Following is the text of the WFP press release:

WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME (WFP)

26 Feb 2002

WFP in Afghanistan: from Relief to Rehabilitation

WFP has announced a new nine-month emergency operation which will use innovative food aid projects to help millions of Afghans reestablish their shattered lives and build a future for their devastated country.

February 26 -- With food aid now successfully reaching about 6.6 million people in Afghanistan, WFP is set to shift the focus of its operations from relief to rehabilitation.

The Agency has announced a new US$ 285 million operation, which will continue to deliver emergency food aid but also help lay the foundations for rebuilding a country devastated by three years of drought and over two decades of conflict.

The nine-month operation, which is set to start on April 1, will require an estimated 544,000 metric tons of food aid.

"Not only do the Afghan people need emergency food aid, but most of the country will have to be rebuilt from the bottom up," said WFP executive director Catherine Bertini at a press conference in Washington announcing the operation.

WFP will introduce a series of innovative projects designed to address the major challenges facing the National Afghanistan Interim Government as its people look to re-establish their shattered livelihoods and build a future for their country.

-- Civil servants: WFP will help get Afghanistan's decimated civil service up and running again by providing short-term food rations to employees, whose salaries are currently among the lowest in the world.
-- Women: food aid will be given to women for attending non-formal education, while WFP will expand its successful women-only bakery projects beyond Kabul and Mazar-I-Sharif.
-- Farmers: 85 percent of Afghanistan's 24 million people depend on agriculture for survival, but the three-year drought looks set to continue well into 2002; WFP will pay farmers with food to rehabilitate irrigation systems.
-- Children and education: expansion of school feeding projects to one million students; food at school encourages children's attendance and addresses hunger to facilitate successful learning.
-- Infrastructure: under food for work schemes, WFP will 'pay' workers to reconstruct their country's decimated schools, hospitals, roads and bridges.
-- Resettlement: WFP plans to help hundreds of thousands of Afghans displaced by war and drought get back to their villages in time to plant crops.

FOOD RELIEF CONTINUES

The new operation will also address Afghanistan's short-term as well as its long-term food needs.

With the effects of a three-year drought expected to last well into 2002, hundreds of thousands of people still require emergency food aid at least until the summer harvest.

To address their hunger, WFP will build on the success of its current operation, launched in October 2001. By delivering more than 320,000 tons of food aid in four months, the Agency has, to date, successfully averted a famine.

Over the coming months, the Agency will concentrate its free food distributions in the north, in Badakshan and the Central Highlands, where the population has been devastated by three consecutive years of drought.

PARTNERS

In order to implement its food aid objectives, WFP will work with a large number of international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as well as other UN agencies. Local NGOs, in particular women's groups, will be given priority.

AGRICULTURE

The Challenge: after three successive years of drought and a 53 percent fall in grain production in the past two years, Afghanistan now meets less than half of its national grain requirements. Military operations have exacerbated food shortages, stopping farmers from planting.

To make matters worse, it is possible that the effects of Afghanistan's three-year drought will still be felt for another 12 months, further aggravating the situation.

The worst affected are small farmers, landless laborers and sharecroppers in rural areas in the provinces of Ghor, Badghis, Faryab, Saripul and northern Badakhshan. Here, WFP estimates that 80 percent of the total population need emergency food assistance

WFP Response: large-scale investment is urgently needed in the agricultural sector for future food security. WFP's food for work projects will pay workers with food rations to rehabilitate irrigation systems, preserve ground water supplies and take anti-erosion measures.

The Agency will also use food aid to help farmers who have abandoned poppy cultivation. Until 2001, Afghanistan's poppy farmers accounted for 3-4,000 metric tons of the world's opium and derivatives.

CIVIL SERVICE

The Challenge: the ability of the Afghan state to provide vital public services is essential to the long-term credibility of the new government. But, in the past, Afghan civil servants, in particular teachers, have been paid too late and too little; they are among the poorest paid people in the world with an income of one US$ or less per day.

WFP Response: in an unprecedented measure, WFP will help re-establish and reinforce the Afghan civil service by providing short-term food rations of pulses, oil and tea on a monthly basis to its underpaid employees in Kabul. The project, which will be undertaken in close collaboration with Afghanistan's Interim Administration, will start in March and last six months.

