Wazir Khan Jam is a long-established settlement named after Wazir Khan, son of Shir Mohammad Khan, a respected landowner who helped shape the community. Residents, who settled permanently during the time of Zahir Shah, shifted from a nomadic lifestyle due to access to land and agriculture. The settlement now includes about 600 households: 381 local families, 150 returnees from nearby provinces, 40 IDP households, 29 returnees from Pakistan, and 33 women headed households.

Most returnees own land for housing and farming, while around 40 IDP families have land only for shelter. Agriculture is the main livelihood, with over 2,000 jeribs of irrigated and 600 jeribs of rainfed land producing wheat, sesame, corn, vegetables, fruit, and supporting small livestock. Unemployment is high, rising above 70% in winter, particularly affecting youth. Skilled workers in masonry, carpentry, and mobile repair lack tools, while women show interest in tailoring, pickle making, dairy processing, and poultry if provided training and support.
A newly established SubHealth Centre (SHC), supported by Bakhtar Development Network (BDN), offers OPD, gynecology, vaccinations, and basic care, but operates from three small rooms in a donated home and lacks adequate WASH facilities, electricity, staffing, and medical supplies.
Education access is limited to one overcrowded primary school with four teachers for about 300 students and insufficient WASH, heating, cooling, and electricity. Two madrassas serve roughly 200 learners. WASH conditions are critical: only 2 of 14 hand pumps installed under the NSP still function, forcing about 90% of households to rely on untreated canal water.
Most shelters are mud structures, with only 5% built of masonry or concrete. Around 40 households require new shelters or major repairs, and more than 30 need rehabilitation but lack financial means. The settlement is not connected to the electricity grid, roads remain unpaved and in poor condition, and Salam is the only reliable mobile network.
Overall, Wazir Khan Jam faces significant challenges in shelter, WASH, health, education, and livelihoods, yet remains socially cohesive and willing to participate in development initiatives if provided appropriate support.

Afghanistan has faced a major returnee crisis since September 2023, with more than 2.8 million people having returned to the country in 2025 only. The Integration of returnees is a major component - allowing them to advance towards durable solutions to displacement. In order to strengthen social cohesion with local communities, UN-Habitat fosters participatory and inclusive, community-driven processes. Listening to communities, including both local and displaced people, understanding their specific needs but also analysing climate-change related risks are first crucial steps for then programming for durable solutions that are tailored to the local context as well as based on people’s priorities.

UN-Habitat has implemented the “Participatory Hazard, Vulnerabilities, Capacity Assessment” (PHVCA) more many years, to ensure that people’s voices are heard and that local knowledge (on risks and opportunities) is captured. The findings of the PHVCA then informs Community Action Plans (CAPs) and allows programming and implementation of community projects that serve displaced people, returnees and local communities through an area-based approach.

Participatory processes foster integration and social cohesion, investments in community infrastructures and basic services, shelter and housing solutions and enabling livelihood opportunities are key for enabling returnees to become self-reliant and live in dignity.

Afghanistan faces complex displacement and reintegration challenges. Decades of conflict have resulted in a legacy of 6 million Internally Displaced People (IDPs), while an emerging post-conflict trend has seen a surge in cross-border returns – between 600,000 and 1.5 million people have been forcibly returned to Afghanistan since 2023. In this context, Afghanistan’s informal settlements are emerging as key sites of displacement, hosting large populations of both protracted IDPs and recent returnees.

Residents of informal settlement face severe HLP risks, including growing threats of eviction, which have limited investments in housing, critical infrastructure and services. Afghanistan’s climate breakdown exacerbates these challenges, exposing vulnerable residents to floods, droughts and associated disease. Women are disproportionately affected due to their roles in domestic labor and childcare, which increase during times of climate shocks. Strengthening HLP rights in such areas underpin investments in gender-sensitive, climate-resilient housing and community infrastructure, and are prerequisite to sustainable reintegration of displaced populations residing in informal settlements.

In response to these challenges, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) engaged UN-Habitat to implement a research and capacity-building project aimed at advancing sustainable solutions for displacement-affected communities in Afghanistan. Beginning in 2023, the Housing Land and Property (HLP) Rights of Displacement-affected Communities in Afghanistan project promotes data-driven, gender-responsive, and climate-resilient HLP programming. Focusing on six informal settlements in Jalalabad and Herat—key sites of internal displacement and hubs for returnees from Pakistan and Iran, respectively—the project addressed HLP insecurity, climate vulnerability, and gender inequality through an integrated HLP and climate resilience programmatic approach. Read more...

