Lack of funding forces UN to cut food aid in Afghanistan as hunger rises to record levels

Amna Nawaz:

The United Nations World Food Program has announced a lack of funding is forcing it to stop feeding some of the most vulnerable people in the world.

Some 15 million Afghans, more than a third of the country, struggle to find their next meal.

As Nick Schifrin reports, the largest humanitarian organization in Afghanistan is scaling back just as hunger is rising to record levels.

Nick Schifrin:

In Eastern Afghanistan, a mother has nothing to offer her 11 children, except one meal a day of tea and bread. And her husband Abdul Haq, struggles to repair a life he calls frayed since the World Food Program cut them off.

Abdul Haq (Afghanistan):

When we received assistance, we lived a better life. Now we don't get anything, and now we only eat once a day. The World Food Program needs to not only continue its assistance, but increase it.

Hsiao-Wei Lee, Afghanistan Country Director, World Food Program:

For the 15 million people who do not know where their next meal comes from in Afghanistan, we're only able to provide three million people with emergency food assistance.

Nick Schifrin:

Hsiao-Wei Lee is the WFP's Afghanistan country director.

Hsiao-Wei Lee:

We're having to choose between families that are hungry and those who are starving. How do you tell a mother who's asking us for assistance and holding a hungry child that her child may not be hungry enough?

And it comes to just very difficult conversations, conversations that we shouldn't have to make and choices that we shouldn't have to make.

Nick Schifrin:

There's no shortage of humanitarian crises. The war in Ukraine has produced more European refugees than any moment since World War II.

Just today, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield is visiting Sudan's border, calling for more funding. That donor fatigue has pushed WFP's Afghanistan funding shortfall to a billion dollars. That's particularly challenging when WFP had been reducing the numbers of acutely hungry and now needs to preposition food before the winter.

Hsiao-Wei Lee:

What we need to avert is people who find themselves without any food in the winter. And then, by then, it's too late for us to be able to help.

We need to avert children from being malnourished and having to seek malnutrition treatment that they can't even access in the winter. That is the catastrophe we need to avert.

Nick Schifrin:

Years of drought and economic crisis mean Afghanistan's catastrophe is not only a lack of food; 29 million, nearly three-quarters of the country, need assistance, and those who are most powerless are the most hungry.

More than a million mothers and children are malnourished, including those treated at this WFP-supported clinic.

Dr. Balqisa Stanikzai (Afghanistan):

The women who come here say that their husbands don't have jobs. They're poor and vulnerable, and say that they can't afford to eat more than once a day. They even say that they have to send their children into the streets to beg.

Nick Schifrin:

And the Taliban continue to erase women from society. Afghan women are barred from secondary education, visiting national parks and amusement parks, and most jobs.

The only reason WFP has Afghan female workers is a temporary exemption.

What's your message to the Taliban leaders, who are supposed to be deciding whether these exceptions can become permanent?

Hsiao-Wei Lee:

Half of the people that we serve are women and girls. And it is absolutely critical that we have female staff who are able to engage, who are able to understand what is needed.

Nick Schifrin:

Going back to how we started this conversation, what's your message to the international community, as you have to make these difficult decisions about cuts?

Hsiao-Wei Lee:

The people that we serve, the women that we serve, that I meet, they are teachers, shopkeepers who have lost their jobs. They are girls who have dreams to be pilots, to be doctors or even journalists. And they have lost their dreams.

The emptiness that they feel should not be exacerbated by the pain of a hungry stomach.

Nick Schifrin:

And, without more help, that pain and hunger will extend to the next generation.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Nick Schifrin.