TALKING POINTS
Police trainees graduate
The first police trainees are graduating this month from the Police Academy in Kabul. Groups of the 253 non-commissioned officers have been completing their one-year training course at the Academy throughout July. They will now go and work with the central police units.
They will be part of the new police force of 50,000 which is being trained with the assistance of Germany, the lead nation on police reform. There will also be a 12,000 strong Border Police.
The one year training programme covers areas such as basic police training, law and order and security, human rights, constitutional, police and criminal law, criminology, crime detection and prevention, road traffic, logistics, training in radio communications and shooting techniques.
Around 1,000 commissioned officers who are on a three year training programme at the Academy are also finishing their first year of training now. They too will be sent out for work experience in the field for one year before returning to continue their studies.
While the German-run Police Academy is training new recruits to the police force, the United States is embarking on a training programme aimed at those already working in the police. This complements the Academy's work. Every two months 750 policemen will complete the course at the US training centre in Kabul. Eight regional training centres are to be set up in Gardez, Kunduz, Mazar, Bamyan, Kandahar, Jalalabad and Parwan.
Rehabilitation of Pol-e-Charki Prison
UNAMA and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) will carry out a preliminary engineering building assessment this week of Cellblock 1 of the Pol-e Charki prison in East Kabul.
As you may be aware, back in April a presidential decree was issued transferring authority for the central prison department from the Ministry of the Interior to the Ministry of Justice. The key objective of this exercise is to improve the general standards of prisons starting with Kabul
At this stage Cellblock 1 of Pol-e-Charki prison, which is 90 per cent complete, will be assessed by engineers to ensure that the basic needs of prisoners are met - water and electricity; that the structure of the building is safe for both prisoners and staff and; that there is compliance with established international standards on prisons. It is hoped that when this project is finished it will be the model for other prison projects beginning with Cellblock 2 of Pol-e-Charki prison. The current cost of renovating Cellblock 1 is US$2 million, with US1 million already provided by the Italian Government funded. Part of this funding will also go towards renovation of the female prison section in the Kabul Police Headquarters and construction of a kitchen in those headquarters.
Mobile entertainment projects reach out to people across Afghanistan
Afghans living in remote villages around the country are enjoying live theatre performances and film screenings this summer thanks to the touring mobile theatre and mobile cinema caravans that are currently traveling throughout Afghanistan.
The mobile cinema is part of a project to rebuild the capacity of Afghan films. Eight mobile cinemas are going to Badakhshan, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Mazar, Bamyan, Kabul, Paktya and Herat. In each region there will be an average of 30 shows in 20 different locations. Each month three educational films made by Afghan Films will be shown. For the first month the films are about educating girls, Afghan artists and Afghanistan's Cultural Heritage.
This project which gives Afghan Films enhanced capacity is supported by the non-governmental organization, AINA, with the financial support and cooperation from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the UK's Department for International Development, the European Commission and UNAMA.
Last year the mobile cinema showed films to more 400,000 Afghans. Around 80 per cent of viewers had never seen a film before.
Meanwhile a mobile theatre has returned to Kabul after touring Balkh, Faryab and Jawzjan provinces. The theatre has been enthusiastically received by large audiences, in one case (at the Mazar Electricity Factory Cinema) more than 3,000 people attended the show. Next month it will be going to Kunduz, Baghlan, Takhar and Badakhshan. The mobile theatre is a project run by the National Theatre of Afghanistan and the non-governmental organization, Media Action International with the support of UNAMA, two UN agencies and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.
The sketches are performed in Dari and Pashto, depending on the region and are entertaining with clear messages portrayed in a humorous way with respect to Afghan culture and tradition. There are short plays on the constitution, immunization, maternal mortality and the rights of disabled people.
Constitution
There is a press release available today issued by the Afghan Civil Society Forum and the Constitutional Commission. They are announcing that on 29-31 July the Constitutional Commission of the Transitional Islamic State of Afghanistan and the Afghan Civil Society Forum (ACSF), supported by swisspeace, will hold a three day workshop concluding their collaboration on civic education on the constitution-making process.
There will be approximately 244 representatives at the workshop about 40 per cent of them are anticipated to be women, from all over Afghanistan who are coming here to Kabul to discuss several issues that were raised during the civic education campaign so far.
More details are in the press release.
