SEPTEMBER
PAKISTAN: 1/9 Juvenile courts
Pakistan's leading child advocacy groups have urged the government to establish exclusive juvenile courts to end the problem of delayed trials, which has led to a situation in which 80 percent of juvenile prisoners are those on remand. "As of December 2003, some 2,500 juvenile offenders were awaiting trial out of a total juvenile prisoner population of 3,061, while the country has only one exclusive juvenile court," Arshad Mehmood, deputy national coordinator of the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC), told IRIN.
AFGHANISTAN: 2/9 Flood appeal
The government of Afghanistan and the United Nations have launched an emergency appeal to combat drought in the war-ravaged country. According to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), US $71.3 million is needed immediately to combat the worst effects of the drought. "The government, the United Nations and non-governmental organisations [NGOs] have launched a joint appeal to combat the worst drought that the country has faced, now in its sixth year," Manoel de Almeida e Silva, a spokesman for UNAMA, told IRIN.
TAJIKISTAN: 6/9 Capital's water supply improves
Piped water in the Tajik capital Dushanbe can now be consumed after boiling, following floods and landslides in the country in July that left more than half of the city's population without access to safe drinking water. But infrastructure such as bridges and roads in the rest of Tajikistan remains damaged, according to humanitarian workers. "The water is back to normal," Johannes Chudoba, head of the UN Coordination Unit (UNCU), told IRIN from Dushanbe, noting that the authorities had assured the public that it was safe to drink tap water after boiling it.
AFGHANISTAN: 7/9 Scabies in the north
An outbreak of scabies in the northeastern province of Badakhshan has affected at least 7,000 people, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). "WHO estimates that the disease has impacted on 7,000 residents in Nusai district in Badakhshan province," Dr Sardar Ahmad, WHO information officer, told IRIN in the Afghan capital Kabul on Tuesday. WHO and the Afghan Health Ministry were sending medication to the area to stop the spread of the disease, he added.
PAKISTAN: 8/9 Tribal belt humanitarian situation
Residents of Pakistan's northwestern conflict-hit tribal belt of Wana have complained that no relief or human rights agency have acted to stem the deteriorating humanitarian situation following a military operation in the area designed to root out militants and those supporting them.
PAKISTAN: 13/9 Voluntary repatriation continues
The office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) will continue operating its voluntary repatriation assistance programme for Afghan refugees from Pakistan, as the agency announced a suspension of operations from Iran via Herat following the attack on the UN offices in the western Afghan city of Herat on Sunday. The buildings of the UNHCR and the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) were attacked by demonstrators protesting against the sacking by Afghan President Hamid Karzai of Ismael Khan, the governor of the western Afghan province of Herat.
TAJIKISTAN: 13/9 Cost of natural disaster
Tajikistan needs more than US $21 million worth of assistance to deal with the damage caused by natural disasters this year, according to an emergency official. "This year there have been many natural disasters in Tajikistan, especially in mountain regions, and roads, bridges and arable land have been damaged," Khilol Shamsuddinov, head of the Tajik disaster relief coordination centre, told IRIN from the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, on Monday.
AFGHANISTAN: 14/9 Aid workers leave Herat
Aid workers and United Nations international staff members are moving out of the western Afghan city of Herat following the attack on Sunday by angry demonstrators on the compounds of the UN and other aid agencies. Seven people were reported killed and over 20 injured in the incident, although no UN employee was badly hurt. The city is now reported to be calm and the Afghan National Army (ANA), supported by US-led security forces, is controlling the situation on the ground.
AFGHANISTAN: 15/9 WFP appeals for drought victims
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) says more than US $50 million is needed to tackle the severe drought now facing the country. According to the WFP, some 1.4 million Afghans have been affected by continued drought and crop failures. "We are facing a very significant problem. This is said to be the worst drought in living memory, causing severe water shortages and leaving thousands, if not millions, of Afghans unable to meet their basic food needs this year," Maarten Roest, an information officer for WFP, told IRIN.
PAKISTAN: 15/9 Modern agriculture needed
Pakistan's farming community urgently needs to switch to modern irrigation techniques to combat declining agricultural productivity caused by an acute water shortage, according to water experts. The shortage is mainly caused by reduced monsoon rainfall this year. "Our immediate water shortage problem could be solved through better water management and the use of the latest agricultural techniques," Dr Munir Ahmed of the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE) told IRIN in the capital, Islamabad.
AFGHANISTAN: 16/9 DFID makes progress
In an interview with IRIN, Gareth Thomas, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for International Development (DFID), said Afghanistan had made major advances, while many challenges, including security, had yet to be fully addressed. As Afghanistan moves towards holding its first ever democratic elections in early October, the international community is cautiously expecting to see the results of the millions of dollars that have been spent in the country, which is still reeling from the consequences of more than 20 years of conflict.
KAZAKHSTAN: 20/9 Flawed elections
Parliamentary elections in Kazakhstan have fallen short of both national and international standards, a local monitoring body says, describing them as a step backwards compared to earlier polls. The elections returned overwhelmingly pro-government candidates. "There have been gross violations and the elections were not democratic," Zhan Konserkin, a lawyer for the Kazakh Network of Independent Monitors (KNIM), told IRIN from the Kazakh commercial capital of Almaty.
UZBEKISTAN: 20/9 ADB education loan
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved a further US $30 million loan to help reform the education sector of Central Asia's most populous state, bringing the total of its loan projects for education to more than $230 million since 1997. Uzbek schools and colleges have been experiencing difficulties since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 with shortages of textbooks, a lack of teaching equipment and the resignation of teachers due to poor salaries, critics say.
AFGHANISTAN: 20/9 NGO suspends work in Nooristan
The UK-based relief agency Afghan Aid (AA) has suspended activities in the northeastern province of Nooristan after an armed attack on its field office last Friday. A group of armed men broke into the AA office during the night, beat up the local staff and stole two vehicles and all the agency's electronic and communications equipment.
PAKISTAN: 20/9 UNHCR closes iris scan centres
As the number of Afghans repatriating to their homeland falls, UNHCR has announced the closure of two of its iris scanning centres in Pakistan, which had been set up to verify the entitlement of returnees to avail themselves of repatriation assistance. The UN refugee agency was operating four Iris Verification Centres (IVCs) at its four departure centres in the two Pakistani cities of Peshawar and Quetta, located close to the Afghan border. Iris verification is a requirement for every Afghan over the age of six wishing to receive the UNHCR repatriation assistance package.
TAJIKISTAN: 21/9 Labour migrants in Russia victims of abuses
Central Asian migrant workers in Russia are increasingly falling victim to a post-Beslan crackdown on illegal migration. The Russian police have deported hundreds of Tajik labour migrants for failing to register in time, a move criticised by migration NGOs in the country. "This is nonsense. It is nothing but window-dressing," Lidiya Grafova, head of the Forum of Migrants' Organisations, an international NGO tackling the problems of migrants, told IRIN from Moscow on Tuesday. "Similar demonstrative deportations for the television cameras have been done in the past, and mainly the most vulnerable and unprotected Tajiks were taken."
AFGHANISTAN: 21/9 Disarmament continues
Tens of thousands of ex-combatants will be disarmed by the UN-backed disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programme before the October elections, according to officials at the Afghan Ministry of Defence (MoD). The multi-million dollar Afghanistan's New Beginning Programme (ANBP, the official name for the DDR process) is designed to disarm more than 100,000 former fighters.
PAKISTAN: 21/9 Out of country voting for Afghan refugees
An intensive training programme is under way to train over 1,000 election staff recruited to administer the out of country 9 October Afghan presidential poll in Pakistan, according to an official of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). More than a million Afghans living in Pakistan and Iran are expected to vote on 9 October, after three days of registration starting from 1 October.
TURKMENISTAN: 21/9 Religious freedom
Concern over the state of religious freedom in Turkmenistan persisted on Tuesday after a recent US State Department report failed to designate the reclusive Central Asian state a country of particular concern (CPC), much to the chagrin of the United States Commission on Religious Freedom. "The State Department's own records have consistently concluded that religious freedom conditions continue to deteriorate in Turkmenistan, a highly repressive country whose leader is currently imposing a state religion based on his own personality cult," Commission chair Preeta Bansal told IRIN from Washington.
UZBEKISTAN: 22/9 Drug Proliferation
Since the overthrow of the Taliban - who banned poppy cultivation in Afghanistan - at the end of 2001, the level of heroin transiting through southern Uzbekistan has been increasing as Afghan opium output has reached new highs. The increase is leading to new security and health problems in the unstable former Soviet republic. In Surkhandarya province, bordering Afghanistan, heroin seizures and drug-related crimes have been rising steadily over the past two years. Last year, the provincial anti-narcotics authorities arrested more than 650 people in connection with drug trafficking, up from 500 just 12 months ago.
AFGHANISTAN: 22/9 Training women as leaders
Female civil servants and qualified Afghan women will be trained in leadership and decision-making skills through a joint UN-government programme. Under Senior Women in Management (SWIM), a US $100,000, six-month training course was launched by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Afghan Ministries of Rural Rehabilitation and Development, Finance, and Women's Affairs on Monday.
KYRGYZSTAN: 23/9 Reprocessing foreign nuclear fuel
Controversial plans to ship 1,800 mt of British radioactive material to Kyrgyzstan for reprocessing have not been agreed by the authorities in Bishkek, a government official told IRIN on Thursday. "Nobody, neither a legal entity nor a real person, has applied to us for a licence to import this uranium waste," Emil Akmatov, a spokesman for the Kyrgyz Ministry of Environment and Emergencies, said. British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL), an international company owned by the UK government, has defended the decision, which will recover 90 mt of reactor-grade uranium while, in effect, removing 10,600 drums of low-level radioactive waste from its reactor plant near Preston, in northwest England, for disposal in a uranium mine in the Central Asian country.
AFGHANISTAN: 27/9 World Bank reconstruction update
Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world with a continuing vicious cycle of insecurity, an informal economy and drug trafficking, according to a World Bank report released on Friday. The first economic report on Afghanistan by the World Bank in a quarter of a century indicates that up to 90 percent of the country lives in an informal economy, denying the government much needed taxes and other revenue needed for development.
TAJIKISTAN: 27/9 Measles immunisation begins
A major effort to immunise some 3 million people against measles began in Tajikistan on Monday, the largest nationwide immunisation campaign since the former Soviet republic gained independence in 1991. The US $2.6 million government initiative, with extensive support from the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Japanese government among others, is being administered through schools, health centres and mobile teams throughout the impoverished nation.
KYRGYZSTAN: 27/9 Boosting disaster preparedness
A new project by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) aims to reduce the vulnerability of the poor in Kyrgyzstan to natural disasters and increase their preparedness for emergencies. The US $1 million programme, funded by the Japanese government, will start in January 2005. According to a UN report, more than 1,210 natural disasters were registered in Kyrgyzstan between 1992 and 1999. More than 400 people were killed and over 50,000 houses, 222 schools and 127 health care facilities damaged or destroyed, along with roads, electricity transmission lines and other important items of infrastructure.
UZBEKISTAN: 28/9 Drug proliferation increasing
Uzbek law enforcement bodies on Tuesday burned 566 kg of illegal narcotics, including 381 kg of heroin, as part of their fight against illicit drug trafficking. Uzbekistan is becoming one of the main drug transit routes following a significant increase in Afghan opium output last year. "Drug dealers are increasingly trying to use Uzbekistan to shift Afghan-made drugs to Russia and further a field to Europe. This is directly connected to the big opium harvest in neighbouring Afghanistan in 2003," Shuhrat Azimov, an Uzbek security service official, told IRIN.
KYRGYZSTAN: 28/9 Hepatitis on the rise
Epidemiological services are seeing a steep rise in the number of acute viral hepatitis cases in southern Kyrgyzstan. In Osh alone, the country's second largest city, about 100 people have been hospitalised with hepatitis over the past month, local epidemiologists told IRIN on Tuesday. Officials at the Osh regional epidemiological control centre say that this year's hepatitis incidence rate exceeds last year's level by 50 per cent. The number of infected people is increasing in rural areas, including the Kara-Suu, Aravan and Uzgen districts, where one or two patients are hospitalised with hepatitis each day.
IRAN 29/9 Afghan refugees given the chance to vote
With just 10 days to go to polling, preparations to give hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees living in Iran the chance to vote in their country's presidential elections next month are proceeding well. "Most of the eligible voters here, most Afghan refugees here, will have the opportunity to cast a ballot," Craig Jenness, head of the International Organisation for Migration's (IOM) Out of Country Registration and Voting Programme (OCRV), told IRIN on Wednesday from the Iranian capital, Tehran.
PAKISTAN: 29/9 Afghan refugees given the chance to vote
As the time approaches for Afghans to vote on 9 October to chose their first-ever elected president, the voter education campaign being run by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) for Afghan refugees in Pakistan is in full swing. For the vast majority of Afghans, this will be the first time that they are voting in a democratic election. Through extensive public awareness campaigns, the IOM intends to inform Afghans of their right to vote, and encourage female participation in particular.
AFGHANISTAN: 29/9 Child health
Prospects for Afghan children have improved in recent years, though much work remains to be done to compensate for decades of conflict, under-investment and international isolation, according to a joint UN-government report just published. The report - the first comprehensive study since 1996 to present a widespread insight into and analysis of the condition of Afghanistan's women and children - was released on Tuesday. "Progress of Provinces; results of 2003 Afghanistan Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey [MICS]" is the outcome of a 12-month nationwide exercise led by the Afghanistan Central Statistical Office (CSO) with the support of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
TAJIKISTAN: 29/9 Demining to benefit at least 12,000
Tajik demining specialists are planning to clear minefields in two districts of the eastern Badakhshon region, a move set to benefit some 12,000 rural residents in the area. A general assessment done by Tajik Mine Action Centre (TMAC) revealed that there were many dangerous sites in the area, which have impacted on the local population. The sites have been divided into three groups - low, medium and high impact - with demining to start in the high impact areas.
TURKMENISTAN: 30/9 Prison conditions remain poor
Conditions in prisons throughout the country remain dire, with routine reports of torture, beatings, food deprivation, overcrowding and disease, failing to receive the international attention they deserve, activists told IRIN. Although officially there are 15,500 people imprisoned in Turkmenistan, rights groups estimate their real numbers to be much higher.
OCTOBER
UZBEKISTAN: 4/10 Call for an end to the death penalty
Amnesty International (AI) has called for a moratorium on the death sentence in Uzbekistan, the only country in Central Asia that still practises capital punishment. "Uzbekistan should follow the example of its Central Asian neighbours and fundamentally review its policy on the death penalty," Anna Sunder-Plassman, a researcher for the watchdog group, told IRIN on Monday from London.
TAJIKISTAN: 4/10 ADB loan to boost agriculture
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) plans to lend Tajikistan more than US $46 million over the next two years in an effort to bolster rural development and enhance regional cooperation. The bank's assistance level for 2004 was expected to be around $25 million, while in 2003, Tajikistan had been granted $38 million in loans, Dwyer explained.
TAJIKISTAN: 4/10 Measles campaign a success
Efforts to vaccinate up to three million people against measles in Tajikistan are proceeding well, one week after the campaign's launch. As of Saturday, excluding the northern Soghd region, 2,095,498 people had been vaccinated against the disease or almost 71 percent of the targeted figure, Mokuo said, making it the largest nationwide immunisation campaign since the former Soviet republic gained its independence in 1991.
AFGHANISTAN: 5/10 Refugee voter registration
Efforts to register hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees living in Pakistan to vote in the upcoming presidential elections finished on Monday with a high level of participation. Although the process had ended, registration stations would remain open on Tuesday for supervised public viewing of the registration lists. According to the IOM, with an estimated 740,000 Afghans registered to participate in the presidential polls, the four-day Afghan Out-of-Country-Registration and Voting (OCRV) exercise has been the largest out-of-country voting operation for refugees ever held in such a short period of time.
AFGHANISTAN: 6/10 NATO deploys ahead of poll
More than 2,000 troops have been deployed in Afghanistan by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) to support the Afghan security forces during Saturday's presidential polls, NATO officials confirmed to IRIN on Wednesday. With some 9,000 soldiers, NATO now has troops in all five northern provinces in addition to the main deployment in the Afghan capital, Kabul, under the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). The fifth ISAF Provisional Reconstruction Team (PRT) reached the northern province of Baghlan on 1 October.
UZBEKISTAN: 12/10 Demining work suspended
The Uzbek military has suspended demining work along part of the border with Kyrgyzstan due to some technical difficulties and weather conditions, according to a military official. Tashkent planted mines in some mountainous parts of its Kyrgyz and Tajik borders, including those in the densely populated Ferghana Valley which were difficult to control, in an effort to stave off incursions by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) since 1999 and prevent drug trafficking and weapons smuggling through the area. The issue has remained a serious one between the affected countries.
PAKISTAN: 13/10 Child labour in frontier province
Working children remain a very common sight in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, where according to official figures gathered in 1996, 1.1 million children, out of a total of 3.6 million countrywide, are engaged in various forms of hazardous labour despite the extensive legislation that is supposed to regulate the practice.
TURKMENISTAN: 14/10 Refugees to resettle in Canada
Dozens of refugees in Turkmenistan, mainly Afghans and Azeris, are set to be resettled in Canada in the near future, according to the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Ashgabat. The Canadian government has accepted 140 refugees for resettlement, including 25 families from Azerbaijan, 22 families from Afghanistan, 17 families from Iran and one stateless person. They are expected to leave for Canada in the near future.
CENTRAL ASIA: 14/10 Children remain in poverty
The number of children living below national poverty levels remains very high across Central Asia, despite economic progress in the region. According to the UNICEF report assessing the situation of nine countries across Eastern Europe and Central Asia for which data were available, 14 million out of 44 million children were living in poverty. Levels vary widely from country to country. In Kyrgyzstan, for example, more than half of children live in poverty.
KYRGYZSTAN: 20/10 Typhoid outbreak
More than 60 people have been hospitalised in southern Kyrgyzstan with suspected typhoid over the past three weeks, according to local health officials. According to the Kyrgyz health ministry, the outbreak takes the number of typhoid cases registered in Jalal-Abad to 80 since the beginning of the year. Nurbolot Usenbaev, deputy head of the National State Sanitary and Epidemiological Control Department (NSSECD), told IRIN from the capital, Bishkek, that the number of typhoid cases nationwide was almost five times as high as last year, reaching 255.
AFGHANISTAN: 20/10 Warlords get compensation for giving up armies
Former Afghan militia commanders will receive regular financial support after they surrender military units to the UN-backed disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programme, according to a top official of the Ministry of Defence (MoD). Following an accelerated DDR plan, the UN and MoD have designed a new scheme which offers commanders and senior officers of the Afghan Militia Forces (AMF) units a Financial Redundancy Package (FRP) in return for the disarmament and demobilisation of their units.
PAKISTAN: 21/10 Supporting female leaders
Pakistan's women's ministry has launched a new programme with the support of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) for the education and training in political processes of female leaders and representatives of local bodies across the country. "The Women's Political School [WPS] project will help in institutionalising the process of training of women political leaders, taking into account the dynamic political climate of the country and the upcoming local government elections in 2005," Nilofar Bakhtiyar, an adviser to the prime minister on women's development, said. UNDP has granted US $4.5 million for the WPS project, an integral component of its Gender Support Programme for Pakistan.
IRAN: 21/10 Concern at online censorship
Twenty European news websites have expressed their concern at the recent imprisonment of five Iranian online journalists. They made their stand in a Reporters Without Borders (RSF) appeal over the crackdown against online media in Iran. "We are always concerned when there are negative effects on journalists when they do their jobs," Holger Hank, editor of the German dw-world.de - the online publication of the Deutsche Welle (DW) international radio and TV service - told IRIN on Thursday from Bonn, showing DW's support, along with other news organisations, for the RSF appeal.
TAJIKISTAN: 22/10 Newspaper crackdown
Major Tajik independent newspapers are planning to print abroad following a recent government crackdown on independent media in the country, newspaper editors said. Rajabi Mirzo, editor of the independent Ruzi Nav newspaper, told IRIN in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, on Friday that he had held negotiations in Kyrgyzstan about publishing four independent newspapers, including Ruzi Nav, Nerui Sukhan, Odamu Olam, and Zindagi at the publishing house, based in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, and supported by Freedom House, a US-based pro-democracy group.
UZBEKISTAN: 25/10 Unfair trials for terror suspects
International and local human rights groups expressed serious concerns as an Uzbek court sentenced 23 more defendants to long prison terms in connection with a series of blasts and shoot-outs this spring that killed more than 40 people. A wave of arrests and trials of suspects after the March-April attacks were viewed by human rights watchdogs as a clampdown on Muslims who worship outside state sanctioned Islam in this former Soviet republic of 26 million.
TURKMENISTAN: 26/10 Prison amnesty dismissed
Activists have largely dismissed a proposed amnesty for thousands of prisoners incarcerated in Turkmenistan's overcrowded jails, describing the annual event as mere window dressing to disguise an otherwise abysmal human rights record. "These amnesties occur every year," Tajigul Begmedova, head of the Turkmen Helsinki Foundation, told IRIN from the Bulgarian Black Sea port of Varna on Tuesday, noting, while such events were important, they did little to help those incarcerated for their political views or opposition to the government.
PAKISTAN: 27/10 Honour killings ruling
Pakistan's lower house of parliament strengthened a law against honour killings, but opposition parties and human rights activists say it lacks bite and sincerity. The UN Children's Agency UNICEF defines honour killing as an ancient practice in which men kill female relatives in the name of family "honour" for forced or suspected sexual activity outside marriage or even when they have been victims of rape.
UZBEKISTAN: 28/10 HIV/AIDS prevention
A project on HIV/AIDS prevention among high-risk groups and youth in the Uzbek capital Tashkent, implemented jointly by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and World Vision Japan/Uzbekistan, has recently launched its web site. The two-year "SOS" project, which kicked off at the beginning of the year, continues the work of the former project by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the Uzbek government on promoting a multi-sectoral effective response to drug abuse, HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in the country, which ended on 31 December 2003.
NOVEMBER
KYRGYZSTAN: 1/11 Landslide threatens nuclear dump
A potential landslide in the central Kyrgyz province of Naryn could affect a uranium waste dump, threatening up to 50,000 people, according to the Kyrgyz emergency ministry. "The danger of a landslide is very serious. Currently, according to an expert who has been monitoring the situation on the ground since August, the landslide is moving by 1 to 1.5 cm per day," Emil Akmatov, a ministry spokesman, told IRIN from the capital, Bishkek, on Monday.
AFGHANISTAN: 2/11 UN staff kidnapped
NGOs in the Afghan capital Kabul are stepping up their security following last week's kidnapping of three international UN staff. "That such an incident could happen in broad daylight on a busy Kabul street is a reflection of a deteriorating security situation," Nick Downie, head of the Afghanistan NGO Security Office (ANSO), told IRIN. The three UN election workers were working on Afghanistan's October presidential elections.
IRAN: 2/11 Winter lessens refugee returns
Cooler weather has resulted in a sharp fall in the number of Afghans repatriating to their homeland from Iran. "It's something like 400 to 500 [returns] a day," Xavier Creach, a spokesman for the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told IRIN from Tehran, citing cooler temperatures as the primary cause. "It's like this every year. It's quite normal," he said. Over one million Afghans have voluntarily returned to their homeland from Iran since the UN refugee agency initiated the programme in April 2002.
AFGHANISTAN: 3/11 Karzai declared winner of election
Hamid Karzai, the interim president of Afghanistan, was officially declared the winner from October's historic presidential elections. Karzai, who won 55.4 percent of more than eight million ballots cast, secured the required simple majority in the first round of voting, according to the UN-government Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB). After reviewing the report of an international panel on the extent of election fraud, Zakim Shah, the head of the JEMB, said the body certified the elections and recognised Karzai as legitimate president of Afghanistan.
KYRGYZSTAN: 4/11 HIV/AIDS book row
A row over a book published in 1999 designed to help Kyrgyz teachers promote HIV/AIDS awareness and healthy lifestyles is continuing, involving everyone from parliamentarians to parents. A group of conservative activists, who claim the book encourages young people into sexual experimentation, are trying to sue one of the authors for US $100,000 in damages and have forced its withdrawal from schools.
PAKISTAN: 8/11 Oxfam launches campaign against honour killings
The international NGO Oxfam announced its plans to launch a massive drive against killings in the name of family honour in Pakistan. The campaign would start in March 2005 in the southern province of Balochistan and be extended across the country in November next year running until 2011. Honour killings are widespread in Pakistan. During 2003, a total of 1,261 women were killed in the name of honour.
AFGHANISTAN: 8/11 Poverty and drought in Faryab
Nearly a million people are threatened by poverty and a severe drought in Faryab. Officials and aid workers in Maimana, the provincial capital of Faryab, told IRIN immediate assistance, mainly food items, was required to prevent any human tragedy during the harsh winter. The journey to Faryab from northern Balkh province illustrates the problem. It takes nine hours in a four wheel drive vehicles on dusty tracks across the Laili plains to reach the isolated province.
AFGHANISTAN: 10/11 Illegal taxation continues
Illegal taxation by local commanders and warlords continues to be a major human rights issue in the area, according to Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), while in some parts of the east, including Nangarhar, Laghman and the western province of Farah, such taxation by powerful warlords, most of whom are not loyal to the central government, is widespread.
KYRGYZSTAN: 11/11 New ADB scheme to help small businesses
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has begun a new credit line for entrepreneurs in Kyrgyzstan without government guarantees, as a sign of its confidence in the republic's political and economic reforms since independence. Half of the incoming aid to the republic will be grant based.
KYRGYZSTAN: 15/11 Anaemia remains widespread in rural areas
Health officials in the central Kyrgyz province of Naryn say that the high prevalence of anaemia among women of child-bearing age in the area could result in a weakening of the national gene pool, citing poverty as the main cause of the problem. Anaemia is the most common nutritional problem in the world and mainly affects women of child-bearing age, teenagers and young children. While it is not usually a threat in its own right, it may be an indication of a more serious underlying problem.
TURKMENISTAN: 15/11 Drug proliferation seminar
A seminar to train Turkmen and Afghan customs officials on how to detect chemical precursors to help reduce drug trade in Central Asia was held in the Turkmen capital, Ashgabat, thanks to a joint initiative by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the UK government. Precursors are chemicals such as kerosene which can be used to turn raw substances like opium into morphine, or morphine into heroin.
KYRGYZSTAN: 18/11 Protest against prison violence
A group of 20 prisoners and detainees revolted in a temporary detention facility (TDF) in the southern city of Osh, some harming themselves in protest against the use of violence in prison. The entire prison population numbering some 250 people has also gone on a hunger strike in response to the use of harsh measures at the facility.
AFGHANISTAN: 19/11 Drug survey depressing
Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has increased by two-thirds, reaching an unprecedented 131,000 hectares, a new survey by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) revealed. The survey also said that poppy cultivation spread to all 32 provinces of the country, making narcotics the main engine of economic growth and the strongest bond among previously quarrelsome populations.
AFGHANISTAN: 22/11 Drug abuse widespread
Drug abuse continues to rise, the Afghan Counter Narcotics Directorate (CND) warned at a donor conference in the Afghan capital, Kabul. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Afghanistan is the world's largest poppy growing country, providing more than 80 percent of the world's illicit opium, with 4,200 mt of opium produced in 2004. There are more than 60,000 addicts in Kabul alone, of whom 7,000 are heroin users, 11,000 are opium addicts, and nearly 25,000 hashish smokers.
KYRGYZSTAN: 22/11 Poverty alleviation programme
The Osh regional governorate has launched the country's first regional poverty reduction plan, aimed at reducing poverty in the southern province by more than half by 2010. With a population of around 1 million, Osh province is one of the largest and most populous provinces of the country, where some 5 million live. According to the UNDP, the poverty rate in the region is over 52 percent, exceeding the average national poverty rate of 44 percent.
AFGHANISTAN: 22/11 Quarter of a million disabled
Despite having one of the highest numbers of landmine victims in the world, Afghanistan has been slow to reintegrate its disabled war victims. The figures are staggering. The country has more than a million people living with disabilities, according to the Afghan Ministry of Martyrs and Disabled (MOMD) and a quarter of them - at least 250,000 - are victims of landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXOs).
AFGHANISTAN: 23/11 Kidnapped UN staff released
Three kidnapped UN workers were healthy and in good spirits following their release this morning, the United Nations said. Kidnapped off the streets of the Afghan capital, Kabul, on 28 October, the three had been working on Afghanistan's first ever presidential elections. Afghan officials said the hostages were released during a rescue operation and that the government managed to release them without making any deals with the kidnappers. One kidnapper was killed and four others wounded, officials said.
AFGHANISTAN: 25/11 Strengthening the provinces
The Afghan government has launched a new US $312 million project financed by international donors to centralise and equip the country's fragile district administrations. The project, entitled the Afghanistan Stabilisation Programme (ASP), is expected to strengthen the authority of the central government beyond the capital Kabul, one of the main challenges facing Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
PAKISTAN: 26/11 Landmines in frontier and the tribal belt
Landmines and other unexploded ordnance (UXOs) continue to pose an immediate threat to the local population in Pakistan's northwestern tribal belt bordering Afghanistan. They also impede infrastructure development and the agricultural production of the area, according to anti-landmine activists. According to a survey conducted by the Community Motivation and Development Organisation (CMDO), 405 landmine victims were identified last year, 157 of whom died.
TAJIKISTAN: 29/11 High infant mortality rate
Tajikistan has the highest rate of under-five child mortality among the Central Asian states, with 78 deaths per 1,000 live births, according to a survey by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). The UNICEF study shows that there are some 170,000 new births in the ex-Soviet republic each year. But 106 out of 1,000 live births do not reach the age of five.
DECEMBER
UZBEKISTAN: 1/12 Human rights protest
Rights and opposition groups gathered outside the US Embassy in the capital, Tashkent, calling on Washington to support freedom of speech and democracy in Central Asia's most populous state. The protesters claimed the Uzbek government had blocked the registration of genuine opposition candidates for the 26 December parliamentary elections.
CENTRAL ASIA: 1/12 Disaster preparedness conference
A regional conference on disaster preparedness in Central Asia opened in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, aimed at finding ways to mitigate the risks and ensuring regional cooperation. All the regional countries - including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan - are prone to various emergencies caused by natural hazards.
UZBEKISTAN: 2/12 Prisoner amnesty
Thousands of prisoners are to be released under an amnesty signed today, pardoning more than 5,000 prisoners. Under the decree signed by Uzbek President Islam Karimov, 5,040 prisoners will be released and 8,000-9,000 will have their sentences reduced.
PAKISTAN: 2/12 Blasphemy case
A court in Pakistan handed down a life sentence and a fine of 10,000 rupees (US $167 dollars) to a man from the minority Ahmediya community for remarks deemed blasphemous to Islam. Human rights groups have been highlighting the persecution suffered by the Ahmediyas in Pakistan since a 1974 constitutional amendment declared the Muslim sect to be heretical, even though Ahmediyas regard themselves as part of the Islamic faith.
KYRGYZSTAN: 2/12 Human rights activists reappears
Rights activists welcomed the reappearance of a missing colleague, Tursunbek Akunov, a prominent human rights activist who went missing in November, but called on the authorities for a full investigation. According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), Akunov went missing on 16 November after a meeting with an officer from the National Security Service (NSS).
UZBEKISTAN: 7/12 Uighurs demand more political rights
Uighurs in Uzbekistan, a Turkic, Sunni Muslim people, with close cultural and linguistic ties to other ethnic groups in Central Asia, including Kyrgyz, Kazakhs, Uzbeks and Turkmen, are demanding more political rights. Uzbekistan is one of the most homogenous states in Central Asia, where according to official statistics, Uzbeks comprise more than 75 percent of the country's 25 million population.
PAKISTAN: 8/12 HIV/AIDS among Afghan refugees
The UN refugee agency has signed a three-year agreement with the UN joint programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) to strengthen its prevention and control programme for Afghans residing in refugee camps in Pakistan. Under the agreement, the office of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees
(UNHCR) and UNAIDS will work closely to share information on the disease and implement UN plans to combat HIV/AIDS in refugee camps.
KAZAKHSTAN: 13/12 Chechens mark start of war
Kazakhstan's Chechen community marked the 10th anniversary of the start of the first Chechen war with an appeal to the international community to resolve their plight both at home and abroad. In addition to some 30,000 ethnic Chechens holding Kazakh citizenship, according to the office of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR, there were an estimated between 8,000 and 13,000 Chechen refugees in the country.
AFGHANISTAN: 14/12 NGO reform mooted
Afghan planning minister Dr Ramazan Bashardoost has resigned, following rejection by the government of his proposal that 2,000 aid agencies should be wound up. Bashardoost had called on the central government to close down 80 percent of all national and international aid agencies, labelling them ineffective and corrupt.
KAZAKHSTAN: 15/12 Education reform needed - UNDP
Education is in need of reform, a new report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) says. While Kazakhstan enjoyed almost 100 percent enrolment following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the country faced the daunting task of re-establishing its own education system.
PAKISTAN: 16/12 Health mission to Kashmir
A 26-member humanitarian mission of renowned French surgeons has treated some 30 patients with complicated surgical disorders, at the Combined Military Hospital (CMH) in Muzzaffarabad, capital of Pakistani-administered Kashmir. CMH Muzzaffarabad, a 410-bed hospital, is the only big hospital in the state of Kashmir which has specialists for almost all main outpatient departments (OPDs).
AFGHANISTAN: 16/12 Child soldier demobilisation
Nearly 4,000 child soldiers have been demobilised in 15 provinces of Afghanistan under a UN-backed programme, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) confirmed. The Child Soldiers Demobilisation and Reintegration Programme is designed to target an estimated 8,000 such children in the country mostly forcibly conscripted to fighting forces in the last years of more than two decades of armed conflict and civil war.
AFGHANISTAN: 20/12 Women's employment
Afghanistan's Ministry of Women's Affairs (MOWA) is seeking employment opportunities for tens of thousands of unqualified women in the country. The initiative is part of newly created UN backed employment services centres which are expected to operate in nine provinces of the country, according to MOWA. The centres will be established to tackle unemployment and provide training opportunities for unqualified job seekers, according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO).
PAKISTAN: 20/12 UNHCR suspends voluntary repatriation
The office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has suspended the voluntary repatriation assistance programme for Afghans living in Pakistan. The programme is being suspended from 27 December and will resume by 1 March next year.
PAKISTAN: 21/12 Juvenile justice
The Lahore High Court has ruled a presidential decree, the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance of 2000, as unconstitutional, unreasonable and impracticable. Under the decree, the government had to set up special juvenile courts for under-age offenders and establish independent trials for juvenile and adult offenders. But implementation has been slow.
KAZAKHSTAN: 22/12 Children in care
An estimated 200,000 children currently live in institutions throughout the region; half of them in Kazakhstan alone, where more than 600 different types of institutions for children - ranging from official and private, to orphanages and rehabilitation centres - can be found.
UZBEKISTAN: 24/12 - Election flawed
Uzbekistan's parliamentary election is unlikely to lead to change in Central Asia's mostly populous state, opposition members and local watchdog groups warned. Members of outlawed opposition parties picketed the mayor's office in central Tashkent, calling on people to boycott the poll, which they described as fraudulent. Five political parties viewed internationally for being pro-government are running in the elections, while the two main opposition groups Erk (Freedom) and Birlik (Unity), whose leaders are in exile, have been barred from running.
PAKISTAN: 24/12 Official human rights body to be formed
The federal cabinet has approved a draft bill to establish a Pakistan National Commission for Human Rights. The government says the commission will monitor the human rights situation and any violations. Despite scepticism from rights groups, President General Pervez Musharraf announced his intentions to set up such a commission in May to facilitate the implementation of human rights standards in the country.
AFGHANISTAN: 27/12 IDPs destitute in the south
Tens of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the southern border camp of Zhare Dasht are seeking assistance to help them settle in an area they have lived in temporarily for the last two years. With drought conditions continuing in their areas of origin, the destitute families prefer to stay in Zhare Dasht rather than return. Although the desert area is cold during the winter and isolated from the southern Kandahar city, people say they can manage to earn a living or receive some assistance in the troubled IDP camp.