Bruno Lemarquis said Friday that Afghanistan is at a difficult turning point more than five years after the Taliban regained power. Relative calm and security, he said, are being undermined by a weak economy, broad limits on rights and severe humanitarian need.
He serves as deputy special representative of the secretary-general for Afghanistan and as the United Nations resident and humanitarian coordinator there.
| Year | Amount |
|---|---|
| 2023 | $2 billion |
| 2025 | $1 billion |
| 2026 so far | $570 million |
Women and girls remain under tight limits on their freedoms, he said, and are shut out of many places to study, work and take part in public life. He called the bar on girls’ education one of the world’s most sensitive education challenges. Since 2021, more than 2.6 million girls have been denied secondary school, and female enrollment in universities stands at zero.
Higher education more broadly is in crisis, he said. Because the economy is frail, some families are also holding sons back from school.
Asked how the Taliban explain the limits on women and girls, Lemarquis said the answers mix religious extremism with long-standing practices of control and discrimination. Since September 2025, Afghan women on the United Nations staff have been banned from entering United Nations premises across Afghanistan. He said the ban has not been lifted.
The return of 6.7 million nationals since 2020 is putting more strain on services that are already stretched, he said. Many were forced out of neighboring countries that had hosted them, and a large share came from Pakistan and Iran. He said he had met people who had to come back despite never having lived in Afghanistan, including a 45-year-old father born abroad who returned with his children to his ancestral village.
Returnees need legal documents, protection and work, he said. He summed up that need as “jobs, jobs, jobs.”
Afghanistan produced more illicit opium than any other country for many decades. Cultivation then fell sharply after the Taliban banned the crop in 2022. Lemarquis cited a recent United Nations report that found opium poppy production rose 330% in 2025, with farmers hiding output from the Taliban. Effective eradication, he said, depends on other ways to make a living. “We cannot survive. And we don’t want to die,” some farmers told him, speaking of how little income they would have without the crop.
Humanitarian needs are expected to rise sharply in 2027, he said, as the mass return of people, regional instability and a stronger-than-ever El Niño pattern threaten food security and access to services. At the same time, aid funding is falling year by year. The humanitarian response reached $2 billion in 2023, halved to $1 billion in 2025, and has amounted to $570 million so far in 2026, about a quarter of the 2023 level.
About 40% of primary health care facilities are expected to close between 2025 and 2026, equal to 700 health posts out of 1,900 nationwide. Lemarquis called the consequences very significant and urged other countries not to turn away from Afghanistan. He said effects could spread past the border and affect regional security, stability and migration routes, citing an Afghan saying that what happens in Afghanistan does not stay there.
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