Strengthen community-based protection monitoring to reduce community vulnerabilities in Afghanistan Since the Taliban took-over power in mid-August 2021, the protection environment in Afghanistan has remained volatile and UNHCR’s protection strategy (as well as the work of the Government and the wider humanitarian community) will need to be informed by evidence-based data on violations of human rights and international humanitarian law and the associated protection risks to the population. Information should be gathered through systematic, structured dialogue with individuals and communities of concern to ensure the centrality of protection, including through the work of the Protection Cluster. Protection monitoring is the most feasible way to increase UNHCR’s protection footprint and enable meaningful outreach by informing evidence-based programing and using the collected data for advocacy 
Through the use of joint monitoring tools and inter-agency procedures tailored to the capacity of actors in each respective location, UNHCR will continue to regularly collect, verify and analyze information to identify violations of rights and protection risks of people of concern, applying an AGD and community-based approach. Structured, participatory interaction with communities and individuals will be used as a primary method of collecting such information.
Additionally, UNHCR will conduct rapid assessment, for the newly displaced IDPs and returnee IDPs in the places of origin to assist the vulnerable people based on the identified needs. Both directly and through its existing network of partners, UNHCR will continue to undertake protection monitoring in emergency, post-emergency and prolonged situations of displacement, maintaining a protection footprint in all regions of the country that are accessible, while using phone interview methodologies to monitor where access issues persist. Where humanitarian access is limited, UNHCR’s work will be complemented by the presence of other protection actors on the ground. Through capacity building of partners, the quality of protection information collection will improve allowing for more precise determination of trends and gaps in protection delivery in 2021. Well-established protection networks and partnerships will be reinforced by strengthened sub-regional clusters, resulting in improved monitoring, reporting and advocacy. Community-based protection monitoring will also constitute a basis for the design and implementation of life-saving assistance, identification of communities for UNHCR’s CBP and solution programme response (CO-PROSPER) projects, identification of Persons with Specific Needs and referrals to specialized services for vulnerable Afghans across the country. The information will be disseminated during the community mobilization activities and a whole of community approach will be applied, targeting all population groups.

The objective of the project is to identify protection risks and concerns in communities through protection monitoring, in order to develop strategic advocacy efforts steered by the Protection Cluster as well as devise and implement evidence-based interventions to reduce the vulnerabilities of the community. Furthermore, through protection monitoring, UNHCR will identify vulnerable individuals in a community who will be referred to the Persons with Specific Needs (PSN) programme and other assistance programmes to mitigate and address the protection risks faced by the individual. The project will be implemented in Balkh, Bamiyan, Jalalabad, Kandahar, and Kabul provinces targeting IDPs (40,000), IDP returnees (40,000) and host community members (20,000).