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HORN OF AFRICA
IRIN-HOA Weekly Round-Up 208
21 - 27 August 2004


CONTENTS:

ETHIOPIA: Malnutrition looming in Oromiya region - OCHA
SOMALIA: Swear in the remaining MPs, US urges
SOMALIA: Transitional parliament inaugurated in Nairobi
SUDAN: Joint mission reviews implementation of Darfur pledges
SUDAN: Rains disrupting road and rail transport in Darfur
SUDAN: Darfur peace talks make sluggish progress
SUDAN: Some progress on Darfur, but more needs to be done
SUDAN: EC gives =8020 m for Darfur as UN appeals for more funds


ETHIOPIA: Malnutrition looming in Oromiya region - OCHA

Ethiopia's south-central Oromiya region is threatened with rising
malnutrition levels, hunger, disease and water shortages as a result of
inadequate and erratic rainfall, the United Nations Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said. OCHA, in a report
issued on Monday, warned that a crisis would be inevitable unless more
seeds were made available to farmers, saying that its recent field mission
to the region had predicted a poor harvest of the main food crops - maize
and sorghum.

It said that little amounts of seeds had been provided to farmers too
late, and that serious shartages of water would follow if the dry spell
persisted. In mid-August, the Ethiopian government disaster prevention
commission warned that the number of people in need of food aid had risen
to more than 7.6 million as a result of crop failure and lack of pasture
following poor long rains earlier this year. More than 6.6 million people
in the Horn of Africa country were already dependent on food aid following
a prolonged drought that hit the region in 2002 and 2003. The needy would
now require nearly 500,000 mt of assorted foodstuffs between August and
December, the commission said.

[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=42821 ]


SOMALIA: Swear in the remaining MPs, US urges

A day after Somali leaders inaugurated a new parliament in the Kenyan
capital, Nairobi, the United States urged the participants in Somali
reconciliation talks to name the remainder of the 275 members of the
parliament who were not sworn into office. The US government said it was
encouraged by the swearing-in of most MPs, calling it an "important step
toward the re-establishment of effective governance and stability in
Somalia". But it expressed concern that some MPs had not yet been
selected.

"We urge the Somali participants to work in an inclusive manner to quickly
resolve the remaining differences blocking the swearing-in of the
remaining members," the US said in a statement. "After 13 years, the
possibility of re-establishing a government in Somalia may finally be on
the horizon. We call on all Somali participants to approach this process
with sustained commitment, honesty and goodwill," it added. Some 206
members of the Somali transitional parliament, including 16 women, took
the oath of office on Sunday. A total of 214 MPs were scheduled to be
sworn in, but eight were absent. [Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=42812 ]

SOMALIA: Transitional parliament inaugurated in Nairobi

Some 206 members of the Somali transitional federal parliament took the
oath of office on Sunday, paving the way for the formation of a government
in the Horn of Africa country that has been ravaged by factional violence
since 1991. A total of 214 MPs were scheduled to swear-in, but eight did
not make it to the ceremony held in the United Nations complex in the
Kenyan capital, Nairobi, officials said.

Sixty-one seats in the 275-member parliament were still vacant. Officials
said some subclans had not yet submitted their lists of representatives to
the regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) mediators,
because of disagreements on how to share the number of positions allocated
to them. Most of the subclans that are yet to submit their lists of MPs,
belong to the Darod group. "Some cases are still in dispute and we asking
them to expedite the process of selecting their representatives," Kenya's
regional cooperation minister John Koech, the new chairman of the IGAD
ministerial committee mediating the Somali peace talks, told IRIN.

[Full story at: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=42791 ]


SUDAN: Rains disrupting road and rail transport in Darfur

Torrential rains have seriously disrupted road and rail transport in the
western Sudanese region of Darfur, trapping food trucks in thick mud and
derailing a train carrying supplies, the United Nations World Food
Programme (WFP) said. WFP said planes it was using to drop food into areas
that were hard to reach, had also been delayed, in some cases, by 24
hours. Whenever it rained, the airstrip at El-Geneina, the capital of West
Darfur, became unsuitable for heavy aircraft and Antonov-12 planes had
been prevented from landing there before 2.00 pm (11.00 GMT), the agency
added.

