AFGHANISTAN: Extreme weather forces more people from their homes

KABUL, 6 Aug 2024 - Extreme weather events forced at least 38,000 people from their homes in Afghanistan in the first six month of this year – of whom about half are children – which is more than in the whole of 2023, said Save the Children.

Analysis of data from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) found there were more displacements in the first half of this year due to droughts, extreme temperature, floods, landslides, avalanches and storms than in all of 2023 (37,076) [1].

While IDMC does not provide child-specific breakdowns for displacements that happen within a given year, it does state that half of people driven from their homes in Afghanistan are children [2]. Afghanistan also had the highest number of children made homeless by climate disasters of any country in the world as at the end of 2023 (747,094) [3].  

While most displacements in recent decades have been due to conflict, in 2022 climate disasters became the main reason people fled their homes and moved to other areas within Afghanistan. Drought was the main reason for disaster-driven displacement, according to the UN. One out of every seven Afghans is facing long-term displacement, the largest number in South Asia and the second highest in the world [4].  

Afghanistan is the sixth most vulnerable country to the impacts of climate change [5] - but also one of the least able to adapt and cope with the impacts of the crisis. More than one in three people in Afghanistan are facing crisis levels of hunger, driven mostly by climate shocks and high food prices. Twenty-five of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces face severe or catastrophic drought conditions, which affect more than half the population, according to the UN.