EU Warns of Worsening Maternal Health Crisis in Afghanistan as Restrictions and Funding Gaps Deepen

Afghanistan’s maternal health crisis is accelerating at an alarming rate, with sweeping restrictions on women’s education and severely limited access to healthcare pushing mothers and newborns into increasingly grave danger, the European Union’s humanitarian aid office warned on Friday.

In a stark post on the social media platform X, the EU office responsible for humanitarian operations in Asia and the Pacific underscored that Afghanistan remains in the grip of a severe and escalating maternal health emergency. It stressed that mounting barriers to girls’ education coupled with constricted access to reproductive and emergency obstetric services are directly undermining the health and survival of pregnant women, new mothers, and their infants.

The office, which falls under the European Commission’s Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO), reaffirmed that it continues to back the delivery of maternal and newborn health services across Afghanistan through its humanitarian programming. However, it did not specify the scope, geographic reach, or financial scale of that assistance, leaving open questions about whether current support can keep pace with rising needs.

Afghanistan already ranks among the world’s deadliest places to give birth, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) and multiple United Nations agencies. For years, humanitarian groups have repeatedly warned that the compounding effects of protracted conflict, economic collapse, a severe shortage of skilled female health workers, and woefully inadequate medical infrastructure have left pregnant women and newborns acutely vulnerable to preventable complications such as hemorrhage, infection, and eclampsia.

The situation has deteriorated markedly since the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021. The de facto authorities have imposed a cascade of draconian restrictions on women and girls, including a blanket ban on secondary and university education for girls, sweeping limits on women’s employment across most sectors, and stringent rules that curtail their freedom of movement and participation in public life. These policies have not only stripped women of their rights but have also systematically dismantled the healthcare workforce, as female health professionals long the primary caregivers for women in a deeply conservative society—have been pushed out of jobs or prevented from training.

In December 2024, the Taliban’s supreme leader issued a decree barring women from studying nursing and midwifery, effectively closing one of the last remaining higher-education pathways for Afghan women. Aid agencies on the ground report that this measure remains actively enforced, according to UN monitors. By cutting off the training pipeline for future female health workers, the ban has intensified an already critical shortage particularly devastating because many Afghan families, due to cultural and religious norms, will only permit female practitioners to attend to their wives and daughters. The loss of new midwives and nurses, humanitarian groups warn, is not a future threat but a present-day crisis, as retiring or departing staff cannot be replaced.

The WHO, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), and other international health bodies have urgently called for sustained and increased investment in maternal health. They caution that persistent funding shortfalls exacerbated by donor fatigue and competing global crises combined with the bans on women working in the health sector, could trigger a sharp rise in preventable maternal and newborn deaths. Moreover, they emphasize that when female providers are scarce, women are far less likely to seek antenatal care, skilled birth attendance, or postnatal support, leading to delayed interventions and fatal outcomes.

Despite these sweeping restrictions, the Taliban authorities have generally continued to permit already-employed female midwives and doctors to treat women, and UN agencies have been allowed to run women-for-women maternal health services in many areas. However, aid groups on the ground report that these services remain severely hobbled by chronic underfunding, supply chain disruptions, and the broader restrictions on women’s mobility which make it difficult for both patients and female staff to reach clinics safely and on time.

The EU’s warning arrives as Afghanistan confronts one of the largest and most complex humanitarian emergencies globally. The UN has projected that approximately 21.9 million people nearly half of the country’s population will require humanitarian assistance in 2026. This staggering figure does not account for the added strain from the mass return of hundreds of thousands of Afghans expelled from Iran and Pakistan over the past two years, many of whom arrive with acute health needs and place overwhelming pressure on an already brittle and under-resourced health system. Camps and host communities have reported shortages of clean water, food, and basic medicines, further endangering pregnant women and newborns among the displaced.

The EU remains one of the largest financial contributors to humanitarian aid in Afghanistan, and it states that it channels its support through partner organizations, including UN agencies and international and local non-governmental groups. Yet the bloc has not disclosed what proportion of its overall Afghanistan funding is specifically allocated to maternal and newborn care a transparency gap that some advocacy groups say makes it difficult to assess whether resources are matching the scale of the crisis.

In its public statement, the EU humanitarian office reiterated its steadfast commitment to sustaining health services for Afghan mothers and children. It also called on the international community to maintain and increase assistance, warning that without urgent collective action, the gains made over two decades in reducing maternal mortality risk being entirely reversed. “Every mother and every newborn deserves a chance to survive and thrive,” the office wrote. “We cannot look away while the most vulnerable pay the heaviest price.”

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