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.