Italy is to contribute EUR 3.1 million to support an IOM programme
to help reintegrate returnees, internally displaced people (IDPs)
and other vulnerable groups in western Afghanistan.

The 18-month project, which will focus on Herat and Farah
provinces, will be implemented in close cooperation with the Afghan
Ministries of Refugees and Repatriation, Labor, Social Affairs,
Martyrs and Disabled, and Rural Rehabilitation and Development,
together with UN and NGO partner agencies.

The beneficiaries will include growing numbers of Afghan
deportees from Iran, which currently hosts some 900,000 registered
and as many as a million unregistered Afghan workers.

In 2007 and 2008, Iran deported 766,000 Afghans, mainly through
the Islam Qala and Zaranj border crossing points on its eastern
border with Afghanistan. Between 1 January and 22 May 2009, a
further 166,000 had been expelled, 42 per cent more than in the
same period the previous year.

Since 2002, another 4.3 million Afghan refugees have also
voluntarily returned to Afghanistan, creating acute shortages of
housing and over-stretched infrastructure in a country that has
experienced decades of conflict, instability and economic
stagnation.

High food and fuel prices as well as droughts have had a severe
impact on the most vulnerable groups in Afghanistan, many of whom
are living in poor and inadequate housing, exacerbating their
suffering during months of freezing temperatures during
Afghanistan’s harsh winters.

With the onset of winter, the Italian funding will be used to
procure and distribute winter kits including heating fuel; help
provide shelter for homeless families; offer livelihood training
and financial aid to create small cooperatives; build community
infrastructure such as access to clean water and train local
authorities to cope with the challenges posed by returnee and IDP
populations.

For further information, please contact:

Marco Boasso

IOM Kabul

Tel: + 93. 20 220 10 22

E-mail: "mailto:mboasso@iom.int">mboasso@iom.int