IOM’s shelter and NFI interventions will aim to preserve the immediate safety and well-being of vulnerable Afghan IDPs, returnees, refugees, migrants and their host communities and to gradually improve living standards. A combination of in-kind and cash-based modalities will be used depending on the context and will be done in line with cluster standard approaches. Specific needs and vulnerabilities of beneficiaries (especially women and girls) as well as other protection concerns will be identified through sectoral assessments and will be considered in the shelter and NFI interventions. 

• Emergency shelter and NFI assistance, including for winterization, will be provided to people directly impacted by new shocks. This will include the procurement, pre-positioning and distribution of essential items for IDPs that have been affected by conflict and disasters, for cross-border returnees and refugees, for people facing multiple shocks, as well as for those who are extremely vulnerable. 
• Transitional shelter support (through shelter construction, repairs/upgrade, rental subsidies) will be provided in areas of protracted displacement, in areas of return and in newly accessible areas in order to enable safer and more dignified living standards and prevent recovering communities from slipping back into humanitarian need. 
• Active participation and engagement in country-level coordination mechanisms (including the co-leadership of the ES-NFI cluster in Afghanistan, that currently also covers the CCCM working group) will be reinforced in order to ensure a timely, effective, context-specific and needs-based sectoral response.  

Health has been identified as a key priority area by all humanitarian actors, including access to lifesaving primary and secondary health care services, and mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) services. Weak health systems and disrupted access to health care have left millions of Afghans, both in Afghanistan and in neighbouring countries, with mounting health needs, compounded further by the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, due to past conflicts and the recent political turmoil and economic hardships, many Afghans experienced different forms of violence, displacement and other potentially traumatic events and have to cope with these experiences as well as the psychosocial impact on their lives. 

Ensuring the availability and accessibility to the basic package of health services as well as emergency health care, including sexual and reproductive health services, remains essential for meeting the needs of IDPs, returnees, migrants, refugees and other mobile populations, including for women and girls, and host communities. To respond to these needs, IOM activities will include

• deployment of mobile medical teams and overall expansion of health activities, including in border areas;
• provision of MHPSS services for vulnerable migrants, including through mobile teams and community-based support; 
• health and hygiene promotion as well as Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE) activities.

Four decades of conflict, recent measures curtailing population’s freedom and human rights, increasing hunger, limited access to basic services, rising poverty and resulting population movements have severely impacted the humanitarian and protection situation across the region. The most vulnerable include, among others, those exposed to forced, multiple and often extended periods of displacement, undocumented Afghan returnees, children, the older people, households headed by women and people with disabilities. Raising protection concerns (including population safety and security, freedom of movement, denial of and inability to access services, lack of civil documentation, human rights violations and systematic discrimination against civilians, including against women and girls) have increased vulnerabilities and exposure to risks, including the risk of trafficking and gender-based violence (GBV), and pushed many to adopt harmful coping mechanisms. 
IOM’s response will focus on 

• strengthening protection monitoring and analysis in areas of high mobility and cross-border locations; 
• identifying and providing targeted protection services and assistance for persons with specific needs, including through case management and individual protection assistance and/or referral to partners’ services; 
• strengthening referrals mechanisms and partners’ protection knowledge and skills including on protection mainstreaming, psychological first aid, GBV, child protection, legal assistance and counselling on civil documentation, counter-trafficking principles and best practices; 
• enhancing community-based protection mechanisms and increasing protection actors’ capacities to provide timely and quality protection services, including access to information on services, asylum, and other relevant topics. 

Overall, IOM will also ensure protection mainstreaming across all sectors and activities is strengthened.  
 

The lagging effects of recent years’ droughts, conflict and the COVID-19 pandemic, combined with large-scale cross-border population movements and recurring natural disasters have diminished people’s access to essential services, including WASH infrastructure and services. Emphasis will be put on ensuring that people in areas of high mobility, return, protracted displacement, in displacement sites and at key border crossing points have safe access to potable water in sufficient quantity as well as sanitation and hygiene sustainable infrastructure and services. Hygiene promotion and the distribution of hygiene kits will be integrated into the sectoral response whilst efforts will be made to ensure that gender and protection concerns are taken into consideration. Across all targeted locations, delivering a WASH minimum package of services will be the response priority and will include the following activities: construction and rehabilitation of WASH facilities, through the incorporation of gender mainstreaming considerations (i.e., set-up of gender-balanced community-led committees), culturally appropriate safe hygiene messaging, set-up of core pipeline for WASH supplies.

This includes:

• Assessment, rehabilitation and expansion of water schemes;
• Management of water schemes through the creation of gender-balanced community-led WASH committees;
• Hygiene promotion and awareness raising activities, focus on risk mitigation measures for transmittable diseases, including COVID-19 and AWD/cholera;
• Provision of basic hygiene kits inclusive of menstrual hygiene management (MHM) items.

