Emergency food assistance to acutely food insecure people living in IPC Phase 4 With the rapid withdrawal of international military forces and the subsequent collapse of the central government, the Taliban captured territory in almost all parts of the country, including border crossings and main cities, culminating in the sudden fall of Kabul on 15 August 2021. As a result, displacement has taken place within and outside the country. Between January and August 2021, it is estimated that over half a million people have been newly displaced due to conflict, 80 percent of whom are women and children, adding to the more than 2.9 million people already internally displaced due to conflict [1]. 

This transpires against the backdrop of a humanitarian emergency growing in complexity, and food insecurity increasing in scope and scale. The convergence of conflict, climate, economic and financial crises has resulted in a humanitarian catastrophe growing in complexity, scope, and scale, leaving almost 50% of the population unable to feed themselves. 

The recent IPC Post-Harvest Analysis Preliminary Findings [2] estimate that more than half the population of Afghanistan (22.8 million) will face acute food insecurity from November. Afghanistan is quickly becoming the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. This includes 8.7 million facing emergency levels of food insecurity (IPC Phase 4). This is the highest number of acutely food insecure people ever recorded in the ten years the UN has been conducting PIC analyses in Afghanistan.

At the same time, Afghanistan faces economic collapse. International financial institutions have suspended Afghanistan’s access to funds and foreign reserves and assets, the local currency (Afghani) is at an all-time low, and prices of everyday items continue to surge. Between 15 to 25 August, the internal banking system was frozen, severely restricting the availability of cash. Though there has been partial reopening, the outlook remains uncertain, as restrictions on withdrawals and suspensions on key transactions remain in place. The freeze on foreign inflows includes Official Development Assistance, previously comprising over 42 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP and providing support to 75 percent of the government’s budget, exacerbating the ability of vast swathes of the Afghan population to cope with mounting economic stress and impacting the delivery of essential services.

To complement WFP’s overall crisis response, WFP aims to use this funding to provide unconditional, nutrition-sensitive in-kind food assistance to acutely food-insecure people in Hirat, Nangarhar, Ghazni, Faryab, Parwan, Ghor, Jawzjan, Badghis, Sar-e-pul Wardak, and Zabul provinces. All of these provinces have been classified as facing IPC Phase 4 levels of acute food insecurity in the projected period between November 2021 to March 2022. WFP plans to provide a total of 8,455.7 MT worth of emergency in-kind assistance to 312,786 acutely food-insecure people (44,684 households) in the abovementioned targeted provinces. Targeted households will receive a monthly in-kind nutritionally balanced food basket comprised of 75kg of fortified wheat flour, 6.83kg of fortified vegetable oil, 9.38kg of pulses, and 0.75 kg of iodized salt. Households will receive in-kind food assistance for two months within a longer-term period of assistance which will be sourced from other donors. WFP’s in-kind assistance is aligned with the Food Security and Agriculture Cluster’s (FSAC) recommended guidelines on humanitarian response packages. WFP aims to prevent people facing emergency levels of acute food insecurity from falling below acceptable levels of food security, bridge critical food gaps whilst increasing food consumption levels, as well as prevent vulnerable households from having to resort to negative coping strategies that would further compound their vulnerability to food insecurity. Food assistance will be provided with full consideration of COVID-19 preventive measures.