A Brighter Future for Children: Realising the Nexus in Afghanistan

The global COVID-19 pandemic has caused humanitarian needs to soar and laid bare the implications of years of chronic poverty, under-development and inability to sufficiently invest in delivery of basic public services, systems and infrastructure. Fragility represents one of the greatest challenges to sustainable development and peace, particularly in Afghanistan. There has been a progressive global call to more coherently realise the nexus of humanitarian, development and peace outcomes to more effectively tackle factors of fragility. Few contexts in the world better represent the urgent need to realise this coherence than Afghanistan.

This case study examines World Vision’s experience implementing a nexus approach across health, access to clean drinking water and education interventions in western Afghanistan, and how its joined-up approach to humanitarian and development programming has been adapted since 2018 to better respond to vulnerability, reduce risk and help strengthen the resilience of Afghan children and their families.