News (Consolidated) - UNSOM

14 April 2009 - Rukha, one of the seven districts of the famous province of Panjsher, just north of Kabul, was today declared a peace district. Rukha is the second district in the province that has disbanded illegally armed groups present there following Unaba a few months ago. A peace district or…

15 April 2009 - Sabza Bibi, 24, mother of two children is admitted to the Malalai hospital in Kabul due to an obstetric fistula. She developed this condition almost two years ago when she was in labour pain for two long days. By the time Sabza Bibi got to the health facility, she had developed life…

KABUL - Two Afghan girls have won gold medals at an international education competition. Meena Sanjar, 17 and Rowida Abidi also 17 from Kabul’s Afghan-Turk girls’ high school came top at an education competition held on 3 and 4 April in Baku, Azerbaijan. 173 students participated from 30 countries…

KABUL - Afghanistan's Joint Coordination and Monitoring Board (JCMB) met today, Sunday, for its first session in 2009 and agreed to place development of the country's long-neglected agriculture sector among new top priorities. The JCMB heard presentations from the ministers of finance, interior, and…

KABUL - The United Nations has called for serious action to improve literacy rates in Afghanistan, one of the most illiterate countries in the world. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) today launched the…

21 April 2009 - One thousand Afghan returnees will be able to build their own houses as a result of action taken by the Government of Afghanistan and the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) shelter project in the eastern province of Nangarhar. 750 returnees from the Chamtala…

KABUL - The UN’s top representative in Afghanistan called today for new and more strategic thinking about the country’s education needs. Kai Eide, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Afghanistan, told an audience gathered at Kabul’s Amani high school, that Afghanistan’s economic…

21 April 2009 - People living with HIV and Aids can now receive treatment in the first anti-retroviral therapy centre in Afghanistan. The Minister of Public Health, Dr Sayed Mohammad Amin Fatimi opened the centre on Tuesday at the Infectious Disease Hospital in Kabul. There are 556 reported HIV…

23 April 2009 - Dost Mohammad Khan left from Bamyan seven years ago. Since then he has been living with his family of nine on Koh-e Shir Darwaza [lion gate mountain]. He finds life in Kabul harsher than Bamyan. “I did not know [this] when we first came to Kabul – life has become even more difficult…

26 April 2009 - Five thousand families have lived across Afghanistan for decades, but none of them have Afghan citizenship. Among several minorities in Afghanistan, a forgotten and isolated minority is the Jogi tribe. Jogies have Uzbek and Tajik origins and many crossed the border from Bukhara in…

KABUL - It is an urgent global concern that cases of influenza infection with a new virus, currently being reported in some areas of Mexico, the United States and Canada. The symptoms of swine flu in people are similar to the symptoms of seasonal human flu and include fever, cough, sore throat, body…

KABUL - While many farmers are happy with the spring rains this year which should result in good harvests, many Afghans have suffered heavily from floods caused by the recent heavy rainfall. Thousand of families have become victims of flooding over the past ten days in the north, north-east and…