• The United Nations World Food Programme in Afghanistan is being forced to drop food assistance for another 2 million people in September due to massive funding shortfalls.
• The hunger crisis in Afghanistan is worsening, with cuts to development aid from donor countries resulting in the World Food Programme only being able to support one in nine malnourished children in the country.
• Malnutrition in Afghanistan has reached unprecedented levels, with 47% of children being malnourished in the first quarter of this year, and the consequences of abject hunger are likely to lead to migration, radicalization, and instability that could spill over beyond Afghan borders.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has said that the hunger crisis in Afghanistan is reaching increasingly devastating proportions.

Cuts to development aid from many donor countries mean that the WFP can now only support one in nine malnourished children in the country, the WFP's country representative for Afghanistan, John Aylieff, said on Tuesday.

He said that malnutrition has reached unprecedented levels, with 47% of children being malnourished in the first quarter of this year. According to UN estimates, more than 48 million people live in Afghanistan.

The consequences are likely to be felt beyond Afghanistan's borders at some point, Aylieff warned. "Abject hunger drives migration, radicalization and ultimately brings instability. And instability, as history shows, has a tendency to spill over beyond Afghan borders," he said.

"Feeble cries of malnourished babies haunt the health clinics of Afghanistan as worried mothers – many themselves weakened by hunger – bring their children, desperate for treatment," said Aylieff.

"We are witnessing the next generation waste away in spite of this being harvest time – a time of plenty. This is not simply heartbreaking, it is unacceptable."

He told of a malnourished mother of three in Kandahar who can only give her baby weak tea instead of milk. Her malnourished 6-year-old son is too ill and weak to go to school. She came to a clinic in desperation, but the WFP had nothing to help her.

The WFP has so far received only just over a 10th of the $900 million it had budgeted for Afghanistan this year, said Aylieff.

Although a good harvest is expected this year, many more people need to be fed. Over the past three years, around 6 million Afghans have been forced to return to their homeland from neighbouring countries.