Humanitarian partners in Afghanistan are committed to the principles of quality and inclusive programming. This includes a response anchored in the centrality of protection and do-no harm approaches, as well as a response that is owned and delivered in partnership with communities and informed by two-way communications with affected populations, including women, children and marginalized groups.
Improving protection remains a cornerstone of the humanitarian response. DfA restrictions on Afghan women's participation persist, posing critical challenges for humanitarian efforts. These directives limit partners' ability to reach women and girls, hindering the delivery of assistance to vulnerable groups and meaningful engagement in humanitarian action. Women and girls with disabilities and women-headed households face compounded risks. Clusters have incorporated protection risk analysis and mitigation measures into the cluster response plans, and protection and gender considerations will be mainstreamed throughout the implementation of the response. Moreover, the AAP, Disability and Inclusion (DIWG), Gender in Humanitarian Action (GiHA), and PSEA Network collaborate to ensure inclusive and quality programming for the most vulnerable populations.
Accountability to Affected Populations
Accountability to affected populations (AAP) is fundamental to the humanitarian response. Humanitarian partners are committed to seek out, listen, and act upon the diverse voices of all affected communities. In 2023, humanitarian partners successfully established and implemented a collective AAP Strategy, coordinated by the ACBAR and UNFPA-led Afghanistan AAP Working Group. Guided by this inter-agency AAP commitment, efforts to ensure meaningful participation of affected communities in humanitarian response were made throughout the year, including:
- Ensuring minimum standards for quality and inclusive programming in response.
- Tracking and monitoring community feedback and perceptions through the Afghanistan Community Voices and Accountability Platform and Awaaz helpline to inform response decision-making processes.
- Implementing “do no harm” approaches through rolling out Data Responsibility SOP for community feedback and complaint systems.
- Communicating a series of critical and lifesaving messages to local communities, including DfA directives and impacts on humanitarian activities, as well as standardized key messages on available assistance in the Herat earthquakes and Returnee responses.
Humanitarian partners will continue to strengthen community-centered approaches in the response. With the support and guidance of the AAP Working Group, key AAP areas such as real-time community feedback and perception monitoring, community validation, and inclusive, protection-sensitive and gender-responsive AAP mechanisms will continue to be strengthened. The AAP Working Group will also continue to build and strengthen the capacity of frontline teams, particularly local actors and community members, to ensure the Afghanistan humanitarian response is fully guided by crisis-affected communities.
Satisfaction with assistance received
based on feedback mechanisms
Disability Inclusion
People living with disabilities in Afghanistan face additional barriers accessing employment, services, and education, as well as increased economic vulnerability. In 2024, the DIWG will continue building the capacity of humanitarian actors on disability inclusion, provide technical support on developing and reviewing inclusive proposals and tools, and support systematic disaggregated data collection and analysis from an age, gender, and disability perspective. The DIWG will also improve advocacy efforts to promote the rights of persons with disabilities, ensure meaningful participation of persons and organisations of persons with disabilities (OPDs) in the humanitarian cycle, and provide technical support to OPDs.
Gender in Humanitarian Action
Women and girls in Afghanistan continue to face restrictions rooted in cultural norms and DfA-enforced directives, rendering them more vulnerable to the humanitarian crisis. This has prevented them from raising their voices in the response, participating in the design and monitoring of aid delivery, and at times from accessing services and distributions. In addition to the bans on Afghan women working for I/NGOs and the UN, organizations face a range of gendered impediments targeting women staff and shrinking the space for gender-specific humanitarian assistance. These further impact women’s access to assistance and contribute to negative coping mechanisms such as selling assets or taking on debt, eating less preferred foods or eating less often, and entering into early marriage or engaging in child labour. Furthermore, as poverty levels deepen in the country, poverty-driven scrap collection also increases children’s exposure to explosive ordnance, with over 60 children – mostly young boys – killed or wounded each month.
In 2024, GiHA will continue to provide a gender lens to decision makers by supporting the Women’s Advisory Group to the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT). Guidance will be implemented on gender-responsive programming for all humanitarian partners, both at national and regional levels, building on the activation of GiHA in several regions in 2023. GiHA will promote the recruitment and retention of women humanitarian workers through monitoring and capacity-strengthening of partners. GiHA will continue producing data and analysis, tracking access challenges, modalities for women participation, and raising actors’ awareness on inclusive, gender-responsive methods to reach women and girls.
Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse
While sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) affect persons across all segments of society, women, children, and people with disabilities are particularly at-risk and disproportionately affected in aid settings. In response to the augmented risk of SEA in Afghanistan following the 2021 political transition, the PSEA Network was expanded and bolstered with additional capacity. Barriers, including legislative limitations, hinder SEA survivors from coming forward. Moreover, critical gaps in awareness persist, with only 31 per cent community members reporting broad community awareness of SEA implications. To overcome these challenges, under the leadership of the Humanitarian Coordinator, the HCT seeks to build on existing PSEA efforts including endorsement of PSEA Standard Operating Procedures and SEA Action Plan.
In collaboration with the AAP Working Group, the PSEA Network conducts quarterly assessments with affected community members on PSEA issues related to awareness, access, reporting preferences, and risks. A helpline was established to provide guidance on inter-agency standard operating procedures on processing and recording SEA, victim support, and gender-based violence/child protection referral pathways in local languages.
Response Strategy
In 2024, cross-cutting working groups will unite to address inclusive and quality programming through AAP, disability inclusion, gender and PSEA. Building on 2023 initiatives, they will operationalize minimum standards, providing training for clusters and enhancing capacity to ensure the effectiveness of the programmes in contributing to response-wide accountability and strengthened outreach to vulnerable populations.
Furthermore, the AAP, DIWG, GiHA, and PSEA network, supported by the GenCap, will continue to monitor the humanitarian response to ensure quality programming and the inclusive provision of humanitarian assistance through dedicated outreach to groups at risk of being left behind. This includes expanded data collection and the deployment to teams on the ground to conduct more face-to-face interviews to reach vulnerable community members who cannot easily access hotlines. The various cross-cutting monitoring indicators and tools utilized in 2023 will be streamlined into 2024 HNRP monitoring to enable humanitarian actors to enhance monitoring efforts.
References
- UNICEF, Country Task Force on Monitoring and Reporting, 2023.