Afghanistan Critical Funding Gaps (October to December 2024)

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SITUATION OVERVIEW

As of mid-October, the 2024 Afghanistan Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan (HNRP) is significantly underfunded, with just US$961.7 million received—which amounts to 31.4 per cent of the initial request. This shortfall comes as humanitarian needs in Afghanistan remain stubbornly high due to ongoing food insecurity and malnutrition, protracted displacement, widespread explosive ordnance contamination, recurrent natural disasters, communicable disease outbreaks, climate change effects and political estrangement. In addition, an increasingly restrictive environment continues to create challenges for partners to reach affected populations, particularly women and girls, and, in turn, affects their ability to access services.

Since the 2021 takeover, de facto authority (DfA) line ministries and provincial directorates have issued 392 directives directly affecting humanitarian operations, including 71 that specifically target Afghan women's involvement in the response. So far, in 2024, the DfA has issued 97 directives, six of which relate to female participation (including requirements such as adherence to hijab, restrictions on women working in the field and salary reductions for female government employees). In August, the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (MoPVPV) promulgated the Morality Law, which reinforces and expands existing discriminatory policies, such as mandatory dress codes (for all genders), the requirement for women to have a male guardian (mahram), and the segregation of men and women in public spaces, while also giving broad discretionary powers to inspectors. Humanitarian actors are closely monitoring the impact of the law on operations, including the safe, meaningful and comprehensive participation of Afghan women in all aspects of the response while trying to strengthen existing mitigation measures to ensure continued principled delivery.

From July to September 2024, Afghanistan experienced widespread flash flooding that affected almost 18,900 people across 14 provinces, resulting in significant agricultural and livestock losses and jeopardising fragile gains in food security. The floods caused the destruction or damage of 2,560 homes, left 220 individuals injured and resulted in 73 fatalities. Cross-border movements continued in the reporting period, with September seeing the highest number of returnees from Iran this year, with over 230,000 movements recorded.

Since January 2024, around 1.1 million Afghans have returned to Afghanistan  243,000 from Pakistan and 825,000 from Iran.

Currently, the Afghanistan humanitarian response is facing an overall shortfall of around $2.09 billion, with critical funding gaps of $1.09 billion, excluding the $245.7 million reported by clusters as in the pipeline. Funding shortages have already prevented 3.7 million people from accessing primary and secondary healthcare services, almost 352,000 children under-five and 258,000 pregnant and lactating women (PLW) with moderate acute malnutrition from receiving blanket supplementary feeding, left 300,000 people without emergency latrines and bathing shelters, and seen 25,000 earthquake-affected families and 12,700 flood-affected households go without longer-term shelter support. Across the board, scaled-down or pared-back food assistance has led to the exclusion of entire districts from critical food support and resulted in the partial implementation of child protection services, particularly case management and structured psychosocial support (PSS). Moreover, supply chains for all seven clusters are at imminent risk of disruption.

Without increased financial support and greater sectoral and multisectoral response, millions of Afghans will remain in critical need, particularly in underserved districts. This challenge is further compounded by the anticipated global funding shortfall in 2025 and anticipated reductions in donor contributions, potentially by as much as 50 per cent in some cases. In the absence of additional funding, critical life-saving programmes – including mobile health and nutrition teams (MHNTs) that service hard-to-reach areas; inpatient treatment for severely malnourished children with medical complications; psychosocial and protection support for children; mine action; food and livelihoods assistance; and the provision of dignity kits for women and girls of reproductive age during sudden-onset crises – risk further reduction and closure. At the same time, these funding shortfalls impact humanitarian actors’ capacity to prioritize immediate needs over safeguarding issues such as sexual exploitation and abuse and inclusive programming, the latter of which is critical to address the needs of women, girls and people with disabilities.

This analysis aims to inform donor funding decisions by identifying critical funding gaps in Afghanistan's humanitarian response. It details the funding shortfalls to date for each sector and cross-cutting areas, along with the expected impact of continued underfunding in the coming months (October to December 2024). The reconciliation of reported Financial Tracking Service (FTS) funding streams will continue over the coming weeks. This process will also analyse the $79.7 million categorized as ‘sector not specified’ and ‘multi-sectoral’ funding.

To enable humanitarian actors to respond efficiently, effectively and equitably, donors should provide early, unrestricted and multi-year predictable funding which allows for response to a range of activities.

Donors are also encouraged to increase their international engagement with the DfA to include technical support and knowledgesharing to increase mutual trust and contribute to a more enabling environment.