct international development assistance which previously accounted for 75 per cent of public expenditures. High-levels of unemployment and sustained inflation of key commodity prices have driven the average household’s debt to increase six-fold since 2019, and by 44 per cent for urban households since 2021.

The other major driver of need has been the worsening of the protection situation, mainly due to the increasing restrictions placed on women and girls, including the exclusion of most secondary-school girls and women from education.

Of the 28.3 million people in need of life-saving assistance, humanitarian partners have prioritized 23.7 million people to receive well-coordinated multi-sectoral assistance in 2023, for which US$4.62 billion is required.