In his statement SRSG Arnault will note achievements accomplished in the public and political sector under the leadership of Afghan women themselves and highlight that this same strategy must be utilized to address other challenges affecting women. On issues like domestic violence, forced marriage and other cultural practices that have a negative impact on women, the United Nations and the international community will continue to look for guidance from Afghan women and to support their efforts.

Just a reminder that the Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB) Secretariat will establish a special registration site in the Kabul Women's Garden to facilitate the registration of women who attend the various activities that are planned for 8 March. The special registration site will involve four teams of female registration staff and will be housed in marquees. Some of Kabul's 32 newly trained female police officers will be in attendance to provide security for the special registration site. The day's activities in the women's garden are being organized by the Afghan Women's Network.

These deplorable attacks on schools, particularly those serving girls, are cowardly and aimed at thwarting reconstruction and human development. The overwhelming the majority of Afghans want their children - both boys and girls - to be educated. The mere fact that these communities have rallied around to save their schools and condemn these and similar offenses in the past should send a strong message to the perpetrators that their misguided actions are obviously not deterring the desire for education amongst ordinary people.

For those of you who do not have the background, on 2 March there was an attempt to burn a girls' school in Bala Bluk district in Farah Province. One school tent was completely destroyed while the local community managed to extinguish fires in three others. The Farah incident follows an arson attack on 19 February against another girls' school in Kishem in Badakshan when the main building of Shah Ba Ba Girl's High School was set on fire. Forty per cent of the school was damaged, mostly roof, while classroom materials were destroyed.

The SRSG compliments local authorities on the resolute stand they have taken against these despicable acts and the measures they are taking both to apprehend the perpetrators and their determination to prevent such incidents in the future. The SRSG is also heartened by the efforts of UNICEF to provide replacement tents for classrooms as well as to identify contractors to make permanent repairs before the start of the new school year on 22 March.

Actions such as these, although not widespread (less than 30 incidents reported out of 7000 schools) do detract from the achievements in two years especially with regard to the education of women and girls. But there have been many positive advances. Later on Eddie Carwadine from UNICEF will tell you, for example, about the Winter Accelerated Learning Programme that took place in five provinces over the last three months.

Currently the areas with the highest percentage of women registrants are the central highlands with 41 per cent followed by the west with 38 per cent. The lowest number of women registrants continues to be in the south with 13 per cent and the southeast with 14 per cent.

Registration sites in Kabul have just been increased from 19 to 35. There are now 89 sites around the country including the new sites in Kabul. Registration teams countrywide have also increased to 413. There is a list of Kabul sites on the side table and we encourage the Afghan media to publicize those sites.

There are two recent initiatives that have been taking place in support of voter registration and women's participation.

A few days ago the Ulema Shura of the Southern zone in Kandahar issued a Fatwa to help the registration process and upcoming elections. The declaration distinctively supports both processes and emphasizes the equal participation of males and females. The Shura noted that if the women of neighboring countries could proactively participate in elections so should Afghan females. They underscored that it was the political right of every individual to actively contribute in the upcoming election. They also noted that women who register do not have to take photos for the registration card but can have fingerprints instead of photos out of respect for culture and tradition. This is exactly the procedure that has been in place since voter registration began.

Last week in the southeast UNAMA met with CLJ delegates and elders from Shajoy district in Zabul. Both elders and delegates pledged to cooperate on the registration process for men and particularly women. This group will now meet periodically and clarify sensitive issues arising from the registration as well as propose culturally appropriate solutions to them.

For those of you who are interested in the logistics of this operation, yesterday and Friday three of four MI8 Helicopters that will support voter registration and elections arrived Kabul. They are currently receiving their safety checks before being used in operations.

The Ministry of Health (MOH) has prioritized the provision of good quality and affordable healthcare to mothers and children. A basic package of health services has been developed with special attention to maternal and newborn health.

The maternal mortality ratio is 1,600 per 100,000 live births and this reaches an extreme in Badakshan with 6,500 deaths per 100,000 live births. Maternal health care services are not equally distributed and the majority of women especially from rural areas do not have access to essential obstetric care. Moreover, pregnant women and children under-five in Afghanistan are at high risk of malaria while tuberculosis is also a major killer with women comprising 70 per cent of cases.

The Safe Motherhood Initiative is a priority component of reproductive health in Afghanistan with particular emphasis on access to emergency obstetric care. Female health workers are being trained for this with a focus on training community midwives for rural areas. The MOH with support from UNICEF and NGO partners is also establishing and upgrading one health facility per province to perform emergency obstetric care services. Currently 25 out of 32 provinces have functional services.

The first round of this years Maternal and Neonatal Tetanus Elimination Campaign will be launched on 31 March. The MOH with support from UNICEF and WHO aims to eliminate this vaccine preventable disease by reaching four million child bearing age women (15-45) nation wide.

This decision has taken immediate effect and will also affect all demobilized soldiers and officers in Kabul, Parwan and Kapisa who where supposed to receive their second cash payment starting 9 March. We recently told you that this measure would have gone into effect with the start of the remaining disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) projects in Heart, Kandahar, Jalalabad and Bamyan but now the MOD and ANBP have decided that this measure takes immediate effect.

In our effort to show you how women are important in any area of activity, we would to highlight a reintegration activity in Kunduz that involves women. This is a training programme spearheaded by Child Fund Afghanistan (CFA) for female family members of the ex-soldiers who have chosen agriculture as their reintegration choice. The training includes techniques on improving vegetable cultivation, adding nutritional value and marketing the vegetables. Two women hired by CFA are conducting the training. As part of the programme, CFA provides participants with vegetable seeds such as spinach, onion, tomato, pepper, okra and squash. Currently over 150 women have benefited from the programme since it began on 17 January 2004.

In two days time, on 9 March, there will be an inauguration ceremony of WADAN's Drug Treatment Centre in Gardez. WADAN is a local NGO for drug rehabilitation and treatment. I am informed that WADAN means rehabilitation in Pashto. ANBP beneficiaries from Gardez as well as Kabul are being referred to the Centre. To date some 50 ex-soldiers have come forward to ANBP with admitted drug abuse problems.

To date 5,475 men have been disarmed in the four ongoing pilot projects in the country and 4,257 weapons collected. A total of 5,373 ex-officers/soldiers have been demobilized in Kunduz (1,008), Gardez (584), Kabul/Parwan (1,870) and Mazar-e-Sharif (1,911) while 3,320 have gone through the reintegration process.

We also have available the WFP's 2003 Annual Report for Afghanistan. The report covers the steps towards recovery over the past year and also includes a look ahead for 2004. In 2003, Afghanistan saw its best harvest on record but pockets of vulnerability still remained. Over the year, WFP assisted 2.8 million Afghans under its emergency operations and 6.9 million under its protracted relief and recovery operation. In addition, WFP promoted labor opportunities in construction of roads, bridges and irrigation canals, and some 1.2 million children received food to encourage school enrolment.

Full details are available in the report.

UNICEF Communication Officer, Edward Carwardine

The winter accelerated learning programme, managed by UNICEF and the Ministry of Education and implemented by the NGO BRAC, took place in five provinces of the country over the last three months. Just over 37,000 participants, 81 per cent of enrolled students, were girls.

The accelerated learning programme is designed to assist children who have missed out on significant periods of their education, and provide them with rapid "catch-up" classes to help them join the correct level of schooling when the new academic term begins on 22 March. The programme is especially important for girls, many of whom missed up to seven years of schooling during the Taliban era, and in many cases have had to enrol in classes lower than other children of the same age. This mix of ages has made teaching more challenging, and has acted as a disincentive to many girls wishing to resume their studies.

UNICEF estimates that nearly 1.5 million primary school age girls are still not enrolled in Afghanistan's schools. A recent study has shown that factors such as distance to schools, lack of proper facilities and shortages of female teachers all act as barriers to girls' enrolment. Being an "over-age" girl in a classroom of younger students also discourages many girls from restarting their education. The accelerated learning programme, which focuses on the teaching of core language and mathematic subjects, can help students catch up on one or more grades of study in a short space of time. Teachers leading the courses have benefited from special training programmes to enable them to deliver the catch-up classes effectively. More than 1,500 teachers took part in this special training programme.

Experience from a smaller accelerated learning programme in the winter of 2002-2003 showed that 93 per cent of girl participants were able to enrol in formal classes the following March at least one grade higher than prior to taking part in the programme. UNICEF and its partners will be monitoring the enrolment level of those students who participated in the 2003 programme.

The accelerated learning programme is funded through generous contributions from Sweden, Austria, New Zealand and the Siemens Corporation. A second round of classes will be held in the summer, in southern provinces, where an estimated 28,000 children are scheduled to participate in the programme.

Questions and Answers

Question: Will there be no more cash payments for demobilization?

Spokesman: The cash payments will be incorporated into the salaries that [ex-soldiers] will be getting in their new reintegration activities. The policy remains the same. The only thing that has been changed now is that it takes immediate effect rather than down the road for the remaining pilot areas.

Question: Despite the developments in support of women over the past few years and the fact that CEDAW [Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women] was signed, one can see that all of the discrimination and violence that existed still exists against women. How difficult in a post-conflict country or a traditional country like Afghanistan is it to address this issue?

Spokesman: It is very difficult because, as you correctly said, some of the situations faced by women in Afghanistan are not just the result of lack of legislation or lack of state institutions to protect their rights - this is being addressed and this is the easy part. What is very complex is when you have forms of behavior that have been in conservative societies for ages and that takes time to address. This is the kind of thing that you cannot force down people's throats, nor do you want things to happen in that kind of way. So it is very important when you have tribal leaders, religious leaders taking action like I indicated today with the mullahs in the south. When they make statements encouraging the participation of women in the registration process or when we have other leaders bringing their own wives to encourage other women to participate in this transition process in Afghanistan.

This is the kind of thing that will happen gradually but it does not mean that many actions cannot be taken. I would say that a very, very key element is education. You are not going to see sustainable changes that really mean something to people from one day to another. You need girls to be educated and very importantly you need boys and men to be educated to understand what the rights of women are. You and your colleagues in the Afghan media have a tremendous role to play in helping to put forward these ideas and values for discussion. It is important that people debate these ideas so that they feel comfortable with them.

Question: What organization will be in charge of security tomorrow at the Polytechnic and when should press arrive to set up?

Spokesman: I believe security will be with the Afghan police. We are not organizing it but I would suggest that you arrive at least an hour before with the hope that things are not too much delayed.

Question: Did you say His Majesty would be there?

Spokesman: The Ministry of Women's Affairs has informed us of the message by His Majesty. I am not sure that he is in country at this point.

Question: Where do the 18 helicopters come from for the voter registration process? Who pays for them?

Spokesman: It is not 18 but MI8, which is the model of helicopter. There are four of them and three have arrived. They are Russian helicopters and are a part of the transport budget for voter registration. It is the collective contribution of the donor nations that makes it possible for the Joint Electoral Management Body, in particular its Secretariat, to have this kind of very necessary support.

Question: The numbers of men demobilized is 5,000 and the number of weapons is 4,000? Is this right?

Spokesman: Yes, as we have been explaining to you, the number of men who are disarmed (5,475) is not exactly the same number of weapons collected (4,257). This difference is because certain weapons are not operated by one soldier only. Some weapons have to be operated by two or three or four soldiers so that is why there is this difference.

Question: On the issue of enrollment at schools, the reason that many cannot go to school is because there is a shortage of female teachers. Are there any plans with the Ministry of Education to address this?

UNICEF: The shortage of women teachers is obviously a long-term problem because it takes time to recruit and to train more women into the profession. I know that the Ministry of Education is looking at ways at trying to encourage women to come into teaching.

From the point of view of UNICEF, our focus is really more on the physical access for girls. You are quite right in saying that particularly in rural areas the sheer distance between the community and the nearest girls' school is a major obstacle. One of the programmes that we are launching this year is to try and develop more community-based schools where we look at facilities that already exist within communities, for example through mosques and other public buildings that are available. These can be turned into a classroom facility for at least a part of the day or assistance can be provided to communities to build additional rooms onto those facilities to be used for classrooms, specifically for girls. It is also possible to build boundaries walls for mosques so that the mosques can be used as classrooms or to provide school tents, which provide temporary accommodation while we look at the longer-term issue of reconstruction.

In terms of women teachers, I think that is an area that you need to take up with the Ministry who has the ultimate responsibility for recruitment. What we are trying to do with the existing women teachers is to improve their teaching ability. As you know, over 55,000 teachers at the primary level took part training programs last year. A similar number will take part in training programs this year and about 30 per cent of those teachers were women. We are making great efforts to improve the teaching quality of women teachers. One reason many families feel uncomfortable about sending their girls to school, particularly older girls, is because they feel the value of the child going to school is negligible due to the quality of the teaching. We aim to tackle that and we have been tackling that over the last year.