Annan immunises Afghan child on refugee visit

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, touring a refugee camp in northwestern Pakistan on Monday, helped to immunise a young Afghan child against polio, while thousands of the camp's 60,000 inhabitants jostled for a glimpse of the UN chief. Annan visited the Shamshatoo refugee camp to witness first hand the desperation of the Afghans living in tents and shacks amid over-crowded conditions there, after fleeing war and drought in their homeland. Annan listened to refugee elders as they told him of their increasingly desperate cirumstances. He assured them that the world had not forgotten their plight and that he would do whatever was possible to get more help to them. However he added that peace was the key and every effort had to be made to end the conflict so the Afghans could return home. Thousands of Afghans squatted on the camp's hillsides and watched as Annan's motorcade passed by. The Secretary-General visited a girls' school at Shamshatoo, where he knelt on a plastic mat and listened as children recited verses from the Muslim holy book, the Koran. He then watched as the World Food Programme handed out bags of flour to refugees waiting in lines for their rations. Speaking briefly to reporters at the camp, Annan said the UN was committed to helping the Afghan people inside Afghanistan and also those who were refugees in neighbouring Pakistan. While conditions are poor in Shamshatoo, they are even worse in the nearby makeshift settlement of Jalozai. A further 80,000 refugees live amid squalid conditions, camped out in the open in Jalozai, near Peshawar in northwest Pakistan. In late January, the regional authorities suspended UNHCR's refugee verification process, effectively blocking the transfer of the vulnerable from Jalozai. Since then conditions at this makeshift settlement have deteriorated rapidly. Jalozai has no adequate shelter, sanitary facilities, health or water supply. Meanwhile UNHCR fears that conditions look set to deteriorate further with the onset of the hot season. UNHCR spokesman in Pakistan, Yusuf Hassan, warned in February that unless prompt assistance was provided, Jalozai could become a "death camp". Dozens of people, mostly children, succumbed to illness and disease during the harsh winter and UNHCR now fears the approaching summer could exacerbate the situation. "With the onset of the hot season, the already squalid conditions could pose serious health hazards and threaten both the Afghans and local residents," UNHCR stated on Friday. The refugees there are living under thin plastic sheeting with no sanitation and the Pakistani authorities have stopped most aid from reaching them in the hope that they might return home. The Secretary-General had requested a visit to Jalozai although local Pakistani authorities did not grant permission. Instead Annan flew over the camp in his helicopter on Monday after leaving Shamshatoo. UNHCR has allocated US $4 million to assist the new arrivals in Pakistan. The country already plays host to some 1.2 million refugees, plus an estimated two million illegal immigrants, who fled Afghanistan during the 1979-89 Soviet occupation and the ensuing civil war. The Secretary-General was accompanied by his wife and a delegation including the Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Kieran Prendergast. The delegation left Pakistan on Monday, to travel to Nepal, Bangladesh and India, before returning to New York on 18 March.