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HORN OF AFRICA
IRIN-HOA Weekly Round-up 182
28 February 2004 - 5 March 2004


CONTENTS:

SUDAN-CHAD: No chance of early return for Darfur refugees - UNHCR
SUDAN: One million at "imminent risk" in Darfur, says US government
SUDAN: Peace process threatened by exclusivity, says think-tank
ETHIOPIA-ERITREA: First postwar bilateral meeting of local commanders
ETHIOPIA: US ambassador calls for telecommunications and banking reforms 
ETHIOPIA: Calls for greater youth involvement in anti-AIDS fight
ETHIOPIA: Rights organisation condemns arrests of Oromo students
ETHIOPIA: Rural resettlement programme criticised
DJIBOUTI-SOMALIA: Refugees returning from Djibouti
SOMALIA: Faction leaders meet in Jowhar
SOMALIA: Hundreds of thousands threatened by drought


ALSO SEE:

HORN OF AFRICA: Urgent action needed on food security situation, say FEWS
NET at: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=39831

ETHIOPIA: Focus on street children rehabilitation project at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=39760

SUDAN-CHAD: No chance of early return for Darfur refugees - UNHCR

An estimated 110,000 refugees in western Sudan's region of Darfur will not
be going home any time soon, Ruud Lubbers, UN High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR) said. It could be "months and months" before they could
even begin to think of returning home, he said in Touloum, a UNHCR transit
centre for the refugees. "There's no immediate prospect for them to go
back now. UNHCR's role is to accommodate them in Chad until it is safe for
them to go back to Darfur."

Sebastien Apatita, the head of the UNHCR field office in the Chadian
border town of Adre, said "up to now we cannot even talk about returns, we
are still receiving people". Just 10 days ago, 10,000 refugees had arrived
from Western Darfur, where their villages were attacked and burned by the
Janjawid militias, he said. [Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=39843 ]


SUDAN: One million at "imminent risk" in Darfur, says US government

One million people are "at imminent risk of life and livelihood" in
Darfur, due to a lack of civil order and the "refusal of local and
national authorities to permit unrestricted access for humanitarian
workers", according to the US government.

A statement released on Tuesday said the US viewed the deepening
humanitarian crisis in Darfur with grave concern. Particularly threatening
were the actions of the "government-supported militias, known as the
Janjawid, who continue to attack and burn undefended villages, murdering
and raping the inhabitants and forcing survivors into desperate flight to
garrison towns" or neighbouring Chad, it said. [Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=39798 ]


SUDAN: Peace process threatened by exclusivity, says think-tank

The ongoing peace process between the government and the Sudan People's
Liberation Movement/Army is threatened by its almost total exclusivity,
necessitating a new approach from both the negotiating parties and
Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) mediators, the
Institute for Security Studies (ISS) said.

Whereas the first phase of the process had necessitated a narrow focus on
the two main belligerents, a second phase after the signing of a bilateral
peace agreement would need to radically change to involve the Sudanese
public, said ISS in a report entitled: "The Sudan IGAD Peace Process:
Signposts for the Way Forward".

So far, however, a number of key groups, including northern opposition
groups, southern militias and the National Democratic Alliance have been
excluded from the peace negotiations. The rebellion in Darfur is deemed by
observers to be a direct reaction to this exclusivity and fears that the
national cake is being divided up into only two slices. [Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=39810 ]


ETHIOPIA-ERITREA: First postwar bilateral meeting of local commanders

Ethiopia and Eritrea held their first-ever local military border talks on
Wednesday at a meeting set up by the UN to help defuse potential border
flashpoints. The talks were also the first occasion since the end of the
border war in 2000 on which local military commanders have met face to
face to discuss ways of resolving tensions.

The military officials met on the Mereb Bridge which links the two
countries, in an encounter which the UN hopes may boost confidence and
trust between the two countries.  [Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=39830 ]


ETHIOPIA: US ambassador calls for telecommunications and banking reforms

Ethiopia must "get trade going" and get rid of obstacles precluding
overseas businesses from investing in the country, the US ambassador urged
on Wednesday. Ambassador Aurelia Brazeal said reforms in the country's
telecommunications and the banking sectors were vital as a means of
stimulating foreign investment.

The ambassador - whose country is Ethiopia's primary aid donor - said
trade rather than aid would boost the country's development. "Trade is the
answer to help economic growth, not aid," she told journalists at a press
conference at the US embassy in the capital, Addis Ababa. "There is no
amount of aid that can be given to any country in the world that will get
it on a path of growth, so you have to look at the private sector and
trade," she said. [Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=39825 ]


ETHIOPIA: Calls for greater youth involvement in anti-AIDS fight

Ethiopia's youth were on Wednesday urged to join the fight against the
HIV/AIDS pandemic devastating the country. Bjorn Ljungvist, the head of
the UN Children Fund (UNICEF) in Ethiopia, said young people constituted
the "greatest hope" in combating the virus. His rallying call was voiced
during a conference convened at the UN Conference Centre in Addis Ababa to
discuss ways of boosting the role of young people and that of anti-AIDS
clubs springing up in the country.

