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

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Central Asia
IRIN-CA Weekly Round-up 139
22 - 28 November 2003


CONTENTS:

AFGHANISTAN: "Premature" elections could lead to instability - report
AFGHANISTAN: One killed, four injured during Kabul demonstration
AFGHANISTAN: Women's raisin factory provides jobs in conservative south
PAKISTAN: Focus on new HIV/AIDS prevention programme
PAKISTAN: ADB to sponsor road network in Balochistan
KYRGYZSTAN: World Bank to reduce uranium waste danger in Ferghana Valley
KYRGYZSTAN: Focus on abandoned children in south
KYRGYZSTAN: New law criminalises torture
UZBEKISTAN: Solar power brightens the lives of desert communities
UZBEKISTAN: Freedom House staff "harassed and intimidated"
UZBEKISTAN: Home-based preschool care taking off
IRAN: Tehran rejects UN human rights draft resolution
CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap



AFGHANISTAN: "Premature" elections could lead to instability - report

As Afghanistan begins to register voters early next month for next year's
presidential elections, a local think-tank released a statement over the
weekend arguing that holding elections next year was risky and could
further destabilise the country as the situation on the ground was
unfavourable for free and fair elections. "The biggest risk is that
holding elections prematurely could do more to promote instability and
conflict rather than lasting peace," the Afghanistan Research and
Evaluation Unit (AREU) said in a report entitled "Afghan Elections: the
Great Gamble". AREU warned that at present, approximately one-third of the
country, especially in the southern and eastern Pashtun belt, would be
difficult or impossible to access by voter-registration and election teams
due to security concerns.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38077&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN


AFGHANISTAN: One killed, four injured during Kabul demonstration

One person was killed and four injured during a demonstration on Sunday in
the Afghan capital, Kabul, when several hundred former army officers
entered the defence ministry compound demanding reinstatement and payment
of salary arrears. "We had no choice but to fire as they [the
demonstrators] did not agree to talk and continued to march towards the
hall of the ministry angrily and aggressively," Zahir Azimi, a spokesman
for the defence ministry, told IRIN following the demonstration. Azimi
said some of the protesters were carrying smalls arms with which they
exchanged fire with ministry guards after the guards fired into the air to
warn the group to disperse. "We were ordered to fire when we realised
three of the protesters had pistols under their shawls," Azimi said,
noting that the demonstrators could have destroyed ministry property if
they had not been stopped.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38049&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN


AFGHANISTAN: Women's raisin factory provides jobs in conservative south

Clad in white, 16-year-old Zahrah carefully sorts raisins in one of
Afghanistan's first food-processing factories. The factory providing
employment to women in the southern city of Kandahar, the spiritual base
of the nation's erstwhile Taliban rulers, who banned women's work and
education. "I like working here, because I earn for my family and it makes
me independent," she told IRIN. "Our life is better now, but I am sad that
I was deprived of education during the Taliban's seven-year rule," she
said. Earning some US $35 a month, Zahrah supplements her father's income
that has to suffice for

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38095&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN


PAKISTAN: Focus on new HIV/AIDS prevention programme

A special programme launched in October to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS
in Pakistan is the first of its kind and will be split up into four key
components to help the most vulnerable populations defend themselves
against the disease, according to an official. "It's the first time such a
programme is being launched in Pakistan, with the primary assistance of
the World Bank of about US $47 million," Dr Mohammed Imran, the acting
programme manager of the National AIDS Control Programme (NACP), told IRIN
in the capital, Islamabad on Wednesday. The project was also supported by
the British government's Department For International Development (DFID),
which works to alleviate poverty and promote sustainable development, and
the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Imran added.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38093&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN


PAKISTAN: ADB to sponsor road network in Balochistan

A road improvement assistance package worth about US $187 million has been
approved by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for the southwestern province
of Balochistan, Pakistan's largest and most underdeveloped region,
according to an ADB official. "We are providing 70 percent [$187 million]
of the total cost [$267.3 million]," Marshuk Ali Shah, the ADB country
director for Pakistan, told IRIN in the capital, Islamabad, on Tuesday.
The Pakistani government will provide the balance of the cost. The
Balochistan Road Development Sector Project would support institutional
development, improvement of provincial roads and national highways, as
well as the construction of a new cross-border facility into Afghanistan,
an earlier ADB press release said.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38081&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN


KYRGYZSTAN: World Bank to reduce uranium waste danger in Ferghana Valley

The World Bank on Monday pledged to reduce the danger uranium waste sites
posed to residents of the densely populated Ferghana Valley, which is
shared by three of the former Soviet Central Asian countries - Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Joop Stoutjesdijk, the World Bank's environment
expert, told IRIN in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, on Monday that there
would two grants to help address the issue of uranium waste dumps in the
southern Kyrgyz town of Mayluu-Suu. "The first one, US $478,000, is
provided by the Japanese government via the World Bank for the
implementation of the natural disasters prevention project, with the main
goal of preparing detailed documentation of the issue," he said, adding
that the local and international staff from scientific institutions would
work on it for six months.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38104&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=KYRGYZSTAN


