U N I T E D   N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Integrated Regional Information Network for Central Asia

Tel: +92-51-2211451 Ext 484 
Fax: +92-51-2211 450 
e-mail: irin@irin.org.pk


Central Asia
IRIN-CA Weekly Round-Up 136
1 - 7 November 2003


CONTENTS:

AFGHANISTAN: High-level UN mission arrives
AFGHANISTAN: Debate on draft constitution kicks off
AFGHANISTAN: First attack on aid community inside the capital
PAKISTAN: Focus on schools for underprivileged children
PAKISTAN: Focus on child labour in the auto-repair industry
TAJIKISTAN: UNDP strikes deal with Dushanbe on vocational education
TAJIKISTAN: Rains may increase typhoid risk
IRAN: Interview with UN Special Rapporteur Ambeyi Ligabo
KYRGYZSTAN-UZBEKISTAN: Focus on drinking water and hygiene in Ferghana Valley
TURKMENISTAN: Rights groups criticise upcoming amnesty
KYRGYZSTAN: Focus on brucellosis in south
CENTRAL ASIA: Land mines conference highlights ongoing danger
CENTRAL ASIA: Turkmenistan backs away from landmark Caspian agreement
CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap

AFGHANISTAN: High-level UN mission arrives

In a robust message of support for the central government of Afghan
President Hamid Karzai, a high-level delegation from the United Nations
Security Council (UNSC) arrived in the capital, Kabul, on Sunday,
reaffirming the international community's willingness and support for
reconstruction efforts. "The purpose of the visit is to deliver quite a
few messages. First is a message to the Afghan people that Afghanistan is
high on the agenda of the UNSC, and [that] the UNSC and the international
community supports the reconstruction process in Afghanistan," Gunter
Pleuger, Germany's ambassador to the UN and current UNSCE chairman, who is
leading the mission, told reporters on arrival at Kabul International
Airport. The second message for Karzai's government, the ambassador said,
was that the UNSC supports Karzai's efforts to implement the Bonn
agreement. UNSC members were looking forward to seeing a new constitution
along with the preparations in progress in preparing for the elections
scheduled to be held in June next year.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37605&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN


AFGHANISTAN: Debate on draft constitution kicks off

Following Monday's unveiling of Afghanistan's draft constitution; Afghan
observers said the historic document had positive and negative sides. "It
[the new constitution] has some very good and promising aspects while
there are some negative aspects as well," Professor Abdul Kabir Ranjbar
the president of lawyers union of Afghanistan told IRIN on Tuesday. The
draft constitution envisages a strong presidency, elected directly by the
people through fair and transparent means and reaffirms the nation's links
with the Islamic faith. The draft - 12 chapters and 160 articles long-
starts by declaring that "Afghanistan is an Islamic Republic". If the
constitution is adopted, the presidential term would be for five years and
limited to two terms. The position of prime minister was included in
previous versions but was cut from the final draft. "After sharing the
draft with people and having meetings and discussions we got a majority
opinion that it should be presidential, because a prime minister could
emerge as a political and military rival to the president," Musa Maroofi,
a co-author of the draft constitution, told IRIN.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37688&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

AFGHANISTAN: First attack on aid community inside the capital

Following a bomb attack on the Kabul office of the international aid
agency, Save the Children one day earlier, the agency told IRIN on
Thursday that the incident had not produced any casualties and that they
would continue their programme work in the capital. "The staff went home
yesterday [right after the bomb blast] and came back to the office today,
we had a staff meeting and they said they wanted to continue working,"
Lisa Laumann, Save the Children director in Afghanistan said. The bomb
went off directly outside the Save the Children office, not far from
Oxfam's base at 10:50 local time (06:20 GMT). According to Laumann, the
force of the blast was directed away from the office and there was no
major damage to the building apart from glass broken. "There seems to be
no fragments or containers of the explosives, there was nothing visible to
ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] demolition engineers,"
Laumann added. There have been numerous and continuous attacks against the
aid community in recent months throughout the country, but Wednesday's
Kabul bomb blast is the first direct attack on the aid community in Kabul
according to the Afghan NGO Security Office(ANSO).

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37690&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

PAKISTAN: Focus on schools for underprivileged children

Sughran, 6, sits in her classroom with about 30 other children, a battered
little pencil case, shaped like a guitar, protruding out of her breast
pocket. "My father's a labourer," she muttered in a barely audible voice,
fiddling with her pencil. "My mother stays at home and cooks our food,"
she told IRIN, smiling shyly while her class-mates broke into broad grins
when they spotted the visitor's camera. Sughran, and dozens of children
like her, who all come from poor families living in slums with barely
enough income to sustain them on a day-to-day basis, studies at a Karachi
primary school established and run by a non-profit organisation called The
Citizens Foundation (TCF).

