Afghanistan: Humanitarian Response Plan 2018-2021 (2020 Year End Monitoring Report) Format Summary Humanitarian needs driven and exacerbated by conflict, natural disasters and the multi-dimensional impact of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to affect millions of people in Afghanistan at the end of 2020. The emergence of COVID-19 in Afghanistan resulted in a near-doubling of humanitarian need in the space of 12 months -- up from 9.4 million in January 2020 to 14 million in June 2020 to 18.4 million in January 2021. In 2020, $564.5 million (50 per cent of requirements) was received from donors towards a well-coordinated response, in addition to the $96m in late funding carried over from 2019. Humanitarians used this funding to reach 11.75 million people with life-saving assistance across the country throughout the year. Despite the challenging conditions, humanitarian partners were able to exceed the planned reach outlined in the mid-year revision. This is largely due to a significant scale-up in higher-reach, lower cost emergency COVID-19 activities, such as disease surveillance, testing, risk communications, hygiene promotion and food assistance. Unfortunately, the urgent need to recalibrate programming and resource allocation towards the COVID-19 response and mitigation has been at the expense of more complex and costly durable interventions that require greater time and investment. For example, there has been almost no donor investment in transitional shelter solutions, making it difficult to reduce vulnerability in the winter over the coming years. Thus, while the reach has remained high, the depth of assistance provided has been limited by underfunding. Reach with non-COVID-19 health programming was also affected by the community's fear of contracting the virus at health facilities.