Multi-layered drought crisis across northern provinces in Afghanistan

Afghanistan is in the grip of a drought crisis that’s hitting farming families hard across the north, northwest, and northeast. In many areas, crops have failed, and even irrigated farmland is under growing pressure as groundwater levels drop, and water becomes increasingly scarce. Livestock are also at risk. Pasture is vanishing, water is limited, and an outbreak of Foot-and-Mouth Disease is threatening herds. As harvests fail and animals weaken, families are running out of food and the incomes that once sustained them are declining. Of the 9.5 million people projected to face high levels of acute food insecurity, more than 30% are in areas hardest hit by the drought. These same areas are also hosting hundreds of thousands of returnees, many of them settling in the rainfed northern belt. This multi-layered drought has far-reaching consequences for food production, nutrition, water access, health, displacement, protection, and the reintegration of returnees.