Coping strategies, and the impact of cash-for-work
programmes on the lives of the "vulnerable"
Executive Summary
"Winterisation" was the buzzword of last winter. "Winterisation" appears to have included any project or programme which aimed to help those susceptible to the threats of winter to prepare/ and or cope. With the larger than expected arrival of refugee returnee and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) to the city, fears grew within the government and among the aid community, that with a concomitant rise in rents, and increased pressure on already inadequate sanitation and water supplies, many would be without adequate shelter to cope with the onset of the cold season.
While access issues, such as access to roads and markets, dominated the rural debate, inadequate housing due to the destruction of previous years and the huge recent influx of people to cities, particularly Kabul, dominated the urban debate. As a result projects aimed at targeting the "winter vulnerable" were carried out by various agencies: government, UN and NGOs, both in rural and urban settings. However, while agencies may have learned lessons from previous experiences, few programmes appear to have been based on in-depth monitoring of previous programmes or investigation into why, how, and who are vulnerable to the threats of winter.
This study arose out of a desire to learn more by AREU and an NGO consortium formed to provide assistance to the winter vulnerable in Kabul; CARE, Mercy Corps, MEDAIR and ACTED. The assistance provided consisted mostly of cash-for-work; a type of project that provides paid employment (in cash) as a form of assistance.
This study represents an attempt to begin to understand what winter vulnerability means in an urban context, which types of people are vulnerable to the threats of winter, and how cash-forwork interventions address the needs of those susceptible to these threats in order to explore the usefulness of these types of projects and assess whether other types of interventions may be more useful in the future. One hundred households1 with a member on one of the consortiums cash-for-work projects were interviewed three times between the beginning of February to the middle of May 2003 in order to begin to answer these questions.
Key Findings
- The major threats of winter are exposure
to cold temperatures and less disposable income due to less work, lower
wages and higher expenditure requirements.
- With the exception of female-headed
households, no particular group such as €grefugee returnees€h or €gthose
who never left Kabul€h could be said to be more susceptible to the threats
of winter than others. Susceptibility to these threats is determined more
by individual household characteristics such as level of indebtedness,
access to social networks, ability to access credit and ownership of productive
or saleable assets (outlined in Box 2, p.26).
- The households interviewed have coping
strategies to deal with the threats of winter. However coping strategies
such as taking loans or deploying children into paid labour are often detrimental
to future well-being. Due to a lack of ownership of assets these strategies
appear insufficient to enable people to lift themselves out of poverty.
- Cash-for-work reduced winter vulnerability
by providing people with a constant source of income for part of the winter
and thereby enabled them to cope with the added risks and costs of winter.
The effects of cash-for-work did not, however, last much beyond the project
end as the sample group continued to struggle to find paid work and to
take out loans.
- The majority of those vulnerable to
the threats of winter are also vulnerable to threats and shocks throughout
the year. Winter vulnerability in Kabul appears to be largely a matter
of poverty combined with a lack of access to adequate and affordable accommodation.
Issues relating to poverty and accommodation conditions may decrease following
winter, but do not disappear.
- It is argued that reducing poverty would help reduce winter vulnerability, as well as vulnerability to threats and shocks in the longer term. Future policy and programming should therefore aim to help people lift themselves out of poverty in order to both prevent winter vulnerability and reduce vulnerability to shocks in the longer-term.
I. Background
The physical effects of war in Kabul are clearly visible, particularly in the southern part of the city. It is estimated that 63,000 homes (60 percent of the housing stock) have been destroyed in Kabul alone, leaving many without adequate shelter.
Following the fall of the Taliban in November 2001, Afghanistan witnessed a huge influx of returnees from Pakistan and Iran; it is estimated that 1.7 million refugees returned from these two countries between March and September 2002. The combination of continued drought in many parts of Afghanistan and the pull of greater economic and assistance opportunities in Kabul, , drew many refugee returnees, as well as Afghans living elsewhere in Afghanistan, to the city in hope of a better life. UNHCR estimates that 393,582 refugees returned from March to December 2002.2 This does not include the estimated 32, 646 internally displaced persons (IDPs) who also came to Kabul in 2002.3
With the larger than expected arrival of refugee returnees and IDPs to the city, fears grew within the government and among the aid community, that with a concomitant rise in rents, and increased pressure on already inadequate sanitation and water supplies, many would be left without adequate shelter to cope with the onset of the cold season. It was also feared that many returnee refugees and IDPs would arrive too late in winter to be able to construct adequate
shelter and that there would be lives at risk in the cold temperatures of the winter months. UNHABITAT estimated there would be 36,000 "vulnerable" families in Kabul during last winter with 16,000 "critically vulnerable" due to living in open spaces, returning too late to construct homes or living in destroyed or derelict houses.4
Set against this backdrop, many government, UN and non-governmental agencies (NGOs) sought to help those most vulnerable5 to the threats of winter. Four NGOs: CARE, Mercy Corps, Medair and ACTED, formed a consortium for tackling the winter needs of the 16,000 "critically vulnerable" and used cash-for-work as one vehicle through which to achieve this aim. Cash-for-work projects were used to target around 13,175 of the "most vulnerable" in the districts that experienced the most destruction of housing.6 The remaining "most vulnerable," consisting mostly of non-able bodied persons or those not reached by the cash-for-work, were targeted with the distribution of emergency items.
The way in which the four NGOs provided cash-for-work differed slightly. In one NGO, men were enrolled on the project for six months, working 11 days on, 11 days off, while women worked half-days for 22 days, every month for six months. In another, men and women were enrolled for 60 days. The wage rate offered also differed between the NGOs but most of the work was offered at below market rate (around US$2 for unskilled work) to enable self-targeting to take place and to attract only the "most vulnerable" that were able to work. Work provided included rubble clearance, ditch digging and gabion cage weaving.
This study followed 100 households7 with a member on one of the consortiums cash-for-work projects from the beginning of February to mid-May 2003. Each consortium member provided a sample group of 25 households as well as two surveyors (containing at least one woman) to conduct the interviews. The aim was to see whether these households were indeed vulnerable to the added threats of winter, how they coped and how cash-for-work affected their ability to cope. This study evolved out of a desire by AREU and the consortium to know more about winter vulnerability, to learn lessons and to improve future programming for those most at risk.
Defining Vulnerability
Before this paper begins, it is necessary to outline exactly what is meant here by vulnerability. The term is used here to mean the degree of susceptibility to a threat, risk, or shock, together with the ability to cope and recover from those threats, risks or shocks without jeopardising ones future well-being. The ability to cope is most often closely tied to the assets a household can mobilise such as health and education of its members (human assets), land, house, machinery (physical assets), savings (financial assets), social networks (social assets) and access to natural resources such as water (natural assets).
To understand vulnerability it is therefore necessary to look at both the threats and the ability of households to cope with these threats. This shall be looked in relation to winter in sections 3 and 4.
Footnotes
1 The term household is used here to represent the smallest unit in a family; i.e. husband, wife and unmarried children or widow and unmarried children.
2 UNHCR
3 UNHCR, "Monthly IDP Return Assisted Movement Report," December 2002.
4 Cited in Emergency winterisation and income generation proposal of ACTED, CARE, MEDAIR and MC, 2002.
5 The definition of vulnerability used in this paper is defined on p.6.
6 Districts 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 16.
7 The term household is used here to represent the smallest unit in a family; i.e. husband, wife and unmarried children or widow and unmarried children.
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