Good morning everyone, I am so sorry for this delay. [inaudible] I was trying to get something from New York. We are reversing roles a little bit today, because normally what we do here, what we tell you guys is what they use in the New York briefing. This time around, at least in the beginning of the briefing, I will start with a little bit of New York

UN Secretary-General's Press Conference in New York
A few hours ago the Secretary-general had a press conference and he was asked about the extension of ISAF. He said that the mandate is likely to be extended and "the Member States, from my contacts with them, seem ready to approve it", [he said]. On the question of geographic expansion the Secretary-General said that there is much more discussion going on. This is not a United Nations Blue Helmets operation, he explained, and so the discussions are going on between the lead nation, that is the United Kingdom, and the United States and the other Members".

Security Council Briefing on Afghanistan

The other piece of information I have from New York to you is a briefing to the Security Council by the Under Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Kieran Prendergast. These briefings happen regularly; this is a public meeting. My friend [Nicole, from AP] knows about them, she covered them extensively in New York. [inaudible] Basically he tells what is happening here, he updates the Council Members on developments and explains what is going on, and I will make just two points from his briefing. One is on the Loya Jirga and the other is on security.

On the Loya Jirga, he noted that the Commission continues to conduct extensive consultations, and that a visit to the Commission Office here in Kabul is now a central part of the itinerary of Afghan groups travelling from the provinces to Kabul to petition the authorities. Hundreds of people pass through the office each week, many expressed concerns about the possibility of intimidation by authorities and armed groups on the Loya Jirga process. Many visitors have also said that they see the Loya Jirga as an opportunity for them to rejoin the political process.

As you know the Commission is working on the procedures for the convening of the Loya Jirga and they are scheduled to announce that next week, March 21.

On security, USG Kieran Prendergast noted that aside from the ongoing heavy fighting in the southeastern part of the country, the rest of Afghanistan remains relatively calm. However, the appearance of improving security, he noted, conceals tensions beneath the surface. He [said that] the power of armed groups and that disarmament programmes in some areas involve commanders disarming their enemies and rearming themselves.

He also told the Security Council, in this public meeting that I mentioned to you, that alternative sources of income need to be found for the mujahideen and the large number of armed men in Afghanistan.

This issue is being addressed at a number of levels, and everyone seems to agree that a longer-term study is necessary, and whatever initiatives are undertaken must be synchronized with the training programme of a new national army.

UNDP Recovery and Employment Afghanistan Programme

Moving on, back to Kabul, as part of the effort to promote employment. The UN Development Programme and the Interim Administration, with funding from the Japanese Government, have started what is called the 'Recovery and Employment Afghanistan Programme'. The first project is has just started. It is the rehabilitation of a primary school in Chehelsotune village, five kilometres from Kabul city. The school caters for Chehelsotune and the surrounding villages, teaching boys and more recently girls from class one to class nine.

In addition to repairing the school, they will also be repairing the road to the village as well as clearing public areas in the village. This project has just started and is expected to employ some 150 Afghans when it is in full speed. This REAP, what we the Recovery and Employment Afghanistan Programme, is expected to employ in the next six months some 20,000 Afghans, and of course their projects will range from rehabilitation of public buildings, to cleaning up rivers, electricity sub-station, cleaning streets and tree plantation and all kinds of civil works that will benefit the population.

UNESCO - New Year Celebrations

Also, in terms of employment, UNESCO is also bringing its contribution. Some 1,000 Afghans are being employed for the next few days. They are preparing the stadium for a concert on 21 March, the Afghan New Year. They are building a large stage as well as clearing the area, repairing of public facilities, tree planting etc. All of this for a concert to be held in the stadium, as I said, on 21 March, with three traditional orchestras. UNESCO has been able to purchase traditional musical instruments, and now three small traditional orchestras; one from the Ministry of Information and Culture Music Department, one for the Ministry of Interior and one for the Ministry of Defence who will be playing for the Nau Rouz celebrations next week.

WFP - Civil Servant Food Distribution Programme

Now some notes on food here in the country. The World Food Programme tells us that the Civil Servant food distribution which runs through September, began at the weekend. Kabul's civil servants are receiving 12 kilograms oil and 25 kilograms pulses for two months. There are 33 distribution points throughout Kabul where some 60,000 recipients are picking up their rations, worth 50 percent of their cash salary. WFP will be reaching as many as 270,000 countrywide civil servants once the programme expands to the provinces.

WFP food will start being distributed this week to thousands of internally displaced persons returning home, those now going back to the Shomali Plains. Each returning family will receive a three-month, 150 kilogram supply of wheat to help them get back on their feet over the next few months.

Yusuf [from UNHCR] will be telling you soon about the return of the refugees from Pakistan as well as IDPs, internally displaced people, so he will be able to give you more of a context on that.

A total 2,633 returnee families received food from WFP at Jalalabad last week. All these returnee refugees are arriving through the Torkham border and receiving 150 kilograms wheat per returnee family under a WFP supported refugee repatriation programme in collaboration with UNHCR.

