ISTANBUL, 16 Mar 2005 (IRIN) - In a recent statement released to coincide with the day of Zero International Tolerance of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM)on 6 February, the UN Children's Agency UNICEF noted that the Arab world had yet to make decisive moves in the eradication of the practise.Full report

ANKARA, 28 Feb 2005 (IRIN) - More than 600 people are now known to have been killed in last week's devastating earthquake in Iran's southeastern Kerman province, an official from the Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS) told IRIN on Monday.Full report

HOUTKAN, 24 Feb 2005 (IRIN) - The earthquake that struck Iran's southeastern Kerman province early on Tuesday turned the mountain village of Houtkan into mud, killed many of its inhabitants and reduced the survivors to homelessness and destitution. The village was almost totally destroyed and, because it is so isolated, help has been slow to reach the stricken community. Full report

ANKARA, 23 Feb 2005 (IRIN) - Efforts to provide assistance to quake-hit villages in Iran's southeastern Kerman province are now under way, according to officials.Full report

ANKARA, 22 Feb 2005 (IRIN) - Hundreds of people have been reported dead and up to 1,000 injured after a powerful earthquake struck the southeast Iranian province of Kerman on Tuesday.Full report

ANKARA, 18 Jan 2005 (IRIN) - The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reiterated its concern over the fate of hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees in Iran, who are finding it harder and harder to remain in the host country, which sheltered them since 1979. Full report

TEHRAN, 12 Jan 2005 (IRIN) - Hundreds of Afghans have been arrested by Iranian police in a crackdown against illegal migrants, according to press reports. The Iranian daily, Iran Emrooz, said on Sunday that legal Afghan refugees have also been arrested and that the arrests have been taking place in the eastern cities of Zahedan, Zabol, Mashad and Kerman over the last two weeks. Full report

BAM, 4 Jan 2005 (IRIN) - A year after an earthquake that killed at least 30,000 people in just seconds, and on the surface not much has changed. The mangled remains of a lost city are strewn across this once-fertile desert oasis. Debris, rubble and twisted metal girders are still piled high on every street and down every alley, almost untouched since the earthquake struck on 26 December 2003. Around them are date trees and a few half collapsed buildings stubbornly standing, precariously lopsided. Full report

ANKARA, 1 Nov 2004 (IRIN) - Cooler weather has resulted in a sharp fall in the number of Afghans repatriating to their homeland from Iran. "It's something like 400 to 500 [returns] a day," Xavier Creach, a spokesman for the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told IRIN from Tehran, citing cooler temperatures as the primary cause. Full report

ANKARA, 21 Oct 2004 (IRIN) - Twenty European news websites have expressed their concern at the recent imprisonment of five Iranian online journalists. They made their stand in a Reporters Without Borders (RSF) appeal over the crackdown against online media in Iran. Full report

IRAN: Focus on relief in aftermath of Kerman quake

IRAN: Focus on child labour

AFGHANISTAN-IRAN: Interview with Ruud Lubbers, UN High Commissioner for Refugees

IRAN: Focus on Bam survivors four weeks after quake

IRAN: Focus on Bam survivors still living amidst rubble