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CENTRAL AND EASTERN AFRICA
IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-Up 269
5 - 11 March 2005


CONTENTS:

RWANDA: Gacaca courts begin operations
RWANDA: Sweden gives extra US $7 million to fight poverty
BURUNDI: Outpatients suffer as nurses begin strike to demand better
   terms
CONGO: Pool region a neglected humanitarian crisis, OCHA says
DRC: Situation in Ituri IDP camps "alarming" - MSF, OCHA say
DRC: Women remain under represented in government
TANZANIA: Political party clash leaves 14 injured
TANZANIA: Food supply to tens of thousands of refugees set to improve,
   UN officials say


SEE ALSO:

BURUNDI: Environmental causes behind food shortages in northern Kirundo
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=45940

CONGO: Women still without political clout, power
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=45991


RWANDA: Gacaca courts begin operations

Courts under Rwanda's traditional justice system, known as "Gacaca",
began sitting countrywide on Thursday, in an effort to expedite trials
for hundreds of thousands of detained genocide suspects.

"They have started with suspects who fall under category two, who
include mainly people who took orders to kill from their superior,"
Anastase Balinda, head of documentation in the national service of the
Gacaca jurisdictions, told IRIN.

Trials started in 751 village courts where for the past two years
thousands of suspects have been questioned by locally elected judges,
sitting as investigative panels. During this phase, the Gacaca judges
are expected to hand down verdicts to perpetrators of the 1994 genocide,
in which 937,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were killed,
according to Rwandan government estimates.

Rwanda announced recently that up to one million Rwandans - one-eighth
of the population - were due to be tried under the Gacaca courts for
their roles in the genocide.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=46037 ]


RWANDA: Sweden gives extra US $7 million to fight poverty

The Swedish government gave Rwanda a $7-million grant on Thursday, to
help finance the country's budget deficit and its poverty-reduction
strategies.

The money came in addition to Sweden's regular financial aid to Rwanda -
which has amounted to $20 million so far this year - that has been spent
on decentralisation, good governance and poverty reduction programmes.

The donation came four months later than originally intended. It was
held up in November 2004 when Rwanda threatened to invade neighbouring
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The Rwandan government wanted to
pursue Hutu rebels who had fired rockets on one of its villages a month
earlier, wounding three civilians.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=46061 ]


BURUNDI: Outpatients suffer as nurses begin strike to demand better
terms

Long lines of outpatients formed outside hospitals in Bujumbura, the
Burundian capital, after nurses began an indefinite strike on Monday to
demand better pay and working conditions.

Officials of the nurses' trade union said the caregivers were on strike
to pressure the government to implement an accord they signed in
December 2004, following a series of short-term strikes. The chairman of
the nurses' trade union, Melance Hakizimana, told IRIN on Monday that
the nurses were only offering emergency services.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=45952 ]


CONGO: Pool region a neglected humanitarian crisis, OCHA says

Unknown to the world, the Republic of Congo's Department of Pool is
suffering from a social and economic crisis that has result in the
deaths of scores of people, the UN Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a new report released last week.

"The lack of access to health services as well as insecurity and
logistics problems which prevented assistance, led to a humanitarian
crisis which is reflected in increased mortality and morbidity figures,
growing numbers of malnutrition and a generally high vulnerability of
the population," OCHA said in the report, titled "The Pool, a Neglected
Humanitarian Crisis".

The report is the result of several missions to the Pool by OCHA and
three other humanitarian UN agencies - the World Food Programme (WFP),
the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the Food Aid Organization (FAO) -
throughout 2004, and paints a grim picture of this southern region of
the country.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=45949 ]


DRC: Situation in Ituri IDP camps "alarming" - MSF, OCHA say

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) resumed its relief activities on 4 March
in camps for thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Ituri
District, northeastern DRC, after eight days of what has been described
as an "alarming" health situation.

MSF reported on Friday that in Tche Camp, 60 km north of Bunia - the
main town in Ituri - at least 25 people died in six days following lack
of relief aid.

On Thursday, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
(OCHA) said at least 10 people had been dying each day in the camps in
and around Kakwa following the suspension of humanitarian aid to the
area on 28 February. It said the death toll could be even higher in the
camps of Tche and Gina

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=45942 ]


DRC: Women remain under represented in government

Women are still under represented at decision-making levels in the DRC's
institutions, reduced to the role of house help and have even become
victims of repeated sexual violence, women's representatives said on
Tuesday during an occasion marking International Women's Day.

The frustrations of Congolese women are evident in the Senate, which is
debating a new constitution ahead of elections, due sometime this year.
A senator and vice-president of the Parti du peuple pour la
reconstruction et le developpement, Marie-Ange Lukiana Mufwankol, said
women were still under represented in such bodies despite the country
being a signatory to international treaties and conventions aimed at
protecting and promoting women's rights.

The UN Development Fund for Women gender adviser, Miranda Kabefor, told
IRIN that women were far from attaining 30 percent representation in
decision-making bodies of the government - the Senate, the National
Assembly, and heads of public firms. There were, she said, nine women
among the 61 ministers and vice ministers in the transitional
government, and 60 women in the two chambers of the 620-member
parliament. The same situation prevails in state-owned firms. [Full
story on: http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=46034 ]


TANZANIA: Political party clash leaves 14 injured

Fourteen people were wounded, two of them seriously, in clashes on
Sunday between rival political parties on Tanzania's semi-autonomous
island of Zanzibar, police said. The fighting came as the nation
prepares for general elections, scheduled for October.

Zanzibar's senior assistant commissioner of police, Ramadhani Kinyogo,
said on Monday 10 of the wounded were admitted to a local hospital.

Three vehicles were also destroyed and three opposition party offices
set ablaze when members of the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM -
Revolutionary Party) battled those from the Civic United Front (CUF),
Kinyogo said.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=45971 ]


TANZANIA: Food supply to tens of thousands of refugees set to improve,
UN officials say

A food crisis facing at least 400,000 Burundian and Congolese refugees
in Tanzania is set to improve next week due to an increased supply of
maize and pulses, UN officials said on Tuesday.

"After receiving some donations, WFP managed to purchase 12,879 mt of
maize and pulses locally," Karla Hershey, the procurement officer for
the WFP office in Tanzania, told IRIN.

She said the donations came from Britain (US $5.7 million), the
Netherlands ($1.2 million) and Switzerland ($530,000).

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=45972 ]


CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC: First free HIV-screening centres open in
Bangui

The first centres to provide free and anonymous HIV tests in the Central
African Republic (CAR) opened on Tuesday in Bangui, the nation's
capital.

"We will now be able to detect HIV earlier and assist people in
counselling so that they do not infect others," Dr Seraphin Ndanga of
the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the
international organisation financing the clinics, told IRIN on Thursday.

He said the testing centres would provide free and confidential advice
on ways to prevent the transmission of HIV and other sexually
transmitted diseases. The two new clinics are in areas of Bangui which
has had some of the capital's highest HIV infection levels: the Seventh
District, specifically the suburb of Ouango, and the Third District. The
Global Fund said it had also financed similar centres, which were ready
to begin screening, in the provincial towns of Bossangoa, Bouar,
Bambari, Bria, Bangassou and Mobaye.

The HIV infection rate is high in CAR. In December 2002, 15 percent of
the population was HIV-positive, according to the government's National
Committee to Fight AIDS, which is supported by the Pasteur Institute, a
French medical research facility.


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


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