TALKING POINTS

SRSG Lakhdar Brahimi's Official Visit to Iran
The Special Representative to the Secretary-General for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Braimi, left Kabul yesterday morning for Teheran. It is an official visit to Iran, at the invitation of the Minister for Foreign Affairs Dr. Kamal Kharrazi with whom he met in the afternoon, followed by a meeting with President Mohammad Khatami. He also had a working luncheon with Mr. Mohsen Aminzadeh, Deputy Foreign Minister for Asia and Oceania. Later in the day he met with the diplomatic community based in Teheran.

This morning he is expected to meet Vice President Mohamedreza Aref and Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs Dr. M. Javad Zarif. Following these meetings he will fly to Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. He will be there to participate at a roundtable on Transition and Human Security in Central Asia. The roundtable is organized by the Commission on Human Security.

Mr. Brahimi is expected back in Kabul either late Tuesday or Wednesday morning.

Update on the Loya Jirga Process
The Loya Jirga selection got underway a week ago with the assembly at the Mordian district in Jowzjan Province. The Commission brought to Kabul the team leaders in the field and today they are reviewing the process so far and on the basis of lessons learned, will continue with the selection process.

Since the first assembly in Mordian, there have been three other assemblies in this first stage of the selection process: Faizabad, also in Jowzjan District, Qala-e-Zal, in the District of Kunduz and Shortepa, in Balkh province. In the latter, the first woman was selected - 22 year old called Nafissa from Bashirli village.

So far, in these four assemblies some 200 people have been selected to participate in the second round of the selection process; these delegates will elect the participants to the Loya Jirga which will be held here in Kabul between 10 and 16 June.

Joint UNICEF-WHO National Immunisation Days for Polio
Afghanistan is on the verge of a major public health victory. A nationwide campaign to vaccinate children against polio was held from 16-18 April. The Afghan Ministry of Public Health, with the support of UNICEF and WHO, mobilised more than 40,000 people, including vaccinators, social mobilisers, supervisors and monitors.

Initial data from days one and two in major cities, such as Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif, show a coverage of more than 100 percent. This is because initial target populations in some areas were higher than expected because of returnee populations. Extra supplies of vaccine were transported on time to all areas. The overall target population is approximately 5.8 million children.

In Bamiyan, "cave to cave" vaccinations were conducted in the mountains of the Bamiyan Buddhas where hundreds of IDPs have recently returned.

For the first time in more than five years, women made up a large proportion of the vaccination teams in all parts of the country including the southern region. This proportion varied from around 15-20 percent in rural areas to greater than 50 percent in major urban centres. Women had much better access to households and their numbers will be increased for the next National Immunisation Days (NIDs).

Insecurity has not limited the coverage of the NIDs in a significant way. All districts around Gardez and Khost were covered in spite of military action in that area. NIDs saw a slight delay in Daikundi, Uruzgan province, where the immunisation effort was affected by factional fighting.

The next NIDs is scheduled to take place on 26-28 May.

Update on the Locust Control Programme in Northern Afghanistan
Locusts have been hatching in Baghlan, Samangan and Kunduz, "traditional" locust areas in what is the most severe case of infestation in 30 years. With the assistance of other UN agencies and NGOs, and in collaboration with the local authorities, specifically the Department of Planned Protection, Ministry of Agriculture, FAO has put in place the inputs necessary for the implementation of the current on-going programme of mechanical control. This involves digging trenches around the infested areas, herding the locusts in, and burying them. (For more background see 26 March 2002 briefing transcript)

Control operations are proceeding effectively. 5,000 litres of pesticides arrived in Mazar, and were deployed to the provinces this weekend.

The objective of the campaign remains strictly the minimization of crop damage. Even with successful mechanical control it is clear that the three provinces will require a considerable chemical campaign.

Update on Internally Displaced Persons
UNHCR and its partners have completed the repatriation of the internally displaced people from the old Soviet compound in Kabul back to their villages in the Shomali plain.

The last 2,697 IDPs returned home this week, bringing to 14,625 the total number of people who have been assisted in a programme launched by UNHCR, the Ministry of Repatriation and the International Organisation for Migration in early March.

So far, the UN Refugee Agency has helped nearly 23,000 IDPs return to the Shomali from Kabul city and the Panjshir valley in Kapisa province.

Today, UNHCR is beginning the return of thousands of IDPs from the Hesar Shahi camp near Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. Over 13,600 Afghans displaced by the dual effects of war and drought have registered to return to their homes in Kabul, Nangarhar, Laghman and Kunar provinces.

The first 291 IDPs will leave the Hesar Shahi camp this morning for villages in Nangarhar and the nearby province of Laghman.

UNHCR will provide the IDPs with transport and an aid package of blankets, plastic sheets, jerry cans, buckets and soap. They will also receive 150 kilograms of wheat from the World Food Programme.

The UN Refugee Agency plans to assist the return and reintegration of some 400,000 IDPs in 2002. Afghanistan has more than 1.2 million IDPs.

WFP Update - Khaled Mansour
The World Food Programme has conducted over 60 rapid assessment missions in Afghanistan over the past few weeks. This gave us a snapshot of what is happening in terms of food security. The findings indicate an increasing need for food aid in this pre-harvest hunger period; the three months of April, May and June. The malnutrition persists, the sale of household assets continues, and more children are pushed into the labour market to support their families.

For example: One of these missions visited rural areas in Takhar Province last week, a heavily mined area that had been a frontline and completely inaccessible to aid workers for a number of years. The mission visited an Uzbek community and a Tajik community, and many people in the villages had to sell most of their livestock over the past few months at very low prices compared to last year, more people are in debt to shopkeepers and food loans have become common throughout. Employment opportunities are limited. Children are reportedly being sent to the towns to work as cleaners, waiters, porters and shoe-shiners to support their families. Early marriages of daughters between 10-14 years of age were reported as commonplace.

Since October, since the crisis began, WFP provided 400,000 tons of food. This massive input of food aid into Afghanistan helped to avert famine in the winter, but the need is increasing in the pre-harvest hunger period and WFP will have to provide more food to more people until the harvest in July.

The target is to provide over 280,000 tons of food to about nine million people until the harvest in July. With a reasonably good harvest it is hoped the number of people in need will decrease and WFP could focus more on playing its supportive role in the fields of recovery, education and health.

WFP has asked for US$285 million to fund its projects in Afghanistan until the end of the year. So far it has stocks and pledges covering only 40 percent of the needs, but even these pledges will take time to materialise and many projects might have to slow down soon.

Update on Returnees - Yusuf Hassan
A record 300,000 Afghans have returned home in the last eight weeks, the largest and fastest movement in more than a decade.

More than 285,000 have returned from Pakistan and another 10,000 have returned from Iran where we have started a programme to assist returnees on 9 April. On Thursday UNHCR completed the return of 9,000 people from Tajikistan.

At its current rate, the repatriation movement of the world's largest refugee group is shaping up to be the biggest and fastest since 800,000 refugees went home to Kosovo in 1999. UNHCR Representative to Afghanistan, Filippo Grandi, described it as an emergency in reverse, but a positive and hopeful one. He said, "People are retracing their flight journey back to their homes. We are doing everything we can to help them."

Questions and Answers

Q: Question on the factional fighting that is preventing the vaccination of people.
UNICEF: The area that was mentioned is Daikundi, Uruzgan province. More details on the factional fighting are not available at the moment. We will be able to alert you about it in three to four days when we make our final announcement about the NIDs.

Q: Is this a case of armed fighting or ongoing fighting?
UNICEF: It is ongoing fighting.

Q: The figure of 10,000 returnees from Iran, is that considered low?
UNHCR: Even in the Pakistan side where we had a very large number of returns, the initial returns were lower. This appears to be the case, but in the case of Iran most of the refugees seem to be from urban areas. They have children in schools, and we believe that some of them are waiting until the schools are closing in June before they start returning back in significant numbers. The numbers have been going up, like on Thursday we had 2,500 people returning in a single day, so I hope it will pick up.

Q: What about the Tajikistan border?
UNHCR: We completed the total return of 9,000 people with our partners IOM. These were people who were stranded for a number of months on two islands on the Piandz River. They were not allowed to go into Tajikistan proper, they were stuck there, but it is in Tajikistan and all of them had returned back.

Q: Can you shed any light on Mr. Brahimi's meetings in Iran?
Spokesman: I do not have any readouts from the meetings.
Q: [Inaudible] Question on the Loya Jirga selection process in Kabul.
Spokesman: Originally the Commission had told us the plan was to start today. We learnt from them yesterday that it may start in Kabul province tomorrow or the day after. I would recommend that you go to the Commission because they control the process. We follow what they tell us. I do not have a precise date for you other than tomorrow or the day after.