Mr. Ramesh Rajasingham, Head and Representative of OCHA in Geneva and Director of the Coordination Division, on behalf of Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Mr. Martin Griffiths

Briefing to the Security Council on the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan 20 December 2023

As delivered

Thank you, Mr. President,

It is hard to put into words the extent of the daily struggle faced by so many Afghan families. But the numbers tell their own story.

As we come to the end of 2023, humanitarian needs continue to push record levels, with more than 29 million people requiring humanitarian assistance – one million more than in January, and a 340 per cent increase in the last five years.

New developments continue to pile on the pressure.

In October, three 6.3 magnitude earthquakes in the space of just eight days in the western province of Herat damaged 40,000 homes – 10,000 of which were completely destroyed – which affected 275,000 people. Thousands of families are now living in tents and makeshift shelters, where they are exposed to rapidly falling winter temperatures.

And in the eastern and southern regions, there has been a dramatic surge in the number of Afghans returning from Pakistan, following the Government of Pakistan’s announced repatriation of “illegal foreigners” from 1 November.

Since then, more than 450,000 Afghans have returned, more than 85 per cent of whom are women and children. Many have been stripped of their belongings, left disorientated by days of travel, and are arriving in poor medical condition. They require both immediate attention and assistance at the border and longer-term support for reintegration.

Their sudden arrival could have far-reaching consequences for the whole country, unless sustainable and joined-up assistance is received with support from the international community.

Mr. President,

The needs of women and girls in Afghanistan have continued to grow at a scale and intensity commensurate with the repressive approach taken by the de-facto authorities.

For two years now, girls and women have been marginalized from almost all forms of public life. They have had their access to secondary and higher education systematically denied, their movements restricted, and their ability to work, including in the humanitarian sector, prohibited.

While no additional bans or restrictions have been imposed on women working for international and national NGOs or the UN since I last addressed the Council in June, further attempts have been made to limit their role.

In recent months the de-facto authorities have issued a series of official letters to several NGOs and women-led organizations requesting the removal of women from leadership positions (including Director, Deputy Director and Board member roles), and as signatories for bank accounts.

Partners have reported that documents signed by Afghan women, or projects mentioning women beneficiaries, have also been rejected. And some local agreements authorizing Afghan women to participate in humanitarian action were revoked by de-facto authority departments after they had been secured.

Nevertheless, we continue to achieve some degree of practical cooperation with the de-facto authorities at the local level, which is enabling Afghan women to be involved in humanitarian action. To date, at least 630 local arrangements have been agreed, permitting Afghan women to participate in all manner of response activities – from assessments to registration, distribution and service delivery, and monitoring.

Some humanitarian programmes that were initially suspended due to the bans have now resumed and even expanded operations.

A recent in-country partner survey has revealed that since January, just under one third of humanitarian and women-led organizations employing both Afghan women and men are now ‘fully operational’. An additional 43 per cent of organizations reported that they are partially operating with both Afghan women and men staff.

While aid delivery in Afghanistan remains far from straightforward or ideal, these are signs that principled aid delivery is both possible and ongoing.

Mr. President,
The humanitarian community remains committed to delivering this principled assistance.

Between January and October this year, the UN and our NGO partners provided direct life- saving assistance to 26.5 million people, including to 14.2 million women and girls.

In some sectors - such as Education, Food Security and Health – assistance has even increased. Adequate financial resources are required to maintain reach to women and girls moving forward. The humanitarian response has a critical funding gap of US$ 1.8 billion as we end this year.

Mr. President,

In this challenging context, the humanitarian exception provided by Security Council Resolution 2615 continues to play a vital role.

It continues to provide important reassurance, principally to commercial actors, that the provision of services and goods necessary to delivering humanitarian assistance and to supporting basic human needs – including the processing of financial transactions – does not violate UN sanctions.

This reassurance has been critical to encourage the banking sector to transfer funds into Afghanistan. This has eased many of the difficulties faced by humanitarian organisations in the aftermath of August 2021. Since the adoption of Resolution 2615, the number of UN agencies and NGOs reporting difficulties in moving funds into Afghanistan has dropped from 87 per cent, two months prior to the adoption of the exception, and now stabilized at around 50 per cent.

But challenges remain, principally around banking de-risking.

Important work is ongoing to establish at a more granular level the specific bottlenecks facing humanitarian organizations – whether these are in relation to the specific currency of transferred funds; issues with intermediary banks; or the willingness of the global financial messaging system, SWIFT, to accept money transfer instructions to Afghanistan.

The evidence collected will be vital to working with banks and states on solutions in the coming months.

Mr. President,

Guidance issued by several Member States has also contributed to understanding the exception, including the fact that when a designated person holds a leadership position in a ministry, this does not mean that ministry is also subject to sanctions.

