Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General (DSRSG), Jean Arnault: We are very pleased that you have chosen to stay with us for this brief presentation of the programme that is going to lead us into the 2004 elections. There is no need to tell you how important these elections are, not only because, to a certain extent, they are the culmination of the Bonn process, but also they are meant to fulfill the basic aspiration of the people of Afghanistan to create a fully representative government.

Over the past several weeks, preparations towards these 2004 elections have gathered momentum. You have learnt of the creation in recent weeks of new political organizations and we hope that many more will be stimulated to surface and operate throughout the country in the coming weeks and months. We also trust that in the very next few days we will finally have the law of political parties that is needed to guarantee the exercise of political freedoms by these organizations.

There have also been discussions with the Ministry of the Interior, with Germany and with the United States to provide the Ministry of Interior with the necessary capability to give the registration exercise and the elections the necessary security support. There have also been a number of interesting developments on the institutional side. You know that about ten days ago the President of Afghanistan inaugurated the Interim Afghan Electoral Commission and the Commissioners are here with us. He has also, by decree, established a Joint Management Body which will allow the Afghan Commission and the UN to work together towards the preparation of these elections.

Today we make a new step in this direction with a document that will be signed in a few minutes, that is really a very detailed blueprint of the registration activities, civic education activities, public information activities that will be undertaken jointly by the Afghan Commission by the United Nations and also hopefully by a larger and larger number of civil society organizations as well as other international electoral bodies that can make a contribution to the Afghan process. Reg Austin who is our Chief Electoral Officers will give you later a brief presentation of what these registration and civic education activities are.

Let me just tell you, to give you an indication of the magnitude of this endeavour, that we hope together with the Commission to be able register ten million eligible Afghans, a little more than ten million if I’m not mistaken, through the next six months, certainly the fall of 2003, the winter of 2003 and the spring of 2004. We hope to do that with several thousands Afghan registration officers, civic education officers, helped by several hundred international personnel that have been recruited and will be recruited to assist in this process.

Now this is of course an expensive endeavour. I do not have a precise figure but I’m sure that Ercan Murat, the head of UNDP will give us a few details about this. It is an expensive endeavour and we very, very much count on member states, on donor countries to show their generosity towards funding, providing financial support to this project. We hope that they will hear the call of the Security Council that has recently reiterated its commitment to having these elections held on time in June of 2004. Now the requirements from the international community apply to funding but not only to funding.

As you know many Afghans believe today and we share their belief that conditions still do not exist in this country for free and fair elections. That security conditions are not yet what they should be to make sure that political parties and Afghans themselves can express themselves fully and freely in an exercise such as a national election. Many, many things must happen between now and the summer of next year to make sure that these security conditions are met. It means more in terms of disarmament and demobilization, it means more in terms of strengthening the national army, strengthening the national police. Therefore we believe that there is indeed a very important role to be played by the international community in terms of supporting that effort, be it by the expansion of the PRTs to new provinces, be it by the expansion of ISAF military assistance to other parts of this country.

It is, in the end, beyond the electoral process itself, a real process of state building with the support of the international community. This is basically to tell you that we are really at the initial stage of this very, very large undertaking. We hope that in the coming months you, the media, will follow up this process with attention and we hope on our side that we will be able to brief you from time to time on the progress of this very critical endeavour.

Before taking your questions I think it would be useful to hear the Chairman of the Interim Afghan Electoral Commission, to say a few words about the Commission itself and their plans. Then we will hear Ercan Murat, the head of UNPD on some of the basic outlines of this project and then we will ask Reg Austin, our Chief Electoral Officer to give you a brief outline of the programme of work that will be signed today.

Chairman of the Interim Afghan Electoral Commission (IAEC), Zakim Shah: First of all I’d like to thank Mr. Jean Arnault very much for his explanations and I would like to briefly say that the Bonn participants requested the United Nations to undertake the registration of voters for the elections in the year 1383.

For this purpose negotiations, discussions did take place and eventually two decrees were issued by the President one establishing the Joint Electoral Management Body comprising United Nations officials and Afghan officials. The main duty and task of the Joint Management Body is to monitor and oversee the registration process in the run up to the 2004 elections. Besides this it has an advisory and logistical role to help the whole electoral process in the country.

