Crisis overview
The humanitarian situation in Afghanistan is marked by deep-seated structural and systemic challenges, including a lack of essential services, a strained economy, and recurring climatic and seasonal shocks, such as floods, harsh winters and droughts. These issues create chronic needs among large population groups with weakened resilience and coping mechanisms, including vulnerable returnees who may be pushed into acute humanitarian need at any time. Additionally, the slow but steady implementation of de facto authority (DfA) laws and regulations continues to heighten protection risks for women, girls and other at-risk groups, complicating –though not yet fully preventing—the provision of humanitarian assistance. In 2025, an estimated 22.9 million people in Afghanistan will require humanitarian assistance.
Seasonal and climate-related shocks further exacerbate humanitarian needs across Afghanistan, intensifying already precarious living conditions. The anticipated La Niña episode through early 2025 could reduce snowfall and rainfall, and increase temperatures, leading to drought-like conditions, especially in Afghanistan’s key agricultural regions of the northeastern, northern, and northwestern regions. This could worsen an already critical water crisis, stemming from years of over-extraction, maladaptive practices and insufficient groundwater recharge, putting further strain on already fragile rural communities. As water resources decline, food insecurity and waterborne disease risks increase, placing additional pressure on limited healthcare systems. Prolonged food insecurity, inadequate water and sanitation and limited healthcare access have significantly increased acute malnutrition rates among children and pregnant women. Projections for 2025 indicate a nearly threefold increase in districts classified at level 4 for malnutrition, rising from 19 in 2024 to 56.
Ghor Province, Afghanistan
Allahdad, 80, surveys what’s left of his home after devastating floods.
OCHA/Sayed Habib BidellAdditionally, potential La Niña-driven flooding in 2025 could destroy houses, interrupt essential services and displace people for the short-term. Harsh winters bring life-threatening conditions, particularly in high-altitude regions, where access becomes difficult, putting vulnerable people at risk without adequate shelter, heating and clothing.
Restrictive policies on women’s rights, movement and participation in humanitarian activities continue to pose significant challenges, increasing exposure to gender-based violence, affecting sectors like education and healthcare. In particular, the promulgation of the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (MoPVPV) Law in August 2024 will have ramifications for humanitarian operations in 2025, although adaption measures taken by humanitarians aim to preserve women and girls’ access to aid. In addition to restrictive policies, bureaucratic and administrative impediments related to project registration and efforts to influence project design and implementation further complicate the operating environment. Afghanistan remains one of the most heavily contaminated countries, with explosive ordnance covering over 1,200 square metres, causing about 55 casualties per month, mostly among children.
Political developments in neighboring Iran and Pakistan have heightened the risk of a renewed returnee crisis. The threat of Afghan deportations from Pakistan persists, although the monthly number of returnees crossing into Afghanistan has stabilized at pre-crisis levels. Recent announcements from Iranian authorities regarding the deportation of undocumented Afghans have led to a rise in mostly undocumented returnees crossing monthly, further increasing the need for assistance at border points and in areas of return.
Underlying these acute needs is a fragile economy that perpetuates vulnerability. Afghanistan’s economy has significantly contracted since the government transition in 2021. Political estrangement and significantly reduced development funding have isolated the financial system, limiting the DfA’s capacity to provide basic services and employment. High unemployment, debt and reduced purchasing power severely restrict access to goods and services. This economic crisis also impacts the humanitarian sector, where gaps in sustainable development—such as underdeveloped infrastructure, limited livelihood opportunities and weak healthcare and education systems—continue to create conditions for recurring humanitarian crises.
Ghor Province, Afghanistan
Nine-year-old Mohammad stands beside farmland wiped out by flooding. OCHA/Sayed Habib Bidell
OCHA/Sayed Habib BidellResponse priorities in 2025
Decades of conflict, disasters, underdevelopment, economic stagnation, food insecurity and protection concerns have generated complex needs across Afghanistan, many of which extend beyond immediate humanitarian relief. While affected communities welcome short-term aid, they consistently emphasize a preference for sustainable, long-term solutions. Structural vulnerabilities can heighten humanitarian needs after a shock, however humanitarian actors in Afghanistan acknowledge that these underlying issues fall outside the humanitarian mandate. Therefore, collaboration with basic human needs partners will be critical to ensure complementarity and to avoid overlap.
