UN agencies warned on Monday that Afghanistan is enduring one of the largest displacement crises anywhere in the world, driven by a combination of poverty, drought, and earthquakes, United Nations News reported.
The scale of displacement reflects conditions that have pushed large numbers of Afghans from their homes across multiple fronts. Poverty has left communities without the resources to withstand shocks. Drought has stripped agricultural livelihoods, forcing people to move in search of food and water. Earthquakes have destroyed homes and infrastructure, adding another layer of displacement pressure on top of the economic and environmental strains already bearing down on the population, according to United Nations News.
Afghanistan sits at the intersection of several compounding crises. The country has faced recurring seismic events, prolonged dry spells, and deep structural poverty, all of which UN agencies identified as active drivers of the ongoing displacement. The warning issued Monday placed Afghanistan among the most severely affected countries in the world when measured by the scale of internal and external population movement.
UN agencies did not specify a total figure for the number of people displaced, but the characterization of the crisis as one of the world's largest points to a situation affecting a substantial portion of the Afghan population. The agencies' warning stands as the most recent formal assessment of the displacement situation inside the country.