WFP IN AFGHANISTAN

When Afghanistan's borders were reopened in spring 2002, it was estimated that only 800,000 Afghans would return.

The country's lack of security and its decimated infrastructure was expected to deter many from coming home.

But by November 2002, 1.8 million Afghans had crossed the borders from Iran and Pakistan.

Before returning to their homes, the refugees must pass through the resettlement camp situated closest to their old towns and villages. These camps are deliberately sited away from the borders in order to deter 'revolving door' refugees crisscrossing between countries to recollect aid packages.

To help so-called returnees en route to their old lives, WFP's emergency operation in Afghanistan supplies a ‘'Return Package' comprising 150 kilos per family. This includes help with transport, farming tools and seeds to plant for a new harvest.

But WFP's help does not stop there.

The returnees are particularly vulnerable during the first few months back in their hometown. In areas without any infrastructure, food and work can be hard to find.

So to allow people to stay in their old towns - and at the same time begin rebuilding Afghanistan - WFP supports several food-for-work programmes.

These include constructing roads, schools and hospitals in exchange for monthly rations.

WFP's efforts to help Afghans rebuild their shattered lives stretches beyond towns and villages and into Afghanistan's fields.

Three years of drought and two decades of war have badly hit farmers. WFP food for work projects are also 'paying' workers with rations to rehabilitate irrigation systems, preserve ground water supplies and adopt anti-erosion measures.

AFGHANISTAN COUNTRY BRIEF
For up-to-date information on WFP operations in Afghanistan, useful contacts, facts & figures, history of food aid, click here

• Hunger and malnutrition gnaws away at the most valuable assets in any country's development: its people
  
  A person who is always hungry is always poor
  
  

• For such people, each day is dedicated to finding enough food to subsist. Children hardly ever go to school. Farmers cannot afford to risk new agricultural methods

• The special role of WFP food aid is to give people the chance to take the first steps out of the hunger trap
  
  Food aid, given to the right people at the right time, makes it possible for them to devote time and energy to escaping the poverty trap

• This is never more apparent than in WFP's food-for-work projects
  
  Workers are paid not with money but with food rations to build vital new infrastructure that will increase the food security of households or communities

• The projects frequently involve agricultural practices such as irrigation, terracing, tree planting, soil and water conservation
  
  But, in the wake of a natural or man-made disaster, they can also include rebuilding destroyed homes, schools, clinics, roads and bridgesWFP has long believed that women are the first and fastest solution to reducing hunger and poverty