Organizational Setting:
The United Nations Human Settlements Programme, UN-Habitat, is the agency for human settlements. It is mandated by the UN General Assembly to promote socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities. The UN-Habitat Afghanistan country office is part of the Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (ROAP). The position is in Bamiyan, Afghanistan.
Learning from the experience in the last 30 years and recognizing the realities of the current context in the country, UN-Habitat in Afghanistan designs and implements projects in settlements of all sizes, putting the needs of people first, targeting the most vulnerable and meeting local needs by focusing on area-based and community-driven outputs. The portfolio currently covers projects ranging from humanitarian responses to supporting recovery and meeting basic human needs. UN-Habitat collaborates closely with the UN country team as well as with technical and financial partners in Afghanistan, in alignment with the UN Strategic Framework for Afghanistan (UNSFA) and the Humanitarian Needs and Response Plans (HNRP). In alignment with those frameworks and the new UN-Habitat global strategic plan (2026-2029), UN-Habitat Afghanistan has recently published its strategic priorities for 2026-2027 for the office.
Afghanistan is experiencing a continuous humanitarian crisis, with over half a million people in the need of humanitarian assistance. Many people are displaced due to climate change, internal displacement or massive returns from neighboring countries, and many have sought refuge in the relative safety of cities, which are growing rapidly. The number of people living in unplanned, underserviced and informal settlements, including in risk prone areas, is increasing and living conditions as well as access to services is inadequate. The unfolding crisis in Afghan cities, which is accelerated by climate change impacts and natural disasters, is occurring in a context of underlying vulnerabilities, including infrastructure deficits, insecure livelihoods and pervasive tenure insecurity. Most at risk are displaced people in informal settlements, with women, disabled and ethnic minorities being particularly vulnerable.
UN-Habitat applies a participatory and community-driven approach, using participatory spatial planning and action planning processes to enable communities to identify and implement priority service and infrastructure investments to support their socioeconomic recovery processes and creating an enabling environment for durable solutions. UN-Habitat's community-cantered “People's Process” is a proven and effective approach to reduce vulnerability at scale in the Afghan context. UN-Habitat builds upon its long tradition of partnering with communities in informal settlements to create
sustainable and safe settlements, improve living conditions and adequate livelihood opportunities to those most in need.
About the Project
Afghanistan has seen a substantial increase in the number of people living in informal settlements, partly due to (forced) returns from neighboring countries and protracted internal displacement due to conflict and climate change, which since 2022, is the main cause for internal displacement. Living conditions in informal settlements, which are unplanned, lack basic services and put people at risks of forced evictions, often brings health challenges, due to absence of safe access to water, sanitation and unsafe housing conditions, which are specifically challenging for women and girls, who, due to the restrictions, are forced to spend more time at home or rely on neighborhood, community services.
While the overall socio-economic situation in Afghanistan is dire, the country is a place of huge heritage values. The cultural landscape and archaeological remains of the Bamiyan Valley characterize artistic and religious developments from the 1st to the 13th centuries. Tragically, however, over four decades of conflict and a protracted polyresins have severely damaged and continue to threaten Afghanistan’s irreplaceable cultural heritage.
Rapid urbanization and the growth of informal settlements close to heritage sites, such as in Bamiyan pose an acute challenge to Afghanistan’s cultural heritage, and living conditions of the people in those informal areas are often inadequate. Vulnerability in informal settlements is immense and compound: not only are they often located in hazard-prone areas, people, specifically women, also lack decent livelihood opportunities, adequate housing options, infrastructure and basic services, and people are at high risk of eviction. Women are especially also vulnerable, generally deriving any income from precarious informal sector activity. As overall poverty and desperation are on the rise, there is a risk that negative coping mechanisms will be applied by families in vulnerable situations to make ends meet. Living conditions in informal settlements lack adequate infrastructure and basic services such as solid waste and wastewater management, which has turned significant sites into dumpsites. This degradation affects also heritage sites, artefacts and the surrounding environment and severely impacts peoples´ health and environmental degradation is one of the major threats, stemming from inadequate settlement infrastructure and basic services such as solid waste and wastewater management.
With additional populations returning to Afghanistan, from Iran and Pakistan, and many settling in the region, durable solutions need to be prepared and planned for, as displaced people and displacement affected communities who already live informally near or at heritage sites and/or risk-prone areas. When thinking about “solutions”, enabling adequate living conditions, creating livelihood opportunities and protecting heritage need to be considered in an integrated way. Achieving this, however, requires carefully calibrated interventions that address the needs of communities and heritage properties alike. This programme seeks to do just that, offering a pilot of global interest, even in this complex context.
The project is implemented in cooperation with UNESCO, and while UN-Habitat focuses on improving living conditions of displaced people / returnees and displacement affected communities, UNESCO’s complements this approach through increasing skills of people for livelihoods in the cultural industries.
The joint Programme objective is to advance and enable durable solutions for returnees and displacement affected communities through inclusive livelihood opportunities paired with creating improvements of living conditions for people in vulnerable situations.
