An even deeper humanitarian crisis is looming in Afghanistan as hundreds of thousands of Afghans are forced to return from neighboring countries and the global humanitarian funding crisis takes a heavy toll on the country. Numerous United Nations agencies have announced drastic cost-cutting measures in response to massive shortfalls in funding, following brutal cuts by the new US administration in Washington.
Millions of Afghans - especially children and women - continue to struggle to survive in one of the world's largest, most neglected and complex humanitarian crises. The United Nations estimates that in 2025, 22.9 million people - including 12.3 million children - are in need of humanitarian assistance and protection.
Since 2023, more than 3.4 million Afghans have returned under threat of deportation or have been deported from Iran and Pakistan, including more than 1.5 million in 2024 alone. Such mass returns have strained the capacity of many provinces in Afghanistan and exacerbated the risk of further internal displacement.
In early October 2023, the Pakistani government first issued a plan to repatriate "illegal aliens" and threatened them with deportation. The Pakistani government has ignored global calls to stop the deportation of Afghan refugees. In September 2024, Iran similarly announced its intention to repatriate up to two million Afghans by early 2025.
In February this year, Pakistan announced a scheme for the "imminent" and rapid mass deportation of another nearly three million Afghan refugees from its territory.
In April alone, more than 251,000 Afghans returned from Iran and Pakistan under dire circumstances, including more than 96,000 who were deported. The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) is urgently seeking US$71 million to help those arriving home in desperate conditions.
“UNHCR continues to advocate with the governments of Iran and Pakistan that returns to Afghanistan must be voluntary, safe and dignified. Forcing or putting pressure on Afghans to return is unsustainable and could destabilize the region,” UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch told journalists in Geneva on Tuesday.
“While UNHCR recognizes the many challenges – including economic pressures – facing these countries that have hosted millions of Afghans for decades, we have also consistently shared our concerns that regardless of their legal status, people forced to return to Afghanistan may encounter serious protection risks.”
As of 2024, the five neighboring countries of Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan hosted more than 8 million Afghans, including 5.5 million registered refugees and asylum seekers.
Baloch expressed particular concern for the fate of women and girls, who face increasing restrictions on access to employment, education and freedom of movement under Taliban rule.
Afghanistan is in the midst of a major human rights crisis, largely because the de facto authorities are targeting the rights of women and girls in the country by excluding them from public and political life, economic activity and education, further exacerbating the humanitarian situation of the female population.
The Taliban government is not officially recognized by any other country, and the UN has repeatedly rejected requests by Afghanistan's de facto authorities to represent the country internationally, largely because of its violations of women's rights.
In January 2025, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced that he was seeking arrest warrants for senior Taliban leaders in Afghanistan accused of crimes against humanity, citing widespread persecution of the country's female and LGBTQI+ populations.
On Tuesday, the UNHCR spokesperson said ethnic and religious minorities, human rights activists and journalists could also be at risk upon their return. Those concerns were compounded by acute humanitarian needs inside Afghanistan, rising unemployment rates, as well as natural disasters and extreme weather events.
“There has also been new displacement into Iran and Pakistan, and heightened risks of onward movements towards Europe. In 2024, Afghans became the largest group (41 percent) of irregular arrivals from the Asia-Pacific region into Europe,” Baloch said.
“UNHCR is working with partners like UNDP [United Nations Development Programme]and IOM [International Organization for Migration] to support the growing number of returnees in Afghanistan. Amid the current funding uncertainties, we need $71 million to respond to this crisis across the region over a nine-month period.”
The 2025 Regional Refugee Response Plan (RRP) for Afghanistan seeks $624.5 million to assist 7.3 million people, including 4.8 million Afghans and 2.5 million of their local hosts across the region. To date, the RRP is only 7 percent funded.
According to the 2025 Afghanistan Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan (HNRP), approximately $2.4 billion is needed to reach 16.8 million people this year with humanitarian assistance, including food, health, nutrition, protection, shelter, and water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH). To date, the HNRP is only 10 percent covered by funding.
Humanitarian needs have increased dramatically throughout Afghanistan due to the cumulative effects of violent conflict, displacement, drought, and other natural disasters. Nearly one-third of Afghans continue to suffer from hunger.
According to the latest IPC food security analysis, more than 14.8 million people in Afghanistan were acutely food insecure until March 2025, including 3.1 million people at emergency levels of food insecurity.
Around 3.5 million children under the age of five are suffering from, or expected to suffer from, acute malnutrition and are in need of urgent assistance. This includes approximately 867,000 cases of severe acute malnutrition (SAM) and nearly 2.6 million cases of moderate acute malnutrition (MAM).
In addition, an estimated 1.2 million pregnant and breastfeeding women suffer from acute malnutrition.
Malnutrition has long been a critical public health problem in Afghanistan, driven by the complex confluence of factors. Prolonged drought, natural disasters, population displacement, a sharp increase in the cost of living, food insecurity, and widespread unemployment have all contributed to the crisis.
According to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), the number of acute malnutrition cases is increasing every day, putting an immense strain on the limited resources of health facilities and mobile health teams (MHTs), particularly in Kandahar and Paktika provinces.
Emergency Relief Coordinator visits Afghanistan
The UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Tom Fletcher, is currently visiting Afghanistan. On Tuesday, he was in Kandahar, where he met with the de facto provincial governor, Mullah Shirin Akhund, to discuss the urgency of addressing the ongoing humanitarian crisis.
Fletcher visited a reception center for the growing number of Afghan returnees from Pakistan, where the UN and its humanitarian partners are providing support, including health checks and cash.
The UN humanitarian chief also visited the Mirwais Regional Hospital, where medical teams are doing all they can to maintain critical care, including for mothers and newborns, despite brutal funding cuts. He warned that with dwindling resources, facilities are overcrowded and doctors face impossible choices about which patients to prioritize.
Life-saving operations around the world continue to be shut down by draconian funding cuts that will lead to millions of deaths, Fletcher warned on Wednesday.
“Cutting funding for those in greatest need is not something to boast about,” the UN’s top aid official said. “For millions, it is a death sentence.”
Across Afghanistan, more than 400 health facilities have been forced to close so far - depriving more than 3 million people of access to basic health care.
On Wednesday, Fletcher was in Kunduz, where he met with the de facto provincial governor, Mohammad Khan Dawat, and saw how aid agencies in Afghanistan continue to reach people in need, including a growing number of returnees.
At a clinic providing vaccinations, maternal care and nutritional support, the UN humanitarian chief spoke with health workers about how access to critical care is shrinking as resources dry up and other health providers are forced to close.
Staff told him of pregnant women losing their babies because of the long distances and high costs involved in reaching health services.
Fletcher also heard how funding cuts are crippling life-saving mine action work in Afghanistan, where landmines kill or injure an average of 55 people every month - 80 percent of them children, often while playing or going to school.
Afghanistan sinking deeper into a socio-economic crisis
In a related development, a new report released Wednesday by the United Nations Development Programme warns that Afghanistan is sinking deeper into a socio-economic crisis, with growing inequalities that are exacerbated for women and certain regions.
According to UNDP, 90 percent of Afghan households facing the loss of productive assets, livelihoods, jobs and income opportunities reported having to reduce daily household consumption by cutting back on spending, reducing their resilience to shocks and deepening their vulnerability.
With continued restrictions on women's education and employment, the report shows that the gender gap has widened, pushing women deeper into poverty and social exclusion. Rural areas, where 71 percent of the population lives, remain severely deprived of basic services such as health care and sanitation, and lack sustainable livelihoods.
"UNDP’s current analysis and new data indicate the continuation of a deeply troubling trajectory for the Afghan people, who have been grappling with extreme vulnerability over the past decade,” said Kanni Wignaraja, UN Assistant Secretary-General and UNDP’s Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific.
“With the anticipated arrival of hundreds of thousands of returnees this year and a marked reduction in international support, Afghan communities will have to navigate substantial challenges that will increase pressures on an already highly tenuous daily subsistence."