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UN press briefing in Islamabad 11 Jan 2002

PRESS BRIEFING BY THE U.N. OFFICES FOR PAKISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN
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

Mr. Brahimi chaired yesterday the first-ever meeting of the so-called "Joint Coordination Body", bringing together officials of the Interim Administration and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). General McColl, Commander of ISAF and his team were present, as well as Mr. Qanouni, Minister of the Interior, and the Defense Minister General Fahim.

Everyone expressed satisfaction at the degree of cooperation and liaison between ISAF and the local police and military. The Afghan side briefed on measures being taken to improve security in the capital and to ensure that, gradually and systematically, illegal arms are being withdrawn from circulation. The Afghans also appealed for assistance in strengthening the police force, and Mr. Brahimi promised to take this up with interested countries.

Currently, the International Security Assistance Force has deployed 784 troops in Afghanistan and expects to have 1,400 in place by 15 January.

Meanwhile, the Director-General of UNESCO, Mr. Koichiro Matsuura, who arrived in the region yesterday, flew today to Afghanistan to assess ways ands means to reinforce UNESCO's action on the ground in its areas of competence - education, culture, science and communication. Immediately upon his return from Kabul, he will brief correspondents here at the UN Information Centre tomorrow at 4:30 pm.

** Yusuf Hassan, Spokesperson for UNHCR

UNHCR has moved thousands of Afghan refugees from urban slums and miserably squatter settlements to better-equipped camps in the border regions of Pakistan in the past seven weeks. This week, the number of Afghans jointly shifted by the UN Refugee Agency and Pakistan's Commissioner of Afghan Refugees passed the 100,000 mark.

Since mid-November, we have moved more than 114,000 refugees to ten newly established camps situated in the North West Frontier and Baluchistan provinces. In Baluchistan, nearly 80,000 were re-located to five UNHCR-run camps in Chaman and Chagai districts and one established by the UAE Red Crescent Society. Another 34,000 were relocated from the Jalozai makeshift site and the nearby city of Peshawar to five camps in Bajaur, Khyber and Kurram agencies in the North West Frontier Province.

The overwhelming majority of the re-located Afghans had been forced to flee their homeland by the dual effects of conflict and drought and had very little means of survival. In the new camps, UNHCR and its partners provide shelter, food and medical care.

UNHCR is preparing eight more camps in Pakistan, five in NWFP and three in Baluchistan. These camps are expected to be ready to receive new refugees by the end of next week.

But still, we continue to face considerably challenges as the continuing insecurity in Afghanistan uproots more people. The number of Afghans stranded at the Chaman border continues to rise. There are now an estimated 7,500 people at the border. UNHCR is providing high-protein biscuits and water to the new arrivals.

UNHCR field staff in Sadda say the situation in Bagzai in Kurram agency is calm. Both the refugees and the humanitarian workers are safe. There has been no fighting since Wednesday, where an armed clash between warring groups claimed the live of one NGO worker. UNHCR Security Officer for North West Frontier Province is in the area to assess the situation. We hope to start the transfer of refugees to camps in the Kurram agency as soon as the security situation allows.

** Wagdi Othman, Spokesperson for WFP

Good afternoon. There has recently been some media coverage on the situation in the village of Bonawash, Zarah District, in Balkh province, northern Afghanistan. According to reports, villagers are suffering from acute food shortages and are close to starvation. The World Food Programme would like to thank the media for bringing this to its attention.

Yesterday, WFP dispatched two staff members to Zarah district from the recently re-opened WFP office in Mazar-I-Sharif to determine the quickest way to bring food to these people.

Bonawash is located in Zarah district, a remote area at the foot of the Hindu Kush mountains. It is an area that has been hard-hit by three years of drought and was close to the front lines that saw intense fighting in recent years. It takes four hours to reach Zarah by car and then another eight hours by donkey to reach the village itself.

On 5 January, WFP had confirmation that 1,400 metric tons of food had reached Zarah district. This is enough to feed more than 150,000 people for one month and distributions began on 6 January.

