The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has warned that the large-scale return of Afghan migrants from Iran and Pakistan is putting heavy pressure on border crossings, local communities and basic services in Afghanistan. The agency said existing capacity has been severely stretched by the rising number of returnees, making it difficult to meet their needs.<\/p>\n
In its latest report, UNICEF said that since 2023, more than 6.4 million Afghan migrants have returned to the country, a trend that has brought wide-ranging social, economic and humanitarian consequences. It added that only in 2026, up to the end of July, about 1.8 million people entered Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
According to the report, the majority of returnees came from the two neighbouring countries: more than 652,000 from Pakistan and about 425,000 from Iran. UNICEF said more than 413,000 of these people were forcibly expelled, and women and children make up more than half of all returnees.<\/p>\n
The agency also said that in July alone, more than 120,000 people entered Afghanistan through the four border crossings of Torkham, Milak, Spin Boldak and Bahramcha. According to UNICEF, these crossings are facing severe overcrowding, shortages of facilities and additional pressure on service staff.<\/p>\n
UNICEF warned that many returnees have little connection to their place of origin and, after arriving in Afghanistan, once again face poverty, homelessness and displacement. The agency added that a lack of infrastructure in border and urban areas has made settlement and social integration more difficult, increasing their vulnerability.<\/p>\n
In another part of the report, UNICEF described Afghanistan’s food security and malnutrition situation as concerning. Based on the report, about 17.4 million people in Afghanistan need urgent food assistance, and around 4.9 million women and children are expected to require treatment for malnutrition in 2026.<\/p>\n
UNICEF said that of these, 3.7 million are children under the age of five, a figure that shows Afghanistan’s nutrition crisis remains deep. The UN agency works in areas related to children and humanitarian services, and its reports are usually focused on the situation of vulnerable families and basic services.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
UNICEF warns that mass returns from Iran and Pakistan are straining Afghanistan’s borders, services and food security.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,2,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-migrant-news","category-secondary-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}