16 September 2005

Kabul, Afghanistan: More than 130 United Nations Volunteers (UNV) working throughout Afghanistan are readying themselves for the second round of elections that will take place this Sunday.

Some 12 million registered Afghan voters will have the opportunity to head to the polls on 18 September to elect representatives to 34 provincial councils and to the country’s lower house of parliament. An estimated 160,000 election officials will be involved on election day to ensure voters are able to cast their ballot in a safe and orderly manner.

For the past nine months, UN Volunteers have been working with the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) to register an additional 2.5 million voters, disseminate civic education messages in the remotest villages, and train tens of thousands of election officials. To achieve this, the UN Volunteers, alongside national counterparts, spent the past year living and working in nearly every provincial capital of Afghanistan.

The UNV Programme Manager in Afghanistan, Mr. Marc Spurling, says that while safety and security-related concerns often overshadowed the work of the UN Volunteers, they were able to carry out their tasks despite the high threat environment. “It is a great honour for me to lead a team of committed and selfless professionals, who despite incredible obstacles and legitimate concerns, work directly at the grassroots level to ensure that democracy in Afghanistan becomes a reality,” he said.

Sunday’s vote is Afghanistan’s second election in less than 12 months. Last October, Afghans voted in the country’s first direct presidential election, for which more than 600 international and national UN Volunteers were involved in the preparations. They supported the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), the UN Electoral Assistance Division and the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Voter Registration Project in registering some 10 million people, including at least four million women.