Moving onto another region of the country, a WFP team is arriving in Hirat today for the launch for the Agency's western Afghanistan rapid assessment missions which will investigate the food security situation in Ghor, Badghis and Herat.

Finally, moving onto Kandahar, the distribution of food is expected to start from 14 March, which is today, until 20 March. WFP will be doing that with their partner, ADA. The registration has been completed and they will distribute 2,307.85 metric tons of wheat to some 46,157 families in Kandahar.

Now Yusuf will follow me to tell you about the movement of refugees returning from Pakistan as well as an update on the IDPs who are going back to the Shomali Plains. The IDPs, who as you know have been housed, for a long time now, in the former Russian compound here in Kabul. Lori from WHO will follow that to tell you about some sad developments in the health sector in the Badahkshan Province, but she will also report on the WHO team that is in Taiwara, Ghor Province. I believe that is all we have for now and we will come back and take any questions.

Afghan Returnees from Pakistan - Yusuf Hassan
Good morning. For the newcomers, I am Yusuf Hassan, I am the UNHCR Spokesperson in Kabul. There has been a dramatic rise in the number of Afghans returning home from Pakistan, as well as the people interested in returning back from the areas where they were displaced to their areas of origin.

Yesterday nearly 7,000 Afghans returned from Pakistan, bringing to 32,500 the number of Afghans who have come back home under Afghan Interim Administration and UNHCR programme to assist them to go back and reintegrate into the communities that they fled years ago. To cope with the steadily increasing number of returnees, UNHCR is fielding more staff and resources on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

At Tathtabaig outside Peshawar in Pakistan, UNHCR has hired additional staff to register refugees to enable them to receive transport and relief aid on their arrival in Afghanistan. We have also strengthened our capacity to cope with the increasing numbers inside Afghanistan. We have opened, so far, seven distribution points where they will be receiving assistance. About seven of them have started operations yesterday in Kabul. About 2,500 refugees from Pakistan received assistance at the Puli-Charki transit centre, and we hope others will be opening in the 32 provinces in the country, with the assistance of the GTZ which is a German NGO.

We have also continued to move people from the ex-Soviet Compound. More than 5,000 people have now returned with assistance from the Interim Administration, UNHCR and IOM. We will continue to move those people until we have finished with the 15,700 people registered. They are moving to the Shomali Plains just outside Kabul. Many of them are returning to houses and areas that have been completely devastated by the long-running conflict, and we hope to assist them in partnership with many other agencies that are working with them. Some of the assistance packages that we are giving to them to the returnees is a shelter package to help them rebuild their homes, beams, doors, frames and the tools to be able to put that together. We also, in collaboration with other agencies, hope to be able to provide them with seeds, tools, kits to allow them to clear the land and once again start growing crops.

Another significant development is the number of internally displaced people who want to go back. In Kabul, in the suburb, with IOM, we have found 150,000 people who are internally displaced in city. They want to go back to their areas of origin and we are working with other agencies to be able to prepare them so that we can start the move as quickly as possible. Just one indication of the number of people interested in returning from Pakistan, in the last two days we have had 20,000 people coming to the Tathabaig registration centre, near Peshawar, wanting to be registered and we had regionally planned to move up to 1,000 people a day but now the number has gone up to 7,000, and I think, in the next few of days, we are going to see that number even double. Thank you.

WHO Update - Loretta Hieber Girardet
Good morning everyone. My name is Lori Hieber and I am the Spokesperson for the World Health Organisation. This is just to let you know that the World Health Organisation is quite concerned over serious nutritional crisis in Ghor Province. It is estimated that 7 million tablets of Vitamin C are urgently required in Ghor Province to treat an outbreak of scurvy. What is happening is the population is suffering from scurvy which is making them vulnerable to secondary infections, and so far we have had 40 deaths. We still have not diagnosed the secondary infection but we have noted the widespread outbreak of scurvy.

In addition, we now have reports of night blindness in villagers and this is caused by a lack of Vitamin A in the population. So in other words, people are not getting food supplies and they are succumbing to what would normally be treatable diseases. At the same time we have received reports of six deaths in Darwaz in Badahkshan. Again there is an outbreak of a disease there that we have yet to identify. What we know is that people are succumbing after two days of developing high fever. At the same time we can now confirm the deaths of 60 children in Badakhshan as well from an outbreak of influenza. All these areas are remote provinces and remote districts, and it appears that not enough food and emergency supplies are getting there.

At the same time I would like to remind you that starting on Saturday there is a very important health sector planning meeting. All of the UN agencies, the NGOs, the national Government officials and regional health officials, are meeting to chart a plan of action on how to deal with the health crisis in this country. We are looking at the immediate short- term emergency recovery as well as long-term strategies. We are trying to restore the health of the Afghan people which I would like to remind you is one of the worst in the world. Thank you.

Q: …[inaudible] on returnee assistance package.
UNHCR: Well we give them 20 dollars per person and they also get 150 kilograms of wheat from WFP, per family. They also get plastic sheets, blankets, kitchen sets, soap and other related items. But one must remember that before we started the assistance package with the Interim Administration on 1 March, about 180,000 Afghans had returned back without any assistance, since January. Therefore people are returning back not because they are getting assistance from the UN or from somebody else, but they are returning back because they want to come back to their country. I think one of the most important factors persuading people to return back is security. People say if there is security in my village, in my home area, I want to go back. If these areas are becoming more secure and more stable then we will see more people coming back. But it is very unusual for such large numbers of people to return back at this time of year. Usually when we do repatriation, assisted repatriation, in that particular case in previous years, we normally saw an increase in the number of people coming back in April/May/June onwards. They rarely have any significant numbers of people come back so early on in the year, and I think it is an indication of a very large number of return this year. Much more than we have seen in the past.

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Afghanistan Health Update

March 14, 2002

The World Health Organization says that 7 million tablets of Vitamin C are urgently needed in Ghor Province to treat an outbreak of scurvy. A five person medical team, led by a WHO epidemiologist, is currently in the remote district of Taiwara in Ghor Province investigating a deadly disease that has killed forty people. It is still too early to identify the disease but WHO has received reports of cases of night blindness in villagers inTaiwara that seems to indicate a lack of Vitamin A in the local population. It is already clear that there is a widespread outbreak of scurvy, a nutritional disease caused by lack of Vitamin C.

No new deaths have been reported but health officials are quite concerned over serious nutritional problems in the region. A WHO nutritionist is due to travel to Taiwara later this week. Meanwhile, the Action Contre le Faim medical team that had been in Taiwara since March 2nd has been successfully airlifted out of Taiwara and is in Herat. Doctors have examined members of the team. None of them are showing any signs of hemorrhagic fever nor any other contagious disease.

At the same time, WHO has received reports of 6 deaths in Darwaz in Badahkshan Province. The cases entail adults and children who reportedly developed high fever and a skin rash on the face, and then died within 2 days of developing the symptoms. Investigations are being carried out by local health officials with WHO support.

Meanwhile WHO officials confirm that sixty children have died of an outbreak of influenza in the Yumgan valley in Badakhshan province. A WHO team traveled to the Yumgan valley last week to diagnose the disease and distribute antibiotics. The outbreak is now under control with no new cases reported. The WHO team was hindered in its earlier efforts to travel to Yumgan valley because of fighting in the area.

Finally, a reminder that the National Health Sector Planning conference will begin Saturday, March 16th at 8:30 am at the Intercontinental Hotel. This is a crucial gathering of over two hundred international and national players in the health field, including the United Nations agencies, international and national NGOs, and regional and national Ministry of Public Health staff. They are meeting to chart the future course of health recovery in Afghanistan. The meeting will last until March 19th and will be followed by a press conference at 17:30 on that day given by Dr. Suhaila Seddiq, Minister of Public Health, at the Intercontinental Hotel.

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BRIEFING NOTE
Kabul, 14 March 2002

The civil servant food distribution, which runs through September, began at the weekend. Kabul's civil servants are receiving 12 kg oil and 25 kg pulses for two months. There are 33 distribution points throughout Kabul where some 60,000 recipients are picking up their rations, worth 50 percent of their cash salary. WFP will be reaching as many as 270,000 countrywide once the program expands to the provinces. Recipients of this aid include women teachers, such as Nadira Qalandri, who arrived to pick up her two-month ration without wearing her burqa. Nadira is looking forward to getting back into the classroom late March, was banned from teaching for five years under Taliban rule. A teacher for 30 years, Nadira is now the sole-bread winner for her husband and two teenaged daughters.

WFP food will start being distributed this week to thousands of IDPs returning home to the once verdant and fertile Shomali Plains. After living in cramped conditions in Kabul's decrepit Soviet compound for up to 2 1/2 years, IOM and UNHCR are relocating thousands people to the site of their war-scarred villages. Each returning family will receive a three-month, 150 kg supply of wheat to help them get back on their feet over the next few months.

A total 2,633 returnee families received WFP food at Jalalabad last week. All these returnee refugees are arriving through the Torkham border and receiving 150 kg wheat per returnee family under a WFP supported Refugee repatriation programme, in collaboration with UNHCR. The returnee families are from all regions, and are receiving food at the Jalalabad distribution centre until UNHCR has established other distribution centers in other provinces.

Over the next few months WFP will expand its assistance to hundreds of thousands of refugee and internally displaced returnees as they make their journeys back home.

Hirat:

A WFP team is arriving in Hirat today for the launch of the Agency's western Afghanistan rapid assessment missions which will investigate the food security situation in Ghor, Badghis and Hirat provinces. As in the north of the country, the WFP assessments will be carried out both by road and helicopter. The use of helicopters will allow WFP to quickly reach isolated villages tucked away in mountainous, inaccessible areas. The assessments will also include staff from other aid agencies focusing on health, nutrition, water and agriculture. The first assessments will begin late this week.

Kandahar:

WFP and the implementing partner, ADA finalized the registration process for the citywide distribution in Kandahar. WFP/ADA will distribute 2,307.85 MT of wheat to some 46,157 families in Kandahar. The distribution is expected to take place from 14-20 March.

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