Afghanistan / Tadjikistan

The project con­sists of pro­vid­ing med­ical assis­tance to vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple, main­ly women, chil­dren and the elder­ly, and to pris­on­ers, in the provinces of Badakhshan, Takhar and Bagh­lan. Luxembourg’s con­tri­bu­tion is main­ly being used to guar­an­tee the wages of work­ers in the health sec­tor, as well as the sup­ply of basic med­ical equip­ment to hos­pi­tals and health care cen­tres. The sum invest­ed up to 28 Feb­ru­ary 2023 was EUR536139. This project is part of a larg­er project seek­ing to pre­vent the col­lapse of the Afghan health sys­tem. At the end of 2022, a deci­sion was tak­en to increase the con­tri­bu­tion to this project by EUR800000, in order to guar­an­tee the con­ti­nu­ity of basic health ser­vices in the coun­try. With the resur­gence of hos­tile acts against women and girls, it is becom­ing increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to imple­ment projects where women are placed on an equal foot­ing with men, both as ben­e­fi­cia­ries and as imple­ment­ing part­ners. It should be not­ed that, unlike all the cross-bor­der projects by the PATRIP Foun­da­tion (Pak­istan-Afghanistan-Tajik­istan Region­al Inte­gra­tion Pro­gramme), this project is only being imple­ment­ed in Afghanistan.

Mul­ti­lat­er­al­ly, Lux­em­bourg is con­tribut­ing EUR1 mil­lion per year until 2024 to the project ​“House­hold Food and Liveli­hood Secu­ri­ty (HFLS) 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 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.

The Lux­em­bourg Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion is also part of the Spe­cial Trust Fund for Afghanistan (STFA), along­side 10 oth­er donor coun­tries and numer­ous 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 to enable donors to chan­nel their resources and coor­di­nate their sup­port for the ABADEI strat­e­gy. The ABADEI strat­e­gy (Area Based Approach for Devel­op­ment Emer­gency Ini­tia­tives) is being imple­ment­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with oth­er UN agen­cies, funds and pro­grammes. Fol­low­ing an ini­tial con­tri­bu­tion of EUR2 mil­lion in 2021, an addi­tion­al con­tri­bu­tion was announced at the end of 2022, in order to meet the grow­ing needs in the coun­try, espe­cial­ly of women and girls who see their future dark­en­ing day by day. The decree of 24 Decem­ber 2022 pro­hibit­ing women from work­ing with nation­al and inter­na­tion­al NGOs has plunged Afghan women into fur­ther distress.