UN says urgent funds needed for elections

The United Nations announced on Thursday that the voters registration programme for the Afghan general elections scheduled to be held by June next year urgently needed US $76 million from donors. "We are poised to go ahead, but actual movement and activity will depend absolutely on the early arrival of necessary funds," Reg Austin, the chief electoral officer for the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), told IRIN following the signing ceremony for the Voters Registration Project (VRPA) for Afghanistan between the UN and the Afghan government in the capital Kabul. Austin said that the VRPA would register 10.5 million people, but to do so needed to recruit a large number of national and international staff, including 4,000 Afghans, very soon. "The preliminary funding at the moment is even more significant than the question of security, which will continue to be with us as a problem," he stated, noting that it was an expensive endeavour. "We are very much counting on donor countries." Austin went on to stress that almost 65 percent of the $76 million required for the project was urgently needed in the next six weeks for it to proceed. "We especially need a very large Afghan staff to be recruited, as well as vehicles which will give us the mobility to access the whole country and ensure we register people in every part of Afghanistan," he said. Austin added that action to launch a civic education programme needed to be taken as soon as possible. "The idea is civic education should be conducted at least three to four weeks before voters registration, which will start in less than couple of months," he said, noting that VRPA would send 300 civic educators all over the country. "We will do a lot of awareness campaigns through the media and press, as well as through local leaders to produce events for launching the exercise." While the need to proceed with voter registration is urgent, insecurity in the country, particularly in the south, remains a great concern. "The need to start registration in the fall brings to that issue a new sense of urgency, and we hope that both the Afghan government and the international community will find the start of registration another reason to focus a lot of attention on the need to restore security in the south," Jean Arnault, the UN secretary-general's deputy special representative, told IRIN. He said the UN shared the concern of many Afghans that conditions still did not exist in the country for the holding of free and fair elections. "Security conditions are not yet what they should be to make sure that the political parties and Afghans themselves can express themselves fully and freely," Arnault remarked, adding that the very important role to be played by of the international community was expansion of [coalition-led] provincial reconstruction teams and expansion of international peace keepers to the provinces. According to United Nations Development Programme many UN agencies will be involved with the elections registration programme. However, an Afghan Electoral Commission composed of six Afghans together with the Joint Electoral Managing Body which is composed of five international experts that were established following a presidential decree early August are working on this large national priority as well.