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HORN OF AFRICA
IRIN-HOA Weekly Round-Up 234
12 - 18 March 2005


CONTENTS:

ETHIOPIA-ERITREA: Security Council extends UNMEE mandate by six months
ETHIOPIA: Over 50 percent of children stunted - gov't report
ETHIOPIA: Nationwide HIV/AIDS hotline launched
SOMALIA: UN Security Council recommends Sanctions Committee visit
SOMALIA: IGAD to deploy peacekeepers despite opposition by faction
   leaders
SOMALIA: Arms continue to flow in despite embargo, say monitors
SUDAN: IDPs in Darfur to increase; prosecution of perpetrators
   discussed
SUDAN: Government urges political solution to Darfur crisis
SUDAN-ERITREA: Darfur rebel groups threaten not to resume peace talks


ALSO SEE:

SUDAN: Nothing in place yet for returnees at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46171

ETHIOPIA: Q/A with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on Africa Commission
report at: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46180


ETHIOPIA-ERITREA: Security Council extends UNMEE mandate by six months

The UN Security Council on Monday extended the mandate of the United
Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) until 15 September 2005,
and called on both countries to refrain from any threat of use of force
against each other. In a unanimous resolution, the Council urged the two
Horn of Africa states not to increase troop numbers in areas adjacent to
the Temporary Security Zone and to give serious consideration to
returning to the 16 December 2004 levels of deployment.

It stressed that Ethiopia and Eritrea had the primary responsibility for
the implementation of the 2000 Algiers peace agreement and the decision
of the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission. UNMEE, a 3,335-strong
peacekeeping force, monitors a buffer zone along the 1,000-km-long
border between the two countries. Eritrea and Ethiopia fought a two-year
bloody war sparked in 1998 by a border dispute. The war ended with a
ceasefire in 2000, but tensions have persisted because of a deadlock
over the decision by the international boundary commission to award the
town of Badme, previously under Ethiopian administration, to Eritrea.

[Full story
at: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46103]


ETHIOPIA: Over 50 percent of children stunted - gov't report

More than half of all Ethiopian children are stunted, according to a
government report on the state of the country's health released on
Thursday. One in 10 children were described as "wasted", and just under
half as underweight due to poor diet and malnutrition, in the report
issued by Ethiopia's health ministry. The figures also revealed that
Ethiopian babies were more likely to die before they reached the age of
five than in any other country in the world. Entitled 'Health and
Health-Related Indicators', the 60-page report detailed the massive gap
faced by Ethiopia in meeting global health and poverty reduction targets
for 2015.

Vivian Vansteirteghem, head of health and nutrition at the UN's Children
Fund (UNICEF), told IRIN on Thursday that the UN and the Ethiopian
government had launched a massive drive to tackle child health. She said
a government-led health programme, involving the training of 28,000
health workers over the next five years, was under way. The ministry,
she said, had developed a national strategy for child survival. It
included the promotion of breast-feeding, the prevention of illness
through immunisation programmes and the treatment of pneumonia,
diarrhoea and malaria. "These areas tackle the three main areas of child
mortality," she added.

[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46172]


ETHIOPIA: Nationwide HIV/AIDS hotline launched

A new HIV/AIDS hotline was launched in Ethiopia on Thursday, to provide
accurate information, counselling and free referrals to callers across
the country. "We are now receiving 1,800 calls on average every day
since the hotline became available nationwide on 10 March," Gashaw
Mengistu, the coordinator of the facility, told IRIN from the Ethiopian
capital, Addis Ababa. He said a campaign would be launched to promote
the hotline on radio and television, which would hopefully encourage
many more people to use the service.

Dubbed the "Wegen AIDS Talkline", the service will provide a range of
information, including the location of testing centres, ways to prevent
mother-to-child transmission and treatment options such as
antiretroviral therapy. The hotline is supported by the United States
and two Ethiopian bodies: the HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control Office
(HAPCO), and the Ethiopian Telecommunication Cooperation. Dialling 952
from any landline in the country will connect to the service, which has
been operating in the Addis Ababa region under a pilot scheme since
December 2004.

[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46102]


SOMALIA: UN Security Council recommends Sanctions Committee visit

The UN Security Council has recommended that its Sanctions Committee
visits Somalia to reinforce the Council's commitment to fully enforce
the arms embargo against the war-ravaged, Horn of Africa country. The
Council further recommended that the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan,
re-establish the group monitoring the Somalia arms embargo for a period
of six months, a press statement issued by the Council said on Tuesday.
The recommendations followed a report by the UN-appointed monitoring
group which said weapons had continued to enter Somalia despite the ban,
a trend, they said, that could undermine efforts to install a new
government in the country.

The report warned that there was a "seriously elevated level of threat
of possible violence" against the peaceful establishment of the
transitional federal government (TFG) if the violations continued. The
Council's Sanctions Committee was set up in 1992 to assist in the
effective implementation of the arms embargo imposed on Somalia in the
same year. The release urged the Committee to consider and recommend to
the Council ways "to improve implementation of and compliance with the
arms embargo, including ways to develop capacity of States in the region
to implement the embargo".

