Afghanistan in acute food shortage: UN Report

In Afghanistan at least 2 million people are at risk of severe food insecurity because of a devastating drought, the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported.

The hardest-hit are northern and western Afghanistan, where wheat planting has been either delayed or downsized in some 20 provinces, mainly because of a lack of rain and snowfall in the winter, the OCHA report said.

“The last winter harvest must be considered completely lost,” said Abdul Majid from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

As many as 21,000 people were forced to leave their homes in western Badghis and Ghor provinces because of the drought.

The report said that some 1.5 million goats and sheep in north-eastern regions are struggling to find food and more than 600 out of 1,000 villages are suffering from lack of water. Almost half of Afghanistan's 30 million inhabitants 14.8 million are heavily reliant on agriculture either for labour opportunities or livestock.

The UN said that Afghanistan urgently needs about USD 115 million to provide food and shelter for those hit by the effects of the drought.

The OCHA also noted in its report that almost 110,000 Afghans have been displaced by conflicts and natural disasters since the beginning of the year, while in 2017 the total number of those displaced was more than 445,000.

The Afghan Natural Disaster Management Authority reported that flash floods killed more than 60 people across nine Afghan provinces in a mid-May.