JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) and GTZ (Deutsch Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit) chose Groupe URD to carry out a five-month research project (March - July 2007), which aimed to help the Ministry of Women’s Affairs to develop policies and programmes to improve the condition of chronically poor women and widows with families to support, in order to achieve the objectives fixed by the Afghanistan National Development Strategy (A.N.D.S.).

The research has the following objectives:
- To analyse the situation of chronically poor women and define the main factors which keep them in poverty, particularly for widows with families to support;
- To clearly define specific terms such as, ‘the most vulnerable women’, ‘chronically poor’ or even the term ‘work’ when applied to women;
- To collect and analyse all existing data on women in Afghanistan ;
- To review all existing programmes being run by different actors in Afghanistan which are aimed at vulnerable women and widows in particular;
- To make recommendations to improve the programmes and policies of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, and also to measure the progress that has been made towards achieving the objectives fixed by the A.N.D.S.

In the post-war, emergency situation in Afghanistan, the condition of Afghan women has become a priority for aid actors. The international community is putting pressure on the Afghan government to bring about rapid change. The ANDS has fixed very ambitious objectives: ‘By end-2010, the number of female-headed households that are chronically poor will be reduced by 20%, and their employment rates will be increased by 20%’. Unfortunately, a lack of means and skills in Afghanistan are slowing down the progress being made towards these objectives. A large number of programmes have been put in place by aid actors since 2001 (NGOs, International and governmental organisations) to improve the condition of Afghan women. However there is an obvious lack of coordination between these and their impact is rarely evaluated and is not really known.

The report is not available to the public.