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 307
26 November - 2 December 2005


CONTENTS:

UGANDA: LRA rebels ask for peace talks with government
DRC: Amnesty law passed without MPs from Kabila's party
DRC: Plans for referendum well advanced, polls chairman says
BURUNDI: UN agency moves 500 Congolese refugees away from border
BURUNDI: World Bank pledges additional $170 million for projects
BURUNDI: Germany resumes aid with 17 million euros for water, sanitation
CONGO: War-affected youth target of reintegration project
CONGO-SOUTH AFRICA: Mbeki promises to help nation fight poverty
CAR: Civil servants get March salaries
RWANDA: Government receives new funding for HIV/AIDS
KENYA: HIV/AIDS a major health issue in western region
TANZANIA: Mkapa bows out with impassioned plea over HIV/AIDS
TANZANIA: NGO predicts serious food shortages
GREAT LAKES: Norway to promote peace and development through culture, sports
GLOBAL: UN appeals for $4.7 billion in life-saving aid


ALSO SEE:

DRC: Interview with Bernard Lututala Mumpasi, rector of Kinshasa University
[http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50439 ]
BURUNDI: Returnee children face language obstacles in schools
[http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50458 ]


UGANDA: LRA rebels ask for peace talks with government

The rebel Lord's Resistance Army has called for the resumption of peace
talks with the Ugandan government, a call mediators say rekindles hope
for a peaceful settlement of the 20-year civil war in the north of the
country.

The chief mediator in the on-and-off talks and former Ugandan minister,
Betty Bigombe, said on Wednesday that LRA deputy commander Vincent Otti
had contacted her and expressed willingness to resume talks with the
government.

Attempts to hold peace talks between the rebels and the government
collapsed in December 2004 when last-minute hitches thwarted the signing
of the first ceasefire agreement. Within hours, President Yoweri
Museveni ordered the resumption of the military campaign against the
rebellion - a move observers said curtailed any further peace attempts.


[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50416]


DRC: Amnesty law passed without MPs from Kabila's party

The lower house of parliament in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC),
the National Assembly, passed on Tuesday a law granting amnesty to
people who have been blamed for acts of war as well as political
offences.

The vote was taken without MPs from President Joseph Kabila's Parti du
peuple pour la reconstruction et le developpement who feared that a
group of people behind the murder of his father, former President
Laurent-Desire Kabila, would benefit from the new law. The law would be
applicable to offences committed between August 1996 and June 2003.

Some 248 MPs approved the bill, with six abstaining in the 500-member
House.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50417]


DRC: Plans for referendum well advanced, polls chairman says

The man in charge of elections in the country's elections was in
Brussels on Monday to assure the Belgium government, which is providing
him funding, that the first round of voting would take place as
scheduled on 18 December.

The chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission, Apollinaire Malu
Malu, said ballot boxes were already in place and that the distribution
of ballot papers began last week. The first round of voting would be a
referendum on a new constitution. Some 9,300 polling stations would be
set up across the country, which is roughly the size of Western Europe.


[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=50396]


BURUNDI: UN agency moves 500 Congolese refugees away from border

Some 500 refugees from the DRC who crossed into northwestern Burundi in
November have been moved inland from the border area in Cibitoke
Province to the Gasorwe Transit Camp in the northeastern province of
Muyinga, an official of the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said on Thursday.

UNHCR's public relations officer in Burundi, Catherine-Lune Grayson,
said the agency would continue transferring all who were willing to go
to Gasorwe. Cibitoke Governor Samson Ndayizeye said about 68 families,
living in difficult conditions, were still in Cibitoke awaiting transfer
to Gasorwe.

The Congolese refugees told Burundian officials they had fled their
country following fighting there between the Congolese army and militia
groups known as the Mayi-Mayi. Most of the refugees came from the
Ruvunge and Kamanyola areas of eastern DRC.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50443]


BURUNDI: World Bank pledges additional $170 million for projects

In addition to $350 million it has allocated to Burundi for
reconstruction and development, the World Bank has pledged an additional
$170 million over the next two years, a bank official said on Thursday.

Concluding a three-day visit to the country, the assistant head of the
World Bank in charge of Africa, Gobind Nankani, said at a news
conference in the capital, Bujumbura, that the bank was satisfied with
the way the government was implementing projects it was funding.

"The money from the debt cancellation will serve, in the future, in
social sectors like education, health, public works and HIV/AIDS
prevention and control," he added.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=50459]


BURUNDI: Germany resumes aid with 17 million euros for water, sanitation

Germany gave the Burundian government nearly 17 million euros (about $20
million) on Tuesday to improve water and sanitation in various parts of
the country, in what a government official says marks the end of the
suspension of German aid at the onset of the civil war in 1993.

An estimated seven million euros ($8.2 million) of the new aid will go
to the public water and electricity company, Regideso, its director,
Augustin Baruvura, said on Wednesday. Regideso will use the money to
improve water supply to urban areas in the eastern provinces of Gitega,
Rutana, and Cankuzo, where residents currently go without for three or
four days at a time, he said. Baruvura said the shortages were caused by
rapid urbanisation, a reduction in rainfall and aging equipment.

Another portion of the funding will go to improving the supply of water
in rural areas in the northern provinces of Kirundo and Muyinga. [Full
story on: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50423]

[On the Net: BURUNDI: Belgium pledges to increase development aid:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50360 ]


CONGO: War-affected youth target of reintegration project

An estimated 5,000 young people in four war-shattered regions of the
Republic of Congo (ROC) are scheduled to benefit from a $1.6-million
project launched by the government and the UN Development Programme
(UNDP).

The government and the UNDP inaugurated the 18-month project on
Wednesday in the capital, Brazzaville, in efforts to rehabilitate "young
people at risk".