[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46127]


SOMALIA: IGAD to deploy peacekeepers despite opposition by faction
leaders

The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) plans to deploy
peacekeepers in Somalia next month, regardless of opposition by faction
leaders in the war-ravaged country, IGAD chairman and Ugandan president,
Yoweri Museveni, said on Monday. "We are going to deploy with or without
the support of the warlords," Museveni said, on the closing day of a
meeting of IGAD defence ministers in the central Ugandan town of
Entebbe.

"Why should the warlords for example reject Ethiopia and Kenya?" the
chairman questioned. "If the two countries go there, what will happen?
It is a shame for one of [the] ancient races in Africa to suffer for so
long, as the rest of Africa looks on." It was proposed at the meeting
that up to 10,000 peacekeepers, as part of the IGAD Peace Support
Mission to Somalia (IGASOM), be deployed from 30 April. The proposal,
however, has to be endorsed by the IGAD Council of Ministers before it
can be implemented. "What are we waiting for? You should work out the
deployment programme as soon as possible," Museveni told the defence
ministers.

[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46113]


SOMALIA: Arms continue to flow in despite embargo, say monitors

Weapons have continued to enter Somalia, despite a UN ban on the sale of
arms to the country, a team of monitors reported on Monday. The
UN-appointed team warned that violations of the embargo could undermine
efforts to install a new government in the country. "The Monitoring
Group learned that arms-embargo violations had continued to occur at a
brisk and alarming rate," the team said in its report to the UN Security
Council. It also provided the Council with a confidential list of those
who continued to violate the arms embargo, for possible future action.

The report described how the group had uncovered 34 individual arms
shipments, or violations of the arms embargo, between February 2004 and
the time of writing. In 1992, the UN imposed a weapons embargo on
Somalia, one year after the country's government collapsed. Serious
conflict ensued between various clan-based faction leaders and their
militias, who scrambled to claim power, resources and territory.
Monday's report said that arms shipments uncovered by the team ranged in
size, from individual weapons - such as a large, expensive anti-aircraft
guns - to ocean freight-containers carrying small arms, explosives,
ammunition, mines and anti-tank weapons.

[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46109]


SUDAN: IDPs in Darfur to increase; prosecution of perpetrators discussed

Unless a political settlement is soon reached on the conflict-ridden
western Sudanese region of Darfur, and humanitarian agencies are given
full freedom to operate, the number of internally displaced persons
(IDPs) could reach three million by the end of the year, a senior UN
official said on Wednesday. In May 2004, the UN Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs organised an operation to assist an
estimated one million IDPs, Jan Egeland, Under-Secretary-General for
Humanitarian Affairs and the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, told
journalists in Geneva.

However, that number was now fast approaching two million, and unless an
agreement was reached soon and humanitarian agencies were given full
access, it could reach three million by the end of 2005, Egeland warned.
He added that during his recent visit to Sudan, he had been shocked to
find that there had been a substantial shortfall in funding for
humanitarian relief in the crucial months following the historic
southern peace agreement, signed on 9 January by the Sudanese government
and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army.

[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46157]


SUDAN: Government urges political solution to Darfur crisis

The Sudanese government has reiterated its call for a political solution
to the crisis in the western region of Darfur, adding that the recently
signed peace agreement in the south had provided a framework for
settling the Darfur conflict peacefully. "In spite of exceptional and
unfavourable circumstance resulting from civil unrest in southern and
western Sudan, the Sudanese people have managed to lay a solid
foundation for a durable and lasting peace in the entire country," Ali
Yassin, Sudanese minister of justice, told the 61st session of the UN
Commission on Human Rights in Geneva on Monday.

Yassin, the official Sudan News Agency reported, said a new federal
system of government would provide "a real solution" to the conflict in
Darfur and ensure that states had their own constitutions, their own
elected state governors and their own elected legislative assemblies.
"As far as the crisis in Darfur is concerned, we believe that the
African Union [AU], United Nations and other sub-regional organisations
share our belief that the Comprehensive Peace Agreement provides a
framework for settling the crisis in Darfur," he added.

[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46132]


SUDAN-ERITREA: Darfur rebel groups threaten not to resume peace talks

The two main rebel groups in the conflict-affected western Sudanese
region of Darfur have said they will not resume talks with the Khartoum
government unless "war criminals" in the region are prosecuted. In a
statement issued from the Eritrean capital, Asmara, on Thursday, the
Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan Liberation
Movement/Army (SLM/A) said that justice was a precondition for peace in
Darfur. They also demanded the removal of African Union (AU) peace
monitors from Darfur, saying they were no longer "impartial". According
to the rebels, the UN, the European Union and Eritrea should conduct
monitoring activities.

"The two movements view the issue of trial of the perpetrators as the
foremost priority in resolving the conflict in Darfur, especially after
they have been named," the rebels said. "The two [have] resolved to
resume the negotiations only after the apprehension and trial of the
criminals in an international court or tribunal." However, the Sudanese
state minister for foreign affairs, Najib Al-Khair Abdul-Wahab,
described the demand by the JEM as "a maneuver and attempt to weaken the
African role". The minister, in a statement issued through the official
Sudanese News Agency, said, "the responsibility for the solution of
Darfur problems will be the task of Africa, adding that any attempt to
weaken that role is regarded as a violation of the African consensus".

[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46111]


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


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