Project Details.

Pakistan hosts over 1.4 million registered Afghan refugees and hundreds of thousands of undocumented Afghans, with around 68% living in urban areas along with host communities. Pakistan ranks low on human development and high on multi-dimensional poverty, especially in the main refugee-hosting provinces of KP and Balochistan, where over half of refugees are extremely poor. Pakistan faces serious economic challenges like high inflation, currency depreciation, and climate disasters like the 2022 floods, which affected over 33 million people, including over 80,000 Afghan refugees, by damaging houses, standing crops, and infrastructure. 

This complex context exacerbates needs and underscores the importance of ongoing humanitarian action, COVID-19 response, and development initiatives to support the most vulnerable, including refugees and host communities facing socio-economic marginalization, poverty, disasters, and displacement. 

To address these challenges, Concern Worldwide implemented a 2-year Integrated COVID-19 Response Project funded by the Bureau of Population Refugees and Migration (PRM) across five districts: Killa Saifullah, Pishin, and Quetta in Balochistan, and Peshawar and Nowshera in KP. The target groups included vulnerable Afghan refugees and host communities, whereby the program aimed to improve health facilities, the livelihoods of targeted groups, education in schools, and the overall wellbeing of the targeted population affected by the pandemic and other stressors.