It is estimated that there are currently more than 12,00 informal settlements hosting IDPs and returnees across the 34 provinces of Afghanistan with the latest data indicating no more than 60% having access to humanitarian assistance. The CCCM Working Group aims to reach 430,000 IDPs living in precarious condition in informal settlements scattered all over the country. Given the deterioration of the economic and humanitarian situation, there is an urgent need to continue working with these communities. As such, the CCCM working group has been established in Afghanistan to ensure that the provision of humanitarian assistance within these sites is coordinated, that sectoral gaps in terms of assistance and protection are identified and that information on the number and profile of displaced populations in the sites is updated and shared with the humanitarian community on a regular basis. As the global co-lead of the CCCM cluster, IOM aims to reinforce its support towards the coordination of the working group as well as its operational presence at site-level. IOM Afghanistan through its CCCM programming seeks to provide support to IDPs, returnees and underserved host communities to access multisectoral assistance through community resource centers (CrCs) and mobile outreach teams by setting up a system of interconnected CRCs and mobile outreach teams to ensure the provision of humanitarian aid and essential services, especially in the most underserved and hard-to-reach areas. 

This includes:

• Build community participation mechanisms (i.e., camp committees composed of displaced populations and host community representative, women’s, elderly and youth groups, etc.), linking displaced populations to the relevant local governmental counterparts, and strengthening access to basic services through site development and mitigation activities.
• Conduct systematic information management, and advocacy to inform and mobilize local actors and humanitarian partners adequately.
• IOM site planning will primarily focus on rationalizing shelter alignments and spacing within the sites, improving drainage, lighting, creating WASH corridors, improving accessibility with a view of reducing exposure to public health and GBV risks as well as fire hazards as well as the construction or rehabilitation of essential infrastructure. 
• Support the identification of durable solutions and facilitate, local integration, relocation/resettlement or return and reintegration as relevant.

In addition to addressing the adverse drivers of migration and displacement in Afghanistan, IOM recognizes the need to establish adequate response mechanisms and strengthen integrated border management systems to protect Afghans crossing borders and ensure they can move through safe and regular pathways. National border management agencies including immigration, police, customs and armed forces will need to be equipped with operational mechanisms that are designed to respond to changing movement patterns. This support will include:

• capacity building on coordinated and human rights-based border management approaches, including health and protection considerations for safe and inclusive cross-border mobility; 
• donation of equipment and rehabilitation of infrastructures at key border posts.
• support dialogues with governments to advance regional approaches to the mobility crisis, providing capacity building support on the development and operationalization of humanitarian border management procedures, including counter-trafficking strategies, as well as equipment and infrastructural support for key border crossing points.

Community engagement is core to enabling affected people to be directly involved in their recovery process and support local decision making and advocacy. IOM will work with the local authorities, local host communities, displaced populations and local civil society organizations in areas of return and areas of protracted displacement to promote stability at the local level as a step out of crisis or fragility, thus paving the way for more sustainable development approaches. 

IOM’s community stabilization approach combines addressing multi-sectoral early recovery needs with a specific focus on addressing the factors that destabilized communities, whilst restoring horizontal cohesion across communities as well as vertical social contracts with local leadership to build resilient communities, and support durable solutions for displaced populations. 

As part of this approach:

• communities will be provided with capacity building support on basic conflict interpersonal and community-based mediation skills, especially in areas where this type of intervention may be required to mitigate potential inter-community tensions triggered by the arrival of additional displaced populations (or Afghan nationals in neighbouring countries). 
• community-based planning for infrastructures rehabilitation projects will contribute to communities’ recovery processes. 
• activities such as integrated MHPSS interventions (including social, ritual and recreational activities) and community volunteers training in psychological first aid (PFA), will promote relationship-building, trust and problem solving, and overall strengthen social cohesion and resilience. 

In line with the IASC Framework on Durable Solutions for IDPs and returning Afghan refugees and IOM’s Progressive Resolution of Displacement Situations (PRDS Strategy), IOM will work in collaboration with relevant stakeholders, including diaspora communities around the world, as well as the displaced population, to establish conditions and to provide the means that would allow IDPs to return voluntarily, in safety and dignity, to their homes, to integrate in the local community or to resettle voluntarily in another part of the country. At the same time, IOM will be looking at strengthening social, economic and psychosocial resilience of displacement affected communities, by revitalizing local economic conditions and social service infrastructure.

Displaced communities in Afghanistan, as well as Afghan nationals and their host communities in neighbouring countries, will be supported through 

• income generating interventions aiming at strengthening their capacity to respond to future shocks with adverse impacts and contribute towards sustainable recovery. 
• labor market and value chain assessments will be informing the areas of focus for interventions, which include rehabilitation of local infrastructure and services through Quick Impact Projects (QIPs); 
• emergency livelihood assistance through cash-for-work on construction sites, asset replacement and emergency business grants; 
• vocational training, on-the-job training opportunities and apprenticeships; support to new and existing small businesses through business support packages.
• support national and local governments in neighbouring countries to advance inclusive and integrated policy approaches that address the needs of Afghans and host communities. 
• In neighbouring countries, provide policy support and capacity development to national/ local governments as well as host communities to ensure migrants are part of recovery planning and implementation, including policy solutions for upskilling and reskilling of migrants and promotion of multistakeholder engagement on inclusive recovery policies.  
• facilitate the recognition of skills and access to the labor market and promote decent work for Afghans and host communities as part of national and local employment strategies. 
• work on diaspora engagement and mobilization for recovery, in cooperation with governments and other partners.

