Women for Women International has made the difficult decision to close its Country Office and end direct program implementation in Afghanistan.
In our nearly 25-year history in the country since 2002, our Afghanistan team has reached over 140,000 women and adolescent girls across multiple provinces, providing them with the tools, knowledge and resources to rebuild their lives and support their families. Our program also reached over 6,500 men in the same communities. While our teams delivered direct interventions targeting some of the most vulnerable women and households, we were also privileged to provide funding and technical support to multiple national and local NGOs.
Considering the vast challenges facing the Afghan population and women and girls in particular, our intention has been to maintain our presence through direct health and livelihood programming in Afghanistan while also increasing our support to local partners.
Despite our sustained efforts to identify a path to continue our direct operations, the conditions required to do this are no longer conducive. As we come to the end of our ability to safely maintain our offices and programming inside the country, we are working carefully to shift to a model of supporting local partners.
We are immensely proud and grateful for the courage, commitment, and resilience of our Country Office team, who have persevered through so many challenges while continuing to invest in the health, wellbeing, and livelihoods of thousands of women each day. We are also deeply grateful to the donors and partners whose solidarity and support have helped make this work possible over the years.
Most importantly, we remain committed to the women and girls of Afghanistan and to ensuring that our global community stands in solidarity with them, responds to their needs, honors their strength, and elevates their voices.