Afghanistan

Humanitarian Need

The overall level of food insecurity across Afghanistan fell in 2023 compared to the extremely high levels seen in 2022. This has been largely the result of unprecedented levels of humanitarian food assistance and emergency agricultural assistance on the one hand and a significant reduction in drought-conditions across most of the country in late 2023 on the other, which is expected to continue in early 2024. However, the projected levels of food insecurity in 2024 remain extremely high – with more than a third of the total population projected to be experiencing crisis or emergency levels of food insecurity (IPC Phase 3 or above) from November 2023 to March 2024 and importantly, the food security situation remains extremely fragile.

The food security and agriculture approach described below seeks to address directly both the continuing high levels of acute food insecurity across Afghanistan’s rural and urban areas, with a heightened emphasis on reaching women and girls, particularly in the context of female-headed households in principled ways, in order to save lives and livelihoods and prevent any worsening of the situation throughout the year.

Around 13.1 million people are currently classified as experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 3 or above) November 2023 and the situation is expected to deteriorate in the winter period which coincides with the lean season. In the period November 2023 – March 2024, the number of people estimated to be in IPC Phase 3 and above is expected to increase to 15.8 million people, or 36% of the Flowminder 2024 population.

The key drivers of the high food insecurity levels include macroeconomic instability – reflected in weak job growth and continuing high unemployment in both the formal and informal sectors, continuing high levels of household debt, sustained high agriculture and livestock input prices, severely depressed household purchasing power and a persistent limited capacity for affected and acutely vulnerable people across Afghanistan to absorb shocks. The country has undergone extreme climatic conditions, including multi-year drought conditions whose impacts are still being felt, which is further compounded by other natural hazards such flooding and earthquakes that affected severely eroded the coping capacity of the population.

Moreover, extreme climate-related stocks, such as drought, floods and unseasonal hot/cold temperatures and frequent natural disasters, most notably earthquakes have impacted key systems, services and infrastructures like roads, bridges, protection walls, irrigation channels, agricultural lands, many of which had been damaged by conflict and limited maintenance.

Climate forecasts indicate the country is experiencing El Niño conditions and the phenomenon is likely to continue through to March-May 2024, and perhaps longer. El Niño events are associated with positive agricultural growing conditions, in particular due to an increased likelihood of above-average precipitation from October 2023 to March 2024, particularly for the main wheat harvest but also for summer crops and second-season crops (rice, vegetables, maize etc.). The increased likelihood of flooding in March to May 2024 associated with above-average mountain snowpack formation in winter and above average spring temperatures may affect some of the positive harvest outcomes. ¹

Afghanistan’s economy remains fragile. According to the World Bank Afghanistan Welfare Monitoring Survey (AWMS) October 2023 report the inflation rate declined sharply since April 2023 turning into deflation. The Bank predicts if deflation persists, the economy may face further deterioration. In this context, households will enjoy decreasing food prices initially but may face economic hardship due to contracting business activity. While the falling food prices have helped Afghan households, monetary poverty still affects half of the country’s population, and vulnerability remains high². In this context, households may benefit from decreasing food prices initially but will likely face increased economic hardship due to contracting business activity and a declining overall economy.

Extremely negative policy decisions in 2022 and 2023, particularly those restricting women’s participation in the workplace, had negative impacts on household incomes and the economy. Compounding to this, the macro-economic instability has retained high unemployment, especially among youth and women.³. Funding constraints have excluded 10 million Afghans from assistance in 2023 alone, with 1.4 million new and expecting mothers, toddlers and preschool children no longer receiving specialized nutritious food designed to prevent malnutrition. These protracted emergency needs remain for 2024.⁴

