Afghanistan

People prioritised

Humanitarian prioritisation in 2026 is directly anchored in inter-sector severity and shock exposure, ensuring that assistance is aligned with life-threatening risk rather than population size alone. Under this framework, 86 districts are classified in inter-sector severity 4 and approximately 300 in inter-sector severity 3. These classifications overlap spatially with major drought zones, high-return corridors and protection-restricted environments.

Within this context, shock-affected districts form a central pillar of the 2026 targeting strategy. Of the 10.9 million people in need living in drought- and AWD-prone locations, 9 million people are targeted (83 per cent). This reflects the structural nature of drought following multiple consecutive years of rainfall failure, groundwater depletion and agricultural collapse, and the resulting increase in acute malnutrition and water-borne disease. Food security, nutrition, health and WASH dominate the response in these locations.

In inter-sector severity 4 districts, 4.6 million people are assessed as being in need, of whom 85 per cent (approximately 3.9 million people) are targeted. These districts face systemic multi-sector deprivations, where emergency food insecurity coincides with disease outbreaks, displacement, explosive hazards and severe protection restrictions—particularly affecting women and girls. In these locations, humanitarian assistance is foundational to survival, rather than complementary.

Beyond higher-severity districts, sudden-onset disaster pockets within overall inter-sector severity 2 districts remain a critical focus. In these areas, 371,100 people are assessed as being in need, with 333,200 targeted (90 per cent). Although these districts do not meet the thresholds for higher inter-sector severity classification, the intensity and immediacy of shock impacts rapidly generate life-threatening conditions, including emergency displacement, destruction of shelter, disruption of water systems and sharp increases in disease transmission. Taken together, targeting by inter-sector severity, shocks and pockets of need reflects a deliberate risk-informed prioritisation model for 2026. It ensures that life-saving assistance is concentrated in areas where needs are the highest, while also preserving the operational flexibility required to respond rapidly to sudden-onset shocks and localised deteriorations. This layered approach allows the humanitarian response to remain both strategically focused and operationally agile in a context defined by persistent crisis and geographically dispersed recurrent emergencies.

Mitigating against inclusion/exclusion errors

The 2026 targeting framework underwent systematic review by the Inter-Cluster Coordination Team (ICCT) and HCT to mitigate both exclusion and inclusion errors. This process assessed whether underserved pockets of need risked being omitted, and whether areas facing considerable access or feasibility constraints risked being impractically included. Final targets were refined based on operational feasibility, including historical reach, regulatory constraints and partner capacity.

Access constraints and challenges

The operating environment in Afghanistan will likely remain highly constrained in 2026, shaped by regulatory restrictions, gender-related challenges, security risks and persistent administrative impediments that continue to affect humanitarian access, coverage and delivery modalities.

Access impediments continue to challenge the humanitarian response nationwide. Between January and October 2025, 930 humanitarian access incidents were reported, 79 per cent linked to interference in humanitarian operations, resulting in the temporary suspension of more than 500 activities, primarily in food security, health, protection and WASH.¹ Although this represents a reduction compared with 2024, the operating environment remains unpredictable. The decline in reported incidents is largely associated with a reduced operational footprint following funding shortfalls, rather than a substantive improvement in access conditions. Since 2021, more than 470 directives have been issued by the DfA, which affect the humanitarian response, including 79 measures directly affecting female staff and beneficiaries, which continue to restrict women’s access to services, movement, education and employment.² These constraints have a disproportionate impact on all sectors’ engagement with women and girls, including health, nutrition, protection and education. These bans extend to secondary and tertiary education and prohibitions on women’s employment with NGOs (December 2022), later extended to the UN (April 2023).³

While these policies directly contravene international human rights law and humanitarian principles, their level. In practice, humanitarian partners have continued to engage with the DfA through complex, labour-intensive negotiations to preserve principled access and sustain women’s participation in the response where possible. As a result, Afghan women continue to contribute across much of the humanitarian response, albeit with significant geographical variation, operational risk, heightened costs and persistent uncertainty. However, efforts to safeguard the full, meaningful and comprehensive participation of Afghan women staff in humanitarian operations also encountered some major challenges in 2025. In September, the de facto authorities imposed restrictions that prevented national female staff from accessing UN premises. In November 2025, the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (MoPVPV) barred women from working at the Islam Qala reception centre in Herat Province.⁴

In response, UN and NGO partners suspended activities at the reception centre that could not be delivered safely and equitably without female staff, acknowledging that female staff are indispensable to reaching women and girls with protection, health, nutrition, cash and case management services.

Engagement by humanitarian leadership and partners has resulted in the resumption of life saving health services for returnees - most notably through sustained, principled dialogue that helped address the severe access constraints at Islam Qala. Intensive negotiations with the de facto authorities contributed to a partial restoration of female access at the border point, allowing a limited number of national female staff to return to duty under gender segregated clinical arrangements. These improvements have enabled the continuation of primary health care, nutrition screening and counselling, and vaccination services for returnee populations, supported by the presence of a small number of female health personnel whose participation remains essential for safely reaching women and girls. The humanitarian community continue advocating for the full lifting of the restrictions, stressing female personnel are essential for safe, principled and dignified aid delivery – especially to women and children who constitute over 60 per cent of returnees. UN agencies and humanitarian partners have maintained that full operations will only resume once conditions permit. In other parts of the country including those affected by recent earthquakes, partners were able to negotiate local arrangements that enabled the participation of female national staff in field-level response activities. Humanitarian partners continue local-level negotiations to sustain women’s participation where possible, often resulting in uneven and piecemeal access arrangements. Despite these constraints, humanitarian partners continue to adapt through local engagement, risk-informed programming and flexible operational modalities, including gender-segregated service delivery, mahram support arrangements, remote management where necessary and adjusted distribution approaches. While these measures have preserved a degree of humanitarian space, they involve additional operational costs and are not uniformly feasible across all contexts as 39 per cent of partners report that they are no longer able to cover these costs due to funding cuts.⁵

Humanitarian leadership, supported by the Humanitarian Access Working Group (HAWG), will sustain engagement with relevant authorities at national and sub-national levels throughout 2026 to advocate for principled access, the meaningful participation of female staff and the the removal of bureaucratic and administrative impediments. Safeguarding independent, impartial and safe access to affected populations – particularly women and girls – remains fundamental to the effectiveness, accountability and credibility of the humanitarian response.