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HORN OF AFRICA
IRIN-HOA Weekly Round-Up 294
10 - 16 September 2005


CONTENTS:

ERITREA-ETHIOPIA: Security Council extends UNMEE mandate
ETHIOPIA: UNICEF receives Sweden's donation for AIDS orphans
SOMALIA: HIV/AIDS commission launched in Somaliland
SOMALIA: UN envoy welcomes call for cabinet meeting in Mogadishu
SOMALIA: UNHCR head urges action against human trafficking
SUDAN: Food situation remains precarious in the south, WFP warns
SUDAN: Darfur risks descending into anarchy - observers
SUDAN: Three quarters of southern children without education - MDG report


ALSO SEE:

SUDAN: The long road to embracing peace at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=48999

HORN OF AFRICA: Polio vaccination campaign targets 34 million kids at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=49060


ERITREA-ETHIOPIA: Security Council extends UNMEE mandate

The UN Security Council extended the mandate of the UN Mission in
Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) on Tuesday until 15 March 2006, but
expressed concern over the high concentration of troops from both
parties near the border, over which the countries fought a two-year war.
According to the resolution, the Council "calls upon Ethiopia to accept
fully the decision of the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission and to
enable, without preconditions, the Commission to demarcate the border
completely and promptly."

Efforts by the international community to resolve the border dispute
between the two countries since the end of a bloody war in 2000 have so
far been fruitless. Under the terms of the 2000 Algiers Peace Agreement
that ended the fighting, both sides agreed to accept as binding a ruling
by an independent boundary commission on where the border should be.

[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=49062]


ETHIOPIA: UNICEF receives Sweden's donation for AIDS orphans

Sweden has donated nearly US $5 million to the UN children's agency
(UNICEF) to strengthen the organisation's capacity to deal with the
growing number of AIDS orphans in Ethiopia. UNICEF and its partners in
the Orphans and Vulnerable Children National Task Force had asked for
$11 million to implement the first phase of Ethiopia's National Plan of
Action for children who have been affected by HIV/AIDS. The programme
will address the needs of 56,000 orphans initially, the agency said in a
statement issued on Friday.

"Despite our modest initial goals, responses from donors towards the
plan of action have been poor," said Bjorn Ljungqvist, UNICEF's
representative in Ethiopia. "This Swedish contribution is the first
major contribution we have received since the plan was announced last
December. "In Ethiopia, this poor showing from the donor community has
meant that our response to HIV/AIDS, particularly with regard to
orphans, remains at very rudimentary levels," he added.

[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=49004]


SOMALIA: HIV/AIDS commission launched in Somaliland

Authorities in the self-declared republic of Somaliland, in northwestern
Somalia, launched a national HIV/AIDS commission on Thursday which will
plan and coordinate multisectoral efforts to curb the spread of the
pandemic in the region. The commission would also design strategies for
providing affordable and effective drugs to those living with HIV/AIDS.

"It's real that the HIV/AIDS epidemic is in the country and already
contributing to increased mortality, morbidity, fear, family
disintegration, orphans, stigma and discrimination in our society,"
Somaliland's President Dahir Riyale Kahin said during the launch of the
commission in Hargeysa, Somaliland's capital. "Denial of the disease
serves as a negative fuelling factor of the epidemic and creates an
environment of more stigma and discrimination in society," Kahin added.

[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=49098]


SOMALIA: UN envoy welcomes call for cabinet meeting in Mogadishu

The UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for Somalia, Francois
Lonseny Fall, welcomed on Thursday a decision by Prime Minister Ali
Mohammed Gedi to convene a meeting of the interim Somali cabinet in the
capital, Mogadishu. Fall took note of the fact that the meeting of the
Transitional Federal Government's (TFG) cabinet would be preceded by
consultations. Gedi's invitation to ministers to attend the Mogadishu
meeting was circulated at a gathering of representatives of the
international community in Nairobi on Wednesday.

"The international community welcomed the prime minister's initiative
and promised material support for it," a statement issued by the
Nairobi-based UN Political Office for Somalia, said. It did not say when
the cabinet meeting would be held. The invitation follows months of
international efforts to help foster dialogue to resolve differences
within Somalia's Transitional Federal Institutions (TFIs), including
disagreement over where the TFIs should be located.

