EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Since 2008, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) have experienced large displacements due to prevailing law and order situation. As of December 2014, more than 1.5 million people displaced from FATA were thus living in Peshawar and adjoining districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Thanks to the significant improvement in security environment and Government’s systematic efforts, some 115,900 displaced families have returned to their areas of origin in FATA in 2015. Among these, 81,000 families returned to Khyber agency, mainly into Bara Tehsil.
All returning families have been provided with humanitarian assistance for the first six months, which should be followed by further support for a smooth recovery and resilience with a sustained livelihoods. In order to respond to this, four UN agencies, under the overall guidance of FATA Secretariat, are jointly implementing a coordinated programme for recovery and resilience of these returnee population. WFP, UNDP, FAO and UNICEF have jointly conducted this assessment in order to understand the current situation of the population and to identify their priority needs for recovery. The findings are mainly based on community focus group discussions and key informant interviews in areas with high concentration of returnee population in Bara sub-division.
The major source of livelihood of the population is wage labour followed by agriculture, livestock and remittances; more than 70% of households has income less than PKR 10,000 per month. Households are thus relying more on unsustainable sources of livelihood having meagre income. Markets seem to be functioning fairly well with food items available in most markets, even though more than 60% of households reported inadequate income to buy the desired food reflecting food insecurity. This is of concern because own production is sufficient to meet household food needs for less than four months in average.
Major constraints were observed in agricultural sector including access to land, debris/shrubs on the land and demarcation issues, land tenure issues, lack of livestock extension services, animal diseases, lack of fodder, damage to animal houses, removal/cutting of trees due to security reasons , damaged and non-functional irrigation system. Households were cultivating less land than pre-displacement situation, own less number of livestock and their overall income from agriculture is far from satisfactory.
Water quality is of concern even though some 80% of the respondents reported using water from ‘safe’ sources such as tap water or tube well, with 52% reporting that they have own water sources. Some 57% of households were using dry pit latrine while 10% were using pour flush toilets, and 20% were practicing open defecation. 87% of the respondents reported that children under the age of five had received polio drops during polio campaign; awareness on the need of breast feeding practices was fairly good. More than half (53%) of respondents reported initiating complementary feeding for children at the age of 6 months, while it was at the age of 7 months reported by 28%. For children 6-24 months, while cereal was the major source of energy, consumption of milk was low (34%) and that of protein source (meat, eggs, pulses, legumes) was found very low at 3%. Malaria was reported as the number one health problem (reported by 47%) followed by cough/cold and fever (26%), and typhoid (24%).
Education environment was found rather poor with a high proportion of schools non-functional. In case of girls’ school, almost 50% of the schools were nonfunctional while it was slightly better for boys. However, school enrolment was encouraging with 64% of respondents reporting their kids enrolled in government schools, and 32% in private schools.
With regard to basic services such as sanitation, roads, electricity, security and mobile phone, the situation seems fair considering the context of FATA, though significant rooms for improvement exits. One area cited for improvement is the NADRA facilitation; some 90% of respondents suggested need of a major improvement in NADRA services.
More than 82% reported the use of internal Jirga mechanism for community dispute resolution. Level of community engagement in rehabilitation so far seems inadequate as reported by most respondents; likewise community satisfaction on rehabilitation work was also rather low.
Major recommendations based on findings from this assessment include the following:
As most households depend on unstable sources of livelihoods such as unskilled wage labour, programmes should be implemented to diversify livelihood sources; these could be achieved through cash for livelihood activities in different forms to help improve livelihood opportunities and community assets;
Vocational and skill trainings especially to engage the youth;
Households should be supported for revival of agriculture by improving irrigation infrastructure, providing agriculture inputs such as improved varieties of seed and fertilizer and extension services by reviving and strengthening of Farm Services Center; and promotion of agro/farm forestry.
Livestock is one of the important sources of livelihood and thus programmes should be implemented to enhance livestock productivity by provision of livestock feed, support for livestock restocking and better veterinary/animal husbandry services;
Access to safe water should be further improved, use of toilets should be further encouraged and awareness on the importance of hygiene and sanitation should be raised;
Health facilities should be upgraded with better infrastructure and provision of qualified staff as well as medicines and equipment; improvement in services including neonatal and maternal health services; and awareness raising on health and hygiene.
Provision of life saving nutrition intervention to prevent and treat micronutrient deficiencies and promote infant and young child feeding practices among women, management of acute malnutrition by supporting pregnant and lactating women and children under five;
Improvement in quality of education through provision of essential teaching aids and equipment together with improvement in physical infrastructure and training of teachers on psychosocial support;
A detailed assessment on child protection issues and then mechanism to address it;
Support for hazard resistant housing, DRR, improvement of the road infrastructure, improvement in mobile communication network for a better reception;
Mobilization for better community participation in recovery and rehabilitation activities through strengthening of community based organizations; supporting the existing system such as Jirga to be more participatory and accessible.
Access to services from state institutions such as FATA Secretariat at Tehsil level;
Programmes to raise awareness to strengthen the participation in political system and the value of individual’s vote and right to vote including for women;
Reviving broken linkages with the public sector service delivery institutions