Humanitarian Assistance

Our Work

The United States is the largest humanitarian assistance donor helping Afghans affected by natural disasters and ongoing conflict. USAID supports the Government of Afghanistan’s disaster planning and response capabilities. Our humanitarian response includes the delivery of food, shelter, safe drinking water, hygiene supplies, and other critical relief such as child protection, psychosocial support services, and prevention and response to gender-based violence.

Major Highlight

USAID funded a multi-year Disaster Risk Reduction program through iMMAP—an international information management organization—to develop a tool that would help to more effectively respond to emergencies. iMMAP developed the Afghanistan Natural Hazards Data Center portal, Afghanistan’s most advanced geoportal that informs emergency response and is helping to save lives.

Humanitarian Support

By 2001, a decade-long Soviet occupation and ensuing civil strife left Afghanistan impoverished and mired in an extended humanitarian crisis. This resulted in a significant increase in U.S. Government humanitarian support to Afghanistan. USAID airlifted stockpiles of plastic sheeting, blankets, kitchen sets, high energy biscuits, sugar, and emergency health kits to Afghanistan. USAID provided wheat and complementary food assistance to the World Food Program. Since 2001-2002, USAID has provided over $2 billion in humanitarian support to Afghanistan.

Food Security and Nutrition

Between 2017 and 2018, USAID’s Office of Food for Peace contributed nearly $17.5 million to support a new, collaborative initiative between USAID and the Government of Afghanistan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation, and Livestock—twinning. Twinning is an initiative that pairs food contributions from host governments with cash-based contributions from donors to ensure fortification, delivery, and distribution. Through this initiative, the Government of Afghanistan donated approximately 60,000 metric tons of wheat grain to the World Food Program from its Strategic Grain Reserve, while USAID supported the milling, fortification, transportation, and distribution of the donated wheat to drought-affected people in need of food assistance.

Health, Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene

USAID works to improve access to health services, safe drinking water, and sanitation infrastructure for people impacted by conflict and disasters. USAID supports emergency health services, vaccination campaigns, hygiene and sanitation promotion, provision of emergency hygiene and water kits, and rehabilitation of latrines and wells. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, USAID bolstered support for the most-impacted communities, particularly through increased food, health, and hygiene promotion assistance.