As of mid-June, the 2024 Afghanistan Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan (HNRP) is underfunded, with only $615.7mn received—representing just 20.1% of the initial request. This alarming shortfall comes as Afghanistan grapples with severe humanitarian needs, including high levels of food insecurity and malnutrition, protracted displacement, explosive ordnance contamination, recurrent natural disasters, communicable disease outbreaks, and climate change effects.
The situation is further exacerbated by the political estrangement and increasingly restrictive policies imposed by the De-facto Authorities (DfA) since August 2021, particularly on women's and girls' rights. These restrictions have hindered access to assistance and services and limited their involvement in public life. Against a backdrop of forty years of war and entrenched poverty, these challenges highlight the urgent need for both immediate and longer-term interventions to maintain essential infrastructure, including schools, hospitals, and water systems.
Recent natural disasters have compounded the crisis. In the past two months, three years of successive drought-like conditions and spring rainfall led to flash flooding, affecting 120,000 people and causing widespread human, agricultural, and livestock losses. Additionally, 25,000 families affected by three earthquakes in Herat Province last October remain in makeshift shelters.
Since September 2023, more than 610,000 Afghan returnees from Pakistan have arrived in equally vulnerable host communities. Furthermore, 3.4 million people live within 1 km of explosive ordnance, and the education of 300,000 schoolchildren is on hold due to the transition of community-based education (CBE) classes to provincial educational departments, which lack the technical capacity, funds, and donor support to continue.
The overall funding shortfall for Afghanistan's humanitarian response stands at around $2.45bn, with critical gaps amounting to $1.1bn, excluding the $238.3mn reported by Clusters that are in the pipeline. This shortfall has already had severe impacts, preventing 3mn people from accessing primary and secondary healthcare services, 1.3mn children under five, and 470,000 pregnant and lactating women from receiving Blanket Supplementary Feeding Services, and leaving 234,000 people without resources to respond to acute watery diarrhea (AWD) and cholera.
Additionally, longer-term shelter support for thousands of earthquake and flood-affected households has been delayed, and child protection services, particularly case management and structured psychosocial support, have been partially implemented. Supply chains for six of the seven Clusters—Education, Food Security and Agriculture (FSAC), Health, Nutrition, Protection, and Shelter—are at imminent risk of disruption.
Without further funding, critical life-saving programs are at risk of further reduction and closure. These include mobile health and nutrition teams servicing hard-to-reach areas, inpatient treatment for severely malnourished children, psychosocial and protection support for children, mine action, food and livelihood assistance, and provision of dignity kits for women and girls of reproductive age during sudden-onset crises.
The funding shortfalls also affect the capacity of humanitarian actors to prioritize immediate needs over safeguarding issues, such as sexual exploitation and abuse, as well as inclusive programming critical for women, girls, and people with disabilities. This is particularly challenging given the restrictions on Afghan women, including prohibitions on their working for the United Nations (UN) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the lack of license renewal for organizations of persons with disabilities (OPDs).
This analysis aims to support donor funding decisions by highlighting critical funding gaps in Afghanistan's humanitarian response. The gaps focus on both sector-specific and cross-cutting areas and anticipate the impact of continued underfunding in the coming months (June to August 2024). The process of reconciling reported Financial Tracking Service (FTS) funding streams will continue, including unpacking the 'sector not specified' and 'multi-sectoral' funding, which currently stands at $70.6 million.
To enable humanitarian actors to respond efficiently, effectively, and equitably, donors should provide early, unrestricted, and multi-year predictable funding, allowing for a range of activities. Additionally, donors are encouraged to increase international engagement with the De-facto Authorities (DfA) to include technical support and knowledge-sharing, aiming to build mutual trust and contribute to a more enabling environment for humanitarian efforts.
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