Humanitarian actors will focus on delivering life-saving assistance. The 2025 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan (HNRP) for Afghanistan will prioritize the critical needs of 22.9 million people, addressing deteriorating protection for women and girls, widespread flood damage to housing, a rise in undocumented Afghan returnees from Pakistan and Iran, climate impacts, and high unemployment and debt—all factors eroding resilience and worsening food insecurity for 14.8 million people targeted for food assistance. Efforts to strengthen healthcare will include maintaining and delivering essential health services while upholding principles of accountability to affected people, disability inclusion, gender, and protection from sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA). Access to education, especially for girls, will remain a priority through continued support for community-based education. Addressing malnutrition is also a priority, with plans to treat acute malnutrition and provide blanket supplementary feeding programmes.
Herat Province, Afghanistan
Seyed, 62, lost everything in the 2023 earthquakes. A year later, he and his five children still live in a single room provided by relatives.
OCHA/Sayed Habib BidellThe 2025 HNRP will maintain its shock-based approach as the foundation for the risk and needs analysis with assistance provided based on vulnerability criteria. Identification methods will vary, utilizing rapid assessments for sudden onset crises, drought monitoring and cross-border tracking for returnees. The 2025 planning process is based on comprehensive needs analysis, informed by lessons from 2024 response reports on target figures, underreach, funding projections and access or bureaucratic barriers observed in 2024. These analyses prevent duplication and align responses with community feedback, addressing expressed needs and priorities. In 2024, humanitarian efforts were spread across Afghanistan’s 401 districts, though only a few received multisectoral support. Acknowledging the importance of intersectoral interventions—such as addressing malnutrition across the nutrition, health, food security, and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sectors—the 2025 HNRP prioritizes targeted cross-sectoral collaboration to optimize resources and impact. In 2025, Afghanistan will also implement an anticipatory action framework for drought to mitigate impacts before they occur.
The collective response is tailored to populations affected by anticipated drought in the north-western, northern and north-eastern regions, as well as residual and anticipated needs from flooding in the northern, eastern and central regions. Needs in return areas across provinces such as Helmand, Kabul, Kandahar, Kunduz and Nangarhar were also prioritized, with a focus on high-need districts facing compounded challenges in food security, health, WASH and nutrition.
Herat Province, Afghanistan
One year after the earthquake, Mahtab, 46, still lives in a dugout, too fearful to move into her new home.
OCHA/Sayed Habib BidellAfghanistan’s operational landscape is expected to remain extremely complex as the DfA continues implementing various directives and procedures. In 2024 alone, the DfA issued 110 directives impacting humanitarian action, including eight specifically restricting female participation, forcing humanitarian partners to engage in challenging, time-consuming negotiations. These restrictions risk reducing operational space, delaying projects, and increasing bureaucratic and administrative impediments. Heightened scrutiny and oversight further raise the threat of violence against aid workers, further compounding already considerable obstacles facing humanitarian efforts.
Despite these challenges, humanitarian partners remain committed to delivering critical assistance to Afghanistan’s most vulnerable people. This includes ensuring women can access the necessary services and that female Afghan humanitarian workers can engage in the response safely, meaningfully and comprehensively.
Financial requirements
The HNRP for Afghanistan requires a total of US$2.42 billion for 2025, reflecting a 21 per cent decrease compared to the previous year ($3.06 billion). This reduction in financial requirements stems largely from lower targets across key sectors, with education, emergency shelter and non-food items (ES/NFI), food security and agriculture (FSAC), health and WASH all seeing notable decreases. For instance, education targets have been reduced by 38 per cent, while health and WASH have decreased by 28 per cent and 35 per cent, respectively.
The 2025 HNRP specifically focuses on providing humanitarian assistance to people experiencing acute shocks like floods, droughts or displacement. Prioritization is based on vulnerability criteria to ensure that humanitarian assistance reaches those most in need. The methods for identifying who requires assistance due to shocks will vary based on the nature of the event (e.g., rapid assessments for those affected by sudden-onset emergencies such as floods, dry spell monitoring for those affected by drought, or cross-border monitoring for returnees). Structural or systemic issues, although they exacerbate vulnerabilities, are outside the boundaries of the humanitarian response unless directly linked to a shock.
The financial requirements use a unit/activity-based costing methodology, where targets for each activity are multiplied by the associated unit costs, and the totals are summed to determine the overall HNRP requirement.
Afghanistan
2024 in review: Response highlights and consequences of inaction
Response highlights
As of September 2024, humanitarian partners reached 15.3 million people—88 per cent of the planned overall target of 17.3 million. In so doing, partners reached every single district with at least one form of assistance. At the same time, 2.8 million people—37 per cent of the inter-sectoral target of 7.6 million—received three different types of sectoral support throughout the first eight months of the year. Food assistance was the largest sectoral response, reaching 9.5 million people (62 per cent of the 15.3 million reached). Meanwhile, WASH and health, each targeting 10 million people or more, provided support to 42 per cent and 52 per cent of their targets, respectively.
