With a view to the Dutch Foreign Affairs Council Debate on the 8th December that will debate on Afghanistan, HealthNet TPO together with Cordaid, Save the Children Netherlands and Stichting Vluchteling call upon Dutch Parliament members to make diplomatic efforts for the people of Afghanistan.
Supporting basic services and necessary, small-scale infrastructure projects
While the economic collapse in Afghanistan has slowed somewhat, the still-deep economic crisis continues to exacerbate the humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan. Western governments over the past year have focused primarily on funding humanitarian relief and implementing significant humanitarian exemptions from sanctioned regimes. But Afghanistan’s economic isolation is taking a heavy toll. Access to foreign reserves remains frozen. The banking system is grounded. And structural development programmes – which finance basic services such as health and education, as well as other things that would be carried out by the government under normal circumstances – are still taking place on a very limited scale.
In our view, donors, including the Netherlands, can continue to support the crucial role of development programmes in Afghanistan by replenishing and renewing the World Bank’s Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF). The Netherlands has historically been the sixth largest donor to the ARTF. Humanitarian programmes save lives in Afghanistan, but humanitarian aid cannot restore destroyed infrastructure or replace public services. The ARTF is currently the largest source of non-humanitarian funding for Afghanistan. As the country prepares for winter, ARTF-funded public services are very much needed.
To address immediate needs under ARTF 3.0, the Dutch government can supplement the ARTF and expand the use of ARTF funds to small-scale infrastructure. This will also contribute to improved humanitarian access and health services. Humanitarian programmes continue to face significant challenges in reaching remote communities due to poor infrastructure throughout Afghanistan. Thirty-eight percent of rural households currently do not have a functional health facility nearby. Bridges and roads are often unusable, while many health clinics operate without functioning water and sanitation facilities. Ensuring health care requires minimal but essential infrastructure improvements, such as installing or repairing water and sanitation systems in clinics, or solar panels to provide cooling systems. Ensure that small-scale infrastructure programmes – including from civil society organisations – are within the ARTF, such as road repairs for hard-to-reach clinics and rehabilitation of water systems in hospitals and clinics to improve hygiene and sanitation standards.
Relationship with the de-facto government
The international community aspires outside the Taliban regime to continue supporting the Afghan people. At the same time, we see that the difficult relationship with the de-facto government is beginning to hinder or make aid delivery very complex. The demands placed on the regime by the international community, and the so-called “red lines” drawn by the EU and the Netherlands, should not, as far as we are concerned, block the delivery of humanitarian aid or become a bargaining point in an extremely difficult political dialogue. We are already seeing that, for example, the handling of NGO contracts in the field of health care is long hampered by negotiations between the UN and the regime. As we argued above, the Afghan people ultimately pay the price. Afghans are trying to get their lives back on track after more than a year under the new regime, but many see little perspective or hope for improvement. To turn that around, we believe an active dialogue with the regime is required, at least to guarantee humanitarian access, but also to pave the way for more structural development programmes without direct interference from the de-facto government. This dialogue must be conducted delicately. The mutual promulgation of principles in order to convince the other has only widened the gap between the regime and the West. The Netherlands could put more effort into dialogue at the EU level that focuses on a common framework with clear rules of engagement and priorities.
Frozen Afghan central bank reserves
We note that one of the main reasons why the Afghan economy has fallen into a huge malaise is the freezing of much of the Afghan central bank’s reserves. As a result, banking traffic in Afghanistan is still virtually at a standstill. This also has major implications for aid organisations like ours. For instance, our local suppliers can no longer buy internationally. Plus, the scarcity of cash forces aid organisations to find alternative ways of getting cash into the country. One widely used is the informal hawala system. However, this makes cash flows invisible, and it is totally unclear where the money ends up. We call on the Dutch government to make diplomatic efforts to unfreeze these reserves and let them benefit the Afghan people. Again, there are possibilities for a construction outside the control of the regime.
With the above, we hope to have provided you with meaningful input for the 8th December debate.
Kind regards,
HealthNet TPO, Cordaid, Save the Children Netherlands and Stichting Vluchteling,
