Afghanistan Humanitarian Collapse
Economic collapse, aid cuts and systematic exclusion of women have created one of the largest aid caseloads in the world.
Severity score
58.1
Severe · default weighting
Trajectory
Worsening
What this is
Following the 2021 Taliban takeover, the freezing of central bank reserves and withdrawal of development aid triggered an economic collapse from which the country has not recovered. Roughly half the population needs humanitarian assistance, child malnutrition is severe, and women and girls have been systematically excluded from secondary education, most employment and public life, a policy widely described as gender apartheid. Earthquakes and drought have compounded the crisis.
Score breakdown
Loss of life
52Direct and attributable mortality, normalised across annual and cumulative tolls.
Lives negatively impacted
86People displaced, injured, food-insecure, exposed or otherwise materially harmed.
Financial cost
35Direct damage, lost output and health-system spend attributable to the event.
Environmental impact
40Emissions, habitat and biodiversity loss, contamination and irreversibility.
Trajectory
80Whether the situation is escalating, and how much worse it is plausibly getting.