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One-third of Afghan population facing acute food insecurity
One-in-three Afghans are acutely food insecure, according to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) assessment report released by the Afghan government and its partners on Tuesday.
According to the IPC report, food insecurity in Afghanistan is attributed to the lingering impact of COVID-19, armed conflict, a rise in food prices, high unemployment rates and income loss, and the start of the complex and recurrent La Niña weather event.
“With doubling of our focus on mitigating adverse effects of COVID-19 on the most vulnerable, we have managed to bring the numbers down from a projected 42 to 35 percent, which is an achievement, however this is still far from our vision of a hunger-free Afghanistan,” said the Minister of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Anwarul Haq Ahady.
“A third of our people are struggling to feed their families. We must not let our guard down in light of the challenges ahead, specifically the drought-like effects La Niña is already triggering across the country, and the Government is preparing to respond to the impending drought”, he said.
While the Government prepares its response to an impending drought, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warn that current resourcing is inadequate to protect lives and livelihoods at risk.
“Millions of Afghan families already struggle to survive, and now they face the second drought in three years. A bag of wheat is 30 percent more expensive than the four-year average. Jobs are few and far between,” Mary-Ellen McGroarty, WFP Representative in Afghanistan said.
“The lean season is expected to arrive earlier and bite harder. We need to act now, bring food closer to people’s homes, and prevent irreversible malnutrition in mothers and children who will be impacted the most. We simply cannot wait and see.”
However, significant funding gaps for humanitarian agencies pose a challenge in meeting even the most basic humanitarian needs in the coming months, the report stated.
While the onset of the summer harvest may bring employment and improve access to food, the report warns the harvest is expected to be “below average” and the “food security situation is expected to deteriorate further during the 2021-2022 lean season”.
A further deterioration of the food security context will push more people to join one third of the population already food insecure.
“In order to understand the IPC report figures, we need to take into account two things. First, this analysis was conducted before any of the drought-like effects could be felt. Second, the projection period coincides with the harvest season, but the most serious effects of the lower rain and snowfall are affecting agriculture and livestock production with cascading food security impacts during the subsequent lean season.
“These figures actually call for immediate action that mitigates the impacts on agriculture and livestock production and prevents rural people from abandoning their agriculture-based livelihoods and displacing to urban areas,” said Rajendra Aryal, FAO Representative in Afghanistan.
La Niña drought-like effects are already evident in Afghanistan, according to FAO.
Early evidence of agricultural drought has been found in 25 hotspots across the country. This weather event is expected to severely affect both agricultural and livestock production in 2021.
According to FAO estimates, wheat production decreased by 16 to 27 percent in the last five drought events induced by La Niña; the potential impact on livestock production of this year’s event is expected to affect 30 percent of ruminants in 18 provinces.
President Donald Trump suspended the green card lottery program on Thursday that allowed the suspect in the Brown University and MIT shootings to come to the United States.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on the social platform X that, at Trump’s direction, she is ordering the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause the program, the Associated Press reported.
“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” she said of the suspect, Portuguese national Claudio Neves Valente.
Neves Valente, 48, is suspected in the shootings at Brown University that killed two students and wounded nine others, and the killing of an MIT professor. He was found dead Thursday evening from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said.
Neves Valente had studied at Brown on a student visa beginning in 2000, according to an affidavit from a Providence police detective. In 2017, he was issued a diversity immigrant visa and months later obtained legal permanent residence status, according to the affidavit. It was not immediately clear where he was between taking a leave of absence from the school in 2001 and getting the visa in 2017.
The diversity visa program makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries that are little represented in the U.S., many of them in Africa. The lottery was created by Congress, and the move is almost certain to invite legal challenges.
Nearly 20 million people applied for the 2025 visa lottery, with more than 131,000 selected when including spouses with the winners. After winning, they must undergo vetting to win admission to the United States. Portuguese citizens won only 38 slots.
Lottery winners are invited to apply for a green card. They are interviewed at consulates and subject to the same requirements and vetting as other green-card applicants.
Trump has long opposed the diversity visa lottery. Noem’s announcement is the latest example of using tragedy to advance immigration policy goals. After an Afghan man was identified as the gunman in a fatal attack on National Guard members in November, Trump’s administration imposed sweeping rules against immigration from Afghanistan and other counties.
While pursuing mass deportation, Trump has sought to limit or eliminate avenues to legal immigration. He has not been deterred if they are enshrined in law, like the diversity visa lottery, or the Constitution, as with a right to citizenship for anyone born on U.S. soil. The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear his challenge to birthright citizenship.
Sixty-one members of the U.S. Congress have urged the Trump administration to reverse its decision to halt immigration processing for Afghan nationals, warning that the move unfairly targets Afghan nationals following a deadly shooting involving two National Guard members.
In a letter addressed to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the lawmakers said the incident should not be used to vilify Afghans who are legally seeking entry into the United States. They stressed that Afghan applicants undergo extensive vetting involving multiple U.S. security agencies.
The letter criticized the suspension of Special Immigrant Visa processing, the termination of Temporary Protected Status for Afghanistan, and broader travel and asylum restrictions, warning that such policies endanger Afghan allies who supported U.S. forces during the war.
“Exploiting this tragedy to sow division and inflame fear will not make America safer. Abandoning those who made the courageous choice to stand beside us signals to those we may need as allies in the future that we cannot be trusted to honor our commitments. That is a mistake we cannot afford,” the group said.
The U.S. admitted nearly 200,000 Afghan nationals in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Thousands of Afghans who worked with the U.S. military and their families still wait at military bases and refugee camps around the world for a small number of SIVs.
An earthquake of magnitude 5.3 struck Afghanistan on Friday, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said.
The quake occurred at 10:09 local time at a depth of 35 km, USGS said.
Its epicentre was 25 kilometres from Nahrin district of Baghlan province in north Afghanistan.
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