TALKING POINTS

SRSG Lakhdar Brahimi
As announced in the last briefing, 21 April, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, has announced that he will return to Kabul from his trip to Iran and Turkmenistan this afternoon. [Later the return of the SRSG was confirmed as Wednesday morning]

Rehabilitation Work in the Provinces and the Capital
Rehabilitation and reconstruction work has begun in the provinces. The United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) is coordinating 14 capacity building projects for women and youth, totaling US$50,000 in Badakshan and Takhar. Work varies from the construction of a women's condolence saloon, where women can offer condolences in a room separate from men, to the building of a Mother and Child Care Clinic.

The UN Development Programme (UNDP) Recovery and Employment Programme (REAP) that has, by early April, employed 8,546 Afghans in 37 projects in Kabul, is expanding to Jalalabad following the commitment of US$1.5 million from the European Union. Today, the Programme Manager travels to Kandahar to assess the different needs prior to the opening of their office in the region. This will be one of many scheduled to open in the provinces of Jalalabad, Faizabad, Mazar, Bamiyan, Herat, and Lashkagar.

Work is still on-going in Kabul as six new projects begin. These include rehabilitation of a District Clinic, a district office and four schools. The projects total approximately US$150,000 and will employ 200 local Afghans over a period of two months.

Update on IDPs and Refugees - Yusuf Hassan
Afghans continue to return home in big numbers. Since 1 March, more than 324,000 have returned from Pakistan, Iran, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. Since 1 March, 302,565 people returned from Pakistan; 13,476 from Iran; 8,900 from Tajikistan since 8 April and from 17 April the first 18 people from Turkmenistan returned back home.

There are now four official entry points; Nawa Pass, Torkham and Spin Boldak on the Pakistani border, and Islam Qala from the Iranian border. Thirty-nine percent of the returnees are going back to Nangarhar in Eastern Afghanistan; 38.7 percent to Kabul province; 5.7 percent to Parwan in central Afghanistan; 3.5 percent to Jowzjan in the north; 2.9 percent to Laghman, an eastern province, and about 9.2 percent are returning to other provinces.

There are also 21 percent of the people from Baluchistan, in Pakistan, returning to Kunduz in the north, and 20 percent to Kabul and 16 percent to Kandahar.

UNHCR is also leading efforts to help thousands of Afghans internally displaced by decades of internal strife and famine to return home and start a fresh. Yesterday saw the return of about 1,396 people to 13 villages in the Shaighan valley, central Afghanistan. They returned back from Bamiyan. There are also returns from Hesar Shahi in eastern Afghanistan of several hundred people mainly to Nangarhar province.

UNHCR had to put return plans for Laghman province on hold or to delay it because of armed clashes in the capital of that particular province in which two people were killed.