U N I T E D   N A T I O N S
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HORN OF AFRICA
IRIN-HOA Weekly Round-Up 273
2 - 8 April 2005


CONTENTS:

ERITREA-ETHIOPIA: Stalemate could lead to war, Eritrean gov't says
ERITREA: Mortality rates decrease by 30 percent
ERITREA: Humanitarian situation worsening, UN says
ETHIOPIA: Child deaths and malnutrition at emergency levels in IDP camp
ETHIOPIA: Prime Minister promises Internet access for all
SOMALIA: War and tsunami force Somalis into slums
SOMALIA: Malnutrition over 20 percent, says UN agency
SOMALIA: New law brings elections closer in Somaliland
SUDAN: Beja people's problems exacerbated by rebels
SUDAN: UN envoy tours Darfur; ICC receives list of war-crimes suspects
SUDAN: Darfur war-crime suspects won't go to ICC, government says



ERITREA-ETHIOPIA: Stalemate could lead to war, Eritrean gov't says

The continuing stalemate between Ethiopia and Eritrea could lead to 
another war, a senior Eritrean government official said on Friday, 
noting that under international law, Ethiopia continued to occupy 
Eritrean territory. Under the Algiers Peace Agreement of December 2000 - 
which ended a two-year war between the two countries - they agreed to 
accept the decision of an independent boundary commission on where the 
border between them should be. But after the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary 
Commission (EEBC) presented its conclusions in April 2002, Ethiopia 
rejected the ruling.

In November last year, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi announced a 
five-point peace plan that said that it accepted the ruling "in 
principle" but insisted on dialogue first. Eritrea, on the other hand, 
insisted on full demarcation of the boundary as set out in the EEBC 
report. Efforts by the UN and international community to resolve the 
situation and demarcate the Ethiopia-Eritrea frontier have so far been 
unsuccessful. "What is clear is that the present scenario is not 
sustainable," said Yemane Ghebremeskel, director of the Eritrean Office 
of President, on Friday.

[Full story at: 
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46465]


ERITREA: Mortality rates decrease by 30 percent

Maternal, child and infant mortality rates in Eritrea have all fallen by 
about a third since 1995, mainly thanks to better healthcare for 
pregnant women, more immunisations and less malaria, a senior healthcare 
official said on Thursday. "In spite of the massive reduction, we are 
not very happy with it, and we need to work very hard to reduce it even 
more," said Zemui Alemu, director of the Family and Community Health 
Division at the Eritrean Ministry of Health. Alemu said that large 
numbers of home deliveries, lack of transport and obstetric knowledge, 
distance from health facilities and malnutrition were all factors that 
were keeping maternal mortality high.

A UN Children's Fund and World Health Organisation estimate in 2004 put 
maternal mortality in Eritrea at about 630 maternal deaths per 100,000 
live births. This compares with a 1995 figure of 998 maternal deaths per 
100,000 live births, from a Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) 
undertaken by Eritrean government departments and international 
partners, mainly funded by the US Agency for International Development.

[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46533]


ERITREA: Humanitarian situation worsening, UN says

A UN report released on Monday warned that the humanitarian situation in 
Eritrea was deteriorating, mainly due to recurrent drought and the 
protracted stalemate in the peace process with Ethiopia. Drought has 
caused "failed harvests, loss of livestock and food insecurity 
throughout all parts of the country - both rural and urban," according 
to the report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian 
Affairs (OCHA). Rains have failed for the fifth consecutive year, said 
the report, and recent surveys showed that pastures in Eritrea's three 
most fertile regions - Anseba, Gash Barka, and Debub - were at their 
driest since 1998.

Experts were quoted as saying that coping mechanisms were being worn 
down by the continued drought, and that the closure of Eritrea's borders 
with Ethiopia and Sudan had hindered the search for better farmland. 
Research in the report revealed that in four out of six administrative 
regions (zobas), acute malnutrition affected up to 15 percent of 
children under five.

