KABUL
\nThe United Nations could feed a million additional children at risk of malnutrition in Afghanistan if the country\u2019s conflict with Pakistan and the Iran war had not inflated prices and transport costs, a senior official told media. Afghanistan saw a record rise in malnutrition cases in 2025, following a deadly earthquake, climate disasters, and the return of millions of Afghans expelled from Iran and Pakistan.\u201cIt is a nutrition crisis here in Afghanistan,\u201d Carl Skau, Deputy Executive Director of the UN\u2019s World Food Programme (WFP), told media.
\n\u201cThe surge last year was the worst we\u2019ve ever seen. It\u2019s worse this year.\u201d The WFP estimated in January that five million women and children in Afghanistan, out of a population of more than 40 million, will experience a life-threatening level of malnutrition this year.
\nAfghanistan\u2019s ongoing conflict with its neighbor Pakistan has led to a near-total border closure for around eight months. Along with the global economic fallout from the Iran war, that has driven up prices for food and fuel and disrupted the supply chains needed to deliver them.
\n\u201cIf we weren\u2019t struggling with the supply chain, both delays and costs, we would be able to feed a million more children here in Afghanistan,\u201d Skau said. He cited the example of thousands of tons of fortified biscuits meant for Afghan schoolchildren, which the WFP had planned to send into the country via Pakistan. With the border closed, the WFP rerouted the supplies via Dubai and Iran \u2014 only for the Middle East conflict to erupt, forcing yet another detour through seven countries, including Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, Georgia and Turkmenistan.
\n \u201cIt\u2019s about to arrive this week, but it\u2019s taken… months. It cost us way more,\u201d Skau said.
\nFundraising has proven difficult, and the WFP has raised only eight percent of this year\u2019s target amount for Afghanistan. Skau recounted seeing long queues of women with young children suffering from severe malnutrition who walked hours to reach a rural clinic in eastern Afghanistan, only to be turned away.
\n\u201cWe did not have assistance to give them… The desperation in the voice of these women will stay with me for a long time,\u201d he said. \u201cIf there is one thing that the world agrees on, it\u2019s that children should not die from hunger.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KABUL The United Nations could feed a million additional children at risk of malnutrition in Afghanistan if the country\u2019s conflict with Pakistan and the Iran war had not inflated prices and transport costs, a senior official told media. Afghanistan saw a record rise in malnutrition cases in 2025, following a deadly earthquake, climate disasters, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478617,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-546523","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n