This is important because, as a matter of operational necessity, humanitarian actors in Afghanistan must make payments to line ministries – some of which are currently headed by designated individuals.

These payments include:

  • rent on government-owned premises and warehouses

  • withholding tax on national/international NGO staff income, rent and suppliers

  • visas and work permits for national/international NGO staff

  • fees for imports

  • landing fees to the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation (headed by a designated individual) for the UN Humanitarian Air Service, and

  • licenses for NGO registration, communications equipment, and municipal charges, among others.

These are requirements we face in any and every humanitarian operation in the world. They are payments that have to be made if we are to even start the process of aid delivery.

Furthermore, a failure to make any, or all, of these payments would have severe consequences for humanitarian actors, including the freezing of bank accounts, the shutting of offices, and even deregistration.

Mr. President,

A further key component of resolution 2615 was the clarification that the provision of funds or assets to designated persons or entities is permitted when it is necessary for humanitarian and basic human needs programming.

However, let me reassure you. The existence of this exception in no way means that humanitarian organisations in Afghanistan approach the matter lightly.

On the contrary, all necessary precautions are taken to avoid making payments to designated individuals or entities.

For example, when using hawala providers – as two-thirds of our partners inform us they have to do at some point in the banking chain because of ongoing issues in the Afghan banking sector – strict measures are taken to avoid those providers listed under the 1988 UN sanctions regime. Indeed, there has been no reported use of these entities.

Furthermore, our humanitarian partners ensure payments strictly match the modalities for payments made during the Republic. These payments include, for example, cash payments to officials at the immigration desk at the airport (for international visas); via bank transfer to line ministries (for withholding tax on behalf of national staff, landlords or contractors); or in cash deposited in Da Afghanistan Bank (for licenses for VHF radios or armoured vehicles).

All of these payments are the cost of operating in Afghanistan, just as they were prior to August 2021. None is aid diversion.

Mr. President,

Now, let me turn to aid diversion specifically. I want to be clear about what we are seeing in Afghanistan.

Aid diversion, as frequently seen in other contexts, such as the looting of warehouses or the hijacking of aid convoys, has not occurred in Afghanistan.

To the extent that aid diversion has occurred, or poses a threat, it tends to take place post- distribution, often in the form of confiscation of assistance by the authorities or community leaders.

Aid that is confiscated tends to be taken to ensure that everyone in a community, rather than only the 70 or 80 per cent who are most in need, receives some form of assistance. It is not intended to benefit the authorities or leaders themselves.

Redistribution of this kind is a common cultural practice in Afghanistan, and something frequently undertaken by communities themselves.

This in no way means that the practice is not problematic and that it does not constitute aid diversion. It may. But it does mean that the mitigation measures and response need to be tailored to the specific nature of the practice.

The other challenge we are seeing to aid distribution in Afghanistan relates to attempted interference in aid programming by the de-facto authorities.

Over the past year, there has been a noticeable increase in the desire of the de-facto authorities to be more involved in humanitarian programming. The attempted interference has contributed to a 21 per cent increase in bureaucratic and administrative impediments between January and October 2023 compared to the same period in 2022.

While the forms of interference such as intervening in beneficiary selection or recruitment, pressure to change established service delivery models, requests for data and information with regards to budget and staffing contracts, and requests for payment of new fees are the same as we see in other humanitarian operations globally and do not necessarily imply aid diversion, they do undermine our capacity to operate in a manner that is independent and impartial. And they do cause delays to assistance.

OCHA Afghanistan continues to work with our humanitarian partners to resolve these obstacles and to categorize the types of interference and nature of aid diversion more accurately. This will help to ensure that the tools we deploy to prevent and respond to these different issues are the most appropriate and effective.

Mr. President,

Humanitarian organizations take their responsibility to minimize the risk of aid diversion very seriously and take strict measures to make sure aid reaches its intended beneficiaries.

When instances of aid diversion have occurred, such as in Ghor Province– which we brought to the Council’s attention during the June briefing – immediate action is taken to cease distribution while issues are resolved. Donors are kept fully informed every step of the way.

Mr. President,

OCHA has just launched the Global Humanitarian Overview for 2024. Afghanistan remains one of the countries with the highest levels of humanitarian need, and the country in which we are aiming to reach the greatest number of people with humanitarian assistance.

And the humanitarian community is committed to doing so. But we cannot be the solution. Ultimately, the Afghan people need sustainable solutions and a longer-term approach that moves them beyond mere survival: Solutions that allow support for income generation, agriculture, climate resilience, and restoration of basic services.

For this, the people of Afghanistan need, and deserve, peace and stability, and an environment in which every Afghan can enjoy respect for their human rights. I urge the Council to continue its efforts to this end.

Thank you, Mr. President.