UN News Today 4 August 2026 — UN News

Afghanistan’s acute hunger crisis now affects 14 million people including babies fed on weak tea and scraps of bread by their despairing and dirt-poor parents. That’s the alarming message from the UN World Food Programme (WFP), which also said that it lacks the resources to contain the deepening emergency. Today, 12 provinces have now reached critical levels of acute child malnutrition, the highest number ever recorded. Fuelling the crisis are conflict, a lack of jobs, soaring food prices, shrinking aid funding and disruption to supply routes, said WFP’s John Aylieff, Country Director for Afghanistan: “When we spoke to Farida, her baby started crying from hunger. She reached into her bag and pulled out a bottle, a child's bottle. Now, normally you expect the child's bottle to be full of milk. This one only had weak tea in it. There was simply no money in the household for milk.” The return of six million Afghans pushed back mainly from Pakistan and Iran since September 2023, has increased the strain on the country’s already fragile economy. Conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan together with the Middle East crisis have also disrupted trade and pushed up food costs by 20 to 30 per cent, pricing the poor out of the market,” Mr. Aylieff explained. As deadly Ebola disease continues to spread in the Democratic…