Bringing Clean Water Back to Rural Afghanistan

Founded in 1984 and now registered as both an Afghan NGO (Kabul headquarters) and a Danish organization, DACAAR is the country's largest provider of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services, working through six regional offices and roughly 1,000 national staff across all 34 provinces. Its Water Expertise and Training Centre operates a national groundwater monitoring network of close to 400 wells covering about 85% of Afghanistan's river basins, tracking water tables as droughts intensify. In a project with the Islamic Development Bank and King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Centre, DACAAR built wells, stand posts, trenches and reservoirs that brought safe drinking water to 2,171 families (13,477 people, 51% women) across Kabul, Nangarhar, Faryab and Kunduz provinces, completed in October 2024, and trained local water management committees and mechanics to keep the systems running.