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Integrated Regional Information Network for Central and Eastern Africa

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CENTRAL AND EASTERN AFRICA
IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-Up 287
8 - 15 July 2005


CONTENTS:

KENYA: Thousands displaced after attack, toll reaches 76
DRC: Army recaptures Nyamilima village, North Kivu
DRC: Donors agree to provide E85 million more for polls
DRC: UN to resume air service in Kasai Oriental
UGANDA: LRA kills 14 in northern weekend ambush
UGANDA: 1,169 Rwandan asylum seekers denied refugee status
RWANDA-BURUNDI: NGOs say "forced" returnees need monitoring
BURUNDI: Head of former rebel group on track to be president
CENTRAL AFRICA: Ministers says rural power a must in war on poverty


KENYA: Thousands displaced after attack, toll reaches 76

At least 6,000 people have been displaced following brutal attacks by
armed raiders that started on Tuesday on villages in the northern Kenyan
district of Marsabit, relief workers said.

They said the death toll had reached 76 by Thursday. This included 20
children killed when the raiders attacked a local primary school, and 10
members of a church group killed in an apparent revenge attack on
Wednesday.

"Initial indications are that 1,000 families - about 6,000 people - have
been displaced," Farid Abdulkadir, the disaster preparedness and
response director for the Kenya Red Cross Society, told IRIN.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said
some 1,000 families affected by the attacks needed emergency aid. It
said the priority needs were for health, temporary shelter and food. The
Kenya Ministry of Health has appealed for medical oxygen and cylinders,
sutures and dressing materials, blood transfusion equipment and help for
medical evacuation of critical patients.

Police said 66 of the dead were civilians who died when the assailants,
believed to be members of the Borana community, launched their attacks
on villages inhabited by the Gabra ethnic group in the Turbi location of
Marsabit, 580 km north of Nairobi.

Some 2,000 army, paramilitary and police troops have arrived in the
area, the Daily Nation, a Nairobi newspaper, reported on Friday. The
semi-arid Eastern Province near the Ethiopian border has a history of
banditry and violent cattle rustling among the pastoralist communities
living in the area, which often fight over pasture and water points.
[Full story on: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=48121 ]


DRC: Army recaptures Nyamilima village, North Kivu

Government troops recaptured on Tuesday the village of Nyamilima, one of
three in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) held by local and
Rwandan Hutu rebels, a senior army commander said.

"We routed the assailants," Col Janvier Mayanga, the 12th Brigade
commander based in Rutshuru, said.

However, his forces are yet to retake the nearby villages of Nyakakoma
and Ishasha from the Forces Democratiques de Liberation du Rwanda and
two Mayi-Mayi militia battalions. These villages are near Nyamilima,
which is 150 km northwest of Goma, capital of North Kivu Province.

Mayanga had said the army would recapture Nyakakoma and Ishasha in the
next few days. The rebels had seized all three villages on Monday from
an infantry battalion of the 12th Brigade.

Mayanga said the army sustained four wounded and killed 12 FDLR rebels
in Nyamilima. UN military observers said they saw one dead government
soldier there.

An official of a civil society organisation, who did not wish to be
identified, said homes had been burnt and that all the fighting groups
had engaged in looting. She said "several thousand" residents had fled
towards North Kivu's Virunga National Park and to Uganda.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=48099]

[On the Net: GREAT LAKES: President orders disarmament of all foreign rebels]

[DRC: Hutu rebels quit forest area under UN pressure: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=48071]

[DRC: Two mass graves reported in eastern village of Ntulumamba: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=48106]


DRC: Donors agree to provide E85 million more for polls

European donors and the government committed themselves on Tuesday to
provide an additional E85 million (US $100 million) for democratic
elections in the central African country.

The commitments were made during a two-day meeting at the European Union
in Brussels, co-chaired by European Commissioner for Development and
Humanitarian Aid Louis Michel, and the UN Special Representative to the
Secretary-General in the DRC, William Swing.

The donors who committed funds were Belgium, German, Sweden, Switzerland
and the United Kingdom. The DRC government pledged E16.6 million (about
$20 million). Others that also expressed their intentions to provide
more money are Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France,
Greece, Norway, Spain and the United States.

The European Commission's desk officer for the DRC, Domenico Rosa, said
from Brussels that though the money for the actual elections was
available, there was still a problem to find more for the logistical
support to hold the polls.

Rosa said although the UN Mission in the DRC (MONUC) had the aircraft
and technical capacity to put the electoral workers and material in
place, and could do so "cheaply and efficiently", it was already
overstretched. He said according to MONUC's calculations it needed an
additional E85.8 million ($103 million) to do the job.

"The [UN] Security Council should now consider increasing MONUC's
budget," he said. [Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=48088]

Meanwhile in New York on Tuesday, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan told
the Council in a report that the UN needed some $190 million more to
support upcoming elections in DRC.

"The estimate provides for the phased deployment of an additional 2,590
military contingent personnel," he said.

This would bring to 19,290 the number of MONUC military personnel in
theatre. Annan also said MONUC would require an additional 216 civilian
police personnel to bring their total to 391; and an additional 625
"formed police personnel" to bring that strength to 750; as well as more
local and international civilian staff and UN volunteers.

The cost of MONUC for the 12-month period from 2005 to 2006 is projected
at $1.3 billion. The timetable for the elections, which would usher the
country's first democratic polls in 40 years, has not yet been set. They
were supposed to have been completed by June but the country's national
assembly postponed them for at least six months.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=48117]


DRC: UN to resume air service in Kasai Oriental

The UN has said it plans to resume flights to two remote areas in Kasai
Oriental Province in response to requests from the humanitarian
organistions.

