The OCHA southern region Sub-Office (OCHA SR) is located in Kandahar City, Kandahar province. The Office covers all the five provinces of the SR, namely Kandahar, Helmand, Zabul, Uruzgon and Nimroz.
SR has 51 districts and 18,381 villages with an estimated population of 35,21,947 and geographic area of 182,705 Km2. Its main economic activity is agriculture.
OCHA-SR contributes to the efforts of OCHA Country Office, which works in support of the UN Humanitarian Coordinator to facilitate a coordinated, well-resourced and effective international relief response and the bridging of the transition from relief to recovery. Functionally, the work of OCHA-SR breaks into three main areas: (1) coordination and operational support; (2) field monitoring and analysis; and (3) information management and humanitarian reporting. OCHA SR closely works with the various humanitarian actors in the region including ANDMA, PDMCs, DMCs, NGOs, UNAMA and UN agencies. In addition, it continuously engages in Civil-Military coordination.
The situation in the SR of Afghanistan is characterized as volatile and extremely dangerous due to ongoing conflict between IMF/ANSF and AOG, as well as drug production and trafficking and generalized crime. Government authority is limited to district and provincial centers, with vast area inaccessible to government and security organs. Aid agency operations are limited to security bubbles in major provincial centers only.
Serious challenges have long undermined the effective provision of humanitarian assistance in the affected area. The greatest challenge stems from the fact that parties to the conflict show no respect for, nor intention to fulfill, their responsibilities to provide protection both to the Afghan civilians and humanitarian workers in territory under their control. Indeed, in the “area of operations” covered by this Framework, humanitarian workers face a high risk of being actively targeted by parties to the conflict. This fact, combined with the volatile security situation generally, has dramatically limited the international humanitarian presence on the ground and humanitarian access to people in need.
The security situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated further in recent years, with the number of incidents affecting the security of humanitarian operations increasing every year since 2005. Armed clashes between pro-government forces and AOGs have continued to rise both in numbers and intensity. At the same time, asymmetric attacks by anti-government elements have risen at an even faster rate. These include the increasing use of suicide attacks, improvised explosive devices, stand-off attacks, assassinations, intimidation and abductions. There are no indications at this stage that the security will improve in 2010. On the contrary, the indications are that, with the incursion of more foreign fighters, the increase in asymmetric attacks, and regional instability, the security situation will deteriorate further and that the risk to both national and international aid workers will increase.
Furthermore, in September 2010, Afghanistan concluded a general election without major incidents. Nevertheless, the political and security climate[i] in SR Afghanistan leads to the prediction of a scenario likely to result in significant population displacements in diverse areas of the SR.
According to the UN’s special representative in Afghanistan, Staffan de Mistura, “the human cost of the conflict is escalating in 2010 and civilian causalities are increasing substantially’. (source: Ian Panel, BBC News, Kabul, 10 Aug 2010).
Winter has the potential for harsh impacts upon Afghanistan's most vulnerable populations. Each year, people in most regions of Afghanistan suffer from a lack of the basic elements of protection. Erratic rainfall also characterizes Afghanistan’s biophysical environment. Flooding during spring and summer severely affect provinces in the southern region, destroying homes and livelihoods. According to an analysis of climate and drought records by the Asian Development Bank, droughts in southern region have a return period of three to five years, while drought covering large areas of zones recurs every 9 – 11 years. The 2008 drought situation, however, was unusual and deeply affected communities in the Southern Region. One positive development in 2009 was the wheat harvest, which was forecast to be the best in 32 years thanks to abundant rainfall in the country in March and April.
However, in 2010 SR experience a poor harvest and floods (especially in Zabul province. Famine early warning system (FEWS) predicted that SR will have a poor harvest (leading to a sever food security0 owing to famine experienced in the first half of the year and floods (mainly in the Zabul province).