7 June 2010 - Latest news and information from UN agencies operating in Afghanistan.

7 June 2010

UNDP PHOTO EXHIBITION (8-10 JUNE 2010)

On 8 June at 10am, a police photo exhibition, “Enhancing Security and Rule of Law for Afghans,” will be opened at the Kabul Serena Hotel by Acting Minister of Interior H.E. Munir Mangal and by Robert Watkins, United Nations Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Afghanistan.

The exhibition, organized by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), will showcase the achievements of one of its key projects, the Law and Order Trust Fund for Afghanistan (LOTFA).

LOTFA prioritises support to the Afghan National Police (ANP), focusing on the key issues of support for police salaries, monitoring and accountability, as well as the cross-cutting components of institutional development and gender mainstreaming.

The exhibition will run through 10 June, displaying around 90 photographs of LOTFA-supported activities.

LOTFA is UNDP’s largest project, globally, on a financial basis. It is a multilateral trust fund set up in 2002 providing a mechanism for coordinating contributions from international partners.

The photographic display is complemented with a painting exhibition, “My Police: the Child’s Eye View,” capturing the very personal perceptions of 10-15-year-old street children working with the NGO, Aschiana, as they see the police around them, and how the police activities impact upon their daily lives.

For more information, please contact Fezeh Hosseini: 0700 475 714.

UNODC: CONSULTATIVE ROUNDTABLE ON WOMEN CONVENED

On 6 June, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) – in collaboration with the Ministry of Women Affairs MoWA), the Ministry of Justice, Central Prison Department (MoJ-CPD) and Afghan Women Network (AWN) – convened a consultative roundtable meeting at the UNAMA compound.

The roundtable, entitled “Addressing the Needs of Women in Prisons: exploring opportunities and developing responses,” was designed to review the current challenges facing women in Afghan prisons, identify the gaps in responses, and identify practical interventions to address these challenges.

The roundtable was jointly chaired by UNODC Deputy Representative Ashita Mittal, MoWA Deputy Minister Palwasha Kakar and CPD Director Amir Jamshid.

The chairpersons highlighted issues such as women being routinely imprisoned for running away from home, and the poor conditions in which they are often imprisoned.

About 30 participants from national and international private organizations, government agencies and embassies attended the roundtable and discussed the issues.

Participants heard that about 500 women and their 200 children are in custody in detention centres and provincial prisons across Afghanistan. This growing population of women live in poor conditions without access to adequate healthcare and prison-based programmes, and are often released without proper attention to their post-release needs, such as housing.

Participants noted the need for further law reforms that would remove moral and behavioural acts as crimes requiring detention, plus the need for reform to encourage judges and prosecutors to use alternatives to imprisonment.

There was clear consensus that the plight of women and their children imprisoned with them is poor, and that prison-based and post-release programmes are needed. The use of alternatives to imprisonment was described as urgently needed.

Further consensus was reached for the establishment of a national steering committee or working group on women prisoners. UNODC will provide support to MoWA, MoJ-CPD and AWN to develop the framework and scope of this body and convene it within the coming weeks.

For more information, contact Collie F Brown: +93 (0) 796 226 383 or collie.brown@unodc.org

WHO: MOP-UP CAMPAIGN IN NORTH-EAST PROVINCES IN RESPONSE TO POLIO OUTBREAK IN TAJIKISTAN

On 1-3 June, the polio-eradication team of Afghanistan conducted a mop-up vaccination campaign in four provinces bordering Tajikistan targeting 1.21 million children.

The campaign was conducted in the provinces of Badakhshan, Takhar, Kunduz and Balkh in parallel with the one conducted in Tajikistan across the border to ensure greater effectiveness.

Polio-free since 2002, Tajikistan has recently witnessed an outbreak. As of 5 June, over 183 cases have been reported, most of them close to the Afghan border in the north-east.

A four-pronged approach has been adopted to ensure that no child is left unvaccinated: (1) establishment of immunization posts at five border crossing points with a view to vaccinating all children travelling across the border during the campaign days; (2) house-to-house visits by various categories of service providers, including 134 district coordinators, 624 cluster supervisors and 3,500 volunteers trained to conduct these visits and vaccinate all eligible children; (3) Aga Khan Health Services (AKHS) has designed a special monitoring plan for geographically-difficult-to-access districts via mobile/transit clinics in busy marketplaces, hospital gates, checkpoints and airports, etc; and (4) fixed teams in hospitals targeting under-five children who accompany their parent/s.

The Badakhshan area has been relatively polio-free for a decade and has been able to maintain a reasonable level of immunity. This makes it all the more significant to maintain the high levels of immunity in this region by taking steps to contain spill-over effects – a reminder to keep up the good work until we can declare the area and the country polio-free.

For more information, contact Aanchal Khurana: +93 (0) 79 533 9211.