Radio project for local journalists shut in Afghanistan

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A non-profit radio project in Afghanistan set up by the United Nations (UN) is closing after six years of work with local journalists.

The local language initiative focusing on humanitarian news, which was founded by IRIN , the UN's humanitarian news and analysis service in 2003, worked with 20 Afghani radio stations, providing training and mentoring on programme making.

A combination of budget pressure and a growth in other radio production projects in the country reporting on the humanitarian agenda led to the decision to shut the project, IRIN's director Ben Parker told Journalism.co.uk.

The scheme has trained almost 100 Afghan journalists and established a network of 25 local correspondents covering 18 of the country's 34 provinces.

As part of the radio project, IRIN has produced more than 600 programmes in Afghanistan's Dari and Pashto languages for broadcast through local radio partners.

A booklet,

Veil of Tears

, featuring a collection of interviews conducted by the IRIN Radio team on maternal mortality in Afghanistan, will be published to mark the scheme's closure.

IRIN will maintain a text-based Afghani news service from its office in Kabul . The news service is also planning to increase its coverage in other countries, including an hour a day of independent radio content on humanitarian themes in the Somali language .

In Reporters Without Borders' 2009 press freedom index Afghanistan was ranked 149th from 175 countries.