The Joint Management Body is guiding the whole process and providing the necessary consultation and advice and the Interim Commission is responsible for the operational side of the electoral process.

Of course this whole process is a very complex one and there are several main issues for us to tackle and overcome. The first main thing to carry out is the civic education campaign and this will be to tell the population at large about the whole registration process. People will be trained for that purpose in the centre and dispatched to the provinces to disseminate the necessary information to the people with regards to the registration process.

Of course there are other issues concerning the provision of services for this whole endeavour and that will be carried out in a joint effort by the Interim Commission and the Joint Management Body. Once all this is in place then the actual registration of voters will begin.

Of course there will be huge obstacles and problems before us and as Mr. Arnault mentioned earlier the main obstacle will be security of course across the country. I don’t want to go into greater detail regarding all these issues and I would like to thank you very much for your attention.

Ercan Murat, Country Director, UNDP: Firstly I would like to highlight one significant fact about this programme from a United Nations point of view, this is going to be one good example of how UN agencies can work together in coordination to support a very important national priority and there will be significant potential for us to demonstrate that. This programme under the leadership of UNAMA includes many UN agencies such as UNDP, United Nations Volunteers, United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), the Department of Political Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat in New York and others as we need them.

This programme has a budget of 76 million [US] dollars. We have already provided an initial briefing to the donors and we have had some very positive feedback but not enough yet unfortunately. The budget consists of a large equipment component, a large personnel component and these need to be front-loaded, so to speak, in order to get the programme ready to start within a month to six weeks. In other words almost 65 per cent of this budget is required in the next few weeks. So this is one message we need your help to pass on to the donors.

All steps have been taken to make sure that we make this programme as cost effective as possible. For instance we will not go out and buy these usual UN white Toyotas. We’ll go for probably much more cost effective vehicles like Russian made jeeps etc. We will use to the extent possible, Afghan nationals for managing this programme. At the moment we are foreseeing some 4,000 Afghan nationals participating in this programme. When we do not have skills locally then we will resort to United Nations volunteers who are as you know full professionals, but because of their voluntary nature of their approach, they are very, very cost effective. Finally of course there will be some limited number of full international professionals as well.

Again in order to issue these contracts we need to have the funds committed to us as soon as possible, like in the next couple of weeks. We will be under the leadership of UNAMA, supporting the commission to realize this national priority. In doing so there will be both short, mid and long-term capacity building programmes for the Commission so that the Commission becomes a fully capable national entity, not only to manage this registration and maybe next year’s elections, but in years to come to manage the democratic process that the country gives such a high priority to.

Reg Austin, Chief Electoral Officer, UNAMA: Very briefly, as has been pointed out the programme to conduct the registration process has most recently had an enormously important boost with the appointment of the Afghan Election Commission. This has made a great difference and will make a great difference to the effectiveness of our work. Both immediately in the period of registration, but most significantly in the preparation for an Afghan-run polling, counting process next year. I think this has been a most important development, not only as Ercan has mentioned is this an important and most fascinating example of cooperation within the United Nations family but also a very significant development in terms of the United Nations working in very closely harmony with an Afghan institution in building itself and building the process of the electoral dimension of democracy and for that we are enormously grateful.

The actual process of planning the process had to commence some time ago. Since March this year the UNAMA Electoral Unit has been preparing the ground for the registration plan which includes some important issues which are at the moment reflected to some degree in the decrees which the President has passed and will very importantly be reflected in more detail in the registration decree which we hope will be forthcoming very soon. It includes such important issues as how would it be possible effectively to ensure the registration in a very historical context of Afghan women as citizens in this process and that has taken a great deal of thought and consideration. It has involved the question of how does one communicate with the Afghan population effectively to explain the process. Again in this regard the invention and indeed the creation of the Commission will make a very significant difference to the work that we have to do.