KYRGYZSTAN: Focus on abandoned children in south

Ainura is a pregnant 21-year-old studying at one of the universities in
the southern city of Osh. However, despite the fact that she is going to
be a mother, she wants to sell her unborn offspring. "I will have to pay
the tuition fee shortly and I have to study one year more, so I want to
sell my son - it will be a boy, ultrasonic examination has shown that,"
Ainura, who refused to be identified, told IRIN at an orphanage in Osh,
where she had come to learn the addresses of people eager to adopt a
child. Sadly, such cases, while uncommon, are hardly news. Since gaining
its independence after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Kyrgyzstan
has seen a sharp increase in the number of mothers wishing to sell their
babies due to economic hardship.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38094&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=KYRGYZSTAN


KYRGYZSTAN: New law criminalises torture

Torture has become a crime in Kyrgyzstan under a new law that took effect
on 21 November with a possible three to five years of imprisonment for
those convicted of breaking it. "This is a very timely law, but there
needs to be a political will [on the part of the government] for its
implementation," Emil Aliev, the deputy chairman of the opposition
Ar-Namys party, told IRIN from the capital, Bishkek, on Monday, adding
that this law existed only on paper. "We have a lot of laws - the law on
protection of human rights and the constitution - but they are broken
everywhere," he asserted, noting that many ordinary people did not even
know about the new law.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38057&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=KYRGYZSTAN


UZBEKISTAN: Solar power brightens the lives of desert communities

Villagers in the tiny community of Kostruba, 250 km northwest of Nukus,
capital of the semi-autonomous Uzbek region of Karakalpakistan have
something special to celebrate this Eid. For this forgotten, isolated
settlement on the edge of the Qizilqum Desert has electricity for the
first time, thanks to a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
solar-power initiative. "Even during Soviet times there was no power here;
now at last our children can study at night and we can know what is going
on in the world through radio and television," Alautin Serkebaev, a local
official from this largely ethnic Kazakh region, said. Without clean
water, gas or electricity and subsisting on livestock farming, the
residents of Kostruba have very little. In fact, the only resource in
abundance is sunlight.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38079&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=UZBEKISTAN


UZBEKISTAN: Freedom House staff "harassed and intimidated"

The international human rights NGO Freedom House (FH) has expressed
concern on Tuesday over harassment of its staff by the Uzbek authorities,
urging them to desist. "We are entitled to deal exactly with the type of
training that we had planned. We have done it before, and it wasn't deemed
illegal, so it wasn't illegal at this time," Michael Goldfarb, an FH
senior press officer, told IRIN from New York, adding that FH was fully
registered with the foreign ministry to operate in the country. He said
during the difficulties encountered recently, the NGO's staff members had
shown their registration papers issued by the ministry to the local
authorities, which ignored them.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38086&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=UZBEKISTAN


UZBEKISTAN: Home-based preschool care taking off

Odina, a four-year-old girl, proudly recites a poem she learnt at the
Shodlik home kindergarten in the Kuva district of the densely populated
Ferghana Valley in eastern Uzbekistan. She seems happy being there, as she
is learning new things, playing with her friends and feeling secure in
familiar surroundings at the same time. "Children here [at a home
kindergarten] are under better conditions. They differ greatly from those
attending crowded kindergartens," a Kuva District education official told
IRIN. The old system of kindergartens during the Soviet era was based on
massive, impersonal but generously funded institutions. However, after
Uzbekistan gained its independence in 1991, the enrolment of children of
preschool age dropped substantially due to lack of funding and qualified
teachers.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38047&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=UZBEKISTAN


IRAN: Tehran rejects UN human rights draft resolution

Tehran has rejected a UN General Assembly committee resolution condemning
the country's human rights record and, according to local press reports on
Monday, Iran's judiciary has attacked Canada - which drafted the
resolution - as "racist" and "backward". According to Iran's official news
agency, Irna, Paimaneh Hastaei, Iran's representative to the human rights
committee, said the resolution was intrusive, and that Canada was
interfering in Iran's domestic affairs. She also warned that Canada's
draft resolution could exacerbate the already fraught relations between
Iran and the international community on the issue of human rights. The
draft resolution was adopted on 21 November with 74 votes in favour and 49
against; 50 nations abstained.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38083&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=IRAN


CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the World
Health Organisation (WHO) launched their "AIDS epidemic update 2003"
report this week, in which they warned of the rapid expansion of the
disease in Central Asia. "The AIDS epidemic in Eastern Europe and Central
Asia shows no signs of abating. Some 230,000 people were infected with HIV
in 2003, bringing the total number of people living with the virus to 1.5
million," the report said, adding that HIV continued to spread in
Kazakhstan, while more recent epidemics were now evident in Kyrgyzstan and
Uzbekistan.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38146&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=CENTRAL_ASIA


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