At least two million people are at risk of severe food insecurity because of a devastating drought in Afghanistan, the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a report released on Monday.
The report said that the hardest-hit are northern and western Afghanistan, where wheat planting has been either delayed or downsized in some 20 provinces, mainly because of a lack of rain and snowfall in the winter.
“In many cases there was nothing farmers could do but watch the seeds dry out,” said Abdul Majid, the Food Security and Agriculture Cluster (FSAC) Coordinator of UN FAO.
“The drought has already negatively and irreversibly impacted the winter agricultural season of 2017/2018 and is expected to also negatively impact the 2018 spring and summer agricultural season. The last harvest must be considered completely lost.”
As many as 21,000 people were forced to leave their homes in western Badghis and Ghor provinces because of the drought, the OCHA said.
“Some 1.5 million goats and sheep in northeastern regions are struggling to find food and more than 600 out of 1,000 villages are suffering from a lack of water,” the report said.
The lack of water also affects farmers with livestock and pastoralists like the nomadic Kuchi tribe as pasturelands have partially or completely dried up or are overgrazed, leaving flocks with little or no feed.
“Pastures are overfed and animals are eating the plants down to the roots where they can still find them,” said Abdul Majid.
Some 1.5 million goats and sheep in the North-Eastern region are struggling to find food and more than 600 out of nearly 1,000 villages in the province are suffering from lack of water.
The report also said that the intensified conflict across many parts of the country exacerbates the effects of the drought and has limited the communities’ access to markets: in Helmand, village elders reportedly need to obtain special approval from the armed groups controlling their districts to access markets in areas under government control.
In Uruzgan province, people often cannot access the main market in Trinkot due to fighting and insecurity on the roads to the provincial capital. Following a temporary closure of the road to neighboring Kandahar province in April due to fighting, wheat prices went up by 50 percent in the city itself, and the price for fresh produce quadrupled within days, the report said.
It also said that in the 20 provinces most affected by the drought, nearly 15 million people rely on farming, livestock or labor opportunities in agriculture. Of these, an estimated two million people will become severely food insecure due to the drought.
Humanitarian partners are ramping up their response across the country trying to reach 1.4 million of the most vulnerable girls, boys, women and men struck by the drought.
OCHA said partners urgently need 115 million USD; the majority of this amount will provide food support to help families through the lean season and to provide them with drinking water for six months.
A quick, comprehensive response will enable the delivery of food and water to the rural villages and help to avoid the migration of families to cities where they risk losing all of their few possessions, and where they lack shelter and access to health facilities and schools for their children, reads the report.
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