Food availability will slightly improve following the improved harvest from the 2022/2023 season as well as the likely improvements to be experienced in the 2023/2024 season. The 2023 national wheat harvest output is estimated at around 4.4 million metric tons, which is equivalent to an average “harvest”, which although significantly higher than the previous two years, is still only approximately two-thirds of estimated requirements using the NSIA estimated population. As a result, Afghanistan would require about 2.2 million metric tons of wheat imports grains to meet the overall annual demand. Given the continuing economic challenges faced by both households and the country it is not probable that the national food deficit will be met by market and/or public sector mechanisms alone. Instead, continuing high levels of humanitarian food assistance and emergency agricultural assistance, particularly regarding smallholder wheat production, will continue to be required to close this structural food gap and address humanitarian needs. As well as underscoring the need for continuing food assistance at scale, this highlights the need for continuing humanitarian agricultural assistance at scale to close the consumption gap for emergency caseloads, as well as enhance subsistence production of wheat and micro-nutrient rich other crops like vegetables, pulses, lentils, oilseeds, emergency support to the livestock sector in particular with regard to feed and animal health (to both keep animals healthy and to reduce risks of distress selling of vital livestock assets).

During the second half of 2023, national average prices of all basic food commodities in Afghanistan experienced decreases compared to August 2023, with the exception of pulses, important sources of protein and fibre. The prices of cooking oil (-5.6%) wheat flour high (-3.2%) and rice palawi (-3.9%) declined slightly during the second half of 2023 whilst the prices of most other food commodities remained largely stable. However, the prices of all food commodities remained significantly higher than prices in the pre-Covid period (second week of March 2020) except for wheat flour, which was only 8% higher (in November 2023) as compared to pre-Covid prices. The national price of diesel in Afghanistan has exhibited a consistent downward trend for the twelve consecutive months, beginning from its peak of 118 AFN per liter in the month of July. The one-year decline in food commodity prices leveled off towards the end of 2023. However, there is an expectation of a continuing trend of small increases in main food commodities (driven by seasonality through February), though the appreciation of the Afghani and average cereal availability in main import countries may affect the negative impact of these price increase.

Global fertilizer prices were calmer in 2023 than in 2022. However, continuing instability in the prices of key fertilizer constituents is expected to continue. For example, the nitrogen market may continue to struggle due to lower demand from corn and wheat growers. At the same time, winter in Europe tends to generate more uncertainty in the natural gas market and related uncertainty in the production cost of nitrogen fertilizers. Grain and oilseed markets also face some uncertainties, due to the potential negative impact of reduced precipitation in key production areas of Brazil and USA associated with El Niño episodes.

Conversely, the market outlook for potash and phosphates is better, with the potash market experiencing an ample supply period and the phosphate market also on the rise with the return of Chinese Mono-ammonium phosphate fertilizer (MAP)/ Diammonium phosphate (DAP) exports. In Afghanistan, the price of DAP price gradually declined during 2023 after it peak in December 2022 and this trend is expected to remain, although seasonal increases are likely to continue. However, the overall price of DAP remains significantly higher compared to the month of June 2021 and almost double compared to October 2020. The price of Urea gradually declined after its peak price in August 2022, returning to a level close to June 2021. Animal concentrate feed gradually declined after its peak price in Jan 2023 with just a slight increase compared to October 2022 but still significantly higher than June 2021. Market availability of straw and hay is better compared to last year, due to a slight increase in yield of wheat and other crops compared to 2022. Prices are expected to slightly increase due to the winter outlook and limited access to pasture. Animal feed concentrate availability on the market is good, but prices that are still high might prevent purchasing for small and vulnerable livestock owners.

Response Strategy

The FSAC’s priority response activities in 2024 reflect (1) continuing high levels of food insecurity-related humanitarian needs; (2) the positive impacts of food security and emergency agriculture-related responses in 2022 and 2023; and (3) high levels of fragility with regard to food insecurity. Some refinements and additions have occurred in response to the constraints placed on female participation, the changing dynamics of returnee and natural hazard affected populations, and a re-calibration of seasonal assistance packages.

In 2024 there will be a fundamental shift in the design, planning, and implementation of emergency food assistance. In response to reduced resource levels, emergency General Food Assistance (GFA) will no longer be provided in all months of the year as a standard response package. Instead, seasonal support will be extended for 8 months of the year, with a gap over the 4 months summer and harvest season. This reduction in timeframe is alongside a reduction in the numbers of those to be assisted, such that an increasing number of districts, and eventually provinces, will not be covered in the main programme of emergency general food assistance.

