UN Afghanistan Seeks Solution to Current Impasse

Islamabad (Office of the United Nations Co-ordinator for Afghanistan), 30 May 2001 -- United Nations Co-ordinator Erick de Mul today said at a press conference in Islamabad that the recent UN mission to meet Taliban authorities did not result in "very good news."
"The situation of the majority of the Afghan people is getting worse every day," he said. "We have been bending over backwards in order to try to help the people, but the United Nations' space to operate in Afghanistan is narrowing." Although the international community is prepared to do more to assist those in need, the local authorities, and particularly the Ministry of Virtue and Vice, are making life more difficult. He expressed special concern about Afghan national staff of aid agencies, who are particularly subject to harassment and arrest by Taliban authorities. "They are increasingly frightened as they attempt to carry out their work," he said.

He also noted that all staff are facing threats from what he termed "non-Afghan" foreign guests of the Taliban.

On the three-day negotiations, de Mul said that some progress was apparent in the Taliban's acceptance of the Humanitarian Operational Requirements--six points based on universal principles accepted by all nations subscribing to the UN Charter--that spell out the conditions that must be present for the UN to be able to deliver humanitarian aid. He stressed that the Taliban had still not accepted the requirement that the United Nations could rely on Afghan women to help assess and assist the most vulnerable in Afghanistan, who are largely women and children. "On this issue, we are stuck."

This is a general problem, and is a problem specifically for the WFP bakery project. De Mul explained that WFP must re-survey existing bakery beneficiaries--some 40,000 households--in order to see if these families are still in need of assistance. The bakery has not been re-surveyed for many years, and many people have both left and entered the city. Bakery entitlement cards have been sold, traded, handed on, and even misappropriated. "There is corruption in this project, and it needs to be cleaned up," de Mul said. The Country Director of the World Food Programme (WFP) Gerard van Dijk said that the Taliban were aware about the problems in this particular project. He also emphasised that the survey would not cover the whole city, but only the households currently benefiting from the project, i.e. 282,000 people. Therefore, only 20 to 30 women would be required.

De Mul said that the Taliban presented three proposals to find a way to survey the households benefiting from the bakeries, but said that none of them proved workable because the United Nations had to ensure that the surveyors could interview women and could work impartially and independently.

The UN team informed the Taliban that given the rapidly increasing emergency in Afghanistan--of whom the most severely affected are women and children--flexibility in implementing programmes is immediately required.

De Mul welcomed an offer by the Taliban to use their own funds to run bakeries for the needy. He added that this would reduce the amount of resources they have for continuing the war.

In response to a question, he said if there was no agreement that the UN can rely on Afghan women when necessary to reach needy Afghan women, the United Nations would have to see whether other humanitarian aid programmes would also be affected.

A Taliban refusal to allow an independent re-survey of the households enrolled in the bakery project would force WFP to suspend the Kabul general bakery indefinitely as of 15 June. "We are trying to help lessen the suffering of the Afghan people, but there are new obstacles put in the way of our work every day. We are now back to square one. A solution is urgently needed. The ball is now in the Taliban's court," de Mul said.

For more information, please call Stephanie Bunker, Public Information Officer and Spokesperson for the Office of the United Nations Co-ordinator for Afghanistan: mobile 0320 4261325; office 211451, ext. 415.