The Afghanistan Resilience Trust Fund (ARTF) program is fit for purpose to respond to natural disasters like this week’s devastating earthquakes in Herat because we designed nationwide projects to deliver at scale basic services to the Afghan people. ARTF has leveraged parallel financing with ADB and other partners to continue to operate at scale.
Our approach is in two phases:
- Immediate: basic services programs in health, agriculture and community resilience are designed to and will help respond to these disasters; and
- Over the next month - analytics: Afghanistan is not prepared for any natural disaster and our resilience analytics and poverty mapping will help better programming and understanding.
Immediate ARTF Response (as of October 10)
ARTF projects are fit for purpose and responding. The health, food security and community resilience programs, designed to work nationwide, operate in the affected districts and are already supporting assessed needs.
- Community Resilience and Livelihoods Project (through UNOPS, Community Development Councils and Private Sector firms) works across 122 communities in the Herat districts of Zindajan and Kohsan. The project immediately provided cash for work for 500 people to remove rubble and help their communities and provided food for work. The project provides labor intensive work in 8 cities, including Herat. Currently, 21 contractors and 1700 workers are supported in Herat with discussions ongoing to direct the work toward recovery operations.
- Emergency Food Security Project (through FAO and farmers associations) covers 4 impacted districts in Herat.
- Health Emergency Response Project (through UNICEF and NGO service providers) provides basic health and nutrition interventions nationwide, including support to over 30 basic health facilities in Herat province. The immediate response supports Mobile Health and Nutrition Teams and tents for distribution of emergency items.
The other projects (Water, Education) will assess needs.
What Next – Analytics
The World Bank’s Afghanistan Futures – the program of research, monitoring, and analytical reports – is contributing to analytics for the earthquake response and future preparedness. Working closely with UN, ADB and EU, we are supporting an initial rapid assessment of the spatial extent and severity of the earthquake’s physical impact incurred within key sectors. Resilience Analytics are ongoing to look at resilience of food, water, and early warning systems. The just-launched Welfare Monitoring Survey will assist to map out villages and facilities in affected areas.