As humanitarian needs rise in Afghanistan, aid budgets have been reduced, and reports indicate that many relief and development projects lack effectiveness. An Afghan journalist recently reported that despite the financial resources spent, a significant portion of needy families do not feel any tangible impact from the assistance.<\/p>\n
In one example reviewed in Daykundi province, the project to build “energy-free storage warehouses” for preserving agricultural products was touted as a useful initiative, but in practice, only a limited number of families have benefited from it. According to the report, many farmers continue to witness the loss of their crops.<\/p>\n
In another project, imported seeds were distributed among farmers alongside technical training; however, the final results fell short of expectations. Low yields and poor product quality were reported, and each family’s income from this program was estimated at only around 450 Afghanis, roughly equivalent to 7 US dollars.<\/p>\n
Based on this report, such problems are not confined to a few rural areas but have been repeated across various parts of the country. While aid organizations highlight the success of their projects in official reports, many local residents have not observed any significant improvement in their living conditions.<\/p>\n
Al Jazeera English further noted that the inefficiency of aid is not limited to the period after 2021. Afghanistan also faced widespread wastage of foreign resources between 2001 and 2021, a period during which the country became a symbol of corruption and mismanagement of international aid.<\/p>\n
The United States Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) reported that between 26 and 29 billion US dollars of American aid were lost due to corruption or unnecessary expenses. Weak oversight, lack of transparency, and complex project implementation structures were identified as the main causes of this wastage.<\/p>\n
According to the author, many international organizations execute projects through implementing partners and subcontractors; this process reduces direct oversight and leads to a decline in implementation quality. Additionally, in some cases, projects focus more on securing budgets and maintaining financial resources than responding to the real needs of local communities.<\/p>\n
Another part of the report highlights the high costs of international staff, noting that some earn monthly salaries ranging from 10,000 to 20,000 US dollars, while local experts can perform the same tasks at a lower cost.<\/p>\n
The report emphasizes that the global reduction in aid budgets could present an opportunity to reform Afghanistan\u2019s development sector. Given the economic crisis and extensive restrictions under Taliban rule, which increase pressure on the population, utilizing the capacity of local experts, reducing intermediary layers, and focusing on employment, infrastructure, and market access can lead to more effective projects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Aid budgets for Afghanistan are shrinking amid rising needs, with reports showing many projects failing to benefit local communities effectively.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,17,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-important-news","category-top-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}