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UN highlights urgent need for climate action in vulnerable Kabul
UN-Habitat says four out of five Kabul residents live in informal housing areas. Estimates put Kabul population at over 4 million.
As climate pressures mount, Afghanistan’s capital Kabul — home to over 40% of the country’s urban population — is facing compounding urban crises, with the majority of its residents living in informal settlements that are highly vulnerable to extreme weather and water scarcity.
According to a recent post by UN-Habitat on social media platform X, four out of five Kabul residents live in informal housing areas. These densely populated neighborhoods lack basic infrastructure such as sewage systems, drainage, and secure housing, making them particularly exposed to flooding, landslides, and heatwaves driven by climate change.
“These communities are particularly vulnerable to extreme weather events, underscoring the urgent need for climate action,” UN-Habitat stated.
The warning comes amid growing concerns about Kabul’s rapidly depleting water resources.
Years of unregulated groundwater extraction, population growth, and prolonged droughts have left large parts of the city at risk of running dry.
Officials have acknowledged that without sustainable water management and urgent investment in infrastructure, the capital could face a severe water crisis in the near future.
Kabul’s water table has dropped dramatically over the past two decades. With limited access to piped water systems, many residents rely on private wells or water tankers, both of which are increasingly unreliable and unaffordable for lower-income families.
The Islamic Emirate government recently called for action on groundwater management. However, progress remains slow amid economic constraints, limited international funding, and the growing demands of a city whose population has more than doubled since 2001.
Urban planners and aid organizations warn that without coordinated climate adaptation strategies—including improved housing, water conservation efforts, and climate-resilient infrastructure—millions of Kabul’s residents could face worsening living conditions and displacement.
The situation highlights broader challenges facing Afghanistan, where decades of conflict, climate vulnerability, and underinvestment in public services have severely weakened the country’s capacity to adapt to a changing environment.
According to official United Nations data, Kabul’s population is estimated at 4.1 million as of mid‑2024, however, more recent urban-area estimates from UN World Urbanization Prospects put Kabul’s population around 4.877 million in 2025, reflecting ongoing growth and expansion into surrounding suburbs
The Embassy of Japan in Afghanistan announced on Friday that the country has allocated $19.5 million in humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan.
In a statement, the Japanese Embassy said it hopes the aid will help bring positive change to the lives of vulnerable Afghans.
According to the statement, the assistance will cover the basic humanitarian needs of vulnerable communities in Afghanistan.
The embassy added that the aid will be delivered through United Nations agencies, international organizations, and Japanese non-governmental organizations operating in Afghanistan.
Japan’s total assistance to Afghanistan since August 2021 has reached more than $549 million.
Security forces at the Islam Qala border in Herat province prevented hundreds of young Afghans from illegally entering Iran.
Officials from the 207 Al-Farooq Army Corps said that around 530 people attempted over the past two days to illegally enter Iranian territory through areas of Kohsan district in Herat, but border forces detained them and transferred them back to their original areas.
Meanwhile, officials in the local administration of Herat said that due to severe cold along the illegal migration route to Iran, three Afghan migrants have lost their lives in the Kohsan district of the province, and a shepherd has also died there for the same reason.
Mohammad Yousuf Saeedi, spokesperson for the Herat governor’s office, said that some statistics and images shared on social media regarding the incident are not reliable.
According to him, further investigations are underway to determine whether any individuals have died on the other side of the border.
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.
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