Weekly Round-Up - IRINAS-26: 01-Jul-05
U N I T E D N A T I O N S
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Asia
IRIN-AS Weekly Round-Up 26
25 June - 1 July 2005
CONTENTS:
TAJIKISTAN: Poverty reduction initiative announced
TAJIKISTAN: Mine survey on Uzbek border completed
TAJIKISTAN: Floods cause havoc in south
AFGHANISTAN: Government charts progress in tackling opium
AFGHANISTAN: Focus on rehabilitation of child soldiers
AFGHANISTAN: Interview with governor of isolated Nuristan province
AFGHANISTAN: Floods devastate Badakhshan and other regions
AFGHANISTAN: UN marks disarmament milestone
AFGHANISTAN-IRAN: Tripartite refugee agreement signed
KYRGYZSTAN: Micro-credit promotes rural business culture
KYRGYZSTAN-UZBEKISTAN: UNHCR official urges Bishkek to honour refugee
commitments
IRAN: Hardliners win landslide victory in Presidential election
IRAN: Gruesome sentence upheld by Supreme Court
NEPAL: Concern about torture cases ahead of UN visit
PAKISTAN: Northern flood threat decreasing
CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap
TAJIKISTAN: Poverty reduction initiative announced
A new initiative to reduce poverty in Tajikistan was announced on Sunday
by President Emomali Rakhmonov, the day one day before National
Reconciliation and Consent Day, a public holiday marking the end of the
civil war that ravaged the former Soviet republic between 1992 and 1997.
The announcement was made at a meeting with Professor Jeffrey Sachs, the
United Nations Millennium Development Director, as part of a three day
visit to Tajikistan which ended on Monday.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=47843&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=TAJIKISTAN
TAJIKISTAN: Mine survey on Uzbek border completed
The border of Takikistan and Uzbekistan is a dangerous place. Mines have
claimed the lives of scores of local residents and similar numbers have
been injured in recent years. Now a team of deminers have completed a
mine risk assessment of the Uzbek border region as a prelude to demining
the area. "We have completed a mine hazard assessment of the Tajik-Uzbek
border this month," Parviz Mavlonkulov, an operations coordinator with
the Tajik Mine Action Centre (TMAC), said from the Tajik capital,
Dushanbe, on Tuesday.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=47851&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=TAJIKISTAN
TAJIKISTAN: Floods cause havoc in south
Torrential rains over the past week have caused havoc in southern
Tajikistan and thousands of local residents have been evacuated to safer
areas, according to emergency officials. Mudflows caused by the
downpours have also damaged crops and infrastructure in the area.
"Around 4,300 residents have been evacuated from the Netontugay village
of the southern Hamadoni district, along with some 3,000 inhabitants of
the Sovetobod village due to the concerns for their safety," Nazokatsho
Sayorabekov, a spokesman for the Tajik emergency ministry, said on
Wednesday in the capital, Dushanbe.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=47872&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=TAJIKISTAN
AFGHANISTAN: Government charts progress in tackling opium
Afghanistan has embarked on a concerted campaign to tackle its booming
narcotics trade, the counter narcotics minister, Habibullah Qaderi
announced, following an event that included the burning of 30 mt of
refined and raw opium on the outskirts of the capital, Kabul, on Sunday.
The move marked the United Nations international day against drug abuse
and illicit trafficking. Afghanistan produced 4,600 mt of opium in 2004,
accounting for 86 percent of the total world supply of the highly
addictive drug.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=47844&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
AFGHANISTAN: Focus on rehabilitation of child soldiers
Sitting around a tailor's table in a tiny shop, Najeebullah and his
friends say they are proud to have once been child soldiers because now
they are the only literate young people with jobs in Amirbai village, 35
km north of Kunduz, provincial town of the province with the same name
in the north of the country. The group has been demobilised as part of a
UN-backed programme after several years of life under arms.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=47828&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
AFGHANISTAN: Interview with governor of isolated Nuristan province
Development work and aid has all but dried up in the eastern Afghan
province of Nuristan because of the lack of security and only a minimal
government presence. Like many other eastern and southern provinces of
the country, it is still reeling from the consequences of more than two
decades of conflict. Mohammad Tamim Nuristani, the newly-appointed
governor of Nuristan, said in an exclusive interview with IRIN, that
Nuristanis were faced with an extremely poor humanitarian situation and
called on aid agencies and central government to revise their activities
in the remote province.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=47861&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
AFGHANISTAN: Floods devastate Badakhshan and other regions
Despite the acceleration of rapid emergency assistance to flood affected
parts of Afghanistan, thousands of people continue to suffer. To date,
flash floods and storms have left 48 people dead and more than 1,000
injured in 13 provinces of the country in the northeastern, northern,
eastern and southeastern regions, according to officials. The worst
affected area is the northeastern province of Badakhshan where officials
said floods over the last two weeks had closed several roads and
hampered the delivery of aid.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=47898&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
AFGHANISTAN: UN marks disarmament milestone
The disarmament and demobilisation phase of the UN-backed Disarmament
Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) programme in Afghanistan ended on
30 June, while reintegration of former combatants will take another
year, the United Nations announced on Thursday, in the capital,
Kabul.The DDR has processed a total of 61,417 former Afghan militia
force (AMF) members of which 52,509 have been assisted with
reintegration package so far.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=47914&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
AFGHANISTAN-IRAN: Tripartite refugee agreement signed
A new tripartite agreement was signed on Tuesday between Iran,
Afghanistan and the office of the United High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR), facilitating the voluntary repatriation of Afghan refugees from
Iran. "It is essential that the repatriation programme continues and
UNHCR continues to be supported by the international community to enable
us to assist in the voluntary repatriation and to provide assistance to
Afghan refugees remaining in Iran," said Sten Bronee, UNHCR
representative in Iran.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=47897&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN-IRAN
KYRGYZSTAN: Micro-credit promotes rural business culture
Mambetova Asymkan, a former teacher, spoke optimistically about his
career prospects in Karagansai village, part of Aksy district in the
southern Kyrgyz province of Jalal-Abad. "Now I have three sewing
machines, I have a dream to open a tailoring shop. The UN helped me
achieve this, now I want to go forward," Asymkan told IRIN. Asymkan
received assistance in setting up his venture from the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP) poverty reduction programme. Such
micro-enterprise success stories are common where the scheme is
operating as another beneficiary told IRIN.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=47899&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=KYRGYZSTAN
KYRGYZSTAN-UZBEKISTAN: UNHCR official urges Bishkek to honour refugee
commitments
The UN's Assistant High Commissioner for Refugees, Kamel Morjane,
expressed concern about Kyrgyz threats to repatriate Uzbek refugees
fleeing mass killings in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan last month.
He was speaking in the capital, Bishkek on Monday. "We are especially
concerned that 29 people who are today in detention in [the southern
Kyrgyz city of] Osh. They were taken from the [Uzbek] refugee camp in
Jalal-Abad after official requests from Uzbekistan", Morjane said at a
press conference.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=47842&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=KYRGYZSTAN-UZBEKISTAN
IRAN: Hardliners win landslide victory in Presidential election
Hardline conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has won a landslide victory in
Iran's presidential elections, pledging to make Iran a "modern,
advanced, powerful and Islamic model for the world." His victory is a
shocking blow to Iran's reform movement which was backing ex-president
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in the run-off between the two candidates in an
unprecedented second round of voting. Rafsanjani was the frontrunner yet
outsider Ahmadinejad has confounded political analysts and Iranian
commentators by securing victory.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=47825&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=IRAN
IRAN: Gruesome sentence upheld by Supreme Court
An Iranian court has sentenced a man to have his eyes surgically gouged
out for a crime he committed 12 years ago, according to a report in the
Iranian daily newspaper Etemaad. Amnesty International (AI) has
condemned the sentence passed on the man known only as Vahid. The
Iranian Supreme Court rejected an appeal earlier this month and ordered
that the punishment should be carried out, although human rights groups
in Iran have said that such unusual sentences are almost never carried
out.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=47877&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=IRAN
NEPAL: Concern about torture cases ahead of UN visit
Activists and lawyers in Nepal are seriously concerned about the lack of
proper documentation or official investigation into the cases of
suspects allegedly tortured in police and army custody. They say that
former detainees who were subject to torture whilst in detention inside
army barracks and police stations are often too scared to go to the
courts to seek justice and compensation because they fear reprisals by
security force personnel.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=47852&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=NEPAL
PAKISTAN: Northern flood threat decreasing
Soaring temperatures for over a week across northern hilly regions of
Pakistan are likely to drop in a couple of days, reducing snowmelt and
resulting high water levels in rivers across the upper parts of North
West Frontier Province (NWFP), according to meteorologists. Temperatures
have been about eight percent higher than normal for the time of year
causing the Kabul and Swat rivers to flood and so far displacing over
16,000 people in the Charsadda, Nowshera and Peshawar districts of NWFP.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=47871&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN
CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap
Developments in the plight of some 450 asylum seekers who fled the
eastern Uzbek city of Andijan in May dominated news this week. The
office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) appealed
urgently to several countries to take Uzbek asylum seekers from
Kyrgyzstan because of fears they could be forced to return to
Uzbekistan, a senior UNHCR official said on Thursday.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=47920&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=CENTRAL_ASIA
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