Weekly Round-Up - IRINCAS-59: 24-May-02
U N I T E D N A T I O N S
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Central Asia
IRIN-CA Weekly Round-up 59
18 - 24 May 2002
CONTENTS:
AFGHANISTAN: Huge teacher training programme launched
AFGHANISTAN: Fund helps in rebuilding Afghan journalism
TURKMENISTAN: Tajik repatriation continues
TURKMENISTAN: Infant mortality remains high
PAKISTAN: UNIDO signs accord with software body
PAKISTAN: Focus on NGOs and community development in Balochistan
TAJIKISTAN: Food shortage predicted
IRAN: Tripartite agreement on trade and investment
CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly News wrap 24/5
AFGHANISTAN: Huge teacher training programme launched
One of the largest educational training programmes ever undertaken in
Afghanistan was officially launched at a ceremony in the southern city of
Kandahar on Thursday by the UK-based NGO Islamic Relief (IR). Under the
scheme, 40 schools would be rehabilitated in the city. As part of the
education programme, IR is training teachers in the city, formally the
spiritual stronghold of the brutal Taliban regime, who had banned girls
over the age of 12 from school and stopped women from working.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27926&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
AFGHANISTAN: Open Media Fund helps in rebuilding Afghan journalism
Sitting cross-legged in his bookshop, 45-year-old Hamdullah Sahhaf, an
Afghan refugee in Pakistan's southwestern city of Quetta, contemplates
returning to his home town, the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, after
nearly two decades in exile. "I hope and pray that this time peace in our
country is not elusive," he told IRIN after a recent trip to Kandahar to
assess his prospects. Sahhaf wants to permanently resettle in his country,
but knows little other than printing, binding and selling books - a rare
profession in his war-ravaged country. Sahhaf had worked in a printing
press in the United Arab Emirates before joining his family in exile in
Quetta in early 1980s. "I want to utilise my experience and want to
establish a printing press in Kandahar," he said. Already, he has
published four issues of a Pashto magazine, Palana, or Nurture, along with
more than 20 books on his country's poetry, history and culture.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27904&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
TURKMENISTAN: Tajik repatriation continues
Nurali Honov wants to return to his country. Having fled civil war and
conflict in his native Tajikistan, the 27-year-day labourer from the
southwestern Hatlon province is among the hundreds of Tajik refugees a
year repatriating from Turkmenistan. Working on a construction site
outside the Turkmen capital Ashgabat, he told IRIN he was ready to return.
"I want to go back, I miss my country," he said. Of the 14,000 refugees in
Turkmenistan today, an estimated 12,000 are Tajiks, the vast majority of
whom are of Turkmen ethnicity. Most fled the civil war in neighbouring
Tajikistan in the early 1990's and settled in the rural areas of eastern
Lebap province and the southern provinces of Ahal and Mary.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27901&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=TURKMENISTAN
TURKMENISTAN: Infant mortality remains high
Despite an earlier infant mortality rate (IMR) in Turkmenistan of 34 per
live 1,000 births, according to a recent joint government and USAID
sponsored demographic and health survey, the figure now stands at 74, over
double its original estimate. "This suggests an urgency to further
investigate the reasons for the increase in IMR," Mahboob Shareef, the
assistant representative of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in
the Turkmen capital, Ashgabat, told IRIN on Tuesday. The earlier estimate
of infant mortality was based on data collected according to protocols
established during the time of the former Soviet Union. Those protocols
classify a pregnancy that ends at less than 28 weeks of gestation as a
miscarriage unless the infant born survives for at least seven days.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27866&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=TURKMENISTAN
PAKISTAN: UNIDO signs accord with software body
The United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) has signed
a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the private Pakistan Software
Houses Association (PASHA) to encourage expatriate Pakistanis to become
more involved in the crucial growth of the information technology sector
in the country. "The memorandum will open doors for foreign investors to
come and do business in Pakistan," said Hamza Matin, President of PASHA,
at the signing ceremony in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, on Wednesday.
PASHA represents more than 200 software companies of the country.
Information technology is seen as a major engine of economic growth for
cash-strapped Pakistan and the provider of the largest number of jobs if
its potential is fully exploited. Expatriate Pakistanis are believed to
hold billions of dollars in assets abroad, only a part of which, if
invested in the country, could turn around the information technology
sector.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27888&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN
PAKISTAN: Focus on NGOs and community development in Balochistan
Although NGOs have mushroomed in thousands, rutted roads, open sewers,
flying plastic bags, swarms of flies and nets of electricity wires hanging
overhead in Nawai Killi, or new village, in the suburbs of Quetta, the
capital of Pakistan's southwestern Balochistan province, present a grim
picture of community development. With an estimated population of over
100,000, Nawai Killi is a huge settlement, separated from Quetta city by a
sparkling military cantonment. Massum Khan Kakar, a community activist in
the village, told IRIN that they faced all imaginable miseries.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27887&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN
TAJIKISTAN: Food shortage predicted
Tajikistan will suffer from an acute food shortage of about 300,000 mt
this year despite good rains, United Nations officials warned on Tuesday.
"Food supply in Tajikistan has been tight for the past three years, and
emergency food aid has been necessary to prevent starvation in some parts
of the country," Aziz Arya, an economist at the UN's Food and Agriculture
Organisation (FAO), told IRIN from Rome. He said an annual estimated
requirement of about one million tonnes could hardly be met by domestic
cereal production, estimated at about 388,000 mt. "Given the current
production and import capacity estimates, there is a shortfall of about
303,000 mt of cereals, which has to be met through food aid," he added.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27864&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=TAJIKISTAN
IRAN: Tripartite agreement on trade and investment
Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran have agreed, at a conference over the
weekend, on setting up a commission to deal with regional issues of
concern - primarily investment, a UN official confirmed to IRIN on Monday.
"It was an extremely successful meeting," the regional press officer for
the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Cherie Hart, in the
Iranian capital, Tehran, said. Facilitated by UNDP, the top ministerial
meeting was attended by Iranian Foreign Minister Kamala Karris, Iranian
Economic Affairs and Finance Minister Thames Masher, Afghan Finance
Minister Headiest Amin-Arsala and Pakistani Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz.
Other participants included UNDP's Administrator, Mark Malloch Brown, the
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Bank, the
Asian Development Bank and the Islamic Development Bank.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27834&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=IRAN
CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly News Wrap 24/5
The week opened with a warning shot from Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei instructing foreign powers not to meddle in the contentious
feud over the Caspian Sea's vast energy riches. "Some international big
powers are opposed to the resolving of regional disputes including those
on the Caspian Sea," Khamenei said, according to IRNA. Iran is holding out
against the four former Soviet states on how the oil- and gas-rich waters
should be divided up. Tensions rose in the Caspian Sea row a week ago when
Iran slammed Russia and Kazakhstan for signing bilateral deals on the
delineation of their borders in the Caspian without Iran's approval.
Tehran backed its threat up by putting its Caspian-based naval forces on
high alert.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27953&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=CENTRAL_ASIA
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