New SRSG – Tom Koenigs
The United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has appointed Tom Koenigs, a German national who has served the UN in Kosovo and Guatemala, as the new head of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.

Mr. Koenigs is replacing Jean Arnault of France, who has been in Afghanistan with UNAMA since March 2002 and has held the post of Special Representative since February 2004.

Mr. Koenigs is presently the Commissioner of Environment of Frankfurt as well as a senior member of the German city's administration.

Floods in Balkh and Saripul
Following heavy rain in the last few days, UNAMA has received reports of flooding in the northern provinces of Balkh and Saripul. The Department of Disaster Preparedness has had a coordination meeting with government departments, UN agencies and NGOs and at this stage the worst affected area appears to be Deh Dadi district of Balkh province, where around 50-60 houses are reported damaged.

UNAMA is coordinating contributions of UN agencies to provide and transport non-food items such as blankets and stoves.

A small inter-agency assessment team has also been sent to Pul-i-Baba village in Deh Dadi district, where at least eight families will receive assistance.

UNOPS to build new road south of Mazar-e-Sharif
Work has begun on a 9.5km gravel road linking Mazar-e-Sharif city to Sultan Baba Ali Sher village in the district of Charkent. The cost of the project, which is being implemented by UN Office of Project Services (UNOPS), is approximately $US378,000, which is being provided through the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development. The road is expected to be completed in November 2006. It will benefit 12 villages and provide employment for 29 former combatants.

More than 520, 000 Afghan refugees returned in 2005
2005 has been a year of very significant returns for the UN refugee agency in Afghanistan, with more than half a million people repatriating since the start of the year

520,100 Afghans have returned home with UNHCR assistance, with 453,000 coming from Pakistan. This represents a significant increase over 2004, when 380,000 Afghans returned from Pakistan, and is due, in part, to the closure of refugee camps in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

UNHCR-assisted returns from Iran now stand at around 67,000 for 2005, a lower figure than had been predicted at the beginning of the year. The total number of returns from Iran, which includes those returning without assistance from the UN refugee agency, is nearly 280,000.

UNEP and NEPA workshop on environmental issues in Afghanistan
To help journalists in Afghanistan, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) – in collaboration with the National Environmental Protection Agency – recently ran a 4-day workshop for the media on key environmental issues in Afghanistan. The workshop was held at the Centre for International Journalism in Kabul and included sessions on the state of the environment, ecologically significant areas in Afghanistan, community awareness, desertification, climate change, ozone layer protection and the role of journalism in environmental protection.

UNEP is currently implementing a capacity and institution building programme for environmental management in Afghanistan funded by the European Commission, the Government of Finland and the Global Environment Facility.

‘Afghan Women the Reality' – New Photo exhibition
A unique photo exhibition organized by the Ministry of Women's Affairs and funded by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) has opened in Kabul. The show focuses on the reality of Afghan women's lives in the provinces as seen through women's eyes.

It features the work of 40 Afghan women in four provinces of Afghanistan – Badakshan, Mazar-e-Sharif, Bamiyan and Logar – who were trained in photography and small business development. The women photographers are being assisted in setting up their own photography businesses by the NGO, Pamir.

The exhibition is showing at the Ministry of Women's Affairs today. It is moving to the Women's Garden in Kabul until January 10.

Question and Answer

Question: The Afghan government has ordered foreign organisations to dismantle security barricades. Can you tell us if the UN will comply with the order, which appears to apply to at least one UN property?

Spokesperson: We are still waiting for clear directives from the Ministry (of Interior) about precisely what they want us to do. It's not the UN's wish to have these barricades in place, however they have – as part of the security provisions for doing our work here – been necessary. We'll be in a better position to answer your question once we have more information from the government about precisely what they want us to do.