[Full story at: 
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46478]


ETHIOPIA: Child deaths and malnutrition at emergency levels in IDP camp

Mortality and malnutrition rates among children at Hartishek, a former 
refugee camp in southeastern Ethiopia, are critically high, aid agencies 
warned on Wednesday. Save the Children UK (SCFUK) has called for 
immediate food distribution, medical support and proper sanitation at 
Hartishek, which was once the world's largest refugee camp, and home to 
thousands of Somalis. Hartishek now houses internally displaced persons 
(IDPs) from within Ethiopia. Humanitarian sources told IRIN that the 
IDPs - who are said to number 5,400 - say they have received no 
assistance for the last four months.

"The situation is critical and getting worse unless something is done 
promptly," SCFUK said in a report presented to the Ethiopian government, 
the UN and aid agencies at a meeting of the government's Emergency 
Nutrition Coordination Unit (ENCU) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital. 
According to accepted international guidelines, any under-five mortality 
rates that are above two per 10,000 children per day should be treated 
as an emergency. SCFUK said the figure in Hartishek has reached 4.87 per 
10,000 per day. Severe acute malnutrition of children under five years 
old has reached 5 percent - which is also an emergency level. [Full 
story at: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46531]


ETHIOPIA: Prime Minister promises Internet access for all

Ethiopia, one of the poorest nations on earth, will boost Internet 
coverage from a handful of users to the entire country in three years, 
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi announced on Tuesday. At an information 
technology (ICT) conference in the nation's capital, Addis Ababa, Meles 
said that high-tech information technology lay at the heart of 
transforming the impoverished country, where millions are dependent on 
foreign aid. "We are fully committed to ensuring that as many of our 
poor as possible have this weapon that they need to fight poverty at the 
earliest possible time," he said. "We plan to ensure universal access 
and Internet connectivity to all the tens of thousands of rural kebeles 
[districts] of our country over the next two to three years."

Currently there are just 30,000 Internet lines in a country of 71 
million people. Within six months that figure will be expanded to 
500,000. The government has begun laying 10,000 km of fibre optic 
cables, and has invested around US $40 million in developing its 
Internet service. Ethiopia has a rural population of 57 million, most of 
whom eke out an existence as subsistence farmers.

[Full story at: 
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46454]


SOMALIA: War and tsunami force Somalis into slums

Civil war and December's tsunami have inflicted mass devastation on 
Somalia's housing situation, a Somali government official said on 
Tuesday at the 20th Governing Council of the UN Human Settlements 
Programme (UN-HABITAT) in Nairobi, Kenya's capital. "Because of the 
frequent movements and internal displacements due to the civil war, 
certain areas of Somali cities are extremely overpopulated, while other 
areas are not populated at all, and have become ghost neighbourhoods," 
Qasim Hersi Farah, the permanent secretary in Somalia's ministry of 
environment, said during a plenary session.

"This has led to heavy garbage disposal everywhere, shortages of shelter 
[and] water, and the growing spread of communicable diseases," he added. 
Delegates from 58 UN member-countries are attending the five-day 
meeting, opened on Monday by Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki. The 
conference is expected to give new impetus to plans for meeting the UN's 
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), in particular target 11 of MDG 7 - 
improving the living conditions of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 
the year 2020.

[Full story at: 
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46502]


SOMALIA: Malnutrition over 20 percent, says UN agency

Somalia is continuing to experience food shortages, with some areas 
reporting malnutrition levels of more than 20 percent, according to the 
UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. In its March update on food 
security and nutrition in Somalia, the FAO's Food Security Analysis Unit 
(FSAU) noted that in the southern region of Juba Valley, more than a 
quarter of children screened were at risk of malnutrition. In the 
central region of Galgadud, levels of malnutrition were almost as high, 
at 24 percent.

"Limited services available for malnourished children in Somalia have 
forced families to travel long distances to Galkayo [central Somalia] in 
search of therapeutic care," the report stated. It also quoted an 
interagency tsunami assessment, which said that 22,000 people along the 
northeastern tsunami-affected coastline would need "sustained resource 
transfer over the next eight months". Elsewhere, "civil insecurity 
continues to disrupt pastoral and agro-pastoral livelihoods" in part of 
the western region of Bakool, according to the analysis unit. [Full 
story at: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46476]


SOMALIA: New law brings elections closer in Somaliland

The parliament of the self-declared independent republic of Somaliland, 
in northwest Somalia, passed a bill into law on Saturday that would pave 
the way for national elections. "All three political parties are in 
agreement over the bill," Ali Ilmi Gelle, Somaliland's deputy 
information minister, told IRIN on Tuesday. Saturday's bill was passed - 
by the lower house of parliament - despite serious disagreements between 
Somaliland President Dahir Riyale Kahin and parliament, with several 
legislators demanding a national census and the clear demarcation of 
regional borders before they would approve it.

