Background and Objectives:
The Government of Afghanistan and the international community have had to address, from 2002, critical problems of security, demobilising combatants, facilitating the return and reintegration of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs), and the establishment of a state infrastructure.

In this context, returning refugees and other vulnerable groups (women, elderly, and children) face great difficulty in building sustainable livelihoods and gaining access to land, shelter, and basic services.  Most settlements lack water, sanitation and other basic infrastructure.

This project aims to address the reintegration of returnees and Internally Displaced Persons by removing systemic obstacles (social, political, financial, physical, human), which impede their ability to build sustainable livelihoods. To do so, interventions are targeted at the household, community and municipal level.

Activities:
The main activities include:
Normative support:

• Formulating an urban policy framework in conjunction with the Afghan National Development Strategy (ANDS).
• City profiling and strategic municipal action planning (MAP).

Operational support:

• Identifying settlements in Kabul and establishing neighbourhood-level Community Development Councils (CDCs).
• Selecting beneficiaries for the provision of housing grants to enable housing reconstruction.
• Preparing Community Action Plans (CAPs).
• Implementing projects identified in CAPs and monitoring.

Results:

• Numbering of houses for community mobilisation completed, identified neighbourhood and cluster boundary.
• Twenty-five Community Development Councils (CDCs) formed in Kabul.
• 180 beneficiaries identified for shelter support.
• Bi-monthly newsletter published in local language for the month of July 2006, circulated widely among target communities and to other stakeholders.
• Several rounds of training conducted for both project field staff and focal persons of municipality and Ministry of Urban Development.