We have to register something like 10.5 million people and it is vital, as has been mentioned, that a civic education programme should be got underway as soon as possible. Here I come back to the important point which has been made, which is that we are poised to go ahead but actual movement and activity will depend absolutely on the very early arrival of the necessary funds to enable us to recruit the people we need, especially the very large Afghan staff who need to be recruited and need to be trained both for civic education and subsequently for registration, as well as the vehicles which will give us the mobility to move out into the country as a whole to ensure that we register in a way which produces a balanced, registration of persons from every part of Afghanistan. So the delivery of funds in this sense has become at least for the moment even more significant than the question of security which will continue to be with us as a problem. We hope it will be a problem which will go away gradually but it certainly is going to be a problem. But immediately our need is to be able to get moving on the basis of the funding which must be made available.

Our job then as a Joint Election Management Body will include such significant things as opening up the political space for Afghan political parties partly based on the political parties law which we hope will soon be emerging. But in addition based on the necessity in an emerging environment to provide for the provisional registration of parties so that they can become active during the registration period in terms of organization, ensuring that Afghan witnesses, accredited party agents can in fact witness the process. So that this is not purely a bureaucratic process it is a process which involves the Afghan people and the Afghan political organizations and will in that sense create an environment of freedom which will be extremely important in fact a precondition for the possibility of a credible polling process next year. The process of an election whether it’s the registration or the polling or the counting is in a sense an activity which challenges, especially in an environment such as this where we are in a post-conflict situation in the wake of a period of almost a quarter of a century of conflict.

The electoral process has to be transparent, it has to be nationwide, it has to be something in which everybody participates it cannot be secret, it cannot be hidden. It must be exposed to everybody so that everybody can participate. Of course that creates an enormous challenge in a security environment such as we face. The responsibility for dealing with that will be partly ours, as an electoral management body to ensure that we make wise decisions about how we go about our job and again here the Afghan Election Commission’s role is absolutely critical. But in addition we have to be wise in involving the Afghan political leadership at all levels in understanding this process of change and the potential of the electoral process for creating peaceful change.

Clearly we have to be hopeful that the international community will provide and will continue to provide the kind of environment that will continue to provide safety not only for the electoral registrars, not only for the international staff that we will have here which will be something in the region of 400 all over the country, but particularly for the Afghan people themselves so that they can go confidently to the process of registration, into a situation where they can learn about the process, learn about what is to be done next year and actually become active participants in a political process which is peaceful. And that is part of the registration process, it is not merely an act of counting people. Counting people is very important because it is vital to the planning of the election polling but it is a process of expanding the political space and creating an environment which is democratic and that is a task which we will do together over the next few months and which the international community both in terms of its support for the process financially and its support in other respects as well as the very vital support of the Afghan government and the Afghan people and leadership all over the country, all this will be absolutely critical to the possibility of our bringing about a credible register as a basis for a credible and effective election which will produce a legitimate government for Afghanistan.

Questions and answers

Question: I have a question on security, apart from having a law for political parties, what steps need to be taken before there’s a conducive environment for the elections?

DSRSG: I guess several of us could answer this question I will give you my own version I think ever since last year and before the Emergency Loya Jirga Afghans have already spoken on this and they feel that one key dimension of any exercise be it the Loya Jirga be it the election is the need for disarmament. It’s the need to expand the areas where in fact essentially like in Kabul political parties can be created, political parties can operate in relative freedom. What we think must happen before the holding of the election is that the process disarmament and demobilization has [to have been] expanded to cover most towns in this country, that’s number one. Number two we feel that there is also a need to make sure that basic freedoms are actually observed, as Reg has said, it applies to political parties but it also applies to Afghans and we feel that there is an important role for a number of instruments to be adopted and to be implemented. We need a political party law and we will also need detailed instructions on the way in which the representative of the central government deal with the political parties in a way that allows this freedom of expression to actually take place. We think it’s also important to have an improved press law and hopefully an independent body that could monitor the implementation of an improved press law so that the media can play their role throughout the next 12 months as they should. So we have, in summary, a number of measures that have to do essentially with expanding security through disarmament, through the strengthening the Ministry of the Interior’s capability to implement law and order and also an expansion of those instruments that would guarantee legally and effectively the freedom of expression and the freedom of organization.

Question: There are three major challenges for the elections – security, there is now clear threat against UN personnel, how will the situation …. Will you still wait for funding to be pledged before launching the registration? The cultural complexity – the census programme which has started …?

