National Rural Access Program (NRAP).

The National Rural Access Program (NRAP) is a sectoral national program of Afghanistan applying for the period of 2011-2014. Its main objective is to promote equitable economic growth by providing year-round access to basic services and facilities in rural Afghanistan. This objective will be achieved by nationwide quality rehabilitation, construction and maintenance of essential, basic access and rural road infrastructure.
The NRAP will improve connectivity and accessibility to/from villages leading to the integration of economies with regional, national and international markets, better access to health, education and other basic services, and greater opportunities for economic growth and development in rural areas. The program will provide all-weather or year-round roads in rural areas which will improve connectivity to provincial capitals, Kabul and other important cities/markets. This connectivity will encourage and facilitate more and more people in rural areas to explore better opportunities for employment and for marketing their products and services. The Government and other stakeholders will be able to improve services in the villages and provide better value for money. The private sector will grow faster creating jobs in rural areas. The overall increased traffic of people, goods, services, technologies and ideas will bring prosperity and stability to rural Afghanistan and the country as whole. It will also facilitate the expansion of rural, non-farm activities assisting households to diversify their income sources, to become less economically vulnerable and to be less dependent on opium poppy cultivation.
The Program already has a heavy focus on gender, but will work to strengthen it considerably. It has undertaken a Gender Sensitive Rural Access Study, which suggested stark differences by gender and age group in the use of roads and other services provided by transport programs. The results corroborated that access and mobility patterns are highly gender-differentiated due to strict socio-cultural norms. The NRAP has recently commenced a further study to identify factors that assist or hinder women’s inclusion in and benefits from rural access planning and implementation. The first study was completed in August 2010 and the findings will be addressed with the support of a gender team.
The Program also has active Environmental and Social Management Units which are included in the project management team. These units, in close coordination with the technical unit, are involved from the identification stage of the sub-projects up to completion, and play an effective role in the implementation and monitoring of environmental and social safeguard frameworks for the program. The project will emphasize the protection of human health, prevention/compensation of any loss of livelihood, mitigation of environmental degradation due to road construction, promotion of activities with positive environmental and social impacts, and compliance of World Bank safeguard policies, Afghanistan Environment Law and Regulations.
An Inter-Ministerial Steering Committee (SC) chaired by the Minister of Finance which is responsible for the overall policy, strategic planning and project oversight shall be established, and other line ministries involved as the main beneficiary ministries in the project (agriculture, basic education, health, counter narcotics, etc.). Focus will also be placed towards community-led management and maintenance and community participatory monitoring will be introduced. The Social Inclusion Unit will ensure the participation of beneficiary communities in the implementation and monitoring.