Five Years of Afghanistan’s Humanitarian Crisis

When the Taliban marks its fifth anniversary in power on 15 August 2026, the defining figures will not concern governance or diplomacy. They will reflect hunger, healthcare, and the daily struggle for survival. Human Rights Watch’s latest assessment, released on 3 August, together with UNAMA’s monitoring for April–June 2026, paints a picture of a humanitarian crisis that has steadily deepened rather than stabilised, even as international attention has increasingly shifted toward questions of recognition and governance.

The scale of the crisis is stark. According to HRW, half of Afghanistan’s population now requires food or medical assistance, while more than 3.7 million children suffer from acute malnutrition. These conditions did not emerge from a single shock. Rather, they reflect the cumulative impact of reduced foreign assistance following 2021, an economy that has yet to recover, and Taliban policies that have made humanitarian assistance more difficult to deliver.

Healthcare illustrates this compounding crisis clearly. HRW reports that health facilities across Afghanistan lack essential medicines and equipment because of declining international funding, forcing many families to choose between seeking medical treatment and meeting basic survival needs. These funding shortages are compounded by Taliban restrictions on women.

Female patients are required to be accompanied by a mahram (male guardian) and may only be treated by female medical staff, even as the ban on women’s medical education continues to shrink the number of qualified female healthcare professionals. UNAMA’s monitoring during this reporting period documented these restrictions directly, including an incident in Uruzgan Province, where Taliban morality police visited a health facility to reinforce the mahram requirement for both female patients and healthcare workers.

Consequently, Afghanistan’s healthcare system is being constrained from two directions simultaneously: declining resources for all patients and increasingly limited access to care for women.

Humanitarian assistance faces a similar challenge. HRW notes that restrictions on women’s movement and employment make it significantly more difficult for aid organisations to reach women and girls, who are often among the most vulnerable. Because Taliban gender-segregation policies frequently prevent male aid workers from interacting with female beneficiaries, female humanitarian staff are often the only personnel able to provide assistance. Restrictions on their work therefore affect not only women’s rights but also the operational effectiveness of humanitarian relief across the country.

The refugee dimension adds another layer to the crisis. HRW reports that Pakistan and Iran have collectively deported or facilitated the return of nearly five million Afghans, while warning that many returnees—particularly women, journalists, and former government officials—face significant risks under Taliban rule.

At the same time, Pakistan maintains that its repatriation policy is driven by legitimate security concerns, including the presence of undocumented individuals linked to cross-border militancy, rather than disregard for humanitarian conditions inside Afghanistan.

These considerations are not necessarily contradictory. States retain the right to address genuine security challenges while humanitarian concerns regarding vulnerable returnees remain equally valid.

What is less disputed, however, is that the large-scale return of displaced Afghans places additional pressure on an already overstretched humanitarian system. HRW notes that many returnees arrive without housing, employment, or reliable sources of income, increasing the number of people requiring humanitarian assistance.

None of this exists in an accountability vacuum by chance. HRW observes that although the Taliban has faced sustained international criticism over the past five years, meaningful enforcement mechanisms have remained limited. Whether stronger accountability measures could alter Taliban policies on humanitarian access, women’s employment, or healthcare restrictions remains an open question.

What is increasingly difficult to dispute is the overall direction of the humanitarian situation. Rates of malnutrition remain severe, healthcare access continues to deteriorate, and humanitarian delivery faces persistent obstacles.

UNAMA’s latest monitoring further demonstrates that mahram requirements and gender-segregation policies continue to be actively enforced at the local level, five years after the Taliban’s return to power. The humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan is therefore no longer simply a legacy of the 2021 transition. It has become an enduring condition shaped by continuing political, economic, and administrative realities.