Weekly Round-Up - IRINAS-72: 19-May-06
U N I T E D N A T I O N S
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Asia
IRIN-AS Weekly Round-Up 72
13 - 19 May 2006
CONTENTS:
AFGHANISTAN: UN condemns killing of aid workers
AFGHANISTAN: IOM assists reintegration of former combatants
AFGHANISTAN: Furthering female fitness
AFGHANISTAN: Suicide attacker targets UN vehicles
AFGHANISTAN-TAJIKISTAN: Growing regional drugs problem
CENTRAL ASIA: UNAIDS launches key regional conference
CENTRAL ASIA: Landmark HIV/AIDS conference ends with new regional commitments
CENTRAL ASIA: Labour migrants in Russia continue to face legal challenges
CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap
INDIA: Human trafficking in the northeast fuelling HIV/AIDS - report
KYRGYZSTAN: UN survey shows southerners at risk from landslides and floods
NEPAL: HIV hospice for gay and transgender men offers hope
NEPAL: King's power cut away
NEPAL: WFP leads walk to stop child hunger
PAKISTAN: Key medical facility in quake zone faces closure
PAKISTAN: UN helps returnees integrate into Afghan schools
PAKISTAN: Punjab village fears threat from nuclear waste
PAKISTAN: Activists against institutionalisation of quake children
UZBEKISTAN: Integrated front line approach to tackling HIV/AIDS
AFGHANISTAN: UN condemns killing of aid workers
The United Nations special envoy to Afghanistan has condemned Friday's
attack on aid workers in the western Herat province and has called on
the government to improve the safety of relief personnel and those
involved in reconstruction projects. Afghan driver Sirajuddin Noorzai,
working for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and Zmarai
Azizi, a local doctor working for the German medical aid group Malteser
International, were killed and a second UNICEF staff member, Qasim
Nazari, seriously wounded when unidentified gunmen attacked their
vehicle. The incident happened in the Korkh district of Herat.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=53340&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
AFGHANISTAN: IOM assists reintegration of former combatants
In a tiny shop busy with customers in the western Afghan city of Herat,
Abdul Rashid, 34, sells the latest foreign music and Bollywood films.
"Life has changed since I started my business here," said Abdul Rashid,
recalling how just one year earlier he had been a militiaman for a local
commander for four years.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=53339&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
AFGHANISTAN: Furthering female fitness
Gold's Gym is one of the most popular spots for women in the western
Afghan city of Herat. The first female sports centre to open in this
conservative city, it is spearheading a small revolution in women's
leisure and fitness. "I could never imagine a place like this while I
was [weight] training secretly in my house. But all that has come true
and I am now one of the fittest body builders in our club," said Marzia,
25, sporting muscled arms and a toned body, while pumping iron with a
dozen other women.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=53378&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
AFGHANISTAN: Suicide attacker targets UN vehicles
A suicide attacker in Afghanistan's volatile southern province of
Kandahar detonated an explosives-filled car near a convoy of vehicles
belonging to the UN mine-clearing agency, killing himself and wounding
an agency driver, the United Nations Mine Action Centre for Afghanistan
(UNMACA) confirmed on Wednesday. "There were two UNMACA vehicles heading
from the airport towards Kandahar city when the suicide bomber detonated
his explosives-filled car near their convoy," Masood Ahmad Hamidzada,
external relations officer for UNMACA, said. "One of our drivers was
slightly injured and has been treated while the other is safe,"
Hamidzada explained.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=53414&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN
AFGHANISTAN-TAJIKISTAN: Growing regional drugs problem
US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan do not expect any reduction in
opium production in the country in the short term, a high-ranking US
Central Command official said in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, on
Wednesday.
"The war against narcotics - it is going to be a long battle," Michael
Health, Air Vice-Marshal, Special Adviser to the Commander, said at a
news conference following a three-day meeting on the issue in Dushanbe.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=53432&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN-TAJIKISTAN
CENTRAL ASIA: UNAIDS launches key regional conference
The first HIV/AIDS conference on Russia, eastern European and Central
Asia kicked off in Moscow on Monday, bringing together 1,500
participants from the region to discuss the epidemic. The conference,
"Facing the Challenge", is a milestone in Central Asia's response in
fighting the infection. "This is the first ever big AIDS conference
which brings together scientists, activists and policy-makers from the
region," Henning Mikkelsen, Director for the European Regional Support
Team of Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), said from
Moscow.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=53380&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=CENTRAL_ASIA
CENTRAL ASIA: Landmark HIV/AIDS conference ends with new regional
commitments
The first HIV/AIDS conference on Russia, eastern Europe and Central Asia
held in Moscow concluded on Wednesday with a call for greater leadership
and commitment in mitigating the pandemic's spread in the region. "The
message was that there is considerable seriousness in terms of HIV/AIDS
in the region," Christoph Benn, External Relations Director of the
Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said from Moscow.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=53410&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=CENTRAL_ASIA
CENTRAL ASIA: Labour migrants in Russia continue to face legal
challenges
Thousands of Central Asian labour migrants in Russia continue to face
difficulties over their status in the country, leaving them open to
harassment by local law enforcement officials. "If you don't pay the
police, they will never let you go. If they catch you in the street,
they'll extort money for sure," complained Holmulin Halikov, a migrant
worker from Uzbekistan working for a construction company in Moscow.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=53423&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=CENTRAL_ASIA
CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap
This week in Central Asia, a small demonstration in the Uzbek capital,
Tashkent, was broken up by plainclothes police on Saturday. The
protesters demanded that President Islam Karimov be called to account on
the first anniversary of the violent government crackdown in the eastern
city of Andijan in May 2005, AFP reported. In Moscow, many more
protestors were seen outside the Uzbek embassy, claiming Karimov was a
murderer and slamming Russian President Vladimir Putin's support for
him.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=53433&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=CENTRAL_ASIA
INDIA: Human trafficking in the northeast fuelling HIV/AIDS - report
Images of guns, drugs and rebels have long defined India's troubled
northeast. Now, a study across eight states in this resource-rich,
infrastructure-poor, conflict-scarred region seeks to highlight a new
worry: the rising tide of human trafficking - mostly women and girls -
and its potential for hastening the spread of HIV/AIDS. India's
northeast is home to 200 of the 430 odd tribal groups in the country.
