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Afghanistan could become a ‘forgotten crisis’, aid agencies warn
Humanitarian actors in Afghanistan assess that inaction from the international community is costing the most vulnerable Afghans dearly.
Heavily dependent on humanitarian aid, Afghans are trapped in cycles of poverty, displacement, and despair; and Afghanistan is at risk of becoming a forgotten crisis without international support, a group of 10 aid organizations said in a statement Tuesday.
The organizations stated that Afghanistan desperately needs long-term development assistance to address the root causes of poverty.
Signatories to the statement warned that shrinking humanitarian funding is adversely impacting people’s daily lives, and a lack of funding for medium and longer-term programming has only heightened underlying vulnerabilities, adding to the humanitarian burden.
“Already this year, 343 mobile health teams have shut down, which equals 52% of all mobile health teams. This has had a significant impact on the health and nutrition response, as populations are not able to access essential lifesaving services,” warned Action Against Hunger (ACF), CARE International (CARE), the Danish Refugee Council (DRC), International Rescue Committee (IRC), INTERSOS, Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW), Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), People in Need, Save the Children International, and World Vision International (WVI).
These agencies underscored that the ongoing crisis in Afghanistan cannot be addressed with humanitarian assistance alone and a comprehensive, sustained, and contextualized response from the international community is required. “Diplomatic engagement is crucial to creating an enabling environment in Afghanistan that will support upscaling international aid efforts to include development projects alongside emergency assistance,” the statement read.
“The current isolationist approach of most donor countries does not support durable solutions to the challenges faced by the people of Afghanistan, especially children, women, ethnic and other marginalized groups.”
Millions of Afghans continue to struggle in one of the world’s largest and most complex humanitarian crises, three years after the change in power.
While security has greatly improved in the country in this time, Afghanistan continues to experience shock after shock – the ongoing economic crisis, the legacy of decades of conflict, the impacts of climate change, and the gender crisis have taken a devastating toll on the country.
Humanitarian actors in Afghanistan assess that inaction from the international community is costing the most vulnerable Afghans dearly.
“Without rapid efforts to increase diplomatic engagement and longer-term sustainable funding, Afghans, especially women and girls, will be left to suffer for years to come.
“Poverty is nearly universal, and humanitarian needs are rising due to the ever-growing economic crisis, the impacts of climate change, the gender crisis, and diminishing aid,” the statement read.
In line with this, the organizations collectively called for an increase in humanitarian and diplomatic engagement with the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) to improve their ability to reach all people in need, provide aid effectively, efficiently, and equitably, and push the IEA to adhere to international human rights standards, including their obligations towards all genders of the population.
They also called for long-term relationship building and continuous engagement with the IEA in order to address Afghanistan’s most fundamental challenges.
“To avoid the country falling into deeper poverty and isolation, donors must bolster the return of development and longer-term programming and funding to build resilient communities that are less dependent on aid,” the statement read.
They also pointed out that donor governments should continue to reassure financial service providers that they are able to facilitate transactions into and within Afghanistan, increasing private and public confidence in doing business in Afghanistan and easing the current impediments to the transfer of funds into the country.
Currently, there are an estimated 23.7 million people in need of humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan and despite the severity of needs, only 25 percent of the $3.06 billion required for the humanitarian response has been funded so far this year.
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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