WeWorld was present in Afghanistan until 2017 to support the most vulnerable groups, with projects aimed at strengthening civil society and human rights. At such a sensitive time, after the situation has rapidly precipitated and people's rights are being denied with increasing force, we decided to resume our activities to ensure support for local communities.

Background

More than 40 years of prolonged crisis and war, impoverishment, disintegration of the rule of law, and systematic exclusion of women from social, economic, and public life have hit the Afghan population hard, affecting especially the rights of women and girls.

More than two million women are war widows and an even greater number have effectively become breadwinners. The Covid-19 emergency, in a country where only 2% of the population is vaccinated, has exponentially increased the number of single women, turning the country into a giant widow factory.

Many of them are the poorest among the poor, illiterate, forced to beg to survive while risking their lives every day since the Taliban banned women from leaving the house without a male guardian. We think of all those women who have no male children and live in constant risk of not even being able to beg in order to feed their families.

Our response

In such a context, after the situation rapidly precipitated and became alarming, with more and more people's rights being denied, we decided to intervene to ensure support for the most vulnerable segments of the population.

In the province of Herat, our intervention supports single women who are at the head of their households, along with their daughters and sons, to ensure their access to food.

There are more than 10,000 female heads of household and more than 50,000 children in need of humanitarian assistance in this province.

Women and girls in Afghanistan are paying the worst consequences of this new situation.

Together with our local partner RRAA, we began our intervention with 420 women-led households with no source of income.

We were joined in this project by ChildFund, and thanks to the support of ChildFund Korea, New Zealand, Germany, Australia, and Barnfonden and EDUCO we are guaranteeing food for these families.