Secure land for populations displaced by natural hazards

Objectives

Increasingly, natural disasters cause population displacement in Afghanistan. Recent examples include the 2018 drought in Herat and this year’s floods in Parwan. Climate change is expected to exacerbate the frequency and severity of natural hazards to increase IDP caseload. In this context, systems for allocating safe land and transitional shelter for climate displaced groups until it is safe to return to their Place of Origin are absent. In the recent Parwan floods, over a thousand displaced families are without durable shelter as authorities have struggled to provide suitable safe land for their settlement. In response, the Government of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GoIRA) have requested UN-Habitat to support climate displaced populations access climate safe land to increase their climate resilience. The action will support GoIRA to provide 8,500 IDPs access to secure, legally documented land for their permanent safe settlement at a site not vulnerable to natural disasters and that is located in reasonable prximaty to livelhoods and other social and economic services. To this end, the action will undertake the following activities:
- Identify land for safe and secure settlement of IDPs displaced by natural disasters: Hazard mapping and site suitability assessment for the safe, secure and sustainable settlement of climate displaced IDPs
- Securing land rights associated with the settlement site: topographic survey, clearance of property rights associated with the site entering details into State Land Bank physical demarcation of plot parcels for allocation to IDP families provision of tenure security documents to IDP families
- Develop and gazette settlement master plan for sustainable settlement of IDPs
- Coordination with government and humanitarian agencies to extend shelter, infrastructure and service investments in the site.
Preliminary identification of the vacant land for settlement in partnership with the government has occurred and a document detailing the specifications of this land has been attached in the supplementary documents section. The project timeline of 6 months allows for the completion of all project activities because the ground work for implementation has been completed - staff are in place for the development of materplans, Terms of Reference have been drawn up for required contracted activities, and government cooperation in the implementation of the activities has been secured. The project will provide secure land for the flood displaced. It is envisaged that coordination with other clusters will then provide additional support to households to invest in durable shelter on the site. To this end, the HLP taskforce is currently drafting an advocacy brief with the ES/NFI cluster to mobilize funds for shelter investments in securely held land distributed by the government in Parwan and other locations.