"Improved job opportunities, housing, and access to safe drinking water were listed as the top priorities for the future by the majority of former refugees and former internally displaced people in a survey into social and economic conditions in Afghanistan published on May 2006.

Oxfam has launched a £1m appeal to continue and expand its work with partners in Lebanon, Gaza, Israel and beyond over the next three months to provide clean water, sanitation and public hygiene promotion to innocent people affected by the fighting.

UNDP latest publication on Afghanistan actuality and developments.

FROM ABSTRACT: "Soaring oil prices are undermining the benefits of debt cancellation and putting serious stress on many of the world's most impoverished countries. On July 7, 2006, the market price of oil hit an all time record high of $75.70 a barrel, up from only $19.70 in December
2001. Adjusted for inflation oil is now more expensive than at any time since 1980, and the rising cost of oil imports is draining far more money out of impoverished countries than debt cancellation is contributing more...

This is the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund Report to Donors, quarterly report, March 2006.

Summary of USA Today article: "Two geological basins in northern Afghanistan hold 18 times the oil and triple the natural gas resources previously thought, scientists said as part of a U.S. assessment aimed at enticing energy development in the war-torn country." (March 14, 2006)

Corruption plays a crucial yet nearly invisible role in depriving nearly a fifth of the world's population of access to safe drinking water, a new U.N. report on water and development said on March 9.
While supplies of fresh water are adequate for the whole planet, mismanagement in its distribution helps explain why adequate drinking water is beyond the reach of 1.1 billion people, while 2.6 billion people lack access to basic sanitation, said the report prepared by 24 U.N. agencies.
Those a more...

It is the major aim of the Department of Renewable Energy to facilitate the development, identification and dissemination of economic and user friendly technologies in the field of renewable energy and energy efficiency.
Various surveys have shown that lighting is among the most urgent needs of Afghans all over the country. That is why the Department of Renewable Energy focuses on solar lighting as one strategy to cope with that basic need. Recent studies have shown that an existing solar lamp more...

UN-HABITAT welcomes new submissions for the 2006 Dubai International
Awards for Best Practices. The purpose of the award is to recognize and
publicize outstanding and sustainable achievements in improving the living
environment . The award aims to capture initiatives which already show
noticeable impact on improving people's quality of life; are the result of
partnerships between the public, or private and civic sectors of society;
and are socially, culturally, economically and environmen more...

Afghanistan's coal miners endure some of the most dangerous and primitive conditions in the world. This is a BBC photo account of life in Afghanistan's mines.