A new plan to tackle the problem of Afghanistan's half a million internally displaced persons (IDPs) has been made in a meeting of a number of international organisations in Kabul Saturday.
The meeting focused on how to strengthen housing rights for the displaced, especially women who suffer more from the problem of displacement.
The plan will be delivered to the Afghan government to act upon with the strong recommendations of the organisations, including the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
OCHA head Aidan O'Leary said a change was needed because the current plan of attack is not working.
"At this point in time, there are almost half a million IDPs identified across the country as result of the conflict in Afghanistan. When we actually engage with the populations there, the main solution that is on the table is 'return' - return from the place of origin, from where the people have been displaced. In practice that's simply not working and we have many instances where many people have been living away from the place of origin for ten years or more," he said.
"What we need to be looking at is increasingly moving forward are issues of local integration and also issues of resettlement and third locations," he added.
O'Leary said there is a very strong push to create Afghanistan's first ever IDP policy which will clearly define who are the IDPs to be focused on, and what are the real solutions in both humanitarian response and durable solutions.
"What we would like to make sure is that this policy is as informed as possible about the reality on the ground," he added.
Norwegian Refugee Council country director for Afghanistan said global research is helping find solutions.
"There is global research which is going on in different contexts, conflict and non-conflict protected emergencies of rights of women, and their abilities to access especially the property and land rights in this conflict and conflict situation.
This is going across four or five countries including the occupied Palestinian territories, South Sudan, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and based on all the findings we will come out with the recommendations," Prasant Naik said.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriations (MORR) said Saturday it will also provide the Council of Ministers with a strategy to address IDPs within the next two months.
"The workshop today aimed to find solutions for the issues of displaced women regarding their right of access to properties, land, and houses. We found some solutions and we discussed these and took the suggestions from our partners who work for the internally displaced persons.
These suggestions will help us enrich the policy towards internally displaced persons that we are currently working on," MORR Deputy Minister Abdulsamad Hami said.
"Those who are displaced across the country are vulnerable, and women are more vulnerable than men, even when not displaced. When they are displaced they bear even more vulnerability and will have less rights to house, land, or other properties," he added.