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“Increasing Protection outcomes for population affected by the conflict in Afghanistan”

Executive summary

Afghanistan has experienced decades of wars that generated millions of internally displaced people and refugees across the world, deteriorating socio-economic situation, limited governance capacities and widespread destruction of infrastructure, resulting in loss of livelihood opportunities, endemic corruption and inward migration to urban areas due to multiple form of violence and human right violations in rural areas. The international community has been supporting the affected afghan population throughout those recurrent shocks and stresses by mobilizing humanitarian response capacities.

The security environment has continued to deteriorate over the past few years to a point that humanitarian actors no longer have access to a large part of the country. The protracted conflict has generated vicious circles that ended up in wide spread structural deficit in almost all sectors, in generalized poverty, in a fragmented society, in heightened violence and risks for civilian, and in acute socio economic vulnerabilities.

Furthermore, the protection space for Afghan refugees is shrinking as Countries of Asylum are increasing the pressure on Afghan refugees, asylum seekers and migrants to return to Afghanistan, particularly arguing that the main cities in Afghanistan are safe. The massive return of documented refugees and undocumented Afghans are putting even more pressure on the available services and resources. Secondary displacement towards urban centers upon return to Afghanistan is a major trend as the security environment is still precarious in armed groups controlled areas. The lack of opportunity to develop an adequate standard of living represents a high risk to social cohesion and places massive pressure on the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GoIRA).

With the support of the international community, progress has been made by the GoIRA to enact a national policy framework related to forced displacement. However, progress on governance at national level are not necessarily reflected at provincial level and GoIRA is still experiencing important difficulties to turn the policy framework into practical and concrete actions. As a result, both humanitarian and development challenges remains tremendous.
The paper aims to describe the current situation and identify obstacles and opportunities within the current humanitarian architecture and operational modalities, as well as propose how to increase protection outcomes and dividends for affected populations groups. For this purpose, the paper is analyzing potentialities by applying a protection lens at all levels of the humanitarian coordination system and develop a collective understanding towards enhanced protection outcomes, including through improved humanitarian access, protection mainstreaming and accountability, and complementarity with longer-term development actions.