Today's Guests
The government and the heads of UNICEF, UNDP, UNFPA and WFP signed agreements last week on new country programmes, which govern the work of these UN agencies in Afghanistan. The new country programmes start this month and run until the end of 2008. They will include major government-led projects aimed over the longer term at helping Afghanistan in achieving the Millenium Development Goals, and over the medium term in meeting the objectives of the government's evolving Afghan National Development Strategy. The programmes that have been agreed to mark Afghanistan's steady transition from post-emergency to development programming and should help reinforce current processes and positive economic trends..

We are joined today to tell you a little bit more about the details of this by Frederick Lyons, country director of UNDP, Charles Vincent, head of the World Food Programme in Afghanistan, Sukanta Sarker, adviser on reproductive health at UNFPA, and Vincent Smith, who is the senior operations officer at UNICEF.

Frederick Lyons, UNDP

The signature of our respective programmes was a good moment in the sense that many of our agencies have been working in Afghanistan over the last few years on the basis of short-term programme agreements. In the post-crisis phase it was necessary to agree on emergency short-term programmes. This was the first time in many years that it has been possible for our agencies to sign a longer term development programme with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

These programmes had been negotiated among our respective agencies with the government and line ministries over a period of some 10, 11 months previously and I felt very proud as we signed together these agreements with the Minister of Foreign Affairs. The signing of these programmes now allows us to work together as individual and collective United Nations agencies under a series of joint United Nations programmes in Afghanistan over the coming years. The core priorities linked to the UN development assistance framework agreed with the government of Afghanistan brings our programmes to work on some key areas with key priorities of the government. Issues of strengthened governance – how do you improve standards and processes of government in Afghanistan, both at central and provincial levels. On issues of sustainable livelihoods – how do you ensure that development programmes provide jobs, how do you ensure that people are better fed, how do you ensure that trade improves and industry picks up. We'll be working in another priority area, that of civil society empowerment – how do you ensure that the non-governmental areas of society receive support to work together, to associate, to drive their concerns, to promote issues with government.

Finally, the fourth priority is one concerning the environment, the natural resource management – areas which have been long neglected during the years of war and crisis. We believe the United Nations will be able to work in some of these key areas, together with UNICEF leading in some cases, the World Food Programme leading in others. For example, the World Food Programme will be working on a greening Afghanistan initiative. Social forestry, tree plantations, working to increase the coverage, the protection of Afghanistan's forests in the coming years. UNICEF working on joint programmes to improve maternal health across the country, to improve access to health care and to education.

We expect that the London Conference at the end of this month will provide additional pointers to areas where the United Nations system can work together. It's very likely that following the London Conference, the United Nations system will be working increasingly together on issues relating to access to justice for the population, particularly in rural areas, that we'll be working together increasingly on issues relating to regional development, and together also working to support the government in the implementation of its interim Afghan National Development Strategy.

Charles Vincent, WFP

The World Food Programme has carried out a review of how food aid can assist in the continuing reconstruction of Afghanistan. A lot of progress has been made. Since 2002, WFP has brought in about half-a-million tonnes of food aid. Now we'll be down to 140,000 tonnes. It shows that the food security situation in Afghanistan is improving, however there are still 6.5 million Afghans who are food insecure – either chronically or seasonally. This is where WFP comes in to assist the government in meeting some of those food insecurities. We looked at each region to see what the vulnerabilities are. Some of them are educational – trying to get boys and girls into school, trying to keep the children in school, trying to meet food security needs with children in very food insecure areas. We are also going to help internally displaced persons until durable solutions are found.

We will also assist the government in food-for-work activities where appropriate and where there are no cash-for-work activities. We anticipate that the food security situation will improve as these massive cash-for-work schemes come on line. However, in some areas at some periods of the year food is still the preferred option. We'll be reviewing, with the government, where cash-for-work activities are ongoing. We'll be giving a big impetus to literacy. We feel we can draw people in food insecure areas so that they can start learning. Once they come to school, once they start learning, our assistance is no longer needed.

