Afghanistan

The decree of 24 Decem­ber 2022 pro­hibit­ing women from work­ing for nation­al and inter­na­tion­al NGOs has made it more dif­fi­cult to imple­ment projects where women are placed on an equal foot­ing with men, both as ben­e­fi­cia­ries and as imple­ment­ing partners.

In 2023, Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion extend­ed its con­tri­bu­tion to a health project set up by the Aga Kahn Foun­da­tion (AKF). The project con­sists of pro­vid­ing med­ical assis­tance to vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple — main­ly women, chil­dren and old­er peo­ple — and to pris­on­ers, in the provinces of Badakhshan, Takhar and Bagh­lan. In 2023, an addi­tion­al EUR 800,000 was grant­ed to AKF to ensure the con­ti­nu­ity of basic health ser­vices in Afghanistan, which is increas­ing­ly hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty in pro­vid­ing essen­tial services.

At the end of 2023, Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion signed an agree­ment with the Ger­man NGO Kiron Open High­er Edu­ca­tion for the project ​“Thrive – Enabling Access to Job Mar­ket for Young Afghan Women”, which con­sists of pro­vid­ing online voca­tion­al train­ing cours­es for young Afghan women, so that they can start their own busi­ness­es. The pro­gramme also enables ben­e­fi­cia­ries to estab­lish con­tacts in the pro­fes­sion­al world. Since the cours­es are online, Kiron pro­vides the nec­es­sary tech­ni­cal equip­ment for young women, which they can keep at the end of their studies.

Since June 2023, Lux­em­bourg has also sup­port­ed the NGO Front Line Defend­ers (FLD) in the field of pro­tect­ing human rights defend­ers. FLD pro­vides prac­ti­cal sup­port to human rights defend­ers at risk through evac­u­a­tion assis­tance, pro­tec­tion grants and safe­ty advice. FLD is aimed pri­mar­i­ly at mar­gin­alised peo­ple, who do not have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to access oth­er pro­tec­tion mech­a­nisms or oth­er organ­i­sa­tions. The project, which is expect­ed to last four years, was able to ben­e­fit from a bud­get exten­sion in Decem­ber 2023, fol­low­ing the numer­ous atroc­i­ties on Afghan refugees who had returned from Pakistan.

Mul­ti­lat­er­al­ly, Lux­em­bourg is con­tribut­ing EUR 500,000 per year until 2024 to the project ​“House­hold Food and Liveli­hood Secu­ri­ty (HLFS) and Sup­port for the Devel­op­ment of an Effec­tive Exten­sion Sys­tem” by the Unit­ed Nations Food and Agri­cul­ture Orga­ni­za­tion (FAO), in the area of food secu­ri­ty, which has become increas­ing­ly frag­ile in Afghanistan since the Tal­iban took pow­er. The project aims to reduce food inse­cu­ri­ty among the poor­est fam­i­lies in four dis­tricts in par­tic­u­lar, name­ly Cha­har Asyab, Jabal Sir­aj, Qarghayi and Moham­mad Agha. The project involves the care­ful selec­tion of means of sub­sis­tence, tar­get­ing diverse sources of income and food, and intro­duc­ing tech­nolo­gies and prac­tices geared towards resilience and adap­ta­tion to cli­mate change.

Luxembourg’s Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion is also part of the Spe­cial Trust Fund for Afghanistan (STFA), along­side 11 oth­er donor coun­tries and 17 UN organ­i­sa­tions. The Trust Fund was estab­lished to pre­vent a human­i­tar­i­an dis­as­ter and the socio-eco­nom­ic col­lapse of the coun­try, which would lead to increased insta­bil­i­ty, seri­ous secu­ri­ty threats and migra­to­ry flows in Afghanistan, the region and beyond. The Fund serves as an interin­sti­tu­tion­al mech­a­nism for donors to chan­nel their resources and coor­di­nate their sup­port to the ABADEI strat­e­gy (Area Based Approach for Devel­op­ment Emer­gency Ini­tia­tives), imple­ment­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with oth­er UN agen­cies, funds and pro­grammes. In 2023, Lux­em­bourg grant­ed an addi­tion­al con­tri­bu­tion of EUR 2 mil­lion to meet the grow­ing needs in the coun­try, espe­cial­ly those of women and girls.