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I saw for myself the horrors of Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis when I visited to report on the impact of UK aid: painfully thin infants and families selling possessions to stay alive. I was told of some parents so desperate they sold their own children.

Shockingly, this man-made catastrophe is even worse 18 months later. Nearly 23 million Afghans require aid, including 12 million lacking food – just as international funding dries up. The World Food Programme has shut 298 relief sites.

Faced with this deepening emergency, I am glad the UK government will host a conference this month to galvanise international action before the cold Afghan winter brings yet more preventable deaths.

By partnering with Unicef to launch the First Foods Afghanistan initiative – to boost locally-grown and produced food – ministers are showing welcome leadership to give children the nutritious start to life they need so badly.

But there will be an elephant in the room when Hamish Falconer, the UK minister for Afghanistan, asks fellow donors to dig deep in a few weeks’ time – the uncomfortable truth that the UK itself is cutting funding even as it expects others to step up.

With £151 million in bilateral aid promised for 2025-26, the UK remains one of Afghanistan’s biggest donors, but that is £20 million less than last year and little more than half the £285 million provided in 2021-22, after the Taliban takeover.

More worryingly, the bulk of the UK aid cuts have yet to be implemented – a further £6 billion of savings must be found over the next two years, as spending is reduced from 0.5 per cent to 0.3 per cent of national income – and Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine may be higher priorities for what is left in this shrinking pot.

Donors at this month’s conference will want evidence of the UK’s continued commitment to Afghanistan before they pledge more aid – they will not backfill if we do less. This was made crystal clear to me when I worked at the Independent Commission for Aid Impact, the UK’s aid watchdog, during the aid cuts at the start of this decade.

If, as the government states, the UK’s “resolve to support the Afghan people for the long term remains unwavering”, it must consider whether this noble aim can be achieved as the aid budget falls a 26-year low?

Aid works. When I visited Afghanistan, I witnessed the huge difference it was making, not only feeding malnourished women and children, but UK-funded midwives saving lives by providing round-the-clock telephone advice to help rural midwives dealing with complicated pregnancies and deliveries. I saw the training to equip women to work from home – producing artisan products, computer software and marketing websites – and how the Halo Trust is clearing landmines to reduce injuries and give farmers more land to grow food.

The UK uses third party monitors to report where our aid goes, and to blow the whistle if the Taliban interferes, as do the UN agencies which we fund, although a permanent presence on the ground would monitor results better. We could open an office in Kabul without recognising the Taliban.

Russia, China and Iran have embassies there, but they are not championing human and women’s rights. If we want Afghanistan to produce more food, and the Taliban to stop oppressing women, we should be there too.

By reducing human suffering, our aid to Afghanistan also reduces migration to the UK, because starving people cross borders to seek sanctuary and food. It counters the instability that fuels terrorism and, alongside diplomatic pressure, has kept open some opportunities for women.

The sacrifice made by the 457 UK armed forces personnel who died in Afghanistan, and more than 4,000 who were injured, brought improved living standards, women’s rights, fewer maternal and child deaths, and enabled millions more girls (and boys) to go to school.

This month’s conference can help resist the sweeping away of those achievements – but it cannot succeed if the UK fails to back up its admirable ambitions with money.

Sir Hugh Bayley is the former commissioner of the Independent Commission for Aid Impact and was Labour MP for York Central from 1992 to 2015

This article has been produced as part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project