As part our operational plan for Afghanistan, WFP was to deploy helicopters to provide rapid assessment capability for remote areas towards the end of January when winter conditions are at their most severe.

However, in view of these reports of pockets of malnutrition in remote areas, we will bring that plan forward and immediately bring two helicopters to Mazar.

Four more helicopters will be based in Chaghcharan and Bamyan to cover the Central Highlands, the other area in Afghanistan where access becomes extremely difficult during the winter months.

With these helicopters in place, in addition to being able to do assessments, WFP will have the opportunity to respond to acute food needs with small amounts of emergency supplies to relieve the most immediate requirements while long-term arrangements are made.

WFP has two C 130 aircraft in the region that can be used to airdrop food if we cannot do so by truck or donkey. But for this we need the villages to be located near valleys wide enough to permit airdrops to be done safely.

It should be remembered that WFP and the entire humanitarian community are working under extremely difficult conditions in Afghanistan. It is a country only just emerging from 20 years of conflict. There is almost no infrastructure and in rural areas security is still of major concern.

In addition, three years of drought have eroded all the coping mechanisms of the Afghan people and those in rural areas are the most hard-hit.

During the last three months, WFP has multiplied by four the amount of food delivered into Afghanistan. This was done against a backdrop of a volatile situation, which included overall insecurity and the risk of food being diverted.

We knew that potentially we were running the risk of some of the food being diverted. But because it was urgently needed by millions of hungry Afghans, we had to accept the risk of some losses.

To distribute the record amounts of food sent to Afghanistan in recent months when there could be no international presence, WFP was not able to rely solely on its own staff or those of our traditional NGO partners.

In order to distribute food to the people, especially those in these very remote areas, we needed to rapidly expand our network of partners and in some cases work with smaller and less-experienced organizations.

So far, we have no formal confirmation of food diversions. We have however anecdotal reports from Jalalabad.

Whenever possible we take immediate action to investigate the veracity of such anecdotal reports. This is what we are doing right now in Jalalabad where WFP international staff returned to our office earlier this week.

** Lori Hieber-Girardet, Spokesperson for WHO

In an effort to help local authorities get accurate figures on the number of deaths at the Maslakh displaced persons camp near Herat, monitors for the graveyards have been hired. The monitors are responsible for remaining in the camp's three graveyards throughout the day to record official deaths. When a body arrives for burial, the family is requested to give information including the name, cause of death, and the name of the father. The decision to hire graveyard monitors follows unsubstantiated reports of extremely high number of deaths in the camp.

The WHO has ascertained there is an average of 40 to 60 deaths per week in Maslakh. On a typical week, from 29 December to 4 January, 42 people died in the camp. Half of these were under the age of five. The causes of death continue to be acute respiratory diseases, such as pneumonia, typhoid and tuberculosis.

There are five clinics open in Maslakh and two doctors at each clinic. There appears to be adequate drug supplies.

Overall the health situation in Herat continues to be poor. The regional hospital is understaffed, and the medical staff that is operational is suffering from low morale due to low or non-existent salaries. There is a problem of overload of patients.

During the last week, WHO has been involved in on-going discussions with local health officials, other UN agencies and NGOs for the establishment of a rehabilitation plan for the regional hospital in Herat.

In other news, the British government has contributed £2,000,000 or $3,000,000 to the World Health Organization for health sector activities in Afghanistan. The money will be used for quick impact programs designed to immediate contribute to the over-all health needs of the population. The money will be used for rapid health assessments, rehabilitation of health facilities, institutional support to the Ministry of Public Health for capacity building and training, as well as provision of essential medicines.

In Pakistan now, a survey for the assessment of Leishmaniasis in Kurram Agency has been completed by WHO. The data revealed more than 1,000 cases, in addition to the around 1,500 cases from the Afghan refugee camps reported by the Department of Public health in the North West Frontier Province. More details will be made available soon.