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CENTRAL AND EASTERN AFRICA
IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-up 283
11 - 17 June 2005


CONTENTS:

BURUNDI: Thousands displaced in Bubanza
BURUNDI: Talks with rebel group adjourned
BURUNDI-RWANDA: Transit camp closed, "asylum seekers" repatriated
UGANDA: Rebel attacks force thousands of Sudanese into Uganda
UGANDA: Rape rampant in largest northern IDP camp
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC: Bozize inaugurated, prime minister appointed
TANZANIA: Free ARVs for 100,000 by 2006, prime minister says


SEE ALSO:

CONGO: Interview with former rebel leader Frederic Bitsangou
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=47644


BURUNDI: Thousands displaced in Bubanza

An estimated 23,000 people have fled their homes in the last week in the
western Burundi's Bubanza Province because of fighting between
government soldiers and rebels of the Forces nationales de liberation, a
provincial official said on Tuesday.

"Many of the displaced people have been without food for more than a
week," Fidele Niyongabo, the communal administrator of Mpanda, told
IRIN.

Others were living under trees and drinking water that may be unclean,
Niyongabo said. Fighting occurred again there on Tuesday. He said many
of displaced people were in the villages of Musenyi, Gahwazi, Nyamabere
and Gifugwe in Mpanda Commune near the border with the Democratic
Republic of Congo. Some had taken refuge with other families, he said.


BURUNDI: Talks with rebel group adjourned

Talks between the Burundian government and the country's remaining rebel
group, the Forces nationales de liberation (FNL), were adjourned on
Tuesday after six days of debate that focused on the violation of a
ceasefire agreement signed on 15 May in Dar es salaam.

Tanzanian officials said they hoped the talks, in Dar es Salaam, would
resume as soon as both parties had reiterated their commitment to
ceasefire negotiations. The Burundian government and FNL delegations
agreed on Tuesday to proceed with the ceasefire talks at a later date,
despite several incidents of fighting in Burundi over which each party
accuses the other of responsibility.

Representatives of the Netherlands, South Africa, Uganda and the United
States, as well as those from the Great Lakes region's initiative for
peace in Burundi, the African Union and the UN Operation in Burundi,
attended the talks held from last week.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=47645]


BURUNDI-RWANDA: Transit camp closed, "asylum seekers" repatriated

Burundi has closed a transit camp in its northern province of Ngozi
after thousands of Rwandan asylum seekers there returned home, the
provincial governor said on Tuesday.

"Songore transit site is now closed, the last asylum seekers voluntary
repatriated yesterday [Monday]," Felix Niragira, the governor, said.

The 4,787 Rwandans began returning home on Sunday when 1,702 of them
boarded trucks, he said. The rest left on Monday. Burundi's minister of
interior, Jean Marie Ngendahayo, and the Rwandan minister of local
administration and good governance, Protais Musoni, oversaw the
repatriation.

In Rwanda, the executive secretary of the southern province of Butare
that borders Burundi, Aimable Twagiramutura, said the Rwandan government
provided the trucks that transported the Rwandans to their homes in the
province.

He said 3,500 arrived home between Sunday and Tuesday, and that 200
others remained in Burundi.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=47629]

[On the Net: BURUNDI-RWANDA: Minister scoffs at criticism over "forced
repatriation": http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=47655]


UGANDA: Rebel attacks force thousands of Sudanese into Uganda

Thousands of Sudanese refugees have crossed into Uganda fleeing ethnic
tension and food shortages, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said on
Thursday.

The UNHCR spokeswoman in Kampala, Roberta Russo, said the agency had
recorded 7,682 arrivals in 2005, of whom 1,765 came in during the first
three weeks of May and more had come in since then but had not been
registered. She said many of the refugees recounted that ethnic tensions
in southern Sudan were on the rise. Food aid, she added, had been cut
off to some areas, including the internally displaced persons' camp of
Nimule, close to the Ugandan border.

The Uganda rebel group, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), which is
reportedly based in southern Sudan, was also attacking Sudanese
civilians in the areas of Nimule, Torit and Juba, according to Russo.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=47693]


UGANDA: Rape rampant in largest northern IDP camp

At least 60 percent of women in the largest camp for internally
displaced persons (IDPs) in war-torn northern Uganda have encountered
some form of sexual and domestic violence, a new survey has revealed.

The report, titled "Suffering In Silence", was based on the findings of
a joint government and UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) nine-month study in
Pabbo Camp in Gulu District, about 380 km north of Uganda's capital,
Kampala.

In their 33-page study of sexual and gender based violence, UNICEF and
the government said research showed that six out of 10 women in the camp
- home to some 64,000 IDPs - were physically and sexually assaulted,
threatened and humiliated by men.

"UNICEF is very concerned that victims were mainly girls, some as young
as four years old," Martin Mogwanja, UNICEF's representative in Uganda,
said at the launch of the report on Wednesday in Gulu.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=47689]


CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC: Bozize inaugurated, prime minister appointed

The constitutional court of the Central African Republic inaugurated on
Saturday newly-elected President Francois Bozize, ending a two-year
transition to democratic rule.

Bozize, 58, won a runoff presidential poll on 8 May when he garnered 64
percent of the vote against 36 percent of his challenger, former Prime
Minister Martin Ziguele.

In his inaugural speech he called on the citizens to unite behind him,
regardless of their political affiliations. He said his five-year
mandate would be one of guaranteeing development and democratic freedom.

Bozize first came to power on 15 March 2003 when he ousted former
President Ange-Felix Patasse after a six-month rebellion.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=47611]


TANZANIA: Free ARVs for 100,000 by 2006, prime minister says

At least 100,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in Tanzania will receive
anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) free of charge by the end of 2006, Prime
Minister Frederick Sumaye announced on Thursday.

"The target is to ensure at least 400,000 people are on free ARV
treatment within the next five years," he said in a speech before
parliament in Tanzania's administrative capital, Dodoma.

He added the government planned to expand ARV treatment, currently
covering only 4,200 people out of at least two million HIV-positive
people. The government recently bought ARVs for 17,000 patients across
the country, he said, and that the drugs had already been distributed to
64 hospitals.

A household-level survey conducted in Tanzania recently by the National
Bureau of Statistics in collaboration with the Tanzania Commission for
AIDS indicated that 7 percent of Tanzanians aged between 15 and 49 years
were HIV-positive. The survey also indicated that the rate of HIV
prevalence was higher among women than men, with the prevalence among
women averaging 7.7 percent while that of men averaged at 6.3 percent.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=47684]


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Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
2005


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