"Much needs to be done with and by young people to strengthen their
capacity to make a difference," Ljungvist told the delegates. "Young
people are extremely vulnerable to HIV infection for many reasons," he
said, citing risky sexual behaviour, lack of information, and sexual
exploitation of girls. "But just as much as young people are at greatest
risk, they also offer the greatest hope and are a potential force to curb
the pandemic," he noted. [Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=39832 ]


ETHIOPIA: Rights organisation condemns arrests of Oromo students

Ethiopia's human rights group on Wednesday condemned the mass arrests and
physical abuse in January of hundreds of university students in Addis
Ababa. The Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO) said federal officers
had rounded up 349 students belonging to the Oromo ethnic group before
transporting them to a detention centre.

The students - members of the country's largest ethnic group - had then
been forced to march barefoot or on their knees along a gravel path for
several hours, EHRCO stated. "The illegal acts committed by the government
forces - entering into student dormitories, illegally arresting them and
inflicting physical and psychological punishments, instead of taking
suspects to a court of law - have to be condemned," it said. [Full story
at: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=39804 ]


ETHIOPIA: Rural resettlement programme criticised

Ethiopia's massive and controversial US $220 million resettlement drive
has been criticised as "complex, costly and, in the end, wasteful".

Desalegn Rahmato, head of the Ethiopian Forum for Social Studies, said
numerous resettlement plans had been tried and failed in Ethiopia.
"Resettlement programmes have been tried in this country under various
policy frameworks, but the result has been highly unsatisfactory," he said
on 27 February.

The three-year voluntary resettlement drive aims to move 2.2 million
people as part of a programme to end the country’s dependency on foreign
aid. Families are being moved within four regions from poor farming areas
to land believed to be fertile and productive. The government has said
that already harvests reaped by farmers resettled last year have
dramatically increased. It insists that the scheme must go ahead. [Full
story at: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=39757 ]


DJIBOUTI-SOMALIA: Refugees returning from Djibouti

Hundreds of Somali refugees returned from Djibouti to the self-declared
republic of Somaliland, northwestern Somalia, as convoys carrying
repatriates organised by the UNHCR began arriving in their homeland. In a
statement issued on Monday, UNHCR said some 220 refugees returned to
Somaliland on 27 February, bringing the number of returnees from Djibouti
since the middle of February to over 430. It said that "over the last 13
years, more than 867,000 Somali refugees have returned to their homeland,
including more than 467,000 on convoys and airlifts..."

The latest group of returnees left Djibouti's Holl-Holl and Ali Addeh
camps, and were met at the Lowya'ado border-crossing by Somaliland
authorities and UNHCR workers based in Hargeysa, the region's capital.
Each returnee family would receive nine months food rations from the UN
World Food Programme, "plus a repatriation grant of $40 per person, as
well as blankets, cooking sets sleeping mats tarpaulins and hygiene
supplies", said the statement.

Some 400,000 Somalis remain in exile, mainly in neighbouring countries,
according to the statement. The agency plans to repatriate 35,000 Somalis
this year, "while carefully measuring the pace of returns against the
country's strained absorption capacity", it said. [Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=39774 ]


SOMALIA: Hundreds of thousands threatened by drought

An estimated 200,000 pastoralists in Somalia's northern and central
regions are threatened by prolonged drought considered the worst in 30
years, a flash report by the EC- and USAID-funded FAO/FSAU - Food Security
Analysis Unit, and USAID-funded FEWS-NET warned. The report said the rains
that fell in the area were below average, leading to massive livestock
deaths, loss of normal income sources through milk and meat sales, sharp
price increases for water trucking, increasing indebtedness and for the
worst-affected populations, the inability to access food.

One of the worst-affected areas, the report added, was the Sool Plateau in
the north where the rain failed between October to December 2003. It said
64,000 people here faced a humanitarian emergency while 28,000 faced a
livelihood crisis.

"Other pastoral areas are now also facing extreme stress following recent
rain failures including the Todgheer area, the Lower Nugal area and the
Central area of Somalia... reports from Somalia and the borders of
Ethiopia are indicating that the number of migrants and the distances
travelled are highly unusual as pastoralists search for pasture and
water," the report said. According to the flash assessment, which was
issued on 25 February, between 20 and 80 percent of the livestock in these
regions had died during the years of drought. The flash report is
available at www.unsomalia.net or at www.fews.net


SOMALIA: Faction leaders meet in Jowhar

A group of faction leaders who abandoned the Somali peace talks currently
going on in Kenya on Thursday met in Jowhar, 90 km north of the capital,
Mogadishu, to discuss how "to save" the Nairobi talks, according to one of
the leaders.

The meeting, which reportedly brought together over 120 people, was
attended, among others, by Muhammad Habeb, the self-styled governor of
Jowhar; Shaykh Adan Madobe, the leader of a Rahanweyn Resistance Army
faction; Gen Muhammad Sa'id Hirsi Morgan; and Ambassador Abdullahi Shaykh
Isma'il.

Madobe, who is the group's spokesman, told IRIN on Thursday that the
purpose of the meeting was to find ways of "salvaging" the talks being
held at Mbagathi in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, under the auspices of
IGAD. He denied that his group was holding parallel talks, saying they
only wanted "to discuss what we can do to rectify mistakes and problems
with the peace conference, which forced some of us to leave it". [Full
story at: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=39838]


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Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2004


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