Wed Sep 03 13:05:37 UTC 2025: **News Article:**

**Afghanistan Earthquake Response Hampered by Aid Cuts, Save the Children Warns**

**Kunar and Nangarhar, Afghanistan** – The devastating magnitude 6.0 earthquake that struck eastern Afghanistan this week, killing over 1,400 people and injuring thousands more, is being compounded by pre-existing humanitarian challenges and critical aid cuts, according to a statement from Save the Children. The earthquake, centered in Kunar and Nangarhar provinces, has leveled entire villages and left vulnerable populations, especially children, in dire need of assistance.

“This is a crisis compounding a crisis,” said the Senior Director, Program Impact, Influencing and Humanitarian Affairs for Save the Children. “We are witnessing the collapse of protective systems for children – medical, nutritional, educational, psychosocial – when they are most critical.”

While rescue teams struggle to reach remote, mountainous areas, aid agencies are grappling with the impact of international donor budget cuts. Save the Children reports that it had to shut down 126 programs globally, affecting over 10 million people, due to funding shortages. In Afghanistan, this has meant fewer staff, closed medical clinics, and overstretched health facilities, severely limiting the ability to respond effectively to the earthquake’s aftermath.

“Medical clinics have been closed, so there are fewer facilities to treat the injured, and the health facilities that are still open are desperately over-stretched, even before this disaster happened,” the statement reads. Save the Children had already lost funding for 14 health clinics in northern and eastern Afghanistan.

Even before the earthquake, nearly 23 million Afghans needed humanitarian assistance, with over 9 million facing acute food insecurity. Aid cuts are projected to exacerbate the situation, potentially leaving five million Afghan children facing acute hunger by October.

Save the Children is urgently calling on donor governments to reverse course, unblock emergency funding, and commit to longer-term financing of child-focused services in Afghanistan. Without immediate action, the organization warns of a rapid deterioration, with children exposed to waterborne diseases, families forced into negative coping mechanisms, and rising rates of malnutrition.

“No child should die because the world’s attention wanes or budgets shrink,” the statement concludes. “The children of Afghanistan were already vulnerable…and they have now been plunged into a deeper abyss.”

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