"West Darfur is the worst affected by the heavy rains - big thunderstorms
that are pouring down on people living without proper shelter or
drainage," Peter Smerdon, WFP Information Officer told IRIN. "If this
continues, there could be a significant delay in delivering the food."
Smerdon said the rains had not only affected the delivery of food to towns
in West Darfur, but had also hampered delivery outside towns like
Al-Geneina. "Going to Mourni, for example, is a problem. During the dry
season we used to go through desert, but now we have to wade through mud,"
he told IRIN.

[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=42878 ]


SUDAN: Joint mission reviews implementation of Darfur pledges

A team of United Nations and Sudanese government officials arrived in the
western Sudanese Darfur region on Thursday to assess the implementation of
Khartoum's promises to restore calm in the area, officials said. The
three-day Joint Implementation Mechanism (JIM) mission is visiting Darfur
to review the implementation of a plan of action in which Khartoum
undertook to improve security and disarm militias accused of committing
atrocities against civilians. The mission, which includes the UN special
envoy to Sudan, Jan Pronk, and Sudan's Foreign Minister, Mustafa Osman
Ismail, will present its findings to the UN Security Council, which will
decide next week whether Sudan is making good on commitments to restore
security and disarm the militias responsible for killings and massive
displacement.

The Council had given Sudan until 30 August to show that it was making
tangible progress in addressing the Darfur crisis or face punitive
measures, including possible sanctions. In response, Sudan formulated the
action plan. On Thursday, Pronk and Ismail met with the Wali [governor] of
West Darfur State in the town of El-Geneina. He assured them that all was
calm after the deployment of more police and that there were no militias
harassing civilians in the area, a source close to the mission told IRIN.
[Full story at: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=42895 ]

SUDAN: Darfur peace talks make sluggish progress

Hit by power cuts and administrative hitches, the Darfur peace talks in
the Nigerian capital Abuja made slow progress on Thursday, a spokesman for
the African Union (AU) which is sponsoring the negotiations said.
Delegates at the talks circled around the first and least controversial
item on the agenda - humanitarian aid - before adjourning until Saturday,
he told IRIN by telephone.

Meanwhile rebel leaders back in Darfur warned of a rough ride ahead when
negotiations finally got round to the agenda's second item - security. The
Darfur conflict erupted 18 months ago when two rebel groups demanded a
better political and economic deal from the Sudanese government for the
arid western region. They accuse Khartoum of trying to clamp down on their
insurgency by employing a mounted Arab militia, known as the Janjawid, to
loot and burn black African villages.

[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=42892 ]


SUDAN: Some progress on Darfur, but more needs to be done

The Sudanese government has made some positive efforts to comply with
United Nations Security Council demands on Darfur, but the implementation
of steps to improve the situation in the troubled region, especially
security for internally displaced persons (IDPs), is still "mixed", the UN
said. "The clock is ticking," the UN Secretary-General's Special
Representative for Sudan, Jan Pronk, told a news conference in the
Sudanese capital, Khartoum, on Wednesday. "The first line of
responsibility is the government. Journalists should ask the government -
what are you going to do to help your own people?" he added.

The news conference was held ahead of a joint assessment mission from
26-29 August to Darfur by UN agencies, the government and other partners.
The mission will examine progress on a Darfur action plan that was agreed
with the government two weeks ago. Among other things, the plan requires
the Sudanese government to withdraw military personnel from IDP camps,
identify and reduce government-supported militias and increase the police
presence in the region, to protect the camps.

[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=42880 ]


SUDAN: EC gives E20 m for Darfur as UN appeals for more funds

The European Commission (EC) on Wednesday announced it had allocated
another E20 million (US $24.2 million) in humanitarian aid for people
affected by the crisis in the Darfur region of western Sudan. The aid
package would provide food and nutritional support, shelter, access to
clean water and sanitation, emergency health care and protection for
vulnerable civilians," the EC said at a news conference in the Sudanese
capital, Khartoum. It will be channeled through the EC's Humanitarian Aid
Office, ECHO.

The EC Commissioner for humanitarian aid and development, Poul Nielson,
said in a statement that the situation in Darfur was still extremely
worrying. "Continuing violence in the region has claimed the lives of
thousands of people, and is seriously hampering the delivery of
humanitarian aid," Nielson said. Peter Holdsworth of the ECHO-Nairobi
office, told reporters that fear, intimidation and harassment were still
continuing in Darfur, with 136 cases of rape reported in one IDP site
within a month. "Near Jebel Marra, a nine year old girl was still bleeding
after a rape," he said.

[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=42857]


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