The programme would be implemented in the departments of Pool, Niari,
Bouenza and Lekoumou, which were the most severely affected during the
country's civil wars.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50466]


CONGO-SOUTH AFRICA: Mbeki promises to help nation fight poverty

South African President Thabo Mbeki has said his country would help the
ROC fight poverty, which the UN Development Programme estimates to be
afflicting up to 70 percent of the country's 3.1-million people.

"We have other challenges to take up together within the framework of
development and of the fight against poverty," Mbeki said on Thursday in
Brazzaville, the ROC capital, on the second of his two-day visit.

He said South Africa and the ROC could develop air, sea and railway
transport, and dredge the port of Brazzaville on the River Congo. In
addition, he said, there was need to modernise Congo's secondary
airports and build other communication infrastructure.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50469]

[On the Net: CONGO: Mbeki jets into Brazza in first official visit:
[Full story on: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50428]


CAR: Civil servants get March salaries

Rowdy civil servants in the Central African Republic crowded banks in
the capital, Bangui, beginning on Tuesday to be paid one of the many
months of salaries the government owes them.

Many of the civil servants have been on striking since early October to
demand their wages.

Noel Ramadan, the vice-chairman of the country's largest trade union,
known as the Union syndicale des travailleurs de Centrafrique, said the
strike would continue until the government paid two months' salary
arrears as it had agreed to on 12 November. In return, five of the six
trade unions for civil servants had agreed not to go back on strike for
at least six months.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50441]


RWANDA: Government receives new funding for HIV/AIDS

The Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, an
international health financing body, agreed on Monday to give Rwanda the
first portion of a $33-million grant to support programmes aimed at
combating HIV/AIDS.

"The grant will support improved accessibility to health care and
strengthened quality of health care delivery in six of Rwanda's 12
provinces, targeting 4.7 million Rwandans," according to a statement
issued by the Global Fund during an East Africa and the Indian Ocean
regional meeting in the Rwandan capital, Kigali.

The grant for the first two-year phase is worth $14.3 million, the fund
said. The remaining money, if approved, would be spent within five
years.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50388]


KENYA: HIV/AIDS a major health issue in western region

HIV/AIDS remains a major health concern in Kenya despite the fact that a
recent study showed a drop in the national prevalence rate. According to
the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), the overall
adult infection rate reduced from 10 percent in the late 1990s to 7
percent in 2003.

Despite the reduction, which was mainly due to awareness-creation
programmes, UNAIDS estimated that some 1.2 million Kenyans were living
with the virus, of whom 100,000 are children. Some 650,000 children have
been orphaned as a result of the disease.

To contain the epidemic, Kenya has set up national institutions and
local committees in communities and is working on a new strategic
five-year plan for

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50412]


TANZANIA: Mkapa bows out with impassioned plea over HIV/AIDS

In a speech to Tanzanians broadcast live nationwide on Wednesday,
President Benjamin Mkapa bid the country farewell with a plea to all
citizens to establish their HIV status, saying the deadly disease was
wreaking havoc in the country.

"AIDS is wiping us out," he said. "Day after day, parents bury their
children instead of children burying their parents."

The monthly nationwide address, made coincidentally on the eve of the
World HIV/AIDS Day, was the president's last as the country prepares for
presidential and parliamentary elections on 14 December. Mkapa is not
eligible for re-election, having already served the maximum permissible
two five-year terms under the constitution.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50440]


TANZANIA: NGO predicts serious food shortages

Serious food shortages are expected in Tanzania over the next several
months, the Roman Catholic relief organisation, Caritas, said on
Thursday.

"Insufficient rainfall has resulted in poor yields in many parts of the
country," Caritas said, after making an assessment in mid-2005 on the
effects of drought on households and livestock.

"Crop failure was registered at about 80 percent in the districts of
Ngorongoro and Karatu [in the north of the country]," it said.

Caritas, a confederation of 162 Catholic relief, development and social
service organizations, said it correlated its research with information
provided by the US government-funded Famine Early Warning System
Network.

In response to the expected shortage, Caritas said it had launched an
appeal for nearly $800,000 to provide food aid to 251,767 people as well
as seeds to some 5,000 households.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50463]


GREAT LAKES: Norway to promote peace and development through culture,
sports

Norway launched a programme on Friday to support culture and sports in
developing countries, especially among people in conflict zones such as
Africa's Great Lakes region.

"If any organization could come up with a good project aimed at bringing
together the different factions through artistic exchanges and
performances then we would finance that project," Randi Bendiksen, a
special adviser in the Foreign Ministry's Press, Cultural Relations and
Information Department, told IRIN on Friday from Oslo.

One aim of the Strategy for International Cultural and Sports
Cooperation, which was officially launched on Friday at the UN
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) headquarters
in Paris, is to enhance mental health and promote peace and
reconciliation.

Cultural projects would include the building of cultural centres,
funding cultural performances and offering cultural exchange programmes,
Bendiksen said. Norway would also seek to introduce sports as a
component in development cooperation.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=50467]


GLOBAL: UN appeals for $4.7 billion in life-saving aid

The high $4.7 billion price tag on the United Nations' latest global
appeal is because there are currently a large number of humanitarian
operations and natural disasters, according to Jan Egeland, the UN's
under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief
coordinator.

"It's not like we're asking too much," Egeland told reporters after the
launch of the appeal in New York on Wednesday. "For the equivalent of
two cups of coffee per person for the one billion affluent people in the
world, we would cover all the needs of 31 million people in a desperate
situation for a year."

Egeland's comments followed a request made to the world's wealthier
nations by UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, for $4.7 billion to help 31
million people affected by conflict or disaster in 26 countries around
the world.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50472]


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