An allocation of nearly 1 million people worth of assistance will be held in reserve for rapid and flexible emergency response based on early warning indicators and analysis throughout 2024. Early warning systems combined with partner rapid assessment capacity will inform these hotspot responses in 2024.

The proportion of emergency food assistance delivered through cash-based transfers will also increase in 2024 to just below half of all assistance, to promote localized economic benefits, recovery, and provide greater choice and dignity, representing around a 20% increase in CBT modality in 2024.

The FSAC’s major objectives for 2024 are:

1. Ensure timely access to food for the acute food insecure people IPC Phase 3+ populations.
2. Protect the livelihoods of urban and rural populations facing acute food insecurity, mitigate distress sale of productive assets, and sustain local food production.
3. Income support to the most vulnerable population especially female headed households through vocational skills and asset-creation activities for improvement of community infrastructure
4. Reduce the effects of natural shocks and stressors on communities and their livelihoods through asset-creation activities in affected communities.
5. Emergency preparedness through early warning systems and timely assessments

The FSAC’s response aims to address the food security needs of people facing acute food insecurity through food assistance in-kind, cash-based support, subsistence food production support, and livelihood protection support. FSAC response is articulated in a way to target specific vulnerable groups through different types of response.

Food Assistance

The FSAC will target 15.8 million people identified in IPC Phase 3 and above in the November 2023-March 2024 projection period. Priority will continue to be given to ensure that all families facing IPC Phase 4 level outcomes are assisted throughout the year, with the most vulnerable of those facing IPC Phase 3 outcomes assisted as much as possible based on resourcing levels and especially during the winter lean season and reflecting the fragility of household food security across Afghanistan’s 34 provinces.

Within this 15.8 million people considered as People in Need (PIN) FSAC is also targeting an estimated caseload of 68 280 people displaced due to conflict and natural hazards,181,748 people affected by sudden onset natural hazards, 696,378 undocumented returnees from Iran and Pakistan, and 50,434 Pakistani refugees. Therefore, the overall number of people targeted for food in-kind and cash assistance amounts is 15,823,078 (Boys 4,087,005 Girls 4,126,092, Men 3,877,849, and Women 3,732,132. Disaggregating by rural and urban populations, for the Urban FSAC will target-(Boys 1,168,101, Girls 1,160,108, Men 1,177,181, and Women 1,205,123) Rural (Boys 2.918.904, Girls 2.965.984, Men 2.700.668, and Women 2.527.009. FSAC will also target 2,373,552 people with disabilities which is 15% of the PIN.

Emergency Food Production and Livelihoods

Given increased food production in 2023 due largely to improved climatic conditions and increased emergency agricultural assistance in 2022 and 2023, food assistance will be integrated with additional emergency agricultural assistance to protect agricultural livelihoods and asset creation. Continued at-scale emergency agricultural assistance will be a key factor for maintaining the gains in food production as well as protecting rural livelihoods and saving lives. This is particularly true for vulnerable farmers who, without emergency agriculture assistance will have limited access to productive inputs, hampering opportunities to benefit from positive seasonal conditions during the 2023-2024 growing season.

The Seasonal Food Security Assessment (SFSA 2023) reported that 38% of rural households experienced major shocks, including 28% who faced loss of employment, 24% income reduced, and 6% drought affected. As a result, 86% of households borrowed food, 50% of households used crisis and emergency coping strategies. Seeds and fertilizer will remain a major limiting factor for farmers to increase their productivity, as reported by the last 2023 Data in Emergencies Monitoring (DIEM) assessment⁵ with respectively 64% and 38% of households mentioning these issues as one of the difficulties, along with water and crop diseases. The livestock sector also faces significant challenges, which has a strongly negative effect on household livelihoods and food security. The latest DIEM assessment reported that 80% of households faced significant difficulties related to livestock production due to difficulty in purchasing feed, access to pasture, animal diseases, poor pasture condition and highly limited access to veterinary services. Livestock-based interventions will increase the availability of /access to protein rich foods also positively affecting child nutrition levels and household dietary diversity levels. Furthermore, livestock support will be critical for maintaining livestock health should animal disease outbreaks occur during 2024.