The region is also socially and culturally distinct from mainstream
India. Along with Kerala, this pocket is the bastion of Christianity in
the country.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=53386&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=INDIA
KYRGYZSTAN: UN survey shows southerners at risk from landslides and
floods
A United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) survey on natural
disasters in southern Kyrgyzstan shows many communities are at risk from
landslides and floods. The survey, launched on Friday in the capital,
Bishkek, forms part of ongoing efforts to reduce the risk of natural
hazards in the country. The survey was conducted in the most vulnerable
communities of the southern provinces of Osh and Jalal-Abad - the areas
most disaster-prone in the Central Asian state.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=53350&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=KYRGYZSTAN
NEPAL: HIV hospice for gay and transgender men offers hope
There's no signboard outside the simple white-washed building at the end
of the road - and neighbours have little idea of who its occupants are.
But in this traditional Hindu society, where open discussion about
HIV/AIDS remains largely taboo, that's not surprising. Behind the
well-trimmed lawn and flower beds of the two-story building lies Nepal's
only hospice dedicated to caring for men who have sex with men (MSM)
infected with HIV/AIDS, a particularly marginalised group in this
impoverished nation of 28 million.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=53385&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=NEPAL
NEPAL: King's power cut away
Nepal's new parliament approved a landmark 10-point plan on Thursday to
curb the monarch's powers and take away the title of supreme
commander-in-chief of the military from King Gyanendra. The move came
less than a month after mass protests across the Himalayan nation led to
the king reinstating parliament and handing power back to a multi-party
government.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=53424&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=NEPAL
NEPAL: WFP leads walk to stop child hunger
World Food Programme (WFP) hopes to mobilise around 1,500 Nepalese
children and 500 adults to take part in the global Walk the World
initiative on 21 May to raise funds to fight hunger. The event, which
has been running for three years, is expected to raise US $5 million for
WFP's global school feeding programme. Last year over 200,000 sponsored
walkers in 266 locations raised funds to feed 70,000 children around the
world.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=53422&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=NEPAL
PAKISTAN: Key medical facility in quake zone faces closure
Immediate financial assistance is needed to keep a key paediatric unit
running at the main hospital in the quake-hit Battagram district of
Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP), officials at the
Pakistan Paediatric Association (PPA) said on Monday in Battagram city.
The unit is in the frontline of child medical care in the region and has
dealt with thousands of young victims of the regional earthquake that
killed at least 80,000 in October last year.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=53357&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN
PAKISTAN: UN helps returnees integrate into Afghan schools
The office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Islamabad
on Wednesday signed a two-year agreement with the UN Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on educating Afghan
refugee children inside Pakistan, as well as in their home country of
Afghanistan. "Afghan children going to refugee schools inside Pakistan
and those continuing their education after repatriation back in
Afghanistan, are the main beneficiaries of this deal," UNHCR spokesman
Babar Baloch said in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=53411&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN
PAKISTAN: Punjab village fears threat from nuclear waste
Heaps of yellowish, sandy material and pale sludge can be seen around
the village of Baghalchur, located in the barren hills around the city
of Dera Ghazi Khan, around 300 km south of the capital Islamabad, in the
southern Pakistani province of Punjab. At first sight, the material
seems innocuous, blending in with the sand and scrub all around.
However, local people believe the material contains radioactive nuclear
waste, brought in by the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) and
dumped in the area by staff wearing full protective gear.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=53387&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN
PAKISTAN: Activists against institutionalisation of quake children
Seven months after a powerful earthquake devastated northern Pakistan
and Pakistani-administered Kashmir, child protection experts have called
for a community-based care system for vulnerable children instead of
putting them in institutional facilities. "These [unaccompanied]
children are at risk of missing out on essential life skills by growing
up in an artificial environment separated from the family and
community," Salma Jafar, head of the child protection unit of the
UK-based charity, Save the Children, said in the Pakistani capital,
Islamabad, on Thursday.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=53435&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=PAKISTAN
UZBEKISTAN: Integrated front line approach to tackling HIV/AIDS
On a street corner in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, an inauspicious
doorway marks a new approach to dealing with the growing threat of
HIV/AIDS in the country. In an effort to combat stigma and encourage
testing, the government has introduced integrated facilities under one
roof: a clinic for anonymous testing, a needle exchange for intravenous
drug users and an advice centre for sex workers.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=53431&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=UZBEKISTAN
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