Heartbreaking Tragedy of Afghan Family: Three Boys Lost to Starvation

Mon Oct 20 2025 03:17:05 GMT+0300 (Eastern European Summer Time)

In a heartrending tale from Afghanistan, a mother mourns her three sons who died from malnutrition as the UN warns of a growing hunger crisis affecting millions of children.

Ghulam and Nazo, a couple from Afghanistan, have tragically lost three sons to malnutrition within a year. The relentless hunger crisis, exacerbated by a lack of international aid and the Taliban's political decisions, is placing millions of Afghan children at risk. With two-thirds of children in the graveyard of Sheidaee being underage, the situation underscores an impending humanitarian disaster as winter approaches.

Gusts of wind blew dust up off the ground as Ghulam Mohiddin and his wife Nazo walked towards the graveyard where all their children are buried.

They showed us the graves of the three boys they lost in the past two years – one-year-old Rahmat, seven-month-old Koatan and most recently, three-month-old Faisal Ahmad.

All three suffered from malnutrition, say Ghulam and Nazo.

Can you imagine how painful it's been for me to lose three children? One minute there's a baby in your arms, the next minute they are empty, says Nazo.

I hope every day that angels would somehow put my babies back in our home.

There are days the couple go without food. They break walnut shells for a living in the Sheidaee settlement just outside the city of Herat in western Afghanistan and receive no help from the Taliban government or from NGOs.

Watching helplessly as my children cried out of hunger, it felt like my body was erupting in flames, said Ghulam.

The deaths of their children are not recorded anywhere, but it's evidence of a silent wave of mortality engulfing Afghanistan's youngest, as the country is pushed into what the UN calls an unprecedented crisis of hunger.

Food assistance kept a lid in this country on hunger and malnutrition, particularly for the bottom five million who really can't cope without international support. That lid has now been lifted. The soaring of malnutrition is placing the lives of more than three million children in peril.

At the Sheidaee graveyard we found startling evidence of child deaths. There were no records of the people buried there, so we counted the graves ourselves. Roughly two-thirds of the hundreds of graves were of children.

Villagers told us the graveyard is relatively new, between two to three years old. They also confirmed that it was not a specific graveyard for children.

As we walked through the settlement in Sheidaee, people came out carrying their children. Nearly half of all Afghan children under the age of five are stunted, the UN says.

This isn't the first time we've documented child deaths from malnutrition in Afghanistan, but this is the worst we've ever seen.

WFP's humanitarian funding will run out in November. With winter approaching, it is hard to overstate the urgency of the disaster unfolding in Afghanistan.