Tuberculosis. We know that there is a relationship between medicine and food and people coming to get treatment. The proportion of people that have TB that come to be tested is very low. We want to increase that and WFP, with the Ministry of Public Health, can help in that respect. We'll be working a lot more with local communities directly.

Disaster Preparedness and Response. WFP responds quickly and gets assistance to people who need it. We will continue to have that capacity as long as resources are provided by donors.

We're also working on a couple of national initiatives. Flour fortification to bring in nutrients to all Afghans. Finally we're trying to get the government of Pakistan to allow a transit route from India to Afghanistan for the assistance that India is providing though WFP to about 1.5 million children in Afghanistan.

Sukanta Sarker, UNFPA

In the coming three years, UNFPA is going to undertake development initiatives in the field of population and development. We'll be working with our line ministries and with NGOs and our focus areas are reproductive health, gender, and population and development.

Under reproductive health, we'll be working on maternal health along with other agencies like UNICEF. We have developed a joint programme for reduction of maternal mortality. The second area under reproductive health is family planning. We know that the family planning use rate in Afghanistan is very low – very few people know about family planning, the information to them is so limited that they cannot make their own decisions. So there is an enormous opportunity to work on information and education for family planning activities. The third area that UNFPA would like to work on is HIV/AIDS. We know HIV/AIDS in Afghanistan is not a serious problem yet, but the risk factors are prevailing in this country so we have to really sound the alert from now so that we can prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Another area UNFPA would like to pursue is sexual and reproductive health. It's not only to educate adolescents about reproductive health but to empower them so that they can take some leadership in their respective communities.

The last element under reproductive health is disaster preparedness. This would be man-made or natural disasters. Under this plan, UNFPA would like to prepare this country so that they can manage any disaster, specially focusing on reproductive health.

UNFPA, along with other agencies, is really working hard on the census.

Vincent Smith, UNICEF

Our aim under UNICEF's country programme 2006-2008 is to give every child and mother the best chance to grow and develop and make a full contribution to the future of Afghanistan and to create a stronger Afghanistan for all children. We will be conducting four major programmes and we will be present in all provinces of Afghanistan. As we move away from the post-emergency to the development phase, we will be expanding outwards and having greater outreach from Kabul to all of the provinces.

Our two primary programmes are health and education and these are supported by programmes in child protection and in water and sanitation. Afghanistan has some of the worst indicators in the world in health in education – these are major challenges. Particularly, our challenge is to reduce under-five mortality by 22 percent. We also wish to reduce maternal mortality by 25 percent. We aim to reduce child and women's malnutrition, particularly iodine deficiency which is still prevalent, and to reduce the number of underweight children below the age of three by 30 percent. Our immunisation coverage – we aim to provide more emphasis on that to cover as many children as we can and to assist in the community based programme activities on integrated management of childhood illnesses, which is more of a total package, as well as working with our colleagues in AIDS awareness.

In education, we aim to increase literacy rates among girls and women from the ages of 15 to 49 by 50 percent; to increase the enrolment of girls in primary school by 20 percent. We will also be working on gender disparity, reducing that and increasing the quality and access of education and in providing educational supplies such as textbooks.

In water and sanitation, we aim to increase the access to safe drinking water and provide a permanent and improved sanitation infrastructure by 20 percent. Our entry point on all these issues of hygiene promotion are school and health centres.
In child protection, we aim – in support of the government – to increase the capacity to monitor and report violations of the convention of the rights of the child, to reduce the prevalence of child trafficking and to increase the skills of adolescents to prepare them for a better future.

We will also be assisting all our colleagues in the UN to work on emergency preparedness and response in all of our four main areas.

Frederick Lyons, UNDP

Over the next year or two, we'll be shifting gradually from the post-crisis emphasis on deepening democracy, on state-building, where we've worked very actively in the elections, on support to the new parliament, where we've worked on justice, judicial reform and, of course, demobilization, disarmament and reintegration. These programmes will be phasing into new areas emphasizing essentially livelihoods, emphasizing the reintegration of vulnerable groups, of refugees, internally displaced people, the ex-military into the villages, into society, into productive enterprise.

We'll be working also on issues related to private sector development – how do you improve the performance of the chamber of commerce, how do you improve trade relations with neighbouring countries, how do you expand the trade of traditional and perhaps new Afghan products.

We'll be working also on access to justice and local government, local governance in the provinces. These are critical in terms of supporting the efforts being made in the areas of security and critical also in the sense that no long term economic development can really take place without improved access to justice or without improved local government and more trained personnel to work in the ministry representations at provincial level. More trained people to work at district level. As the United Nations team moves to the provinces in the coming two or three years, the emphasis will need to be on increased capacity building. In many ways, there is an increasing understanding that following the major changes that have taken place in the past three years in terms of democracy, in terms of elections, in terms of the large political processes, there is a need to make sure that at the local level development also takes place, that there is economic and social change at the local level. This, I think, will be a core element of the UNDP's work in Afghanistan for the next three years.

Question and Answer

Question: Do you have any programme for distributing anti-viral drugs, condoms?

Sukanta Sarker: I think availability of anti-retroviral drugs is very important, though we know there are very few cases of HIV/AIDS positive. But those who are positive have rights to access anti-retroviral. Here in Afghanistan there are two major programmes on HIV/AIDS. One is the national AIDS control programme of the Ministry of Public Health, the other is funded by the Global Fund. UNFPA is working with both these programmes. We are in discussion about how and when Afghanistan should have anti-retroviral drugs. Hopefully they will be available soon.
Condom promotion is one of the key approaches by which we can prevent sexually transmitted infections, which include HIV/AIDS. Condom promotion is not only condom distribution. Condom promotion is creating awareness among the people and making condoms available to those who need them. UNFPA has been working with other partners in this area.

Question: Do you have any specific projects to eliminate child labour?

Vincent Smith: Yes. UNICEF is always interested in eliminating child labour. The reason why this is such an important issue is because it underlies the whole of the future of society. UNICEF is committed to protecting all children against any kind of violence or exploitation or abuse, whether that be child trafficking, early marriage or child labour because the aim is that children grow up healthy and attend school.

Question: Do you have any plans to help wean farmers off poppy culture by buying local wheat?

Charles Vincent: WFP, if resources are available, is interested in purchasing wheat locally. However, WFP will not purchase wheat locally if it's going to unduly affect the market. WFP will not purchase wheat if it's going to increase the price dramatically to the consumer because then we will have more food insecurity in the household. Food aid is becoming increasingly a minor portion of the total food balance in Afghanistan, which is a good thing. Therefore the shift from poppy cultivation must not come through food aid interventions, but rather by a coordinated and systematic alternative livelihood programme which is going to take many, many years.

Question: How much did UNDP spend for projects in Afghanistan in 2005?

Frederick Lyons: During the course of 2005, we spent approximately US$300 million. This was a mixture of UNDP's own core funds as well as a major series of contributions from international donors. We estimate that over the last three years we have delivered programmes worth approximately US$1 billion.

Question: What is your plan in money terms for the next three years?

Frederick Lyons: We estimate that there will probably be a slight decrease per year in terms of the funds going through UNDP. We anticipate expenditure of approximately US$250 million for this year and roughly similar expenditures for the next three years for a total of approximately US$750-800 million.

Vincent Smith: For UNICEF, a very slight reduction from last year. Our budget is approximately US$57 million per annum for the next three years. A total of about US$172 million for the next programme cycle.

Sukanta Sarker: In the coming three years, UNFPA budget is approximately US$52 million for three years. For the census, we may require US$60-80 million in addition to our three-years budget.

Charles Vincent: For WFP, our joint goal with government is to assist each year approximately 3.5 million Afghans The total food requirement over the three years will be about 520,000 tonnes for a total of about US$360 million.