Afghanistan faces a worsening malnutrition crisis as wars, border closures and funding shortages disrupt vital UN food assistance efforts.
KABUL: The United Nations could feed a million additional children at risk of malnutrition in Afghanistan if the country’s conflict with Pakistan and the Iran war had not inflated prices and transport costs, a senior official told AFP.
Afghanistan saw a record rise in malnutrition cases in 2025, following a deadly earthquake, climate disasters, and the return of millions of Afghans expelled from Iran and Pakistan.
“It is a nutrition crisis here in Afghanistan,” Carl Skau, Deputy Executive Director of the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP), told AFP.
“The surge last year was the worst we’ve ever seen. It’s worse this year.”
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The WFP estimated in January that five million women and children in Afghanistan, out of a population of more than 40 million, will experience a life-threatening level of malnutrition this year.
Afghanistan’s ongoing conflict with its neighbour Pakistan has led to a near-total border closure for around eight months.
Along with the global economic fallout from the Iran war, that has driven up prices for food and fuel and disrupted the supply chains needed to deliver them.
“If we weren’t struggling with the supply chain, both delays and costs, we would be able to feed a million more children here in Afghanistan,” Skau said.
He cited the example of thousands of tonnes of fortified biscuits meant for Afghan schoolchildren, which the WFP had planned to send into the country via Pakistan.
With the border closed, the WFP rerouted the supplies via Dubai and Iran — only for the Middle East conflict to erupt, forcing yet another detour through seven countries, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Georgia and Turkmenistan.
“It’s about to arrive this week, but it’s taken… months. It cost us way more,” Skau said.
Fundraising has proven difficult, and the WFP has raised only eight percent of this year’s target amount for Afghanistan.
Skau recounted seeing long queues of women with young children suffering from severe malnutrition who walked hours to reach a rural clinic in eastern Afghanistan, only to be turned away.
“We did not have assistance to give them… The desperation in the voice of these women will stay with me for a long time,” he said.
“If there is one thing that the world agrees on, it’s that children should not die from hunger.”