DSRSG: On the question of the cultural complexity of registration I think it would be proper for the Chairman of the Commission to say a few words.

Chairman of IAEC: Thank you for referring this question to me and I should say that it’s not easy to come up with an answer to this question and I do agree it is a big problem. You are aware that the first prerequisite for such a process to succeed is literacy among the population and that is what we have lost over the past years. The other point is that in the past twenty three years people have been kept isolated from the state and this is another hurdle for the registration process. And also registering women is also another big problem in the country particularly in the south and south west of the country. Local traditions would make it difficult for women to register themselves, on the other hand men would not allow their women to participate in the registration process. And also to reiterate the earlier point, people have been kept isolated from the government. They haven’t seen any positive achievements by the government in their own areas and they are disappointed in that sense and they would not necessarily be wiling to cooperate fully with the registration process. Also there might be threats particularly against women, from certain groups, if they decide to participate in the registration. Despite all these hurdles and obstacles we believe that with the civic education campaign and we’ll also be using the help and support of religious leaders and other institutions that can help in disseminating the necessary information among the population. Teachers, schoolteachers particularly and civic education trainers will be able to reach every single village in the country and provide the local population with the necessary information. It is of course not easy, but we hope to be able to convince the people so that they cooperate with us and register for elections.

DSRSG: Maybe I should say a few things about the issue of security. Now of course we are very concerned about the recent deterioration of the security situation in particular in the south. This is certainly a problem beyond the issue of registration and there are many, many reasons why the international community and the Afghan Government should work together to address this problem. And we think and hope that somehow the registration will provide a new sense of urgency to this effort to tackle together the need to restore a much larger measure of security in the south. The problem has clearly some external dimensions and some internal dimensions. We certainly believe that one of the ways of addressing the situation more forcefully is to make full use of the tripartite commission between the Government of Pakistan, the Government of Afghanistan and the Government of the United States. I think full use of this tripartite commission will bring under control, contain the issue of cross border infiltrations. We also believe that the strengthening of the ANA, beefing up the capability of the ANA to address extremist violence in the south and in other parts of the country is an important part of the solution. But we also know that there are internal elements we feel that it is very, very important that the central government be able in the south to better deliver services, better deliver security, better deliver reconstruction. On that score as well we think it is very, very important through changes, through improvements, the Afghan Government with the support of the international community be able to extend the authority of the central government in much more forceful way than it has been possible so far. We think that a combination of these two elements will bring about results. We know and we hear every day that Afghans in the south want this restoration of security so it is essentially putting the right means at the disposal of that population to make sure that does happen. And we do feel that the need to start registration in the fall in a couple of months, in less than a couple of months, brings to that issue a new urgency and we hope that both the government and the international community will find, in the start of the registration process, another reason to focus a lot of attention on the need of restoration of security in the south.

Chief Electoral Officer: On the question of funding and whether or not we will wait for funding, obviously to some extent this funding is essential to very practical requirements such as the hiring of staff and the deployment of staff and to that extent we cannot as it were, work without money. Nevertheless it should be noted that on the basis of regular budget that was provided by the United Nations and which came on stream at the beginning of July which is a relatively small, in the region of 12.3 million [US dollars], the UNAMA Electoral unit has been preparing the way particularly in the field of civic education which is a precondition really for registration. There has been ongoing discussion and planning between the civic education section of UNAMA and local and international NGOs in the country. We are, in that sense, poised, as I said, to commence a programme that would include the use of media, radio, press, posters to start informing the population of what it is that is about to happen and why it is important to them to participate. So that has been to an important degree enabled by the fact that UNDP has been able to put at our disposal an immediate sum of money of one million dollars which will be useful for some of these immediate activities that have to be commenced. I hope that in the next two weeks we will begin seeing perhaps on the streets and hopefully on the airwaves messages to the Afghan people. In particular now that we have the Afghan Commission, the members of the Commission will be able to play a role that is absolutely vital in explaining to the Afghan people so that these are not [seen as] messages coming from foreigners, these are messages coming from Afghan body that has been appointed specifically to this task.

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