World Food Programme, Public Information Officer, Maarten Roest - Update on provision of food for families affected by the sandstorms in Farah
First of all I would like to clarify something. There was a report last week which said that food had already been sent and was already contaminated. A joint mission found the contaminated food concerned existing supplies and we have not yet sent food to the region.
At the moment, we are planning with our implementing partner, Ockenden International, to go to the region affected, visiting 5-6 villages at one time, starting today or tomorrow. We estimate that 2,471 families will be given one month's supplies of food - wheat, oil and pulses. At the end of August we will see if it is necessary and feasible to transform what is now emergency food aid into a more consolidated effort, to use our food aid with work projects.
Questions and answers
Question: Two decrees were issued by the President last night, one establishing a commission for the election. It states it will have ten members of which five are to be selected by the UN, can you comment on this, how will they be selected and will these people be expatriates or Afghans?
Spokesman: It was announced last night the signing by President Karzai of these two decrees which are very important for the electoral process. We very much welcome that. It is a very important step for the election process that now will hopefully gain momentum and move forward faster. Before I answer your question specifically I just want to give you some background. Just one month or two ago we had Reg Austin, the Chief Electoral Officer of UNAMA briefing you, he heads our electoral unit. Plans are quite advanced for the registration of voters but it was necessary, thus the importance of the decrees of yesterday, that the government appointed first its own commission which if I'm not mistaken, I just had a chance to look very briefly at the decree before coming to the briefing I think it says it has six members and of those six two are women which is also something important to note. There is this joint body which will bring together this commission and UNAMA and it will be international experts, electoral experts who will be able to provide advice in a formalized structure which will be this joint body.
Question: As it was the first step by the government, can we still say the elections will not be delayed?
Spokesman: What can we say about the future? In my country we have a saying - the future belongs to God - you must have something equivalent here. Yes it's a very tight schedule, we never denied that but plans are in place. We hope we will be able to start as soon as possible but as soon as possible also takes some time to put the machinery in place. I should also say something, the decrees were made public yesterday but the government has been working to reach the point of the decrees, they worked a lot before that, to choose names, to identify the names, so it's not as if there had been no work on the side of the government. There had been work which became public yesterday which will provide the frame for this process to really move forward in earnest. The timeframe is extremely tight but we all work with the assumption of having the elections next summer and let's hope we can make it.
Question: Do you think that the election can be held before the disarmament process is finished and do you expect the disarmament process to be finished before the election?
Spokesman: That's a very good and important question and I'm sure your question is reflecting a question of many people in Afghanistan who have been calling for disarmament. The plans, the schedule rather, as you know, is for DDR to start, we're already late, we should have started earlier this month. The estimate is that the actual portion of disarmament of the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration programme (DDR) could take roughly one year. So if the necessary reforms take place to enable DDR to start we are not in bad shape if things go on as planned, as scheduled. Meaning that hopefully a greater portion of the disarmament exercise would have taken place by the time of the elections. So we have to continue to work, everyone, the government, the international community, all of the partners in order to make as much of this real. There will be disarmament and there will be demobilization which certainly will be measures of confidence for the public to participate in this process, there's no doubt about it.
Question: The disarmament process even if we assume it will be completed in one year, still there is the issue of the national army, will they have the capacity to keep the order and security at the time of the elections?
Spokesman: I think we will not have the national army in full strength by then - no one ever said that would be the case. For next summer the idea is that the national army would have double the strength it has now, some 10-12,000 which we all believe will be a very significant contribution to the reform of the security sector of Afghanistan. But I don't think we can think of security having as reference only the Afghan National Army. You have to think of the police, you saw the note we had today, there is a lot of work going on with the police, and the other international partners involved in this as well. There are the PRTs who have been and hopefully will be more involved in support of security sector reform. So I don't think we can look at this very complex process with just one element, there are a number of elements that together will hopefully provide the environment necessary and conducive to free, democratic elections and above all for the people to feel free to express their will.
Question: This is the first time there will be such an election in Afghanistan. What have been the activities of the United Nations to help the people, to educate them on the election process?
Spokesman: As I'm sure you know, so far, nothing has been made public. But one of the major components of the UNAMA electoral unit is what they call civic education, public education and they will have not only a significant budget for that but highly qualified personnel with a lot of experience in this kind of activity. I think that now that we have the decrees this process will gain momentum. I think the different elements will all start to move in a timely way and one of them is undoubtedly civic education, public information.