To help ordinary Afghans, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) has announced the launch of a “people’s economy” fund, to provide desperately needed access to cash. The fund will tap into donations frozen since the Taliban takeover in August. 

Germany has already pledged $58 million of the more than $660 million required over the next 12 months.

The fund is part of a new programme for the country called ‘ABADEI’, which denotes community resilience.

Why has the UN launched such an initiative?

In September, the UNDP released a study which projected that up to 97 per cent of the population may be at risk of sinking below the poverty line next year, unless a response to the country’s political and economic crises is urgently launched.

Banks are running out of money, civil servants have not been paid and food prices have soared.

What is ABADEI?

The UNDP has launched ‘ABADEI’, a new crisis response initiative.

It’s designed to contribute to preventing a humanitarian catastrophe and the country’s economy from “completely crashing” by supporting the most vulnerable populations and collapsing micro-businesses in Afghanistan.

ABADEI (Area-based Approach for Development Emergency Initiatives), which denotes communities being resilient and inspires hope for a better future in several local languages, will see UNDP, UN agencies and non-governmental organisations providing community level solutions which complement the urgent humanitarian interventions.

The ABADEI strategy represents one of the first large-scale attempts to operationalise a humanitarian approach within the complex and fast evolving context of Afghanistan.

Conceptually, it provides an articulation of investments in basic services, livelihoods and community resilience that complement humanitarian efforts by helping households, communities, and the private sector cope with the adverse effects of the crisis. 

The ABADEI strategy aims to promote more effective and joined-up responses by strengthening the collaboration coherence and complementarity of interventions with those covered through the Humanitarian Action Plan. 

ABADEI activities will be funded from contributions to UNDP, as well as through the newly created “Special Trust Fund for Afghanistan”.

How will the fund be used?

All eight administrative regions of the country will benefit from interventions of the Fund.

The initiative will channel funding into community activities, including:

• Providing grants to support small and micro businesses, especially those owned by women.

• Cash-for-work projects offering short-term income to the unemployed, to restore local small infrastructure.

• Support to people with disabilities, the elderly, and the most vulnerable, through temporary basic income.

• Assistance to strengthening natural disaster mitigation and resilience, for example through rehabilitation of canals and flood protection to protect farmland.

This will enable people to stay and live and work on their lands and in their homes and allow them to earn an income.

All assistance provided will be based on impartial assessments carried out in conjunction with local community leaders and independently of authorities.

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