Weaving Afghanistan’s Hope and Displacement Actions Together (WAHDAT)  

- Enabling Durable Solutions in Areas of Return in Western Afghanistan - an Interagency Project Funded by the Special Trust Fund for Afghanistan (STFA)  

Overview 

Herat and Farah provinces in western Afghanistan are experiencing one of the most urgent displacement waves ever. Since early 2025, large-scale returns from Iran have placed immense pressure on already overstretched urban services, housing markets, and livelihood systems. WAHDAT – Weaving Afghanistan’s Hope and Displacement Actions Together – is a joint programme implemented by UN-Habitat, UNDP, IOM, and UNHCR, funded through the Special Trust Fund for Afghanistan (STFA), aiming to support people in vulnerable situations in areas of high returns for advancing towards durable solutions and sustainable reintegration.  

With a total reach of 649,649 beneficiaries, WAHDAT is one of the largest durable solutions programmes in Afghanistan, strengthening urban and peri-urban (re-)integration capacity of communities and neighbourhood resilience in areas of high return in Western Afghanistan. 

Geographic Focus 

• Herat Province: Herat City, Injil, Guzara 

• Farah Province: Farah City 

UN-Habitat's strategic contribution to the interagency cooperation  

The western regions, and specifically Herat and Farah, have seen a large-scale growth of populations, including in their urban and peri-urban areas. Durable solutions and responses to the massive population increase in urban areas (due to both, returns from Iran and accelerated also through climate change and rural-urban migration) need specific responses, which differ from those in rural communities. UN-Habitat's contribution to the WAHDAT project therefore focuses on the importance of strengthening urban systems and settlement resilience in contexts of large-scale returns.  

UN-Habitat’s role 

The overall programme supports durable reintegration of returnees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) while enhancing social cohesion and climate resilience in vulnerable neighbourhoods. UN-Habitat leads participatory planning processes and risk assessments through community engagement (including using Participatory Hazard Vulnerability Capacity Assessments/PHVCA) to identify risks, but also works with communities on infrastructure priorities, strengthening local ownership, and ensuring resilience to climate change and fostering re-integration.  
UN-Habitat's interventions focus on shelter and settlement upgrading (through community infrastructures), climate adaptation and urban agriculture initiatives, and Housing, Land and Property (HLP) activities. 

Key Interventions 

• Shelter repair: Owner-driven shelter repair of 880 houses for vulnerable households, including women-headed families and newly returned families. Installation of 200 environmentally sustainable latrines improves sanitation, safety, and housing security. By training local masons on earthquake-resilient construction methods, long-term sustainability can be achieved through improved capacity of local actors, which will also scale up the number of people benefiting from more earthquake-resilient houses.  

• Neighbourhood upgrading: Participatory spatial planning leads to investments in roads, drainage systems, flood mitigation infrastructure, WASH facilities, wastewater systems, public spaces, and climate-resilient community infrastructure – as prioritised by the communities in the respective neighbourhoods. These interventions benefit 490,000 people. 

• Urban agriculture: Innovative initiatives such as household, community, and school gardens strengthen food security, women’s participation, and social cohesion. Climate-smart practices reduce vulnerability to food insecurity, in a context like Western Afghanistan, where drought is among the major challenges for food security. 

• Climate Resilience: Based on UN-Habitat's community-driven, participatory assessments such as the “Participatory Hazard Vulnerability Capacity Assessment” (PHVCA), community infrastructures that protect people’s assets, as well as awareness-raising activities, will increase the resilience of communities to floods, droughts and other climate-related hazards.  

• Cash-for-work: Labour-intensive activities linked to settlement upgrading, environmental rehabilitation, and infrastructure maintenance provide livelihoods for at least 1,600 direct beneficiaries and an additional 400 craftsmen. 

• HLP security: Participatory settlement mapping, tenure awareness, and support to communal and household-level documentation reduce risks of eviction and secondary displacement, playing a major role in empowering people to feel safe in their homes and encouraging them to further invest in their homes as well as neighbourhoods. 

Impact 

WAHDAT strengthens resilience in displacement-affected communities by: 

• Improving access to safe housing and essential services 

• Enhancing food security and livelihoods 

• Reducing climate risks through adaptation and disaster-resilient infrastructure 

• Supporting women’s participation and social cohesion 

• Securing tenure rights and reducing protection risks 

UN-Habitat's interventions complement the actions by sister agencies: if people have improved and safe living environments – from housing to public areas to more climate-resilient neighbourhoods – they can then focus on livelihoods and income generation.  

A similar approach has been used in the North-East of Afghanistan, also jointly implemented by the four agencies (IOM, UNDP, UN-Habitat and UNHCR). Under the Participatory Action for Integrated Developmental Assistance to Areas of Return PAIDAAR project, also funded by STFA, the four agencies support returnees and local communities for re-integration, improved, climate-resilient and safe living environments, access to safe housing and livelihoods.  

Both the PAIDAAR and the WAHDATA project underline how area-based approaches and integrated approaches are needed to enable durable solutions for returnees. UN-Habitat in Afghanistan has implemented area-based, community-driven and multi-sectoral projects, based on spatial/urban planning approaches since 1992, aiming to support the most vulnerable in locations where they have settled and improve human settlements of all sizes through its interventions.  

More projects and approaches on how UN-Habitat's work supports returnees and displacement-affected communities can be found here (link will be placed soon - stay tuned)