A total of 700,000 households are targeted to receive a winter wheat cultivation package in 2024 as part of the FSAC response, building on the success of the emergency wheat support in 2022 and 2023, which resulted in increased area under production, increased productivity due to the use of improved/certified seed varieties and a near- doubling of total wheat production for highly food insecure and vulnerable households. The seasonally tailored packages will facilitate timely planting using high productive seed varieties, taking advantage of the expected improved precipitation, and may lead to improved harvests and increased consumption from own harvests as well as generating post-harvest residues for fodder and silage making for their livestock holdings.

A total of 214,161 households are the focus of the asset creation activities, which is divided into two categories: cash-for-work and vocational training. This will enable food insecure women and men to receive both immediate cash income and develop both short and longer-term skills that can be used to generate revenue in the future, thereby reducing downstream humanitarian needs. Additionally, emergency cash or food transfers will be provided to vulnerable households to help them meet their food needs while they work to create and rehabilitate vital community assets that support rural and agricultural development.

The FSAC response in 2024 places a significant emphasis on targeting female-headed households. FSAC interventions will ensure women have the means to produce food and generate incomes within the homestead, ensuring increased access to nutritious food over the period of spring and summer, together with sustained income for most vulnerable families with limited access to land. A total of 75,000 households will be targeted for assistance to start or improve their backyard vegetable cultivation capacity. A further 8,000 households will be targeted for assistance with poultry packages. For the livestock protection package, FSAC plans to target 270,000 households. To support the vulnerable households an additional 10,000 households will be targeted for assistance with unconditional / multi-purpose cash transfer.

A provision for supporting farmers and herders with contingency support is also part of the FSAC response plan. Due to the high negative impact of animal diseases (e.g. Lumpy Skin Disease) and plant pests (e.g. locusts) on agricultural livelihoods, the FSAC response plan has included a contingency component to respond through emergency vaccination campaigns and other means to prevent or mitigate the impact of such shocks.

Targeting and Prioritization

Targeting of vulnerable households will be based on IPC Phase 3 and 4 urban and rural populations with a PIN and Target of 15.8 million across Afghanistan based on October 2023 IPC Acute Food Insecurity (AFI) data. The FSAC will assist vulnerable households in rural and urban areas in all thirty-four provinces for both food assistance, food production and emergency agricultural livelihood assistance. During the lean season (January to March 2024) which coincides with the winter period, FSAC will scale up its support to vulnerable households with food assistance and support to winter cultivation. Support to food production and emergency agricultural livelihoods will focus on rural areas, which have been most affected by the series of droughts and have also been significantly affected by the deep economic crisis. The FSAC priorities will differ between spring, summer, and winter due to the different hazards affecting the periods as well as the impact of the harvests. Asset creation will be focused on rural areas characterized by high levels of acute food insecurity and affected by high exposure to sudden onset natural disasters and shocks over the past five years.

Quality and Inclusive Programming

The FSAC partners identify and prioritize the most vulnerable groups while ensuring that women, children, and men have equal and fair access to food assistance, food production and livelihood opportunities. Through the mainstreaming of accountability to affected people, beneficiaries are engaged in all project phases, including through the design of assistance programs and selection of distribution and assistance sites to ensure safe access and inclusive participation of women. Furthermore, the mainstreaming ensures women and girls’ voices are captured (including through more qualitative and/or in person data collection); and through inclusive community engagement with men, women, youth, elders, Shura, authorities, etc. to ensure that sensitization and engagement work is done with all members to maximize support for women’s participation and access.

The FSAC has recommended packages that are gender sensitive, inclusive and can be delivered in principled and safe ways. Livelihood activities such as backyard gardening, support to poultry (and egg) production, income generating activities will prioritize women and other vulnerable individuals (elderly, people living with disability) needs. For these interventions, women or child-headed households will be emphasized in the FSAC recommended beneficiary selection. This includes households where the women are effectively the head of the household, e.g. responsible for income generation or with adult men with disability.

