The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) welcomed an unprecedented $150 million contribution from the World Bank to provide critical livelihood and life-saving assistance to the most vulnerable rural populations in Afghanistan, while boosting local food production and smallholder resilience.

Some 19.7 million people, almost half of Afghanistan’s population, are facing acute hunger meaning they are unable to feed themselves on a daily basis, according to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis released in May 2022 by Food Security and Agriculture Cluster partners, including the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and many non-governmental organizations (NGOs).