With more than five million refugees returning to Afghanistan since 2002, placing a strain on already limited resources, we have in recent years taken critical steps to meet the urgent needs of these returnees.

Many returnees find themselves living in makeshift camps while waiting to receive a plot of land from the Afghan government's Land Allocation Scheme. Since such camps often have poor or even non-existent access to safe water and sanitation, until more long-term solutions can be identified and implemented, we provide these communities with safe water through emergency water tankering.

In 2008 alone we provided 5,570 families living in Chamtala and Tangi settlements in Nangarhar province with 220,000 litres of water daily, thanks to a grant from the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid department (ECHO). For each individual living in the settle-ments this translates into 15 litres of safe water a day for drinking, washing and cooking.

We also recognise that there are times when we need to provide emergency humanitarian relief to rural communities. One such situation occurred in the autumn of 2008, when thousands of Afghan families living in Qadis district, Badghis province, were facing the coming winter months without adequate food reserves.

To avert a humanitarian crisis, we introduced our first "Cash for Work" scheme, whereby unskilled labourers from 156 villages received 48 days of employment. Thanks to a grant from the European Commission's Humanitarian Aid department (ECHO), we were able to ensure that 6,205 households had sufficient food stocks to cover 50 percent of their food requirements for the 2008 winter. In addition to this, we estimate that a further 13,281 households benefited indirectly from the scheme through improved roads and irrigation systems built as a result of the scheme.