U N I T E D   N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Integrated Regional Information Network for Central and Eastern Africa

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e-mail: irin@ocha.unon.org


CENTRAL AND EASTERN AFRICA
IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-Up 281
28 May - 3 June 2005


CONTENTS:

BURUNDI: Communal elections begin
DRC: Refugee camp closes as Angolans go home
DRC: UN Nepalese soldier dies after militia attack
UGANDA: WFP running out of food for three million people
TANZANIA: Local firm to start producing ARVs in 2006
EAST AFRICA: Rwanda may join regional body soon, leaders say


BURUNDI: Communal elections begin

The election of communal councillors in Burundi began on Friday, amid 
reports of violence in the northwestern province of Bubanza.

State-owned Radio Burundi reported on Friday that incidences of violence 
and exchange of gunfire in Bubanza had caused local residents to flee. 
The radio also reported gunfire in the province of Bujumbura Rural, 
which surrounds the capital, Bujumbura. It said security forces and 
peacekeepers from the UN Mission in Burundi, ONUB, had been deployed to 
the areas from which the gunshots came.

It added that reports also indicated that 14 polling stations in 
Bubanza's Rugazi Commune were still closed and that the residents were 
not voting. The radio said at least three million voters had since early 
Friday headed to 6,000 polling stations countrywide to elect over 3,000 
communal councillors.

The communal poll is the first in a series of four elections designed to 
usher in democracy in the country that has experienced 11 years of civil 
war. An estimated 300,000 people have died and hundreds of thousands 
others displaced as a result of the conflict, which pitted mainly Hutu 
rebel movements against the minority Tutsi-dominated army and 
government.

[Full story on: 
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=47457]


DRC: Refugee camp closes as Angolans go home

The remaining 263 Angolan refugees at a camp in Kisenge, in the southern 
Congolese province of Katanga, have been repatriated; ending a refugees 
programme there that had run for at least 20 years, the Office of the UN 
High Commissioner for Refugees announced on Tuesday.

The agency's external relations officer, Jens Hesemann, said some 600 
refugees chose to remain in the Kisenge area. He added that the agency's 
"assisted repatriation" programme for the area would come to an end. 
However, he said, the Angola voluntary repatriation programme would 
continue for several other sites in the provinces of Bandundu and Bas 
Congo, bordering Angola's northern provinces and from Kinshasa, capital 
of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

An estimated 22,000 Angolans remained in refugee camps and settlements 
elsewhere in the country, Hesemann said, in addition to an estimated 
72,000 Angolan refugees who have settled there spontaneously.

The repatriation of refugees at sites around the town of Ngidunga in Bas 
Congo Province ended in March 2005. UNHCR reports that since the start 
of its voluntary repatriation in June 2003, it has assisted in the 
return of about 42,000 Angolans.

[Full story on: 
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=47423]


DRC: UN Nepalese soldier dies after militia attack

One of four UN Nepalese troops wounded by militiamen in an attack in 
village of Lugo in the northeastern district of Ituri died of his wounds 
on Friday, a UN spokesman said.

The soldier, an officer, is the 18th peacekeeper killed in the current 
peacekeeping UN Mission in the DRC known as MONUC, the spokesman, Col 
Thierry Provendier, said in Kinshasa. The injuries of the three other 
soldiers are not life threatening, he added. They were evacuated to 
South Africa.

They were wounded while escorting a UN human rights team that went to 
Lugo by helicopter to investigate allegations that members of a militia 
had abducted women in April and raped them in a local chapel. [Full 
story on: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=47466 ]


UGANDA: WFP running out of food for three million people

At least three million Ugandans, including 1.4 million people displaced 
by fighting in the northern region, are facing serious food shortages, 
the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said on Wednesday.

The agency's director for Uganda, Ken Davies, told IRIN that it needed 
90,000 mt, valued at US $45 million, to see it through December.

"We are going to see a terrible situation getting worse if we do not get 
food immediately," he said.

The needy included 574,000 pastoralists in the northeastern Karamoja 
region, who are suffering from the effects of drought and have depended 
on food relief by WFP since January.

Since 1988, northern Uganda has been ravaged by war pitting the Ugandan 
government against rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army, a brutal 
insurgency that frequently targets civilians for attacks. The conflict 
has killed hundreds of people and displaced more than 1.4 million 
others.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=47447]


TANZANIA: Local firm to start producing ARVs in 2006

The Tanzania Pharmaceutical Industries, a local firm, will begin 
producing generic anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) in mid-2006 from a 
factory in the northern town of Arusha, the firm's managing director, 
Ramadhani Madabida, said on Monday.

"We are optimistic that the locally produced ARVs will be accessible to 
many HIV/AIDS patients in Tanzania," he told IRIN.

The company has already started importing the raw materials from China, 
and its factory has successfully produced the drug on a trial basis, 
Madabida said.

About 7 percent of adult Tanzanians, or about two million people, are 
HIV positive, according to a recent government study. Many of them do 
not have access to ARVs.

[Full story on: 
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=47390]


EAST AFRICA: Rwanda may join regional body soon, leaders say

Rwanda could be admitted to the East African Community by November, 
according to a directive by the heads of state of Kenya, Tanzania and 
Uganda at a two-day extraordinary summit, which ended on Monday in 
Tanzania's commercial capital, Dar es Salaam.

The leaders of the three countries - Presidents Mwai Kibaki of Kenya, 
Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda - have directed 
the community's Council of Ministers to expedite the process of Rwanda's 
admission.

At their summit, the leaders also discussed a report on fast tracking of 
the integration of the East African countries and the creation of a 
political federation, but said there was need for further and wider 
consultations. They directed the Council of Ministers to form national 
consultative mechanisms and to collect views from the public and report 
back to the summit within the next 12 months.

[Full story on: 
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=47377]


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