In Afghanistan and across the region IOM has observed a significant need to improve and strengthen the coordination and delivery of existing health services, including MHPSS, in vulnerable communities, particularly at border areas and areas of high mobility, to help address the complex health needs of returnees, alongside IDPs, and host communities.

IOM will respond to these needs by :

• supporting the financing, running and implementation of critical health facilities, to bridge gaps in public health infrastructures; 
• advocating for the access of migrants and displaced communities to health and mental health services, as well as for their integration in national policies and strategies; enhancing disease surveillance and RCCE mechanisms; 
• supporting  capacity building efforts for medical personnel in targeted subject areas; procuring essential medicines, medical supplies and equipment.
• enhancing the integration of health and border management systems to prevent, detect and respond to COVID-19 and other public health threats at points of entry and other areas of high mobility. 
• supporting equitable access to vaccines, the improvement and rehabilitation of key health facility infrastructure, increase of health system capacity through capacity building and development of policy and pilot schemes that ensure an inclusive health system recovery, diaspora engagement to strengthen human resources for health, including via health worker training/retraining, virtual consultations and transfer of knowledge.

As part of preparedness efforts in communities that face a high-risk of disaster and displacement, IOM supports hazard and vulnerability analysis, community-based disaster risk management, livelihoods' diversification strategies and the set-up of community early warning and preparedness systems to mitigate risk and enable a more effective response.

Aligning with the Sendai Framework, IOM will work towards preventing the worst impacts on vulnerable populations living in disaster-prone areas through:

• constructing small-scale disaster risk management (DRM) infrastructures (such as gabion walls or irrigation systems) and
• implementing Community-Based Disaster Risk Management (CBDRM) through the development of Community Disaster Management Action Plans, community hazard maps and early warning systems.

IOM Iran will specifically work with government officials and humanitarian partners on capacity building initiatives on risk reduction and disaster prevention, including training on CCCM, training on evacuation planning and management .

The systematic collection, analysis and dissemination of baseline data on internal displacement, returns and cross-border movements as well as data on the evolving needs of the population groups on the move enables IOM, governments and partners to have a better understanding of the complex mobility dynamics across the region and contribute to more effective, evidence-based responses. IOM will continue to work in collaboration with UN agencies and other key stakeholders on assessments and other data collection activities to inform strategic planning processes and ensure complementarity and coordinated work across humanitarian, development and peace sectors.

Activities will include: 

• Emergency data collection: In case of sudden and significant internal population movements, emergency data collection mechanisms (such as the Event Tracking Tool (ETT)) shall be deployed to collect and share close to real-time information on the location, the number of affected populations and their immediate priority needs. 
• Mobility tracking: Complementary to the alert mechanism cited above, mobility tracking (baseline mobility and community-based needs) assessments will provide a comprehensive overview of the displacement situation country-wide, allowing to prioritize resources and humanitarian response activities within defined locations.  These assessments will be implemented with the objective of providing estimates on the presence, numbers of affected population groups, reasons for displacement, length of displacement and specific needs of the displaced population and host communities.  
• Cross-border tracking: Data on cross-border movement flows at key transit and border crossing points will be collected, regularly shared with partners such as UN agencies, national authorities, and clusters/sectors and inter-cluster/ inter-sector coordination mechanisms, facilitating better data exchange and having evidence-based response and assistance, and will include information on the profiles, journey, intentions and observed/reported vulnerabilities of populations on the move.
• Conduct research and assessments on host government capacities for migration management, as well as the impact of the crisis on migrant protection and assistance, including return and reintegration, migration patterns, criminal networks, cost for services, incidents of violence, exploitation and abuse, to inform preparedness and response programming.
• Increase the understanding of the impact of the Afghan crisis on host communities and societies, as well as opportunities and challenges for sustainable development priorities through data- and research-related initiatives to support national and local planning mechanisms and policies in response to evolving mobility dynamics, for example, through migration profiles, research on diaspora and remittances, labor market needs and skills mapping of existing migrant workforce in the country as well as assessments on social cohesion/tensions within different communities and across different demographics within communities.
• Strengthen migration data gathering systems to ensure continuity of data collection, enhancement of analysis and forecasting capacities of governments and other partners for preparedness and inclusive development planning. 
• Identify structural drivers that increase displacement risks and unsafe, irregular migration and inform opportunities to prevent future displacement.
• Contextualize mobility trends and its different dimensions to promote broader policy considerations and public understanding of migration and mobility (displacement, migration, returns, remittances, food security, climate change).