s the IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings near, Afghanistan illustrates what the OECD calls “states of fragility”—settings where risk outpaces institutional resilience, and governance gaps become humanitarian emergencies. In extremely fragile environments like Afghanistan, where state institutions are too weak and the country carries one of the region’s largest displaced populations, gaps in basic service delivery have immediate humanitarian implications, not abstract development costs.
In such dire humanitarian environments, local and international NGOs should be harnessed to fill governance gaps—responding immediately to save lives and help communities restart livelihoods—through hybrid delivery that reinforces, rather than replaces, public functions.
The scale of need is well-documented: the UN’s Afghanistan Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan 2025 projected that 22.9 million people required humanitarian assistance last year. The same plan links this to limited capacity to meet basic needs, underscoring that dysfunctional governance institutions often lack budgetary resources, flexibility, and delivery capacity at the same time.
Displacement amplifies this fragility. UNHCR reports that Afghanistan “continues to host an estimated 3.22 million internally displaced persons (IDPs),” increasing pressure on health, shelter, and livelihoods. Forced and adverse returns compound these strains, with humanitarian partners reporting that since 2023, more than 3.4 million Afghans have returned or been deported from Iran and Pakistan, including over 1.5 million in 2024 alone, while UNHCR warns that over 1.2 million Afghans have returned or been forced to return in 2025, worsening the already desperate situation inside Afghanistan at a time when service systems are least able to absorb shocks as reflected in the 2025 humanitarian response plan’s discussion of constrained capacity to meet basic needs. Natural disasters expose the same constraints, as community–focused recovery efforts after the Herat earthquakes show in practice through “survivors rebuilding their communities.”
The World Bank’s trust–fund architecture provides a workable template for much-needed, multi-track partnerships. The fund’s name “was changed to Afghanistan Resilience Trust Fund in July 2023,” and its reporting describes implementation through “selected UN agencies and an international nongovernmental partner,” alongside systems for verification reflected in “monitoring agent reporting.” This hybrid approach also creates channels for knowledge and technology transfer—an objective aligned with the World Bank’s stated approach to building resilience.
Finally, design and implementation of aid that fills governance gaps should include recipients themselves—especially refugees and IDPs— consistent with UNHCR’s emphasis on responding to forced returns at scale. Training and recruiting displaced people into aid operations can reduce overhead and improve targeting by embedding local knowledge where it matters most.
The Spring Meetings should treat multi–track partnerships as a strategic governance instrument, one distributed responsibility, transparently governed, and able to sustain services today while preserving the foundations of resilience and legitimacy tomorrow.
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Multi–track partnerships for Afghanistan’s displaced millions
Photo by Ajmal Gharwal via Pexels.
April 8, 2026
Multi–track partnerships can help deliver services and build resilience in Afghanistan amid fragility and mass displacement, writes Ambassador M. Ashraf Haidari.
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s the IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings near, Afghanistan illustrates what the OECD calls “states of fragility”—settings where risk outpaces institutional resilience, and governance gaps become humanitarian emergencies. In extremely fragile environments like Afghanistan, where state institutions are too weak and the country carries one of the region’s largest displaced populations, gaps in basic service delivery have immediate humanitarian implications, not abstract development costs.
In such dire humanitarian environments, local and international NGOs should be harnessed to fill governance gaps—responding immediately to save lives and help communities restart livelihoods—through hybrid delivery that reinforces, rather than replaces, public functions.
The scale of need is well-documented: the UN’s Afghanistan Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan 2025 projected that 22.9 million people required humanitarian assistance last year. The same plan links this to limited capacity to meet basic needs, underscoring that dysfunctional governance institutions often lack budgetary resources, flexibility, and delivery capacity at the same time.
Displacement amplifies this fragility. UNHCR reports that Afghanistan “continues to host an estimated 3.22 million internally displaced persons (IDPs),” increasing pressure on health, shelter, and livelihoods. Forced and adverse returns compound these strains, with humanitarian partners reporting that since 2023, more than 3.4 million Afghans have returned or been deported from Iran and Pakistan, including over 1.5 million in 2024 alone, while UNHCR warns that over 1.2 million Afghans have returned or been forced to return in 2025, worsening the already desperate situation inside Afghanistan at a time when service systems are least able to absorb shocks as reflected in the 2025 humanitarian response plan’s discussion of constrained capacity to meet basic needs. Natural disasters expose the same constraints, as community–focused recovery efforts after the Herat earthquakes show in practice through “survivors rebuilding their communities.”
The World Bank’s trust–fund architecture provides a workable template for much-needed, multi-track partnerships. The fund’s name “was changed to Afghanistan Resilience Trust Fund in July 2023,” and its reporting describes implementation through “selected UN agencies and an international nongovernmental partner,” alongside systems for verification reflected in “monitoring agent reporting.” This hybrid approach also creates channels for knowledge and technology transfer—an objective aligned with the World Bank’s stated approach to building resilience.
Finally, design and implementation of aid that fills governance gaps should include recipients themselves—especially refugees and IDPs— consistent with UNHCR’s emphasis on responding to forced returns at scale. Training and recruiting displaced people into aid operations can reduce overhead and improve targeting by embedding local knowledge where it matters most.
The Spring Meetings should treat multi–track partnerships as a strategic governance instrument, one distributed responsibility, transparently governed, and able to sustain services today while preserving the foundations of resilience and legitimacy tomorrow.
