Afghanistan: the changing face of aid through a decade of conflict
16th February 2011 - The Global Humanitarian Assistance (GHA) programme launches its latest publication, mapping aid flows to Afghanistan since 2002. This latest report sheds light on Afghanistan's rapid transformation into the world's leading recipient of aid. It reveals the nature of the domestic and international aid architecture which has developed to receive and administer the growing volume of aid, which reached US$6.1 billion in 2009, and captures some of the major aid trends, actors and mechanisms from 2002 to the latest available data.
Providing a broad contextual picture, the report explains that aid is only part of the complex resource puzzle in Afghanistan, which also includes private and domestic resource flows, and it looks at the substantial costs of international military involvement which, for 2009, is estimated to be at least ten times greater than the aid investment.
"If we are to understand how well levels of need are being met in Afghanistan and by whom, it is essential to have a clear picture of the holistic resource context of which aid is only one part," says GHA Programme Leader, Jan Kellett.
Policy Advisor and author of the report, Lydia Poole added, "We believe that collecting and tracking this data will contribute to a better understanding of trends, emergent ideas, mechanisms, actors and changing relationships that affect humanitarian assistance."
Further detailed information on humanitarian aid flows to Afghanistan can be found in the GHA country profiles section of the GHA website.