Weekly Round-Up - IRINCAS-49: 15-Mar-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 49
09 - 15 March 2002
CONTENTS:
AFGHANISTAN: WHO needs 7 million Vitamin C tablets to tackle scurvy
AFGHANISTAN: Enthusiasm for repatriation leads to delays
AFGHANISTAN: Robinson wants truth process to probe all sides
AFGHANISTAN: Focus on Spin Boldak IDP camps
AFGHANISTAN: Interview with human rights advocate Bianca Jagger
AFGHANISTAN: Unidentified disease kills 40 in Ghowr Province
AFGHANISTAN: Focus on the forgotten victims of bombing
AFGHANISTAN: Landslide threat over quake hit village
AFGHANISTAN: New call for opium poppy eradication
UZBEKISTAN: Cooperation agreement signed with US
TAJIKISTAN: Landslide threatens massive floods
AFGHANISTAN: WHO needs 7 million Vitamin C tablets to tackle scurvy
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Thursday it urgently needed
seven million tablets of Vitamin C to treat an outbreak of scurvy in the
western Afghan province of Ghowr, where up to 40 people have died
recently. WHO spokeswoman Loretta Hieber Girardet told IRIN from the
Afghan capital, Kabul, that scurvy had weakened the resistance of some of
the villagers, hastening their deaths from other undiagnosed diseases. The
deaths were discovered when a two-member team from the French NGO Action
Contre le Faim [ACF] travelled to the district of Teyvareh last week to
carry out an assessment. A WHO statement issued from Kabul said a five
person medical team, led by a WHO epidemiologist, which had been sent to
the remote district had found widespread scurvy, particularly in 15
villages.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=25340&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
AFGHANISTAN: Enthusiasm for repatriation leads to delays
Many thousands of Afghan refugees are waiting in long queues as a result
of unexpected enthusiasm for UNHCR's voluntary repatriation drive at the
Takhtabaig voluntary repatriation centre (VRC) near Peshawar, capital of
Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP) on Wednesday. Afghan
journalist Muhammad Zahir Babri, who visited the site on Wednesday, told
IRIN that thousands of families with their belonging loaded onto vehicles
were waiting their turn for registration. "Some families have been waiting
for more than two days and the general mood was chaotic," he said. As part
of the initial UNHCR-sponsored process, refugees at Takhtabaig receive
registration papers entitling them to receive a cash grant, food supplies
and a repatriation package once they arrive back in Afghanistan. The
papers also serve as identity documents for the whole family.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=25038&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
AFGHANISTAN: Robinson wants truth process to probe all sides
A probe into allegations of violations committed by members of the Afghan
interim administration would be supported by the UN Human Rights
Commission (UNHRC), a top UN official has said. "It is clear that any
human rights commission must look at not just human rights violations by
the Taliban, but from elements of the Northern Alliance too," UN Human
Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson told IRIN in the Pakistani capital,
Islamabad, on Tuesday. The UNHRC would be able to give Karzai support and
backup for the commission, she said. "It will be difficult, and there is
great concern in the human rights community that some of the members of
the interim administration have a bad past in relation to human rights
issues," she added.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=24940&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
AFGHANISTAN: Focus on Spin Boldak IDP camps
It was not the fear of US bombs but the dull pain of an empty stomach that
brought the 65 year-old nomad woman, Wazira, to the displacement camp at
Spin Boldak in Afghanistan's southern province of Kandahar, close to the
Chaman border crossing with Pakistan. Wazira's story is no different from
those of about 7,300 families, or some 65,000 internally displaced persons
(IDPs) in Spin Boldak's five makeshift camps. Most of the IDPs living in
these camps are Pashtun nomads and farmers from the southern Afghan
provinces of Kandahar, Zabol and Nimruz, who, along with most of their
counterparts throughout the country, are victims of the severe central
Asian drought - well into its fourth year now. There are also IDPs in the
camps from western and northern Afghanistan - places as far away as Konduz
in the north.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=24983&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
AFGHANISTAN: Interview with human rights advocate Bianca Jagger
Bianca Jagger, the human rights advocate and convener for humanitarian
causes, has stressed the need to extend the operations of the
International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to beyond the Afghan
capital, Kabul. She has also called on the United States government to
provide civilian victims of the coalition bombing of Afghanistan with fair
compensation. In an interview with IRIN in the Pakistani capital,
Islamabad, following a visit to Kabul, Jagger also said the United Nations
must ensure that women have a strong presence in the Loya Jirga (supreme
national tribal assembly) - which will decide on a two-year transitional
government for Afghanistan.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=24881&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
AFGHANISTAN: Unidentified disease kills 40 in Ghowr Province
Some 40 people in the district of Teyvareh in Afghanistan's northwestern