[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=49083]


SOMALIA: The TFG wants the UN back

The Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of Somalia wants the UN to
return its staff to the town of Jowhar and continue its operations
there, following the temporary relocation of all UN international staff
from the town, a senior government official said. "There are no security
problems in Jowhar to warrant the removal of UN staff from the town. We
want to urge the UN to return and resume its operations," Muhammad Abdi
Hayir, the minister of information, announced on Tuesday.

There were no threats against the UN "and there are none now," Hayir
said. "We [the government] think the decision by the UN to remove its
staff from Jowhar was hasty and was not necessary." According to Sandra
Macharia, information officer for the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in
Somalia, the temporary relocations of the UN international staff was "a
precautionary measure due to the recent military movements in and around
the area."

[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=49043]


SOMALIA: UNHCR head urges action against human trafficking

The head of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) urged the international
community on Friday to take measures to stop desperate people being
smuggled out of Somalia to Yemen by unscrupulous traders. At least 150
people have died in dangerous boat journeys across the Gulf of Aden from
Somalia during the past three weeks, the agency announced on Friday.

Twenty-five people were reported dead on Friday off the coast of Yemen,
while at least 75 bodies washed ashore at the beginning of September
after smugglers on four boats carrying some 400 people forced the
passengers to jump overboard as they neared the coast. Another 39 people
were rescued from their drifting boat by a Danish ship on the night of 7
September, but one man died before he could receive proper medical
attention.

[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=49002]


SUDAN: Food situation remains precarious in the south, WFP warns

The food-security situation in south Sudan - particularly Northern Bahr
El Ghazal - remains fragile, as malnutrition rates during an already bad
hunger season seem to be further deteriorating and the prospects for the
next harvest look bleak, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) warned.
"Although we don't have the definite figures yet, anecdotal evidence
suggests that the numbers [of children admitted to supplementary feeding
centres] continued to grow in August," said Simon Crittle, WFP spokesman
for southern Sudan, on Thursday.

"Ideally, numbers level off towards the end of the hunger season in
August/September, but this year they seem to be going up," he added.
Statistics provided by NGOs working in Northern Bahr El Ghazal showed
that during the month of July more than 8,500 children at feeding
centres were malnourished, with 1,100 diagnosed as severely
malnourished.

[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=49079]


SUDAN: Darfur risks descending into anarchy - observers

Darfur risks sliding into a perpetual state of lawlessness even as the
Sudanese government and the main rebel groups in the war-torn region
discuss the possibility of peacefully resolving the conflict there,
observers have warned. Banditry and continuous attacks by armed groups
on humanitarian workers, Arab nomads and villages in Darfur have
increased significantly over the past weeks and threaten to destabilise
the fragile ceasefire in the volatile western Sudanese region.

"The month of September, so far, has not been a good month. There has
been quite an increase in both the number and the scale of attacks,"
Radhia Achouri, spokeswoman for the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS), said on
Tuesday. "Overall, there have been at least 10 serious attacks on
humanitarian workers in the past 30 days - for the purpose of looting -
particularly in West Darfur," Achouri added. "The situation in South
Darfur is not better."

[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=49063]


SUDAN: Three quarters of southern children without education - MDG
report

Seventy-five percent of the estimated 1.4 million children between the
ages of seven and 14 in southern Sudan do not have access to education,
according to the Sudan Millennium Development Goals Interim Unified
Report. "Access to schools is the single most important factor
responsible for the low enrolment rates," the report noted. The study, a
joint effort by various UN agencies, the Sudanese government, academia
and civil society, maintained that increasing the number of primary
schools and positioning them closer to villages was essential to
improving the situation.

Much more was needed, however, to reach the stated goal on education to
"ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will
be able to complete a full course of primary schooling." The interim
report -- based on a December 2004 assessment of Sudan's progress in
achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and launched on 4
September -- found that it was difficult to provide schooling in the
south given the dangerous environment caused by war.

[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=49044 ]


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


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