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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CENTRAL AND EASTERN AFRICA
IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-Up 325
1 - 7 April 2006


CONTENTS:

GREAT LAKES: Free basic education the way forward, UN official says
DRC: Candidates registered, election date undecided
CONGO: New coalition seeks an independent electoral commission
BURUNDI: Thousands affected by drought return home
BURUNDI: UN envoy ends tour of duty, outlines nation's challenges
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC: Women lobby for peace
SUDAN: UN envoy criticises obstruction by government
TANZANIA: Rush for IDs in Zanzibar


ALSO SEE:

UGANDA: Interview with Jan Egeland, UN Under Secretary-General for
Humanitarian Affairs

[Full report:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=52599]


BURUNDI: Interview with Andre Bampoye, Burundi's director-general for
secondary education

Full report:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=52669]



GREAT LAKES: Free basic education the way forward, UN official says

There is a need to lighten the burden of keeping children in school in
Africa's southern and eastern region, where an estimated 20 million
children are currently deprived of education, a United Nations official
said on Wednesday.

The regional director of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), Per Engeback,
said 30 percent of education spending in sub-Saharan Africa was being
spent on fees. He was speaking in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, during a
conference on the abolition of school fees in southern and eastern
African countries. One goal of the three-day conference is to produce a
framework to give more children access to free, quality basic education.
Participants are drawn from Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo
(DRC), Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania, as well
as these countries' development partners.

[Full report:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=52629]


DRC: Candidates registered, election date undecided

Some 73 presidential candidates have registered for the upcoming
elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), but the main
opposition leader was not among them and the commission has not set a
date for the elections.

"Before we can fix a new date for the elections, it is necessary to wait
until the printing companies tell us how long it will take to produce
the thousands of ballots," said the president of the independent
electoral commission, Apollinaire Malumalu, at a press conference in
Kinshasa, the capital, on Tuesday.

The elections had been scheduled for 18 June, but the commission said
polling would take place later, because it had extended the
candidate-registration period by 10 days. That period ended on Sunday,
without long-time opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi. He and his
party, l'Union pour la democratie et le progres social (UDPS), said they
were boycotting the elections because they had been excluded from the
election commission and the organisation overseeing fair media coverage
during the campaign, said party spokesman Jean-Baptiste Bomanza.

[Full report:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=52625]


CONGO: New coalition seeks an independent electoral commission

A coalition of opposition groups in the Republic of Congo has called for
a new, independent electoral commission to administer parliamentary
elections planned for 2007 and presidential elections in 2009.

"If there is no consensus on an independent electoral commission that
includes both the opposition and the government, then the opposition
will not participate in the elections," said Saturnin Okabe, interim
president of the opposition party Rassemblement pour la democratie et le
developpment on Wednesday. His party is one of 21 political groups in
the coalition, which is called the Front democratique pour la commission
electorale independante (FDCEI). According to a statement issued by the
FDCEI on Tuesday, presidential and parliamentary elections in 2002 were
fraught with irregularities.

[Full report:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=52643]


BURUNDI: Thousands affected by drought return home

Some 12,000 Burundians who fled a food crisis caused by a prevailing
drought in their country have returned home from neighbouring Tanzania,
the governor of Burundi's eastern province of Ruyigi said on Tuesday.

The people started returning on Saturday, Governor Moise Bucumi said.
Most of them crossed back into Burundi on foot, as they lived only 3 km
from the border. All the transit camps in Tanzania had closed, except
for one camp, which hosts Congolese refugees. At least 2,000 of the
returnees - who came from other provinces, such as Kirundo, Cankuzo and
Gitega - were being hosted at a transit site in Gisuru, Ruyigi province.

[Full report:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=52603]


BURUNDI: UN envoy ends tour of duty, outlines nation's challenges

The fight against poverty, postwar reconstruction and peace negotiations
with Burundi's remaining rebel group are the main peace-related
challenges facing the country, said Carolyn McAskie, the United Nations
Secretary-General's Special Representative to Burundi and head of its UN
mission, on Tuesday at the end of her term in the country.

"The key for peace in Burundi is continuation of dialogue," she told a
news conference in the capital, Bujumbura. McAskie said the Burundian
people should continue to trust the strong UN team she was leaving
behind. "One person leaves, but the UN remains in the country," she said
as she prepared to return to her native country, Canada.

[Full report:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=52606]


CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC: Women lobby for peace

At least 2,000 women demonstrated on Monday in Bangui, capital of the
Central African Republic (CAR), in an appeal for peace in the country.

"Our objective is to alert the nation and the international community to
the new wave of troubles looming ahead," said Georgette Debale, a
university lecturer and one of the event's organisers. The demonstration
was held in the wake of increased armed banditry and rebellion in the
northwest of the country, close to the border with Chad. According to
the demonstrators, three rebel groups are now active in the region.

[Full report:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=52580]


SUDAN: UN envoy criticises obstruction by government

United Nations Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Jan
Egeland, said the decision of the Sudanese authorities to block his
visit to Darfur and refugee camps in neighbouring Chad was symptomatic
of the lack of government cooperation in solving the problems in the
troubled western Sudanese region.

"In Sudan today, the United Nations is coordinating the biggest
humanitarian operation in the world. Not allowing me to come and do my
work - coordinating the work of the United Nations - is just one of the
examples of an increasing tendency of obstructions of our work as
humanitarian workers, being the lifeline to three million people in
Darfur," Egeland told journalists in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi on
Tuesday.

[Full report:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=52623]


TANZANIA: Rush for IDs in Zanzibar

A new law requiring national identity cards in order to receive salaries
and public services took effect on 1 April on Tanzania's semiautonomous
island of Zanzibar, sending residents scrambling for the necessary
documentation on Monday.

"As from 1 April, most of the social services - including civil servants
getting their monthly salaries - will have to be with the Zanzibari ID,"
said Hassan Hajji Wambi, the principal secretary in the ministry of
regional administration in Zanzibar. The law, which requires Zanzibaris
to be registered and carry the identification, was passed in May 2005.
One must be a Tanzanian of Zanzibar origin aged 18 or older or a
resident of Zanzibar for at least 10 years.

[Full report:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=52586]


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