Food rations will be given along with UNDP salary payments and make up a significant proportion of the total wage packet. After the Kabul launch, food payments will be made to civil servants in other regions.

EDUCATION

The Challenge: after three years of drought and 23 years of conflict, Afghanistan's education system is in a state of emergency.

Formal public schools do not exist in many rural areas while those in towns and cities are old, damaged or destroyed.

-- In 1978, there were 30,502 teachers in Afghanistan; the estimate in 2000 was 21,505.
-- Pay rates are so poor, teachers need second or even third jobs to support their families.
-- There are untold numbers of out-of-school, semi-literate or illiterate children

Today, there is a severe shortage of school-buildings, teachers and even pupils, with many children staying at home to help their poverty-stricken hungry families make a living.

WFP Response: under its school feeding programs, WFP will use food aid to attract children to school and keep them there.

By guaranteeing pupils one nutritious meal each day, the Agency expects to push up attendance rates and improve children's ability to concentrate on their lessons.

Take-home rations will also be provided as an additional incentive to parents to send their children to school.

Since 2000, WFP has been running a pilot school feeding project at 50 schools in five districts of Badakhshan, providing food aid to 27,000 children. Last year, enrolment increased by 35 percent, bringing 7,000 additional students to school.

Under its new emergency operation, WFP will expand its school feeding programs, mainly at primary school level, across the nation to cover one million children.

In addition, teachers' salaries will be supplemented with food rations to ensure full-day attendance and induce teachers to work in remote rural areas.

To address the shortage of teachers, WFP food aid will also support the training of new teachers, while food rations will also be used to pay thousands of Afghans to rebuild 600 schools and 1,500 bakeries for preparing the bread to feed children at school.

INFRASTRUCTURE

The Challenge: Afghanistan suffers from widespread under-employment and millions of people do not have the means to buy their own food.

With many ex-soldiers looking for jobs as they attempt to re-integrate into society, Afghanistan's long-term stability will depend on investment in sustainable economic activities.

WFP Response: WFP's food-for-work (FFW) projects will offer hundreds of thousands of hungry Afghans the chance to earn not money but food rations in return for helping rebuild shattered infrastructure.

After more than two decades of conflict, roads, bridges, schools, health clinics and other public sector infrastructure lie in ruins. WFP food will 'pay' for the reconstruction.

In addition, the Agency will also help Afghans start-up their own businesses, such as rural women's bakeries or producing saleable goods.

In 1999 and 2000, WFP projects gave women the chance to produce humanitarian relief items including quilts and foodstuffs.

RESETTLEMENT

The Challenge: by early 2002, nearly one million Afghans had abandoned their homes to flee the devastating consequences of drought; in a desperate search for food and work, some settled in camps near cities while others gathered in rural areas.

The shifting frontlines of Afghanistan's recent conflict, which destroyed many houses and farms, merely exacerbated the internally displaced person (IDP) crisis.

With the improvement in security, many of these people are expected to return home in early 2002 to sew seeds for the new harvest.

WFP Response: WFP's new emergency operation envisages a "Return Package" for all IDPs of 150 kg per family to help people rebuild their decimated lives. The package will include transport support and items such as tools and seeds.

WOMEN

The Challenge: under Taleban rule, Afghan women were afforded very few employment opportunities and, if single, granted limited access to food, water and shelter.

Yet, after 23 years of conflict, a substantial number of Afghan women are either war widows or struggling to look after families while their husbands are away on the frontlines.

WFP Response: even before the regime's collapse, there was one exception to the strict Islamic ban on women working in Afghanistan: WFP's bakeries.

Under this long-running project, WFP supplies the flour that allows women, in particular, destitute war widows, to produce Afghanistan's traditionally flat bread at about one sixth of market price for women and children; it also provides the bakers with some kind of income.

The bakeries shut down after September due to insecurity, but, after the fall of the Taleban, they re-opened in December.

In the capital Kabul, there are 21 female-run bakeries while in Mazar-I-Sharif, 20 women-only bakeries, which provide jobs for 160 women and feed 4,500 families, are set to reopen.

Under the new operation, WFP will consolidate its women's bakeries in both Kabul and Mazar-I-Sharif as well as other bakeries supporting school feeding. Bakery projects may be expanded to other cities to help families lacking able-bodied members.