In 2018, the Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) and the Global Compact for Refugees (GCR) were adopted by the vast majority of UN Member States.

During the preparatory processes for both Compacts, local authorities, among other stakeholders, were included and actively contributed to the global migration agenda. The Marrakech Mayoral Declaration (MMD, 2018) reaffirmed cities as key actors as they pledged to stand in solidarity, increase inter-city collaboration and play a critical role in shaping a more positive narrative on migration. Both Global Compacts acknowledged the importance of local authorities for shaping and implementation of these international commitments. However, while some local (city-level) authorities are successfully implementing innovative systems and approaches, others, who are also at the forefront of reception, basic service delivery, inclusion and rights protection of migrant populations, struggle and lack comprehensive guidance, resources, and capacity to move their work forward collectively.

The Center for Mediterranean Integration (CMI), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Conference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the United Nations Education, Science and Culture Organization (UNESCO), and the World Health Organization (WHO) therefore worked together with the Mayors Mechanism of the GMFD (UCLG, MMC and IOM) to support local authorities in advancing the implementation of the Global Compacts.

The contributing organizations developed this guidance document in an attempt to:

1. Provide cities with field-tested guidance to proactively shape their local inclusion measures;
2. Showcase the contribution cities across the world are providing to the implementation of the SDGs, the GCM and GCR;
3. Tap into cutting-edge existing support on the key dimensions contributing to local inclusion.

The report highlights the experience of land readjustment in the Republic of Korea dating back to 1930. Learning from practice, training, and experience offers vital support to local and national governments, urban practitioners, and policymakers. Through the country's experience, physical, social, economic, and cultural parameters of land readjustment in similar contexts can be better understood.

The “Housing, Land and Property Issues of Syrian Refugees in Lebanon from Homs City” project was launched in 2017 in partnership with UNHCR and with the support of the Ford Foundation. The aim of the study is to analyze the housing arrangements that refugees coming from Homs city have secured, seven years into the crisis, in addition to their living conditions, the implications of their legal status on their presence in Lebanon, and the role/influence of social networks - characteristic of this community coming from the city of Homs - on their access to shelter and trajectories. The project contributes to the knowledge about refugee trajectories in the context of a protracted refugee crisis particularly in relation to shelter acquisition. The results reported in this study can promote public awareness about the implications of the absence of affordable housing programs and the current restrictions that refugees in Lebanon face to access adequate shelter. They can further inform policymakers and other actors in the shelter sector about the current operations of the housing market.

Partners: UN-Habitat and UNHCR

Locations: Lebanon, Syrian Arab Republic, Homs

Donors: Ford Foundation

In May 2009, three decades of conflict came to end in Sri Lanka. While the entire country had suffered as a result, districts in the North and East were devastated. Families were displaced on multiple occasions, compelled to leave their homes for many years. When people eventually returned to their villages, most of their houses had been either badly damaged or completely destroyed. As the majority of people affected were relatively poor with marginal incomes and little or no savings, they were unable to sustain major financial shocks, especially the loss of livelihoods and housing.

Through a series of photographs taken by UN-Habitat and SDC staff members during the implementation of the project, this publication documents the stories of courage, resilience and recovery of a cross section of the homeowners who have successfully reconstructed their homes.

Ten principles can be followed to produce the sort of equal post-conflict settlement planning that can help to build communities that have a better basis of becoming peaceful and sustainable. These are:

1. Gender factors should be integrated in post-conflict settlement planning.
2. Post-conflict settlement planning should increase the safety and security of all groups.
3. Women grassroots organizations should be involved in post-conflict settlement planning.
4. A spatial framework should be used to facilitate the improvement of gender-sensitive coordination of post-crisis settlement planning.
5. The planning process should be people-centred and include both women and men.
6. Planning should be about building back better and increasing crisis resilience, peace and the inclusiveness of all groups.
7. Spatial planning should frame interventions as first steps towards socially, politically and economically equal neighborhoods and cities.
8. Planning should be integrated, linking infrastructure, services and livelihoods in a way that recognizes both women and men needs.
9. Planning should generate economic recovery and growth if addressed equally.
10. Planning should be monitored and evaluated.