ReliefWeb

After nearly 40 years of conflict and displacement, Afghanistan remains one of the world’s most complex humanitarian crisis. Shelter needs of displaced, host, and shock-affected populations remain at the forefront of this crisis with over 6.6 million people in need of Emergency Shelter and Non-food Item (ES/NFI) assistance, according to the Humanitarian Needs Overview for 2021. Of these, 2.9 million are projected to be in need of emergency shelter assistance, 2.2 million in need of transitional shelters, and 5.8 million of shelter repairs or NFI assistance.

Previous studies have highlighted how many emergency ES/NFI needs are linked to an overall lack of resilience and heightened vulnerability, where many poor families lack the resources to repair their homes following a major shock, often forcing homeowners into debt that limit their ability to recover. The humanitarian community has taken note of this link, highlighting in the Humanitarian Response Plan that transitional shelter responses can play a critical role in building homeowner resilience and keeping them both out of debt and of other, broader needs.

However, despite the clear recognition for more transitional and permanent shelter responses, there is still a lack of understanding of what types of responses would be most effective. Previous studies have noted that many transitional or permanent shelter responses use materials that are not accessible or affordable in the areas of response, or require skills or expertise not found within the beneficiaries' communities.

While standard transitional and permanent shelter packages have been put together by a variety of organizations, these have not always been designed with local shelter materials or regional nuances in mind. In order to strengthen the ES/NFI Cluster's coordination of transitional and permanent shelter responses, REACH conducted a detailed assessment of shelter types, building practices, and hazard mitigation measures across all regions of Afghanistan. The assessment used a mixed-methods approach, combining structured individual interviews (IIs) and semi-structured focus group discussions (FGDs) with homeowners on their shelter types and local building practices, respectively, and detailed key informant interviews (KIIs) with local shelter experts, that catalogued shelter designs and bills of quantity (BoQs). All respondents were non-displaced and internally displaced person (IDP) homeowners, selected on the basis of their shelter types. The assessment, conducted between 1-30 November 2020, covered 26 different shelter type variations in 21 districts spread across 16 provinces. In total, 585 IIs, 64 FGDs, and 63 KIIs were conducted.

All findings are indicative, rather than representative. The final results paint a contextualized picture of local shelter types and their associated construction and repair methods, as well as climatic mitigation measures across Afghanistan. The following key findings are of note: