Press Briefing by Manoel de Almeida e Silva
Spokesman for the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan
Sunday, 1 September 2002, 10am, UNAMA

TALKING POINTS

· Environmental Assessment Work to Begin in Afghanistan

The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) are sending a team of experts to Kabul this week to begin its environmental assessment work.

Team leaders and scientist will begin arriving on Sunday. Four assessment teams will travel to various parts of the country looking into the illegal cutting of trees, the status of National Parks, water and desertification, and urban contamination which will focus on the cities of Herat, Kandahar, Mazar, Jalalabad and Kabul.

This is the first assessment of its kind and the initial stages of future policy formulation.

The team will be holding a Press Conference next week, and we will provide details at Thursday's press briefing.

· Solid Waste Collection Agreement Signed with Municipality

This week Habitat, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme, signed an agreement on Thursday, 29 August with the Municipality of Kabul for the collection of solid waste which has been lying decomposing throughout the city for the past two months.

The project involves mobilizing local community volunteers together with 300 sanitation workers to collect refuse from areas inaccessible by road. Fifteen teams will work to clear Kabul's inner cities, as 45 trucks transport the waste to three disposal sites in Kabul.

Habitat will also be providing teams of six professional female hygiene and health educators who will go to each household, door-to-door, and speak to families about the correct and safe clearing of their rubbish.

· International Seminar on Promoting Independent Media

This coming Tuesday, 3 September is the opening of an international medial seminar to be held here in Kabul. It is titled "International Seminar on Promoting Independent and Pluralistic Media".

This seminar is organised by the Ministry of Information and Culture, with the support of a number of Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs) and UN agencies, particularly UNESCO and UNAMA.

They will be touching a number of related issues in this country and mostly discussing the future directions.

They have invited a number of international experts who should be here as well as Afghans who deal with this matter.

The seminar will be moderated by Riz Khan, the former CNN TV presenter.

It will be at the Intercontinental Hotel. The opening session is on Tuesday but the programme is not finalized so I am not sure if it is at 8 or 9 a.m. The opening session is open to all journalists. I believe that for those of you who would like to continue in the working sessions, it would be a matter of registering with the organizers.

· UNICEF - Latest round of National Immunization Days (NIDs) to continue efforts for polio-free Afghanistan - Chu Lho

A three-day nation-wide immunisation campaign against polio is poised to start in Afghanistan this Tuesday, 3 September. It is a joint operation between the Ministry of Public Health, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organisation (WHO).

This latest round of the National Immunisation Days (NIDs) will target some 5.9 million children under the age of five. Teams of vaccinators will go from village to village, house to house, to ensure that all children in that age bracket are immunised. As in previous rounds, emphasis will be placed on enabling women vaccinators and supervisors to play prominent roles in easing access to mothers.

In Kabul on Monday afternoon, as part of countrywide events to mark the campaign's launch, President Hamid Karzai together with representatives of the Ministry of Public Health, WHO and UNICEF, are scheduled to attend a football friendly organised by the Afghan Olympic Committee at the Kabul Stadium. During the game's half-time celebrations, Radio Afghanistan will organise a performance of songs and skits with the theme of polio eradication. President Karzai is being asked to administer this campaign's first drops of the Oral Polio Vaccine to an Afghan child.

The September immunisations will mark the third of four planned rounds for 2002. The year's final round will take place 22-24 October.

· UNHCR - Update on returnees - Maki Shinohara

Some 250 internally displaced people (35 families) are returning today to Kabul city from Nangahar province (Jalalabad area). This is the start of a voluntary return operation of up to 2,300 displaced families in Nangahar province identified by the Ministry of Repatriation. Upon registration and verification of their areas of origin, UNHCR provides transport assistance to their home areas.

Most of the displaced families in Nangahar province originate from Kabul, Parawan and Laghman provinces and had fled their homes around 1993. (Kabul 1974 families; Parwan 122; Laghman 74; Logar 38)

Earlier in April and May, UNHCR assisted 2,900 families (15,000 people) to return from Hesar Shahi camp, west of Jalalabad, which used to be the largest IDP camp in eastern Afghanistan.

UNHCR's return operation for internally displaced people is on-going practically everyday. This past week, over 270 families displaced in Kabul city (nearly 2,000 people) have been returned to their homes in Logar, Baghlan, Sari pul, and other areas. In total, we have assisted about 210,000 internally displaced people to their homes this year.

Separately, the voluntary relocation of those displaced around the Chaman border area is on-going. So far, we have relocated 628 families (2,855 people) to the temporary site at Zare Dasht in Kandahar. We will continue this week with another three movements.

Meanwhile, the rate of refugee returns is declining, with 32,000 refugees returning in the past week, down from 52,000 during the first week of August. Afghans interview by our staff at the Turkham border said that the ending of summer season was the reason for this decline, as well as the fragile security situation. Nevertheless, our total count of refugee returns stands now at over 1.62 million.

Questions and Answers

Q: Do you think that this is going to be the beginning of a long-term decline and will you be disappointed at the total number of returns?
UNHCR: We actually expected - or we do expect that the rate of returns will continue to decline towards winter for reasons that are obviously, winter is a difficult time inside Afghanistan. We did have a height of returns in May and they are gradually declining since July.

Q: Could you give the highest figure of the number of refugees that are returning?
UNHCR: I don't have the day figures, but for example, back in May we had over 78,000 returning.
Q cont: Per week?
UNHCR: No, per month. Then 54,600 in June. July was a little less than 50,000. Then if you just see the weekly returns - first week of August, 52,000; second week, 50,000; third week, 42,000 and then this past week was 32,000. These families basically, if they do want to come home, they are likely to come during summer time to fix their homes or start working on their farmland and so forth. From here on we do expect that the numbers will decline.

Q: Is there any evidence yet that people are going back to Pakistan?
UNHCR: We are seeing some single men going back mainly to look for jobs or to go back to their previous jobs or what have you. We have been hearing some reports of families moving but we don't really have the details yet. We do have border monitors on both Pakistan and Afghanistan sides and we are trying to monitor the situation and see if there will be any families going back and, if so, why.

Q: What kinds of numbers are we talking about?
UNHCR: Very small and very sporadic right now so I don't really have an overall picture to give to you. I will give it to you as soon as I have it.

Q: Does this make it easier for you to cope? Is this a more copeable level of returnees coming back? Is it easier to get them settled and reintegrated?
UNCHR: Initially - I have been repeating this over and over - earlier in this year, initially we were prepared to assist 1.2 million people returning. We had to revise this figure and now we are prepared to assist up to 2 million people. So far we are able to keep up with the rate of return, although we did have to reduce some amount of the assistance package that we give to them upon their arrival.

Spokesman: There is one question [asked outside the briefing room] that I was thinking would come up and as it did not come, I cannot [close] the briefing without sharing the answer.

UNAMA is sending a team to the north, to Mazar following the statements by General Abdul Rashid Dostum and Ustad Atta Muhammed, to review with them their statement and also learn more to what extent they are ready to cooperate with any investigation regarding the gravesites.

Q: Will the UN be the lead party on any investigation?
Spokesman: Too early for me to say that. I wouldn't be able to answer specifically A, B or C. As you know there are many elements to be considered in an investigation like that there are technical elements. I assume you are talking about the actual forensic investigation?
Q cont: I am talking about the actual investigation.
Spokesman: We will have to see, as Mr. Brahimi mentioned before, we don't see the capacity right now in the government, however, this is a sovereign country and we would have to see what kind of assistance they would request. Based on that we would be able to see who is best placed in the international community to provide that kind of assistance.

Q: When is this team going and how many people are in it?
Spokesman: I don't have a date to give you but it is very shortly.

Q cont: This week?
Spokesman: Oh yes. I don't think I have the number of people yet, but these are people from the mission who work on human rights.

Q: Is the transitional government supporting the UN team going out there? What about General Dostum and Atta, are they supporting and encouraging you coming?
Spokesman: We have so many regular contacts with them that this would be one more contact, but this is with a specific agenda. I have not heard anything to the contrary that they would not be willing to see them. This is not even raised as a question. I think it is part of the ongoing contacts with them. Part of our good offices - this time, however, there is this very specific agenda to be covered.

Q: One of the points that Attar and Dostum made was that they would like to see investigations into other alleged massacres carried out by the Taliban, not just to focus on Shebergan. What is the UN's view on that?
Spokesman: As you may recall in May when we had the preliminary investigation, both in Bamyan and in the north in Shebergan, Mazar airport gravesites, we said that our expectation was that more gravesites [could] be perhaps discovered or announced as a result of more access to many areas of the country and the reduction of conflict. One of the things we were discussing with the experts at the time is how to deal with new requests, new information coming forward. Among them, what capacity would there be in the country to respond to that. There is a lot of need for capacity building on Afghan institutions to respond to those demands, therefore, there would be the need for international support. But above all this, the need for people to say there is a site here or a site there that needs to be looked at. There is also the need to acknowledge the limitations if there are just too many [requests]. But in any case, as I said, we are sending a team to talk to them and if they raise this matter, of course, we will follow up on any of the issues that are discussed in the meeting.