JALALABAD/DUBAI, 7 February 2013 (IRIN) - A key challenge for the Afghan
government and aid agencies is how to help the country’s huge
population of internally displaced persons (IDPs) reintegrate in their
home communities, or - if that is not possible - settle where they are.
Conflict-induced internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Afghanistan
number more than 460,000, and thousands of others have fled their homes
because of natural disasters.
A recent
report by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) suggests that three-quarters of IDPs want to settle where they are now.
In a context of widening conflict in the last 12 months between
anti-government fighters, like the Taliban, and government forces backed
by the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), displacement is a
growing problem.
Despite nearly four decades of conflict, around a third of registered
IDPs are recent - displaced in the last 12 months, according to the 2013
Common
Humanitarian Action Plan.
“The problem at this stage is that the government talks about returns
and the IDPs about settling, so there is an expectation gap,” said
Nassim Majidi, from consultants Samuel Hall, who wrote the NRC report.
“Some of the assumptions that are still common are that displacement is a
temporary state,” she told IRIN, when in fact she says, “we found that
vulnerability doesn’t diminish as people stay for several years, and
sometimes people even become more vulnerable.”
Meanwhile, many analysts predict the withdrawal of international forces
over the next two years is likely to increase conflict, something that
risks creating further displacement and could further hamper a quick
return home for IDPs.
That, says Majidi, makes now a good time to get the policies in place to
facilitate integration: “We’re trying to change the discourse on
internal displacement because the numbers will only increase in the
coming years.”
Return, resettlement or integration?
There are generally considered to be three options for IDPs: return, resettlement or integration.
The latter requires an acceptance that their status is no longer
temporary and shifts solutions from short-term humanitarian aid, to a
more long-term effort to provide basic services, economic opportunities
and housing.
“When it comes to a long-term solution we are talking about people in
their own country and it’s their choice where to live,” Bo Schack, UNHCR
representative in Afghanistan, told IRIN.
Those wishing to settle face a number of challenges including limited
land rights, the absence of legal documents and poor living conditions
that make them among the most vulnerable in the country.
Many live in tents or simple mud shelters. A third of children from IDP
families do not have access to schools, and unemployment among IDPs is
high.
“We are in a bad condition here. Ten children died of respiratory
diseases during the past winter in our neighbourhood. The winter is here
again and most of our children are sick,” Mustafa, an IDP in Jalalabad,
told IRIN.
Mustafa has no plans to return to his home region, the Musa Qala
District of Helmand Province. He fled two years ago due to fighting
between international forces and the Taliban.
On days when Mustafa finds work, the family can eat; when he does not,
they do not eat. He says he has not received any support from the
government or international aid agencies. Last year his 10-member family
lived in a Kabul bus station but when reconstruction work began there
they were forced to move on, finally settling in Jalalabad in Nangahar
Province, which has 68,432 registered IDPs, second only to
Herat Province.
Opposition
But integration is not without opposition. “We’ve spoken with mayors and
municipal leaders and no-one wants to integrate IDPs. They say they are
spoiling the community or the land and need to go,” Abdul Samad Hami,
deputy minister at the Afghan Ministry of Refugees and Returnees (MoRR),
told IRIN.
In the past the government has been reluctant to allow infrastructural
improvements in urban slum areas, where many IDPs live, for fear that
this would encourage permanent settlement in areas where, frequently,
they are living illegally.
“There’s still a lot of debate going on, with sometimes mindsets,
assumptions and stereotypes that are difficult to change,” said Majidi.
Municipalities fear that public moves by a province to improve
integration for IDPs will attract even more IDPs, and migrants from
rural areas.
“This is going to be one of the hardest parts of the policy and this is
really the bottleneck of any plans to implement a better response to
IDPs,” said Hami.
Urban migration has seen cities like Kabul expand quickly from an
estimated population of 1.5 million in 2001 to around five million
today, putting a strain on local authorities.
“The government of Afghanistan, as many other governments in developing
countries, due to the magnitude of the issue, has been hesitant in
dealing with the issue of how to do urban development,” said Schack.
“It's a huge challenge to try and solve. These are major development
issues and it should be much more of a priority for the international
community as well, to support seriously needed improvements.”
A new national IDP strategy
Although IDPs engage in a sort of de facto integration, the Afghan
government has no specific services in place to facilitate this process
and no allocated spending either this year or last for IDPs.
However, with support from UNHCR and others, a national government
strategy on IDPs, devised by MoRR, promises to create a more structured
approach this year.
A first draft of the strategy has been written and sent to relevant
government ministries for consultation, though a January deadline for
responses passed without any feedback, and MoRR officials are worried
about a lack of enthusiasm in other departments.
One thing the strategy aims to tackle is the confusion over how
different parts of government - MoRR, the Afghanistan National Disaster
Management Authority (ANDMA), or provincial governments - relate to each
other on IDPs.
“There are big coordination gaps on the government side. Over the years
the number of IDPs has increased and increased and so have the needs,
and the government and the international humanitarian community have not
been able to address the needs,” said MoRR’s Hami.
The draft IDP policy puts more pressure on municipalities to do more to support integration.
“A national policy will make it official that there is a population of
IDPs in need and will outline how responsibilities will be shared. It’s
an important step forward because it makes the government responsible
for the issue,” said Majidi.
Such a document would outline the responsibilities of the humanitarian
community as well. “The national policy will help establish a framework
understood by everyone - more clarity is definitely a good thing,” said
UNHCR’s Schack.
Even between humanitarian agencies, coordination can be a problem, says
the NRC report, which criticizes a lack of information-sharing that
makes it more difficult to profile, help, and follow-up on IDPs: “Once
the first stage of emergency assistance is over, coordination between
agencies becomes blurred and follow-up referrals and support minimal.”
While UNHCR has responsibility for conflict-induced IDPs, those
displaced by natural disasters fall under the remit of the International
Organization for Migration (IOM).
Aid shortfall
Regardless of strategies, for the time being IDPs will continue to be dependent on aid.
But humanitarian agencies’ projects in the 2012 Consolidated Appeals
Process (CAP) received only 45 percent of the US$448 million appeal - in
percentage terms the world’s fourth-least funded humanitarian crisis.
Agencies say the shortfall undermined plans to support IDPs, despite them being one of the priorities in the 2012 appeal.
In 2012, some 244,000 IDPs and returning refugees received non-food item
(NFI) kits, according to the 2013 Common Humanitarian Action Plan;
UNHCR has been providing blankets, stoves and firewood, as well as
running small-scale projects in IDP areas, such as flood protection and
constructing secondary access roads.
A well-funded aid programme and the right reforms and policies to allow
IDPs to gain a degree of security, stability and employment, could
significantly decrease their vulnerability, and it would also send a
positive message to the 2.7 million Afghans outside the country - the
largest refugee population in the world: Returnees often find themselves
unable to return to their home regions for security reasons and risk
ending up in positions little different from IDPs.