Returnees
Humanitarian partners helped more than 849,000 returnees from Iran and Pakistan in both temporary transit sites and areas of return. Of these, 311,000 in temporary transit sites received ES/NFIs and WASH services, and 538,000 were assisted in their areas of return with ES/NFIs, food and/or protection services. In addition, between April and August, partners reached approximately 120,000 people affected by heavy rain and flash floods across the regions with different forms of humanitarian assistance, including multi-purpose cash assistance (MPCA).
Coordination
In 2024, the inter-cluster coordination team improved monitoring and transparency by shifting from provincial to district-level data analysis and introduced a new inter-sectoral reach calculation to better capture multi-sectoral coverage compared to single-instance reach during the year. In addition, the Afghanistan Accountability Index (AAI) was launched to monitor the quality and inclusivity of humanitarian assistance, especially for women, girls, people with disabilities and other vulnerable groups.
The Afghanistan Humanitarian Fund (AHF)
The Afghanistan Humanitarian Fund (AHF) boosted localized humanitarian response efforts through an area-based approach to strengthen community resilience and service delivery. It also stepped up quality monitoring of system-wide accountability, increased funding to core protection activities—such as mine action, child protection, housing, land, and property, as well as protection from GBV—and scaled up cash-based interventions specifically for MPCA.
Afghanistan Accountability Index (AAI): Safeguarding inclusive humanitarian action
Ongoing and increasing restrictions imposed by the DfA in Afghanistan continue to marginalize Afghan women and vulnerable groups, increasing their protection risks and creating barriers to accessing essential assistance and services. The recent MoPVPV Law issued in August, is the latest example of these tightening constraints, which include active bans on Afghan women working for I/NGOs and, more recently, for the UN—restrictions in place for nearly two years. This increasingly restrictive environment underscores the humanitarian imperative to monitor the delivery of principled, inclusive assistance and gather feedback from affected communities on its adequacy and accessibility.
Building on last year’s Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Framework of Operations and subsequent Monitoring Report (Afghanistan Pulse Check), the AAI was developed in 2024 to track women’s participation in the response, monitor access to vulnerable populations (especially Afghan women, girls and people with disabilities), and assess whether affected communities can meaningfully engage with and access services.
The AAI mid-year report found that partners have successfully secured local authorizations with the DfA to allow Afghan women to work in the humanitarian response and have adopted various strategies to support women’s participation. The report also noted increases in communities reporting that assistance meets basic needs, feelings of safety when accessing aid, and awareness of PSEA, suggesting that partners are improving accessibility through measures like localized distribution points and tailored delivery times. However, feedback also called for more longer-term support and clearer, more accessible communication about aid processes, particularly for female-headed households. Physical distance, lack of transportation for people with disabilities, and restrictions on women’s movement were also cited as significant barriers.
In response, clusters have reviewed the findings and collectively outlined steps to adjust their programmes. The AAI is therefore more than just a monitoring tool; it is a real-time mechanism for adapting and improving inclusive humanitarian assistance based on the expressed needs and priorities of affected Afghans.
Consequences of inaction
As of 25 November, only 41 per cent of the required $3.06 billion for the Afghanistan HNRP has been funded. This shortfall has prevented 3.7 million people from accessing primary and secondary healthcare, left 352,000 children under age five, and 258,000 pregnant and lactating women with moderate acute malnutrition without blanket supplementary feeding, and denied 300,000 people access to emergency latrines and bathing facilities. Insufficient funding has also undermined distribution of teaching and learning materials and left 25,000 earthquake-affected families and 12,700 flood-affected households without longer-term shelter support. Scaled- back food assistance has excluded entire districts from critical food support and limited child protection services, including case management and structured psychosocial support. Supply chains across all clusters are now at imminent risk of disruption.
The situation was compounded by 110 directives from the DfA directly affecting humanitarian operations, including eight related to female participation. In August, the MoPVPV promulgated the Morality Law, reinforcing and expanding discriminatory policies and granting broad discretionary powers to inspectors, increasing bureaucratic and administrative impediments and negatively impacting critical humanitarian assistance delivery.
Amid widespread and recurring humanitarian needs and growing operational complexities, the humanitarian community’s ability to continue delivering life-saving assistance will depend on flexible funding, robust financial systems, and assurances for humanitarian worker safety and principled humanitarian response.