The FSAC partners will fully integrate gender in all aspects of the implementation of its response. This will be achieved through gender-sensitive and responsive vulnerability criteria, which ensure targeted assistance to diverse groups of priority beneficiary groups. FSAC partners will systematically apply safe, principled, and accessible distribution practices in all distributions, such as separate waiting areas for male and female beneficiaries and availability of both male and female distribution staff, wherever possible apart from organizing separate days for distribution of inputs and/or cash to women and men if necessary and wherever possible.

The FSAC partners will follow the Do No Harm principle and strives to ensure assistance does not exacerbate GBV and ensure beneficiaries’ safe, dignified, and unhindered access to assistance. The FSAC encourages partners to organize focus group discussions with beneficiary communities, post-distribution monitoring surveys and rapid protection assessments to verify if beneficiaries are able to access humanitarian assistance in a safe and dignified manner. The FSAC requests partners to mainstream and integrate protection into their operations and to be aware of issues related to gender, AAP and PSEA. In addition, the FSAC requires partners to consider the needs of people living with a disability and elderly people in the design and implementation of their projects.

Links to basic services and development programmes

If funded, complementary basic human needs programmes will interface with FSAC livelihoods and resilience initiatives. This will ensure effective nexus approaches that address both immediate humanitarian needs and provide and/or connect with approaches that contribute to sustainable pathways that contribute to both reduced future humanitarian needs and longer-term growth. Priorities for the Afghanistan Strategic Framework could include small-scale community infrastructure, managed, and owned by communities and focused on water and irrigation-related assistance, which builds upon the impact of emergency humanitarian assistance. At present, the FSAC response is necessary to respond to immediate humanitarian needs arising from the crisis but is not meant to substitute for investments that address infrastructure and social-economic issues which will provide long-term solutions to alleviate unemployment, strengthen the financial system sustainable agricultural livelihoods and food security.

Response Monitoring

The FSAC will collect partners’ response data through 5W data collection reported monthly through the ReportHub. Results are published monthly feeding into the HRP monthly reporting. The FSAC will conduct regular independent and joint monitoring field missions, especially to IPC Phase 4 hotspot areas throughout the year to verify the results of the assessments and to better understand the regional drivers of food insecurity. Through the annual SFSA and Pre-Lean Season Assessment (PLSA), the biannual IPC AFI (pre- and post-harvest) complemented by other ad-hoc and partners assessments such as the Whole of Afghanistan (WoA), DIEM and Post Distribution Monitoring (PDMs), FSAC will be able to timely monitor the impact of the response, identify new and emerging needs and advocate for the required funding. Furthermore, through data analyzed from the WoA, Complaint Mechanism responses will form a robust monitoring framework for the FSAC partners. Furthermore, market price monitoring, displacement tracking and intersectoral monitoring data sets will complement the FSAC monitoring and facilitate adjustments of the response priorities.

The FSAC will continue to work with the PSEA Task Force, AAP, GiHA to ensure they are mainstreamed and monitored. In the monitoring of the response and its impact, the FSAC is integrating cross-cutting issues such as age, gender, environment, disability, protection mainstreaming, PSEA, and AAP using, i.e., the Global Food Security Cluster (gFSC) tool that guides partners to integrate cross-cutting issues, protection, and AAP considerations during targeting and distribution process, as well as regular engagement, training, and awareness raising support to FSAC partners from the PSEA, GiHA and AAP working groups. FSAC strengthens its work with AWAAZ to ensure communities’ urgent food and agriculture-related referral calls/concerns are heard and responded to on time.

PiN Calculation Methodology

The FSAC PiN was developed primarily through the IPC Acute Food Insecurity (AFI) analysis figures released in October 2023, with the addition of needs analysis on other vulnerable groups such as refugees, returnees, and shock-affected non-displaced people (primarily impacted by sudden-onset natural disasters). The IPC analysis is the major set of data which is used for identifying the number of people needing food and livelihoods assistance across the country. The IPC AFI analysis used multiple data sources from the 2023 Seasonal Food Security Assessment (SFSA), Whole of Afghanistan (WoA) assessment, FAO Data in Emergencies (DIEM) Information System (DiEM), Agriculture Prospect Report (APR), nutrition SMART survey, precipitation data, Humanitarian Food Assistance (HFA), market prices and FSAC partners localized assessments and response data.