Additional Context: Foreign assistance in Afghanistan decreased from $3.21 billion in 2024 to $2.68 billion in 2025. While the U.N. Development Programme, or UNDP, does not provide a specific metric for the decrease in household purchasing power, multi-sectoral needs assessments show a 10% decrease in the number of families receiving direct humanitarian assistance, along with the cancellation of numerous other programs, such as those in health and education, which supported the income and spending of numerous Afghan families. According to the UNDP, this has deepened rising debt burdens of Afghan families and accelerated a shift toward increasingly calorie- and protein-deficient diets, as food purchases now represent over half of household spending.

Household resilience has weakened despite a stable macroeconomic outlook in Afghanistan, as declining aid fails to meet increased needs driven by the influx of returnees, which increased by 6.5% in FY2025/2026 compared to the previous fiscal year analyzed. Other compounding factors include financial sector fragilities, climate shocks and natural disasters, as well as border tensions with Pakistan.

Devex Researcher Note: While the U.S. is not specifically mentioned as responsible for the cuts in the source document, aid disbursements from the U.S. to Afghanistan were cut by nearly half between 2023 and 2024, but took an even more severe dip after the 2025 aid cuts. Humanitarian funding from the U.S. decreased from $728.6 million in 2024 to $243.2 million in 2025, with nothing pledged in 2026 — this alone accounts for 51.7% of the total reduction in humanitarian funds in this 3-year period.

Source: UNDP