"We Survived the Virus, but May Not Survive the Hunger": The Impact of COVID-19 on Afghanistan's Internally Displaced
Publisher: Amnesty International
Date: 2021
Topics: Basic Services, Gender, Governance, Humanitarian Assistance, Public Health
Countries: Afghanistan
The COVID-19 pandemic has a disproportionate impact on Afghanistan’s more than four million internally displaced people (IDPs), as thousands of new displacements are registered every day/week, most of whom are women and children. The pandemic makes their already desperate situation even more precarious. As IDPs live in overcrowded conditions in makeshift camps, with insufficient access to services, including water, sanitation, and health facilities, they have very few or no means to protect themselves from contracting, spreading, and recovering from the virus. To assess the human rights situation of IDPs in the COVID pandemic, Amnesty International interviewed more than 20 newly displaced and protracted IDPs in settlements in Kabul, Herat and Nangarhar provinces in July 2020. The organization also spoke to the Afghanistan authorities – the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation (MoRR) and also reviewed regular field reports compiled by the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) in Afghanistan and other humanitarian organizations providing aid to IDPs in response to COVID-19.