GENEVA — One million children in Afghanistan are suffering from life-threatening malnutrition in a worsening crisis sweeping the country, the United Nations warned yesterday.

Across Afghanistan, 3.7 million children suffer from wasting, meaning they are acutely malnourished, the UN children’s agency Unicef said.

Among them are “one million children who are suffering from life-threatening severe acute malnutrition” — the worst form, said Unicef’s Afghanistan country representative Tajudeen Oyewale.

“If there is no treatment, and we are not able to act fast, that one million number are at risk of dying,” he told reporters in Geneva, speaking from Kabul.

Afghanistan has endured repeated hunger emergencies in recent decades as it has struggled through civil war and other crises. An economic collapse followed the Taliban government’s return to power after US-led forces withdrew in 2021.

“Malnutrition plays a central role” in the growing numbers of deaths of very young children, Oyewale said.

Nearly 40 per cent of children admitted to hospitals with severe wasting and medical complications were babies under six months old, he said.

Meanwhile children under two years old make up more than 80 per cent of severe acute malnutrition cases in Afghanistan.

He described a “worsening nutrition crisis” across the country, with more than half a million children admitted to hospital so far this year for high-risk moderate and severe wasting.

In July 2025, around 6,000 severe acute malnutrition cases were admitted; in July this year, the numbers went above 8,000 — a third higher.

“In parts of southern Afghanistan, some hospitals are now seeing three or four severely malnourished children for every available bed,” he warned.