In 2024, Afghanistan will continue to face complex humanitarian challenges necessitating a strategic and comprehensive response. This plan prioritizes response to the critical needs of the 17.3 million Afghan people, considering factors such as a deteriorating protection environment; external factors which risk triggering a sudden onset-crisis, be it natural or man-made; and water scarcity and ongoing food security issues. The primary focus in 2024 will be on providing life-saving assistance including food, safe drinking water, healthcare, and support for education. Moreover, a central tenet of the response is the protection of vulnerable groups, particularly women and children. Despite operational challenges and funding constraints, humanitarian partners remain steadfast in their commitment to delivering vital assistance, ensuring the well-being and resilience of Afghanistan's most vulnerable populations.
Prioritization of Critical Needs and Provision of Life-Saving Assistance
The 2024 humanitarian response strategy for Afghanistan commits to addressing the urgent and comprehensive needs of 17.3 million of the 23.7 million Afghan people in need. This prioritization stems from the deteriorating protection environment, recent earthquakes in Herat Province, increased return of undocumented Afghans, acute WASH needs due to drought and climate change, and ongoing food security issues. District-level targeting and efficient prioritization ensure maximum impact for the 4.2 million women, 3.8 million men, 9 million girls and boys, 329,000 elderly persons, and 1.5 million people living with disabilities targeted in 2024, with a budget requirement of US$ 3.06 billion. The primary focus is delivering life-saving assistance, including food, safe drinking water, and healthcare. Food assistance targets 15.8 million individuals facing critical food insecurity. Strengthening the healthcare system upholds principles like Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP), Disability Inclusion, Protection against Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA), and gender considerations. Ensuring education access for Afghan children, especially girls, remains a priority, with support for Community-Based Education (CBE) and innovative learning methods. Life-saving education in emergencies support will be critical to support returnee children who have been deprived of quality education for longer periods and bring girls’ and boys’ life back to normalcy. Efforts to address malnutrition include acute malnutrition treatments and blanket supplementary feeding programs (BSFP).
Ensure Centrality of Protection
Among the prevalent protection threats and associated risks identified by protection actors include gender-based violence (GBV); the presence of mines and explosive ordnance; unlawful impediments or restrictions to freedom of movement and forced displacement; risks to children including family and child separation, early marriage, and child labour; and psychological distress and emotional abuse. In 2024, protection actors will work with clusters to develop a protection strategy to address these risks and operationalise the centrality of protection. Given the deteriorating protection environment, the strategy emphasizes protecting civilians, especially women and children, at heightened risk of violence and exploitation. This involves providing safe spaces, legal support, and psycho-social services for GBV survivors. Facilitating the safe return of displaced populations and addressing explosive hazards are key components. Resilience-building initiatives, including vocational training and livelihood support, are integrated for long-term stability.
Stay and Deliver
Recognizing the complex operating environment in Afghanistan, this strategy anticipates challenges arising from the DfA’s desire to be more involved in humanitarian planning and programming more generally, including attempts to influence beneficiary selection or project location, and bureaucratic impediments related to project registration, Memorandum of Understanding, and the participation of Afghan women in humanitarian action. On the latter, as has been seen throughout the past year, there has been varying implementation of DfA directives affecting Afghan women and girls, including those banning them from working for I/NGOs and the UN. In 2023, humanitarian actors have been able to reach similar numbers of people with life-saving assistance compared to the same period in 2022. They have not only resumed but scaled up programmes that had initially been suspended, and successfully secured local arrangements with the DfA which enabled Afghan women staff to participate across all areas of the response — from assessments to distributions to monitoring. Challenges, however, remain and will require careful monitoring to ensure continued delivery to women and girls, and to aid operational readiness in the event of a further deterioration in the operating environment, including new restrictions or impediments. Nevertheless, the humanitarian community remains committed to staying and delivering on behalf of the Afghan population – more than half of whom will require humanitarian assistance in 2024 to meet their primary needs.
Women’s Participation and Gender-Responsive Assistance
In 2024, humanitarian partners will continue to push for the safe, meaningful and comprehensive participation of Afghan women in all components of the humanitarian response, while simultaneously investing in their recruitment and retention through inclusive policies and practices. There has been a 1 per cent increase in the number of national female staff employed by the UN in the first six months of the year, the period during which the ban came into effect. Programming adaptations trialled in 2023 such as remote outreach to women and girl beneficiaries, distinct distribution spaces for women and men beneficiaries, and the use of women community volunteers, will be scaled-up to safely reach women and girls. In addition, capacity-building of cluster partners, gender responsive AAP strategies to amplify women’s feedback and voices, and gendered protection and SEA prevention strategies will also be implemented.
Moving the Needle from Humanitarian to Basic Human Needs
The political developments of August 2021, and end to widespread conflict associated with the insurgency, have ushered in a period of unprecedented stability in Afghanistan – albeit unpredictable – which has opened the door for greater investments to be made in longer-term basic human needs programming. This in turn can pave the way, over time, for some communities and population groups to be graduated from the humanitarian portfolio to alternative frameworks. In 2024, efforts will concentrate on establishing close programmatic and working linkages with basic human needs actors to support Afghan arrivals from Pakistan and Iran in areas of return, focusing on Nangarhar, Kandahar and Kabul. Time will of course be needed to verify that basic human needs actors are able to meet the structural needs of affected people, and that they are systematically benefiting from longer-term and larger-scale investments in basic service delivery. In the absence of this, humanitarian assistance will continue to not only be necessary but fundamental to the survival of a significant proportion of the Afghan population.