Five years after the Taliban seized Kabul, the UN refugee agency says humanitarian needs in Afghanistan have grown while international aid and attention have shrunk.
Charlie Goodlake, communications chief for the UN refugee agency UNHCR in Kabul, describes a dramatic fall in international attention since 2021. As DR reports, the Taliban marks five years in power on August 15, 2026, after capturing the Afghan capital on the same date in 2021.
According to Goodlake, the situation is very serious, with four out of ten people in the country dependent on some form of humanitarian assistance. He said fewer resources and less media coverage have coincided with an increasingly difficult humanitarian situation, and he hopes the anniversary reminds the world of conditions in Afghanistan.
Millions of Afghans who fled to neighboring Pakistan and Iran have since been forced back. Per DR, six million people have returned over the past three years, increasing the population by 50 percent. The country is in an economic crisis, worsened by international sanctions on the Taliban government.
Aid budgets down sharply
Save the Children says humanitarian aid to Afghanistan has fallen by almost 70 percent in four years. Al Jazeera reports the organization’s figures show a drop from 3.27 billion dollars in 2022 to around 1 billion in 2025, with about 600 health facilities closing. The organization puts the number of acutely malnourished children under five at 3.7 million in 2026.
Ashish Damle, Save the Children’s country director in Afghanistan, said in a press release that life-saving humanitarian programs are threatened by a massive lack of funding. Figures from the UN humanitarian coordination office OCHA, cited by AtlasPress, show 21.9 million people in Afghanistan need assistance in 2026. Only about 26 percent of the 1.7 billion dollars requested for this year has been funded.
When the Taliban took power in 2021, the movement promised security and stability and said women could continue to attend school. In March 2022, girls were excluded from schooling beyond primary level, and women were later barred from universities. They have also been banned from speaking or showing their faces in public.
A joint UN statement on August 12, 2026, said Afghan women and girls have been erased from public life by more than 100 decrees restricting education, work and movement. Human Rights Watch reached similar conclusions in a five-year review published on August 3, 2026.
Goodlake said UNHCR continues its relief work despite these conditions, arguing the situation would be worse without it. He described daily discussions with the Taliban about girls’ education and about access for female staff, including Afghan UN employees currently barred from the office. He also pointed to small openings where the agency supports women running businesses, including several women’s business clusters.
