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...

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.
 

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.

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.
 

This report is an evaluation of the Clean and Green Cities Programme (CGC) implemented by UN-Habitat Afghanistan with funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the European Union (EU) between June 2016 and June 2019 with a total budget of USD 34. 8 million. It was implemented in 12 cities, three (Kabul, Kundooz, and Lashkar Gah) by the EU and ten (Bamyan, Charikar, Farah, Gardez, Herat, Jalalabad, Kabul, Kandahar, Mazar, and Mehterlam) by USAID; Kabul being considered by both agencies. Its main objective was to improve state-society relations, urban stabilisation and job creation, where urban citizens see municipalities delivering basic neighbourhood services, thus leading to increased hope and government legitimacy.