Nowruz Festival in Kabul Afghanistan, 27 March 2014

 Afghanistan’s new annual academic cycle started on Saturday. According to the Ministry of Education, there are about 12 million Afghan children in schools with 42 per cent of them being girls. In 1999, when the Taliban were in power, no Afghan girl was enrolled in secondary school. But, in the wake of the fall of the Taliban regime, international assistance started to pour in, including through the United Nations, to improve the education sector. Despite this, some 1.3 million children of school-going age are still out of school. In his speech at a ceremony held to mark the start of the new academic year, President Hamid Karzai said education has made a huge difference in today’s Afghanistan when compared to its state 12 years ago. “We should try to reduce the number (of children not going to school) to zero. Education will make us strong and wealthy,” added Mr. Karzai. 

Afghans around the country are gathering to celebrate Nowruz: 21 March 2014

 Afghans around the country are gathering to celebrate Nowruz - these images show celebrations taking place in the Kart-e-Sakhi area of the capital, Kabul. new year and expressed the hope that the coming year brings prosperity and harmony to the Afghan people, who, after years of conflict, deserve a future filled with optimism and hope. 

Opened a special school to train police officers on defusing IEDs, in the capital, Kabul, 08 January 2014.

 Indiscriminate and unlawful use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) has remained the biggest conflict-related threat to civilians in Afghanistan, responsible for 35 per cent of deaths and injuries during the first half of 2013, according to UNAMA’s latest Protection of Civilians report. In order to help alleviate this problem, the country's Ministry of Interior, supported by international organizations, opened a special school to train police officers on defusing IEDs, in the capital, Kabul, today. Some 300 police personnel were trained in mine defusing skills in the past seven years - now, with the new school in place, the General Juma Khan Police Academy, around 1,500 police personnel will receive mine defusing training this year alone, Ministry officials said. 

Afghanistan 1970-1975 Photo Exhibition

 Daily life in Afghanistan was much different some 40 years ago, before conflict started to take its toll on the country. With the country at peace then, the economy was thriving, employment was commonplace and the tourism industry was burgeoning, according to Joseph Hoyt, an American photographer, who captured facets of Afghan life in the early 1970s. A month-long exhibition of 50 photos taken by Mr. Hoyt was opened in the Afghan capital, Kabul, today (shown here), with the images highlighting the difference between lives lived amidst war and peace. The United Nations promotes peace goals as the dominant factor in all forms of arts and encourages revisiting history to discover how people contributed to their cultures. “Many thousands of Afghans have been killed and countless others have been maimed, blinded, displaced and nearly forgotten. Hope for Afghanistan’s future may lie in our ability to look back at an era in its recent past when the nation was at peace,” wrote Mr. Hoyt in his photographic book 'Afghanistan 1970-1975: Images From an Era of Peace,' which was also launched at the exhibition's inauguration. 

World AIDS Day: 01 December 2013

 United Nations agencies joined Afghanistan’s Ministry of Public Health today in observing World AIDS Day. UN agencies and the Government estimate that some 5,000 Afghans live with HIV - and that only 1,529 of these cases are registered. At an event in the capital, Kabul (shown in left and right images), to mark the Day, the country’s Deputy Minister for Health Services, Najia Tariq, cited prolonged conflict, drug production and addiction, poverty, illiteracy and migration among the factors contributing to HIV infections. In his message for the Day, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for “continued investment, commitment and innovation” to reach the vision of zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths.