This Climate-Fragility profile is envisaged as a first component of a Climate-Fragility Risk Assessment process. It summarizes the key challenges the Lake Chad region is experiencing as a consequence of the interplay between climate change and fragility.

The Climate Change and International Security Resource Guide is produced for the Brussels Dialogue on Climate Diplomacy (BDCD) which consists of a series of informal meetings to exchange information and promote cooperation among European institutions and international organisations active in the nexus between climate change and international, national, human and environmental security.
 

Conflict and climate change have pushed 124 million people in 51 countries into acute food security, a situation when the inability to consume adequate food represents an immediate danger to people’s lives and livelihoods. In 2017, the number of people affected by acute food insecurity increased by 11 million. These are the main findings of a publication titled, “Global Report on Food Crises,” released by the Food Security Information Network (FSIN).

The longest-running barometer of Afghan opinion, the Survey of the Afghan People is a map of social change over time, presenting a clear picture of the gains and gaps that Afghans perceive in a rapidly transforming nation.

In Afghanistan, insecurity over land and water rights hampers investments in food production and irrigation. In rural areas, customary tenure systems, partly based on religious law, are the most relevant but suffer from weak recognition and offer little protection to rights holders. The land policy reform is on-going but remains slow. Moreover, land administration capacity is weak and improvements mostly take place in urban areas. In this context, land disputes are common and often violent.

The challenges faced by more than five and a half million Afghan refugees who have returned since 2002 receive scant regard in most international media or official proceedings concerning Afghanistan. Attention is primarily focused on Afghanistan’s intensified armed conflict, NATO’s withdrawal planning, and faltering peace efforts. Moreover, despite the millions of refugees who have returned in the past ten years, Afghans still comprise the world’s largest refugee population.

The Afghanistan land sector is plagued by a multitude of problems linked to weak governance, corruption and lack of capacity. There are competing claims to land, widespread conflicts, resultant landlessness and poverty. Other issues are limited availability of undisputed farmland, difficulties in accessing grazing lands and many disputes over pasture lands. These issues are exacerbated by conflicting land ownership systems, insecure land tenure and registration, weak land governance environment and uncertain and incomplete legal frameworks.

This report looks at the ways in which natural resource management—the institutions, policies and practices that govern land, water, forests, minerals, hydrocarbons—interact with violent conflict in Afghanistan.

The vast majority of land in Afghanistan is untitled and unregistered, further complicating the Afghan state’s ability to help sustainably resolve land disputes. The United States Institute of Peace (USIP) and the Afghanistan Land Authority sought to address this problem by testing a new model of engaging community dispute resolution in formal land registration. This report examines the lessons learned from the pilot and proposes recommendations for reform.

This paper reviews the formal treatment of land rights in Afghanistan over the post-Bonn decade (2002 - 2012). The objective is to document the developments in the recent past to better understand present and possible future trends.

ABSTRACTED FROM EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: In the period from 2017 to 2019, Tajikistan’s authoritarian retrenchment continued. Political institutions were monopolized by the elite after the destruction of the Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) in 2015, at the time the only viable political opposition party. The IRPT’s chairman went into exile, its remaining leaders were rounded up, and lawyers who acted on their behalf were also imprisoned for lengthy prison terms.

Despite interesting patterns from the past and at least superficially striking parallels with the present, policies on Afghanistan have not been adequately informed by an understanding of the country’s history. Nor has the extensive academic literature on Afghan history been translated into policy; on the contrary, much that has been attempted in Afghanistan since late 2001 has been remarkably ahistorical. This report identifies broad historical patterns and distills relevant lessons that may be applicable to policies during the 2011 to 2014 transition and beyond.