Ghowr Province have died of disease, a World Health Organisation (WHO)
official in the capital, Kabul, confirmed to IRIN on Tuesday. "We are
still not sure what these people died from, but we know that there is a
high prevalence of scurvy [a vitamin C deficiency condition] there," a WHO
representative, Rana Kakar, said. She added that it could have been
pneumonia or diarrhoea, both of which can be easily prevented. The deaths
were discovered when a team from the French nongovernmental organisation
ACF travelled to the area last week to carry out an assessment, Kakar
explained. However, the team ran into difficulties and was left snowbound.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=24574&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
AFGHANISTAN: Focus on the forgotten victims of bombing
Marla Ruzick is a restless soul. In this dusty, half-destroyed city of
Kabul, Ruzick, an American NGO worker, runs around energetically with just
one mission; to get compensation for the civilian victims of the coalition
bombing of Afghanistan since 7 October. She does not know how many there
are and no one has compiled reliable figures. All statistics for civilian
victims of the Afghan war are estimates or guesses. Despite that, Ruzick,
in Afghanistan since 1 December, says there are many out there and they
all deserve to be compensated by the United States, leading the war
against terror in Afghanistan.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=24440&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
AFGHANISTAN: Landslide threat over quake hit village
A village in the northern Samanghan province severely devastated by the 5
March earthquake in Afghanistan is still under threat from an unstable
cliff which could collapse at any time, a UN official in the Afghan
capital, Kabul told IRIN on Monday. "The situation is very precarious and
a team of specialists there have said that the cliff is very fragile and
that it is only a question of time before it falls," UN spokeswoman,
Stephanie Bunker said. Some 400 families who lost their homes were now
being assisted by relief agencies. "They are being provided with materials
to help them reconstruct shelter and help restart their livelihoods," she
added.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=24431&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
AFGHANISTAN: New call for opium poppy eradication
At an interior ministry seminar in the Afghan capital Kabul on Saturday,
Hamid Karzai's government called on provincial leaders to enforce a ban on
opium poppy cultivation. "An active participation and serious campaign
against narcotics is on the top list of the priority of the country's
governors," Karzai said. His comments followed preliminary findings by the
United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention (UNDCP), that
suggest that poppy cultivation is on the increase in Afghanistan following
the rout of the Taliban late last year. Although Karzai's administration
has banned opium production, many farmers appear willing to harvest the
crop because the current high prices offered by local traders create a
powerful incentive to do so. A lack of viable alternative cash crops is
also a factor in farmers' reluctance to discard the poppy.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=24434&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
UZBEKISTAN: Cooperation agreement signed with US
Government representatives of the United States and the Central Asian
Republic of Uzbekistan have signed a broad-based bilateral agreement in a
move designed to further cement the fledgling relationship that has grown
between the two countries since the 11 September events. The agreement,
which provides for economic, political, legal and humanitarian
cooperation, as well as an enhanced security arrangement, was signed by US
Secretary of State Colin Powell and his Uzbek counterpart, Abdulaziz
Kamilov, in Washington on Tuesday. As part of the agreement, Uzbekistan
will intensify its commitment to the democratic transformation of its
society and the establishment of a genuine multiparty system, as well as
implementing economic and structural reforms. Both countries also affirmed
their intention to work together to improve training, education, public
health and the implementation of environmental protection schemes in
Uzbekistan.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=25042&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=UZBEKISTAN
TAJIKISTAN: Landslide threatens massive floods
A giant landslide is moving ever-closer to the banks of the Vakhsh river
in western Tajikistan threatening catastrophic floods in the area
including the loss of a major hydro-electric power plant. The landslide,
caused by heavy rainfall and the severe earthquake which struck the
Central Asia region on 3 March, also threatens to submerge the southern
Tajik city of Qurghon Teppa unless action is taken to prevent the slide
forming a dam and blocking the river's flow, local sources told IRIN on
Tuesday. Experts estimate that the landslide is carrying with it between
five and 10 million cubic metres of mud which if it is allowed to reach
the river bank would be enough to form a giant dam across the river. The
attendant flooding that would inevitably follow would likely leave the
Baipaza hydro-electric power station under water. If the river were to
then burst through the banks of the dam then Qurghon Teppa could also be
submerged by the river's redirected flow.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=24660&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=TAJIKISTAN
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