The bill's endorsement, according to IRIN sources, is likely to quell 
discord over the date of the parliamentary election, originally slated 
for 29 March, but since postponed. "We have not yet set an official date 
for the election, but we expect it to be held sometime this year," Ilmi 
said. Observers have criticised the fact that polling booths will only 
be stationed in regional capitals, a move they say would deprive 
thousands of people living in the countryside of the right to vote.

[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46461]


SUDAN: Beja people's problems exacerbated by rebels

The Beja, a semi-nomadic group of people, who live in rebel-held areas 
of eastern Sudan need a huge amount of humanitarian assistance, a 
representative from the International Rescue Committee (IRC) said on 
Tuesday. Although Beja can be found throughout northeast Africa, tens of 
thousands are currently trapped in an area of eastern Sudan near the 
Eritrean border, held by Sudanese rebels since the late 1990s. Only two 
NGOs, both based in Eritrea, are able to access the 15,000 sq km area at 
the moment, one of which is the IRC. The organisation estimates the Beja 
population in the area to be between 45,000 and 186,000 people.

"It is the most under-served, most remote area that I have ever worked 
in, with huge humanitarian needs - even in basic issues of nutrition and 
safe water, up to more complex health and education needs," said Fergus 
Thomas, IRC programme coordinator for northeast Sudan. "The community 
have been left very much to themselves - for thousands of years, 
really," he said.

[Full story at: 
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46475]


SUDAN: UN envoy tours Darfur; ICC receives list of war-crimes suspects

The UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for Sudan, Jan Pronk, 
visited the western Sudanese region of Darfur on Monday and Tuesday - 
days after a UN Security Council resolution called for those implicated 
in the region's crimes to be tried by the International Criminal Court 
(ICC), a UN spokesman said. "Pronk is meeting with authorities, the AU 
[African Union], UN agencies and NGOs," George Somerwill, deputy 
spokesperson for the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS), told IRIN 
on Tuesday.

It was hoped that during his tour, Pronk would be able to explain to 
people on the ground how the three recent Council resolutions, intended 
to put pressure on Sudan to stop the crisis in Darfur, should be 
interpreted. "The central message is that the sanctions and the ICC 
resolution [of 31 March] do not apply to all Sudanese, but only to those 
who commit human-rights abuses," Somerwill said. On 29 March, the 
Council adopted a resolution that strengthened the arms embargo and 
imposed an asset freeze and travel ban on those deemed responsible for 
the atrocities in Darfur, or thought to be violating the ceasefire 
agreement.

[Full story at: 
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46457]


SUDAN: Darfur war-crime suspects won't go to ICC, government says

Sudan's government has firmly rejected a UN Security Council resolution 
calling for those accused of war crimes in the western Sudanese region 
of Darfur to be tried in the International Criminal Court, officials 
said on Sunday. According to the Sudanese news agency Suna, the 
country's Council of Ministers declared its "total rejection" of UN 
resolution 1593 - issued on Thursday 31 March - and said it lacked 
"justice and objectivity". Moreover, the resolution violated the 
principle of national sovereignty, and neglected the vision of the 
government and its efforts for realising peace and stability, the 
Council was quoted as saying.

Sudanese President Umar al-Bashir announced in a statement also on 
Sunday that his government would not hand over any Sudanese citizens to 
be tried outside the country. Sudan's own judiciary was qualified and 
ready to try those accused of any violations in Darfur, al-Bashir added. 
Muhammad Uthman al-Mirghani, leader of the National Democratic Alliance 
(NDA) - a coalition of opposition parties - also made a statement on 
Sunday, saying he did not agree with the prosecution of Sudanese 
nationals outside of Sudan.

[Full story at: 
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46436]


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Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 
2005


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