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37685&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN

PAKISTAN: Focus on child labour in the auto-repair industry

Nine-year-old Ahmad Akram sat patiently in the shade provided by a car
with its bonnet open, watching his brother, two years his elder, bend over
the engine. The hot September sun beat down on the little workshop, a
single room complete with a roughly-constructed inspection pit. Ahmad
wiped perspiration from his face with a dirty, slick-laden sleeve, leaving
black marks running down his face. "I live with my brother and two sisters
not far from here," he told IRIN, as his brother removed his head from the
engine and shouted hoarsely for another pair of pliers. "My father is a
labourer and can barely earn enough to sustain our family, so my brother,
Ali, and I have to work also, so that we can feed ourselves."

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37626&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN

TAJIKISTAN: UNDP strikes deal with Dushanbe on vocational education

An agreement was signed on Tuesday between the Tajik Labour and Social
Security Ministry and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on a
project worth US $420,000 supporting vocational training throughout the
country, particularly for vulnerable groups. "The project in its initial
phase has been offering vocational training to demobilised combatants in
[the capital] Dushanbe, to date, 240 people have been trained up through
the scheme," Andrey Sigorin, UNDP spokesman in Dushanbe, told IRIN. He
added that the training had focused on producing book-keepers, computer
and IT technicians as well as welders and other skilled people in demand
locally.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37668&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=TAJIKISTAN

TAJIKISTAN: Rains may increase typhoid risk

Following a serious outbreak of typhoid in the Tajik capital Dushanbe last
month, with over 400 confirmed cases, UN officials warned on Tuesday of a
further possible spread of the disease as heavy rains strike the city.
"Even if the outbreak is in decline now, there is a danger that it might
flare up again if there is severe flooding," Paul Handley, officer in
charge for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs (OCHA) in Dushanbe told IRIN, citing possible cross contamination
between the city's drinking water and sanitation systems. According to the
OCHA official, although the initial source of last month's outbreak had
been identified and been treated with chlorine, the problem of an
antiquated water and sanitation infrastructure in the city of close to one
million remained. "Even if you treat the source, the pipes are still full
of holes. We just started to experience heavy rains [Monday night] and
there is a lot of concern about further spread of the disease due to
potential flooding," he explained.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37635&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=TAJIKISTAN

IRAN: Interview with UN Special Rapporteur Ambeyi Ligabo

Ambeyi Ligabo, the UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection
of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, spoke to IRIN while in
Iran on his first-ever visit. In what is one of the most symbolic and
important moves to address human rights in the country, the Iranian
government has invited Ligabo on a fact-gathering mission. As well as
meeting imprisoned journalists, students and government officials, Ligabo
will investigate discrimination, threats or use of violence and harassment
directed at those who have peacefully expressed their opinions. Ligabo's
long-awaited visit - already once postponed - comes at a critical time for
Iranian human rights, which have been propelled into the spotlight by
Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi, the death of the Canadian photojournalist,
Zahra Kazemi, and more recently the arrest of five new members of the
Office to Consolidate Unity - the main student reform movement.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37723&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=IRAN

KYRGYZSTAN-UZBEKISTAN: Focus on drinking water and hygiene in Ferghana
Valley

Access to clean drinking water remains a key development issue in the
densely populated and povery-stricken Ferghana Valley, shared by
Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Around 60 percent of the 10 million
people in the valley have no safe water supply. "We didn't have any access
to clean drinking water since our village was established years ago. We
used to drink water from these aryks [small irrigation ditches]," Takhir
Akhmatakhunov, the president of the water committee, a local NGO managing
the water supply system, and the head of the Birlik village administration
of the southern Kyrgyz Osh Province's Aravan District, told IRIN in
Birlik, where some 6,000 people live. According to the village residents,
they used to drink water coming from a small river, which reaches their
village after having passed neighbouring Naukat District and therefore
already polluted.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37655&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=KYRGYZSTAN-UZBEKISTAN

TURKMENISTAN: Rights groups criticise upcoming amnesty

Rights groups have strongly criticised a recent government decision to
pardon thousands of convicts in Turkmen prisons this month, while ignoring
the plight of scores of political dissidents still incarcerated in the
county's overcrowded penitentiary system. "It's a great disappointment for
us. It would have been an opportunity for the Turkmen authorities to show
that they want to protect the human rights of all their citizens," Amnesty
International's researcher for Central Asia, Anna Sunder-Plassman, told
IRIN from London on Wednesday. Her comments follow a recent decree by
Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov approving an amnesty for more than
7,000 prisoners at the end of the holy month of Ramadan November, a move
which has become an annual tradition in the reclusive Central Asian state.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37666&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=TURKMENISTAN

