Afghanistan is a country of extremes: extreme beauty, an extremely strategic location, and a country with many natural resources and extremely resilient people but is still a country where people face extreme socio-economic and human rights challenges.

The Afghanistan Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan (HRNP) 2025 names climate change-induced and natural hazards, inadequate or lack of service provision, decades of conflict and geopolitical dynamics, a weak economy and the socio-political restrictions (among many others) reasons, why almost half of the population were estimated to require humanitarian assistance of any form.

UN-Habitat has been supporting the people of Afghanistan since 1992. As the agency has just launched a new strategic plan at global level for 2026-2029, this paper focuses on strategic priorities for UN-Habitat Afghanistan for 2026 and 2027. Those priorities have been defined through analysis of the agency’s (and other partners’) data and the consultations with the communities and people in Afghanistan and are in alignment with the agency’s overall mandate, the global priorities and the agency’s role in the United Nations family in Afghanistan and the agreed upon priorities at country level (UNSFA 2023-2027).

For our team at UN-Habitat Afghanistan, those priorities will be:
A.    Support the most vulnerable people by creating and enabling dignified living conditions and livelihood opportunities with a specific focus on those living in unplanned, underserviced and informal settlements 
B.    Enhance preparedness, response, recovery, and reconstruction
C.     Accelerate environmental and climate actions to save lives, livelihoods and assets

Acknowledging that women and girls, displaced people but also other marginalized groups are most at risk of being left behind in Afghanistan at the time of writing, we are committed to inclusive, participatory and gender-sensitive solutions and striving towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and based on the New Urban Agenda as a shared vision for a better and more sustainable future.
 

The lack of recognition of the right of self-determination and the large-scale dispossession and degradation of their lands, resources and territories has had a devastating effect on indigenous peoples’ livelihoods, cultures and overall socio-economic conditions. Widespread poverty and destitution flowing from this has had a significant impact on their housing. Indigenous peoples often lack security of tenure and live constantly with the threat of forced eviction from their homes and/or lands. In some countries, indigenous peoples are often found in over-crowded houses that are in poor condition and that often have neither schools nor hospitals nearby. Indigenous women and men face discrimination in most aspects of housing. Housing and development policies and programmes either discriminate against indigenous peoples directly or have discriminatory effects. The loss of traditional lands andhousing contributes to the increased migration of indigenous peoples to urban centres, where barriers to adequate housing (such as unemployment/poverty, discrimination, and lack of affordable and adequate housing) are particularly acute.

Indigenous women in particular often bear the brunt of these inadequate conditions. At the same time, they experience gender-specific problems, such as domestic violence, together with discrimination and inequality as a result of institutional and cultural factors. These often curtail or prohibit women’s access to, control over and the right to inherit land, property and housing. Indigenous peoples with disabilities, youth and children, elders and sexual minorities also experience greater adverse conditions in housing.