Thu 04 December 2025:

Nearly one in four Afghans is living with a disability, the United Nations said on Wednesday, the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, urging greater support for a population shaped by decades of war and crisis.

According to UN data, 24.6% of Afghans live with mild disabilities, 40% with moderate and 13.9% with severe disabilities — among the highest rates in the region.

Decades of conflict, displacement, drought and weak health and economic systems have driven these numbers, leaving many Afghans with lifelong injuries or untreated conditions.

But behind each statistic is a person, the UN said, “someone who is not only navigating their own challenges but is often a vital source of support for their families and communities.” Their daily life reflects the long-term human cost of war, it said.

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1.5 million Afghans living with serious disabilities

Nearly 1.5 million Afghans are living with severe disabilities, most of them injuries stemming from more than 40 years of conflict, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said on Wednesday.

In a statement posted on its official X account, UNAMA noted that children are disproportionately affected, bearing some of the worst consequences of the country’s long-running violence.

Afghanistan remains among the world’s most heavily mine-contaminated nations, with landmines and unexploded ordnance continuing to cause deaths and life-altering injuries on a near-daily basis.

Over the past two weeks, explosions involving explosive remnants of war killed seven people—including several children—and wounded nine others in separate incidents across Kandahar, Uruzgan, and Balkh provinces, according to UNAMA.

A recent assessment by Afghanistan’s National Disaster Management Authority estimates that approximately 1,150 square kilometers of land across the country is still contaminated with mines and other explosive remnants of war.

Afghanistan‘s disability crisis is rooted in nearly half a century of violence — beginning with the 1979 Soviet invasion, followed by brutal civil wars in the 1990s, and later the two-decade US invasion of the country — leaving generations exposed to injury, trauma and shattered health systems.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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