Emergency WASH assistance to drought-affected population of Kunduz province, in Khanabad and Chardarah districts Afghanistan has faced a protracted conflict for the past fourty years with no perspective of stabilization in the coming years. The violence has displaced hundreds of thousands of people within the country and in the neighbouring countries. The overall number of informal settlements has risen from 300 to 623 in the last five years alone, in the 19 provinces hosting the largest number of IDPs. By the end of 2017, 1.9 million of persons were affected by the ongoing conflict, and 405,000 have been forced to flee their home. In addition to the continuous violence, Afghanistan is now facing a major drought, with an average deficit of 70% of snowfall and precipitation during winter 2017-2018. The country is at risk of a severe drought which could reach the level of 2011, when 2.6 million people were food insecure. The HRP has been revised on 31st of May 2018 to include response to the drought and calls for $547 million.
Kunduz province in the North-East region has hosted about 140,000 IDPs since 2016 and is now impacted by the drought, which has forced 2,770 people to flee their home since the start of 2018. The province is among the hardest to reach areas of the country and faces major violence and insecurity.
SI has conducted a WaSH assessment in the province, and especially in 18 villages of the districts of Khanabad and Chardarah to evaluate the needs of the vulnerable IDPs, returnees and host communities affected by the drought. The assessment report shows that 78% of villages identify access to drinking water as their first priority. All villages have noted a high or very high impact of the drought, including on the quality and quantity of their drinking water. 83% of villages rely on the river for their drinking water and 94% noted that almost everybody had had problems to access water in the last 2 weeks. In terms of sanitation 9 villages have no access to toilet and resort to open defecation. Overall, almost all households declared that they had not received any assistance in the last 6 months. 

SOLIDARITES INTERNATIONAL proposes to provide a WaSH assistance to drought-affected vulnerable populations in the districts of Khanabad and Chardarah that have been identified as priority districts by the WaSH cluster. This intervention is in direct link with the cluster's strategic objective to save live in the areas of highest needs and with the specific objective 1.4 i.e. related communicable diseases are reduced among IDP, returnee, refugee and non-displaced conflict-affected women, men and children of all ages through timely and adequate WaSH assistance. 
SI’s intervention will target 19,101  beneficiaries distributed as follows: 20% men, 20% women, 31% boys and 29% girls based on population data collected during the assessment. The beneficiaries are all drought affected persons.    
The rapid assessment conducted in July 2018 has stressed important WaSH needs that SI will address through this project. Its intervention will be composed of three outputs: 1. Most drought-affected IDPs, returnees and host population from Khanabad and Chardarah districts are provided with timely emergency WaSH assistance 2. 2,674 drought-affected IDPs in Kunduz province have access to culturally adapted sanitation services and 3. 5,159 drought-affected individuals improve their hygiene conditions.
In accordance with its internal process and CHF allocation strategy, SI will ensure throughout the project a special attention to cross-cutting issues such as gender equality, environment protection and protection mainstreaming.