Imagine being one of a family of nine and sitting down to a meal of potato peelings and other scraps, boiled up into a soup. This is the harsh reality for many of Afghanistan’s most vulnerable families, forced on them by climate change and drought, widespread malnutrition and increasing restrictions on women, since the Taliban overran Kabul in 2021.
Aid agencies are doing what they can to help, including by identifying dangerously malnourished children in sparsely populated “ghost villages” where those who can leave do so, said Olga Cherevko from the UN aid coordination office, OCHA.
But with nearly 22 million people in need across Afghanistan and the UN’s $1.7 billion appeal only 14 per cent funded, life is “becoming impossible” in remote areas, the agency warns.
Water scarcity is the main cause of strife for villagers in Bamyan province who struggle, far from Afghanistan’s major cities.
“This particular village that I went to, they told me that around half of the population had left, actually, because there’s simply no water to irrigate the lands, and so all the crops that they were growing, they dried up,” Ms. Cherevko told UN News. “People who could leave, they left.”
Those who have remained often do so because they have no choice; they cannot afford to leave.
Ms. Cherevko shared a striking example: “One of the men that I met had nine family members. He showed me what they were having for lunch. It was essentially a bowl of what looked like rotten potato peelings, cooked into a soup just to survive.”
Today, an estimated 3.7 million children in Afghanistan suffer from acute malnutrition. Many cases go unrecognized and in some UN-supported clinics “children die because parents simply didn’t know what was happening; by the time they brought the child in, it was already too late”, Ms. Cherevko explained.
The UN is addressing this critical issue by providing screening and medical support, but also by visiting remote communities and raising awareness.