MONUC's information focal point for humanitarian affairs, Patrice Bogna,
said on Tuesday the humanitarian community urged MONUC to consider the
re-establishment of its flights from the provincial capital of
Mbuji-Mayi to Lubao and Lodja, in the districts of Sankuru and Kabinda.
He said the districts were home to some five million people in need of
humanitarian aid.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=48120]


UGANDA: LRA kills 14 in northern weekend ambush

At least 14 people were killed on Sunday when rebels of the Lord's
Resistance Army ambushed them in Kitkum District, about 400 km north of
the Ugandan capital, Kampala, officials said on Monday.

They said a group of rebels ambushed a pick-up truck between Potika and
Paloga, 60 km northwest of Kitgum town. Fourteen people have been
confirmed dead and more than 10 were wounded, Nahman Ojwee, chairman of
the Kitgum District Council, said.

Army spokesman Lt Col Shaban Bantariza said the victims were going to
the market in Patika when their vehicle was ambushed and set ablaze. He
said the rebels, thought to number about seven, had looted the goods in
the vehicle.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=48065]


UGANDA: 1,169 Rwandan asylum seekers denied refugee status

Some 1,169 Rwandans who fled their country in recent months and sought
asylum in neighbouring Uganda have been denied refugee status and
advised to return home, officials said on Friday.

"We were not convinced by the reasons they gave during our interviews.
They told us that they came to Uganda looking for land and they were
citing property wrangles back home," David Kazungu, Uganda's assistant
commissioner for refugees, said.

"Many said they were told that there is plenty of land in Uganda and
they decided to come in," he added.

However, he said the refugee eligibility committee had found 80 of the
asylum seekers "with well-founded fears of persecution".

The Rwandans recently fled Omutara, Gitarama, Vyumba and Kibungo
provinces in Rwanda, and have since been living in southwestern Uganda,
near the refugee settlement of Nakivale.

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, confirmed Uganda's refusal to accord the
refugees refugee status, and said the process did not contravene any
international convention.

Uganda already hosts some 14,000 Rwandan refugees, living mainly in
settlements in the west.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=48136]


RWANDA-BURUNDI: NGOs say "forced" returnees need monitoring

International Rescue Committee said on Thursday it and nine other
international NGOs had requested international monitoring of 8,000
Rwandans who they say were taken from Burundi illegally and by force on
13 June.

In a letter on 1 July to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the
NGOs asked her to "insist that the Rwandan government provide guarantees
that the safety and dignity of those returned from Burundi will be
ensured, and that these guarantees be subject to effective international
monitoring".

The NGOs also said: "The government of Burundi, under pressure from the
government of Rwanda, declared that the 8,000 Rwandan asylum seekers in
Burundi were ineligible for asylum, designating them as illegal
immigrants, and thereby clearing the way to forcibly expel them from
Burundi."

The Rwandan government has dismissed claims made earlier by UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan and UNHCR that Rwanda and Burundi had
violated their obligations under international refugee law.

"Most of these people were running away fearing charges in the local
Gacaca courts," Protais Musoni, Rwanda's minister for local government,
told IRIN in June. "It is not in the mandate of UNHCR to accept such a
group of people."

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=48139]


BURUNDI: Head of former rebel group on track to be president

The longtime leader of the former rebel movement that won Burundi's
recent municipal and legislative elections, Pierre Nkurunziza, accepted
on Sunday his party's choice as presidential candidate in polls due on
19 August.

Nkurunziza heads the Conseil national pour la defense de la
democratie - Forces pour la defense de la democratie (CNDD-FDD). The
party has the support of the majority of assemblymen and senators.

Under the terms of Burundi's post transition constitution, the next head
of state will be elected in the legislature by assemblymen and senators.
The senators will, themselves, be elected on 29 July by the communal
councilors.

The CNDD-FDD won the municipal and legislative elections with absolute
majorities, clearing the way for an almost certain Nkurunziza victory in
the presidential election.


Nkurunziza, 41, is a Hutu from the northern province of Ngozi. He had
been a lecturer at the Sports and Physical Education Department of the
University of Burundi before joining the CNDD-FDD and becoming its
political leader.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=48073]

[On the Net: BURUNDI: Winning the legislature, former rebels vow to
negotiate peace: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=47989]


CENTRAL AFRICA: Ministers says rural electrification a must in war on
poverty

Energy ministers from countries in Central Africa said on Wednesday the
provision of electricity must be part of their national strategic plans
to end poverty.

Their appeal came at the end of a three-day workshop in Brazzaville, the
Republic of Congo, on providing electricity services for rural
development. Cheap and reliable electricity would, they said, introduce
or modernise clean drinking water, education, health, communication and
agriculture systems for millions of their rural poor.

"In spite of the enormous energy resources in our area, its rate of
electrification hardly exceeds ten percent," Bruno Jean Richard Itoua,
the Congolese minister for energy, told his colleagues from Cameroon,
Central African Republic, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Republic of
Congo.

The countries are members of the Economic and Monetary Community of
Central Africa, also known as CEMAC, which organised the workshop with
the European Initiative for Energy for the Eradication of Poverty and
for Durable Development.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=48119]


[This Item is Delivered to the "Africa-English" Service of the UN's IRIN
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Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
2005


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