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HORN OF AFRICA
IRIN-HOA Weekly Round-up 145
14 - 20 June 2003


CONTENTS:

ERITREA: 8,700 expellees from Ethiopia resettled
ETHIOPIA: Women's coalition on HIV/AIDS launched
ETHIOPIA: Population growth still too high - President
ERITREA-ETHIOPIA: Remains of slain soldiers to be repatriated
SOMALIA: First postwar medical college opens in Mogadishu
SOMALIA: Disagreement over number, selection of parliamentarians
SUDAN-UGANDA: Khartoum denies backing Ugandan rebels
SUDAN: Charity intensifies search for missing abductees
SUDAN: Government reviewing policy on GM food imports
 

ALSO SEE:

SUDAN: Interview with Mukesh Kapila, UN Resident and Humanitarian
Coordinator at: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34872

ETHIOPIA: Feature - Women defy taboo to fight HIV at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34848

HORN OF AFRICA: Former Finnish President appointed UN envoy at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34843


ERITREA: 8,700 expellees from Ethiopia resettled
 
A total of 8,700 Eritreans expelled from Ethiopia in 1998, and who had
been homeless since then, have been given farmland by the Eritrean
government. The 2,870 families, who were each given one hectare of land,
have been relocated in trucks from Shelab camp - shared by internally
displaced people and expellees - in the northwestern region of Gash Barka
to three other localities: Gherenfit East, Gherenfit West and Wedi Emmi.
They were given seeds and farming implements by the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP). Simon Nhongo, the UN Resident Humanitarian
Coordinator in Eritrea, described the move as "a major breakthrough" for
the families, after over four years of waiting. "The difference between
them and the other camp occupants was that they had no original place to
return to," he said.
[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34770]
 
ETHIOPIA: Women's coalition on HIV/AIDS launched
 
Ethiopia's first-ever national women’s coalition aimed at combating HIV
was launched on Wednesday. The coalition, made up of tens of thousands of
women countrywide, is headed by some of the leading female figures in
Ethiopian society. "We say we are going to create an AIDS-free Ethiopia;
we must first stop the spread," Prime Minister Meles Zenawi declared at
the launch of the coalition, held at the UN Conference Centre in the
capital, Addis Ababa. "It is clear we have to go a long way to create an
AIDS-free Ethiopia," he added, insisting that responsibility lay with
individuals to change their sexual behaviour.
[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34821]
 
Population growth still too high - President
 
Meanwhile, President Girma Wolde Giorgis said at a symposium at the UN
Conference Centre on Tuesday that, despite Ethiopia's efforts to tackle
the population explosion, the country still had a long way to go to curb
population growth. Some 67 million people live in Ethiopia, whose
population grows each year by 2.7 percent. More than half its people live
on less than US $1 a day. Girma said the high population growth threatened
economic stability, and that in already poor countries like Ethiopia, it
could lead to massive deforestation, soil erosion and additional strain on
agricultural land, and had a negative impact on food security, as well as
education, health and other social services.
[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34816]
 
ERITREA-ETHIOPIA: Remains of slain soldiers to be repatriated
 
Ethiopian and Eritrean senior military commanders have agreed to allow
remains of soldiers killed during their border conflict to be repatriated
for burial, the UN said on Tuesday. They agreed on Monday that the remains
of dead troops - who number 164 - should be removed from the 25-km buffer
zone between the two countries. Monday's agreement at the top-level
Military Coordination Commission, came three years after both sides agreed
to an initial ceasefire following two years of war: a final peace
agreement was concluded in December 2000. The two sides also guaranteed
the safety of boundary commission staff carrying out the demarcation of
their contested border - scheduled to start next month.
[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34813]

Meanwhile, seven people have been killed by newly laid landmines in 2003
in the border region of Eritrea and Ethiopia, the United Nations Mission
in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE), said on Thursday. Phil Lewis, who heads
UNMEE’s Mine Action Coordination Centre (MACC), added that close to 30
people were injured. On Sunday, an Eritrean militia truck hit a newly laid
anti-tank mine, injuring the driver. UNMEE deminers who carried out a
technical investigation into the incident, which occurred in the eastern
border region, reported that there was clear evidence it had been planted
very recently.
[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34873]
 
