Total people in need: 9.3 million
Total children (<18) in need: 5 million
Total people to be reached in 2017: 1.9 million
Total children to be reached in 2017: 1.03 million
The armed conflict and rising insecurity in Afghanistan forced 245,000 people to flee their homes in 2016, bringing the cumulative number of internally displaced people to 1.1 million. Although more than 600,000 Afghan refugees returned from Pakistan and Iran by early December, most have not yet resettled into their respective communities due to insecurity. Afghanistan is also hosting 175,000 Pakistani refugees who fled insecurity related to military operations in Waziristan in 2014. Natural disasters, particularly earthquakes, floods, landslides and drought, affect 235,000 people every year on average. The fighting is impacting the provision of basic services, with the closure or destruction of schools and health facilities. As a result, an estimated 1.9 million people are in dire need of protection and emergency health, education and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) interventions. Afghanistan is also facing a national nutrition crisis, with an estimated 236,000 children in dire need of treatment for severe acute malnutrition (SAM).
Humanitarian strategy
UNICEF will continue to lead the nutrition and WASH clusters, and serve as a member of the protection cluster and the Education in Emergency Working Group, to strengthen leadership, improve coordination and facilitate robust contingency planning processes at national and sub-national levels. In health and nutrition, UNICEF will collaborate with Basic Package of Health Services project implementers to deliver services through existing health facilities. Mobile health teams and nutrition teams will serve populations outside of health facilities’ catchment areas. With the increasing focus on nutrition interventions, UNICEF's 2017 target for treating children with SAM has increased by almost 150 per cent.
UNICEF will use innovative contingency/emergency programme agreements with per-capita costing to ensure the timely and effective provision of WASH services to the affected population. Risk mapping in provinces of high disaster risk will be developed and resilience will be strengthened at the provincial, district and community levels. UNICEF will support and establish community-based schools and child-friendly spaces using teachers and facilitators from affected communities. Advocacy on children’s rights will continue at national and regional levels, and efforts will be made to strengthen the Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism.