PRESS BRIEFING BY THE U.N. OFFICES FOR PAKISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN (07 January 2002)

The following is a near-verbatim transcript of today’s briefing at the United Nations Information Centre in Islamabad by the United Nations offices for Pakistan and Afghanistan (excluding question and answer session).

** Eric Falt, Director, UN Information Centre

Good afternoon. The Special Representative Mr. Lakhdar Brahimi continues to have a busy schedule. He met over the weekend with members of the diplomatic community in Kabul and separately later with Mr. Zalmay Khalilzad, the Envoy of the United States President, and also with a group of tribal elders from Khost.

This morning, he visited the Kabul airport to take stock of demining activities conducted there, which are essential before Kabul airport can receive international flights in accordance with the regulations of the International Civil Aviation Organization. Another prerequisite is of course the lifting of sanctions and you may have seen that there are moves in that direction.

A number of high-level visitors are also converging to Afghanistan. The Special Rapporteur on Human Rights for Afghanistan, Dr. Kamal Hossain, arrived in Kabul yesterday after meeting in Islamabad with Pakistan government officials, UN personnel, and NGOs. He is now meeting in Kabul with various ministers of the Interim Administration, UN officials and others, and
should be holding a press conference later tonight.

I would also like to announce that Mr. Koichiro Matsuura, the Director-General of UNESCO, will visit Pakistan and Afghanistan this week on a three-day mission. He will arrive in Islamabad on 10 January and proceed to Kabul the next day. The main purpose of Mr. Matsuura’s visit is to reinforce UNESCO’s action on the ground, particularly corresponding to Afghanistan’s reconstruction needs within UNESCO’s fields of competence –education, culture, science and communication. We’ll issue more details of Mr. Matsuura’s itinerary in Pakistan tomorrow.

As you probably know, Ms. Sadako Ogata, former High Commissioner for Refugees, who will co-chair the upcoming Tokyo Conference on reconstruction of Afghanistan, is also on her way to the region. She will be in Kabul this week to meet with the members of the interim Administration as well as Mr. Brahimi. She is scheduled also to visit Herat to see for herself the conditions and challenges of return and reconstruction of Afghanistan, before the Tokyo Conference.

More from Herat now with Wagdi.

** Wagdi Othman, Spokesperson for WFP

The World Food Programme started today distributing food coupons to about 53,000 families in Herat, in northeastern Afghanistan. That is about 340,000 people or 78 percent of the entire population of the city estimated at 430,000 people. The beneficiaries have been identified by WFP as the most needy people.

More than 2,600 metric tons of wheat will be distributed. The citywide food distribution will take place over a period of 10 days (one day per district) to avoid overcrowding at distribution sites.

Near Herat, WFP distributes 90 metric tons of food everyday in Maslakh camp. The camp is our single largest food distribution point in the entire country of Afghanistan. 90 metric tons a day feeds 324,000 people a month. Each family gets a 50 kg bag of wheat for one month. WFP has been distributing food for the last two years in Maslakh camp.

WFP also provides supplementary feeding for highly vulnerable people, including children under 10 years old and pregnant and breast-feeding mothers. Our implementing partner also runs 14 kitchens in the camp, which provides a hot porridge.

WFP partners in the camp, the well-known humanitarian organizations Medecins Sans Frontiere (MSF) and Medicos del Mundo (MDM) run health care clinics where wheat flour, corn/soya blend, cooking oil and lentils provided to severely malnourished.

Recently, the camp has had severe problems with security, when armed groups have repeatedly entered the camp and discouraged international aid groups from doing their humanitarian work.

The camp has also become a well-known place for humanitarian assistance, and is attracting a huge number of people, some of whom may not be vulnerable.

Finally, we are pleased to announce the return today of our international staff member to Jalalabad, the capital of the Nangarhar province. The office is now fully operational with 13 international and national staff.

WFP is now making preparation with NGOs partners to feed some 9,000 displaced people in Laghman, an area north of Jalalabad. WFP is also providing food to over 82,000 people in Kot and Rodat, in Nangarhar province.

** Chulho Hyun, Spokesperson for UNICEF

Good afternoon. I have updates from three regions of Afghanistan today.

UNICEF staff in Faizabad, along with the deputy director of education, recently visited schools for girls there, as part of assessing how UNICEF will support recovery efforts in the local schooling sector.

Our staff report that the need for rehabilitation is considerable. Due to economic constraints, no school was properly maintained for many years, and many schools have had to build temporary facilities that are used as both shelter and classroom. There is a visible lack of basic equipment like chairs, desks and blackboards.

Staying in the region, the Badakhshan portion of the life-saving, national measles immunization campaign gets underway this week. The first phase aims to vaccinate some 57,000 children aged six months to 12 years, and UNICEF has supplied the necessary vaccines and syringes to the district level.

Measles vaccination is also a major activity right now in Kabul, where the campaign was launched last week, and is being monitored by public health officials, UNICEF, WHO and NGO staff. We’ll share the latest coverage figures as soon as they come in, but in the first two days alone in Kabul, the campaign reached a touch above 142,000 children. This tally is three
times the total that was reported between January and October of last year for all the provinces in the Central Region.

You may have also heard anecdotal reports indicating a very active response by mothers and caregivers, flocking to vaccination posts in and around the capital.

And in the latest from Mazar, continuing efforts related to education. UNICEF plans to provide schooling equipment for children living with disabilities in 11 districts of the Samangan, Balkh and Jawzjan Provinces.

This measure is to benefit some 1,200 children, and is based on an earlier agreement with the Comprehensive Disabled Afghans Programme to support education for disabled children.

UNICEF and another partner, the People in Need Foundation, are working to start an education project in the Sakhi IDP camp, aiming to reach 3,000 displaced persons. A related effort is to support the repair work on schools in the Kamaz and Chemtal camps, which have an attendance of 1,200, both girls and boys.

That’s all for now, with a bit of “cleaning house” left--two publications that will be available after the briefing. One is a press release following the recent SAARC Summit, entitled “UNICEF Welcomes Signing of Two Conventions on Children by South Asian Leaders.” And the other, I hope, is also timely —the 2002 Year Planner and calendar, as produced by the UNICEF Afghanistan Country Office, which includes key messages related to children. You can pick up a copy afterwards. Thank you.

** Yusuf Hassan, Spokesperson for UNHCR

The parallel movement of Afghans in opposite directions - one the return of refugees to Afghanistan and the other inflows into the neighboring countries – continues. During the weekend, UNHCR monitors at the Chaman border post in the southern province of Baluchistan recorded the return of nearly 4,000 Afghans. In Iran, another 1,490 Afghans returned home through the Dogharoun-Islam Qala border crossing in western Afghanistan.

At the same time, the number of Afghans fleeing to Pakistan in the last few days has increased. Over 3,000 Afghans have been camped out at the Chaman border post waiting to be allowed into the UNHCR-run Killi Faizo transit centre. The Afghans entered Pakistan three days ago. UNHCR is negotiating with the border authorities so that the vulnerable among them can be admitted into the transit center. UNHCR today started gathering information on these new arrivals. We have been providing them with high-energy biscuits and water.

In North West Frontier Province, the transfer of refugees from Jalozai and Peshawar continue to gain momentum with an average daily transportation of some 1,500 individuals to various new camps in the tribal agencies.

Yesterday, the first group of new arrivals was relocated to new sites in the tribal areas of NWFP. A total of 2,110 have so far been moved from Jalozai to Shalman. Today, UNHCR helped move 179 Shia refugees from Jalozai to Bassu and 459 other refugees to Old Bagzai.

In Afghanistan, UNHCR is assisting Internally Displaced Persons to return to their home villages. In Central Afghanistan, nearly 800 families have returned from Panjshir valley to the Shomali plain, assisted by UNHCR and other aid agencies since the New Years’ Eve. Between Thursday and Sunday, another 400 families returned to Estalif district aboard IOM buses.

Estalif is on a slope at the foot of a mountain range, overlooking the Shomali plain. As the villages are difficult to access, they have been completely empty until our return convoys began arriving last Thursday. Many villagers have seen their destroyed homes for the first time since the fled three years ago. They were happy to return to their picturesque villages, which used to be a popular site for families to spend recreational weekends, but were shocked to see the destruction, with demolished bazaars and only walls remaining in places that used to be their homes.

All families were provided with winter tents on arrival, and they immediately began setting up a mini-camp site in the villages. Those returning to Dara, which is a large village accessible only by two-hour walk up the mountains, have decided to set up tents at the foot of the village, so that they can gradually return back to their homes with assistance packages.

Distribution of return packages, including heating items, are underway for returnee families in Bagram district and it has also begun in Estalif. After a quick assessment, shelter kits are also being distributed to those in need.

Today, we began the assisted return of internally displaced people back to their villages in the Qala Baugh district, a third destination cleared by demining agencies.

Although transportation and initial return assistance is well underway, much more needs to be done to help revive the communities decimated by war.

UNHCR is discussing with other agencies to launch development-type activities to help rebuild communities in the Shomali Plain, such as setting up medical clinics, agricultural rehabilitation, water and sanitation repairs.