KYRGYZSTAN: Focus on brucellosis in south

Health officials in southern Kyrgyzstan have expressed concern over the
growing number of people infected with brucellosis, an infectious
bacterial disease of human beings transmitted by contact with infected
animals, infected meat or milk products and characterised by fever and
headache. "My bones are aching so bad that I am about to climb up the
wall. I can neither sleep nor rest," 45-year-old Abidilla from the
mountainous Chong Alay District of the southern province of Osh told IRIN.
He was sent to the Osh provincial hospital earlier this month after being
diagnosed with an acute form of the disease. For Abidilla, however, his
greatest concern remains his daughter-in-law, who also underwent treatment
for brucellosis in the hospital's infectious disease unit recently. The
disease can reportedly can wreak devastating effects on young women's
bodies, resulting in miscarriages and even sterility. According to local
doctors, Abidillah contracted the disease after consuming undercooked
meat, which is quite a common dietary habit in mountainous areas where it
is difficult to fully cook meat and other foods at a high altitude.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37604&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=KYRGYZSTAN

CENTRAL ASIA: Land mines conference highlights ongoing danger

An international conference on anti-personnel land mines was held in the
Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, on Wednesday to examine the humanitarian and
social problems caused by their use. "This conference is the first big
event that will become the first step in solving the problem," Narine
Berikashvilli, a conference participant from Georgia told IRIN in Bishkek.
The gathering, entitled "Landmines in Central Asia and CIS (Commonwealth
of Independent States) Countries: Defining the Problem and Identifying
Solutions" was organised by the Kyrgyz Committee of International
Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), along with the
Kyrgyz Foreign Ministry with the support of the International Campaign to
Ban Landmines (ICBL). "Three-quarters of the world's nations now accept
that the short-term military utility of the anti-personnel mine is far
outweighed by its negative, long-term humanitarian impact on innocent
civilian populations," Elizabeth Bernstein, the ICBL coordinator, said in
a statement. "We call on Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan to abandon
this weapon and become part of the solution, by banning antipersonnel
mines without delay."

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37692&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=CENTRAL_ASIA

CENTRAL ASIA: Turkmenistan backs away from landmark Caspian agreement

Turkmenistan has failed to sign a landmark treaty designed to protect the
fragile environment of the Caspian Sea, which means that the
ground-breaking agreement is not legally binding. Ministers from Iran,
Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation all signed the Framework
Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Caspian Sea
at a ceremony in the Iranian capital, Tehran, on Tuesday. In the case of
Turkmenistan, however, its vice minister of nature protection, Makhtumkulu
Akmuradov, after giving a short speech on the importance of the
environmental stability of the Caspian Sea, simply returned to his seat.
It appeared Turkmenistan's reluctance to sign had more to do with
bureaucratic procedures rather than issues on which it was at odds with
the Convention. Delegates and members of international organisations
present were quick to point out that Turkmenistan's non-signing would not
stall the Convention. Ma'sumeh Ebtekar, the head of the Department of the
Environment in Iran, announced that Turkmenistan had been granted one year
to join the other member countries in signing.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37645&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=CENTRAL_ASIA

CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap

An IMF delegation led by the IMF managing director, Horst Köhler, is
expected to visit Kazakhstan on 14-15 November 2003, according to the IMF
mission in Kazakhstan, which has noted that this will be the first visit
to Kazakhstan paid by the IMF managing director. Köhler's visit is
connected with the 10th anniversary of the Kazakh national currency, the
tenge, which was introduced on 15 November 1993. The IMF mission has been
operating in Kazakhstan since 1995.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37720&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=CENTRAL_ASIA


IRIN-Asia
Tel: +92-51-2211451
Fax: +92-51-2292918
Email: IrinAsia@irin.org.pk

[This Item is Delivered to the "Asia-English" Service of the UN's IRIN
humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views
of the United Nations. For further information, free subscriptions, or to
change your keywords, contact e-mail: IRIN@ocha.unon.org or Web:  
http://www.irinnews.org . If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this
item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Reposting by commercial
sites requires written IRIN permission.]

Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2003


distributed by
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Center for International                  web: www.cidi.org
    Disaster Information             listserv: www.cidi.org/listsub.htm
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Central Asia                       www.cidi.org/humanitarian/irin/casia