For Afghans, aid can save
lives with disaster prevention
M. Ashraf Haidari
March 23, 2011
For someone who doesn't know Afghanistan well, it would be shocking to learn
that some eight million Afghans remain in acute need of humanitarian aid.
Because of the past three decades of war and destruction, it is no wonder
that the population includes vulnerable groups. They are destitute peasants
needing alternative livelihoods to poppy cultivation; refugees and internally
displaced persons who need aid to rebuild their lives; war victims in need of
welfare to escape psycho-social degradation; youths needing jobs to avoid
resorting to crime and violence; and women and children needing health-care
services to survive.
Although instability has impeded Afghanistan's development, the country is
landlocked, and also has an extremely rough and inaccessible terrain. This is
compounded by its pre-war status as one of the least developed countries,
meaning that even during peaceful times, Afghanistan suffered from recurrent
humanitarian crises due to frequent natural disasters: droughts, floods,
earthquakes, avalanches, pandemic diseases and so forth.
To prevent such disasters from taking their toll on the country's poorest,
humanitarian access is best ensured through long-term investment in the
country's sustainable development. The primary focus should be on institutional
capacity building, so that Afghans increasingly own and lead their country's
reconstruction.
Of course, this does not mean that availability of resources, institutional
capacity, and higher levels of development can always ensure humanitarian access
or negate the need for it in the first place. But such measures make a
substantial difference in saving millions of lives when disaster hits.
We know this from the recent cases of Haiti and Chile, both of which
experienced destructive earthquakes last year. Haiti is an under-developed
country that is ill-equipped to take preventive measures to manage disaster and
to coordinate aid efforts. By contrast, Chile is a developing country better
prepared institutionally to handle a humanitarian crisis and to help those in
need.
Developing societies such as Chile tend to have higher degrees of civic
participation, stronger social coping mechanisms, functioning markets and a
constructive civil society - all of which help to reduce the impact of natural
or man-made disasters. These mechanisms help to ensure better humanitarian
access in times of crisis.
Hence, the strategic solution to humanitarian access in Afghanistan is not
more of the same: a multitude of competing foreign aid organisations who bypass
the Afghan government and try to find more trucks and safer routes to deliver
food rations or drinking water to destitute people. Rather, the strategic
solution to humanitarian access is investing in prevention measures by building
institutions and diverting more foreign aid towards the socio-economic
development of Afghanistan.
Through many international conferences on Afghanistan, from the Tokyo
Conference in 2002 to the Kabul Conference last July, the Afghan government has
appealed to the donor community to comply with the objectives of its own
need-based development strategy.
An integral part of this strategy is properly sequenced development and
humanitarian aid to ensure prevention and effective management of disasters when
they occur. The country continues to call on its partners to deliver on their
pledges at the Kabul Conference, which were to channel at least 50 per cent of
their aid resources through the Afghan state, while ensuring that their
independent aid efforts comply with the priorities of Afghanistan's national
development strategy.
While present obstacles must be overcome, durable solutions based on the
Afghan development strategy must be assessed and be given top attention. In
other words, helping the Afghan government to design reconstruction and
development projects geared towards disaster prevention and management will go a
long way in lifting eight million Afghans out of abject poverty.
One prime example of success is Afghanistan's national solidarity programme,
which the government has effectively implemented with the direct participation
of people. Through block grants, people in more than 20,000 villages across
Afghanistan have organised community development councils to identify their own
local needs and to work with non-governmental organisations, local or
international, to address those needs.
This process has helped to build the capacity of poor Afghan villagers,
ensure greater gender equality in decision-making, and allow humanitarian access
to communities where instability often denies international aid organisations
easy access. Assisted Afghanisation of aid delivery must be the way forward to
end the country's ongoing humanitarian crisis.
M Ashraf Haidari is an analyst of refugee and humanitarian emergencies. He
is currently working with the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The above article originally appeared in
The National. Reprinted here with permission from the author.
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