SOMALIA: First postwar medical college opens in Mogadishu
 
Somalia's first medical college in 12 years officially opened in the
capital, Mogadishu, on 15 June. The Benadir University Medical College is
to be funded by donations from Somali physicians and an annual fee of US
$1,500 per student, its rector, Dr Usman Adan Abdulle, told IRIN. Usman,
one of the most respected physicians in Somalia, said "the need for more
doctors became acute, and so we had to explore ways of getting more of
them into the health system". There is a general shortage of medical
practitioners in Somalia, because no new doctors have entered the
profession since 1990. At the same time, "former doctors left the country,
got old or simply died", he noted.
[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34793]
 
SOMALIA: Disagreement over number, selection of future parliamentarians
 
After days of bargaining, Somali groups meeting in the Mbagathi suburb of
Nairobi failed to reach agreement on the number and mode of selection of
the members of a future interim parliament, a source from the
Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) close to the talks told
IRIN on Tuesday. According to the source, the Somali Reconciliation and
Restoration Council (SRRC), a grouping of southern factions opposed to the
TNG, favours a parliament of 450 members including the 361 delegates to
the peace conference. The TNG and donors, on the other hand, reject the
figure of 450, and argue that the selection process should involve
traditional leaders.
[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34790]
 
In a statement issued on 13 June, the London-based rights group Amnesty
International (AI) called on the delegates attending the Mbagathi talks to
choose leaders who "will be fully committed to protecting human rights and
the rule of law during the difficult task of reconstructing the
disintegrated Somali state".
[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34786]
 
SUDAN-UGANDA: Khartoum denies backing Ugandan rebels

Sudan has strongly denied accusations, made on Monday by the Acholi
Religious Leaders’ Peace Initiative (ARLPI) in northern Uganda, that the
Sudanese army is continuing to arm the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebel
group. The Sudanese consul in Uganda, Hasan Yusuf Ngor, told IRIN the
accusations were "baseless". "It is mere propaganda by those with an
interest in derailing the peace process between the two governments," he
said. "When we took action to fight the LRA alongside Uganda, it was a
clear and strong commitment." A statement issued by the ARLPI leaders said
that since the second half of 2002, members of the Sudanese Armed Forces
had been delivering truckloads of arms, ammunition and other supplies to
the LRA. The accusation was based on testimonies from former LRA members
who had left the group, it said.
[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34850]

SUDAN: Charity intensifies search for missing abductees

A leading UK-based international children's charity said on Wednesday that
it had begun to intensify its efforts to search for thousands of civilians
abducted in southern Sudan since 1983 and taken to the north. Save the
Children said its representatives had this week met local leaders, the UN
Children's Fund (UNICEF) and other stakeholders in northern Bahr
al-Ghazal, to "discuss the best way" to trace, return and reunify the
civilians who were separated from their families in the course of
hostilities. The names of such people would be distributed to local
leaders for follow-up and further verification, additions or corrections,
it said in a statement. These names have been listed in "Ten Thousand
Names", a database released last month by the independent Rift Valley
Institute following an 18-month study. It contains the names of 11,105
people abducted between 1983 and 2002.
[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34832]
 
SUDAN: Government reviewing policy on GM food imports
 
The Sudanese government has guaranteed the World Food Programme (WFP) that
all food aid will be allowed in the country for the next six months,
pending a review of its policy on genetically modified (GM) foods. "The
government informed us verbally that it will review its policy on GM foods
over the next three months," a spokesman for WFP, Robin Lodge, told IRIN
on Tuesday. A number of food shipments held up in Port Sudan for over a
week due to concerns about GM food were released by Sudanese authorities
on Saturday 14 June. WFP, which sources and delivers most of Sudan's food
aid, had received a letter from the Sudanese Standards and Metrology
Organisation (a government body) in May outlining a ban on the import of
GM food.
[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34787]


[ENDS]

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