Action now could prevent major catastrophe

If the international community acts now it could prevent a major humanitarian catastrophe from unfolding in Afghanistan this summer, UN special coordinator for internal displacement, Dennis McNamara, told IRIN on Tuesday. “We have a chance. We could put in investments now which could prevent Afghanistan [from] sliding down a slope that it cannot be pulled back from. The signs are all there. With 300 families a day arriving in Herat [in the northwest], that’s 10,000 a month - that’s big movements,” McNamara, who led a seven-member UN assessment mission to Afghanistan this week, told IRIN.

He called it the highest displacement movement in the world today, with more than 1,500 people a day pouring into camps in Herat. Conditions were worse in northern Mazar-i-Sharif, where families were living in holes in the ground with almost no assistance. McNamara said the Afghan population lacked basic services in all key sectors “to a degree that we seldom see even in some of the worst situations I recently visited in Africa”. The UN official estimated that 700,000 Afghans had been displaced since mid-2000, including up to 200,000 who had fled their homes and crossed borders. “The immediate target group of the most vulnerable is half a million recently displaced,” he said.

McNamara warned that unless the population was stabilised where they were, there would be a greater spillover of refugees into neighbouring countries. He said that the immediate challenge was to stabilise the populations who remained clinging to their fragile homes in the countryside. This “impoverished, highly vulnerable base population” was selling its livestock and agricultural assets as it struggled against drought and conflict in an attempt to avoid displacement. The second focus should be on stabilising those who have already moved within the country, and the third on support to refugees who have fled Afghanistan.

In the northern provinces of Afghanistan, where there are no formal displacement camps, families are dispersed over vast areas, some in public buildings, others simply living on roadsides. Most are in extremely deplorable condition with little or no assistance. “In some cases there are 40 to 60 families living with a sheet over a pole in fields, which, if the rains do come, will be immediately flooded. Others have simply dug holes in the ground with a sheet over the top and a rough roofing, “ according to UNDP official John Rogge.

Rogge said that some 32,000 families - or between 200,000 to 240,000 people - are dispersed over the northern provinces. “This dispersement makes it very difficult to provide assistance. There are long distances between the camps [and] even local populations are setting up camps or squatting near camps in the hope that they can draw upon the assistance made available to these people. Shelter needs therefore are very critical and the scale of support that is proposed for Herat is also needed for the northern provinces,” Rogge said. Also dispersed in this area are Afghans displaced as a result of the fighting between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. There are fears that these numbers could grow substantially this spring if the conflict escalates as is expected.

The assessment mission expressed fears of epidemics and acute outbreaks without adequate sanitation or water or medical support to respond. Some loss of life was “unavoidable”, given the current conditions, and urgent action from donors was needed to curb the crisis from deteriorating further.

The UN assessment team will be issuing a detailed report to Ruud Lubbers, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and to donor governments in Geneva next week. The report will call for a multi-layered response, including a stronger UN presence inside Afghanistan and increased relief assistance to those living near their areas of origin. It will also call for an emergency response to the Afghans who have moved to camps near Herat and Maslakh - the only camp currently receiving new arrivals in the area. The camp’s total population is over 100,000, and is growing. “We saw new arrivals sleeping out in the open in Maslakh. There is no more accommodation in that camp,” McNamara said.

The UN is issuing an emergency appeal for 10,000 tents for short term shelter, and 10,000 mud houses for the longer term. It is appealing for a further US $7 million for an immediate seed distribution and other inputs to support the country’s agricultural base, which represents 85 percent of the population. “If the donors want to stabilise the population in Afghanistan and avoid a surrounding problem, then the investment is needed now. Last year there was over US $100 million through the UN appeal going into Afghanistan. We need two or three times that [much] this year to do what we are talking about,” he said.

Only 15 percent of the UN’s annual Afghanistan appeal of around US $250 million has so far been pledged by the donor community despite the mounting humanitarian crisis. “This was inadequate to meet the needs as forseen then, but very inadequate to meet the emergency situation that we are seeing now,” McNamara maintains.