Highlights
• 2021 saw increased conflict, severe drought, multiple outbreaks, the withdrawal of international forces and a significant political transition. However, within this context, UNICEF reached 4,246,562 people including 3,180,003 children.
• Programmatic adaptations, rapid-scale-up and developing new ways of working in Q4 resulted in almost doubling most programmatic achievements and paved the way for UNICEF to reach 15 million people in 2022.
• UNICEF-led clusters developed scale-up strategies to work with partners on alternative modalities for response and worked to achieve results within the 2021 Flash Appeal.
• In October 2021, the Integrated Phase Classification (IPC) forecasted more than 52% of the population will be living in emergency IPC phase 4 between October and March 2022.
• 24.4 million Afghans, including 13.1 children, will need humanitarian assistance in 2022. Of this number, 1.1 million are acutely malnourished children under the age of five years (HRP 2022).
Situation in Numbers
18.4 M People in need of humanitarian assistance (HRP 2021)
18.8 M People food insecure (IPC October 2021)
9,700,000 children in need of humanitarian assistance
669,053 Internally displaced people between 1 Jan -30 Dec 2021 (OCHA)
Funding Overview and Partnerships
In January 2021, UNICEF requested US$ 143.6 million to respond to the humanitarian needs of children. As the context shifted dramatically in August 2021 and the humanitarian needs increased, UNICEF scaled-up its response with a revised appeal to provide life-saving services to 6.1 million people, including 5.7 million children, requiring US$ 192 million. UNICEF has regularly engaged with partners to mobilize the resources required to support its scale-up plan. Consistent engagement, information sharing and continued advocacy for flexible emergency funding to operate in the new environment enabled UNICEF to obtain the necessary funding to respond to rising needs.
Public donors, international financial institutions, and private donors through UNICEF National Committees, have provided generous contributions to UNICEF Afghanistan’s humanitarian response. Donors include, amongst others, the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF), the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), the European Union (International Partnerships and Humanitarian Aid), Afghanistan Humanitarian Fund (AHF), the governments of Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, and nexus funding from the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and Education Cannot Wait (ECW). UNICEF also received funds from Global Humanitarian Thematic Funds and Emergency Programmatic Funds which provided much needed flexible funding to adapt to the changing context and enable rapid response and scale up. UNICEF expresses its sincere gratitude to all donors and looks forward to partner with them to deliver results against its 2022 HAC appeal of US$ 2 billion.
Situation Overview & Humanitarian Needs
Significant events in 2021 impacted access, limited supply and demand of services and brought further turmoil to a country amid decades of war. Escalating conflict, the COVID-19 pandemic, disease outbreaks, unprecedented severe drought, severe winter weather and a political transition that resulted in many uncertainties, including deepening poverty, all intensified the vulnerabilities of children and women in Afghanistan. The third wave of the COVID19 outbreak significantly impacted access as schools were closed and movement restrictions were imposed to curb the spread. The wave peaked between May-July with around 2,000 cases per day. Throughout 2021, humanitarian needs increased from 18.4 million people in 2021 to 24.4 million in 2022 representing a 30% increase from last year.
At the beginning of 2021, due to lack of snow fall, the country was moving towards a drought. The scope and severity of the drought was underestimated and affected two thirds of the country. According to 2021 Whole of Afghanistan (WoA) Assessment, 46% of rural households reported that drought affected their communities. Internal conflict increased in the first half of 2021. As a result, over 900 schools closed and a third of all households reported the presence of explosive hazards in or closely around their location. A record number of child casualties were recorded in the first half of 2021, comprising 32% of all casualties.2 The conflict resulted in an increasing number of internally displaced people from 13,335 to more than 669,053 people across Afghanistan from the beginning of the year to 30 December 2021. In addition to the internal displacements there was significant outflow and influx of people throughout 2021 spiking at various times due to conflict, uncertainty and the pollical transition. An estimated 4,959,037 individuals left Afghanistan between 1 January and 31 December 2021 and an estimated 4,497,490 returned during the same period. However, these figures do not account for unofficial border crossings which would substantially increase the total numbers.
Since the events of August 15th, political, economic, and social shocks have compounded humanitarian needs. Critical public services that children and families rely on contracted or halted completely as the economy went into free-fall. Disruption to markets, movements across borders, financial and trade mechanisms, cash and liquidity, and the freezing of USD 9.5 billion in central bank reserves has led to GDP contracting by an estimated 40 per cent. This has had a direct impact on humanitarian needs as the very systems used to deliver response collapsed.
The deterioration had a direct impact on women and children. In the fourth quarter of 2021, schools re-opened but secondary schools remained closed in most provinces for adolescent girls. Teachers were not paid for months, resulting in some leaving the profession. While less than 20% of the urban population had access to piped water in cities, the drinking water supply reduced by half in urban settings, resulting in water contamination contributing to
Source: UN Children’s Fund