U N I T E D N A T I O N S Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Integrated Regional Information Network for West Africa Tel: +225 22-40-4440 Fax: +225 22-41-9339 e-mail: irin-wa@irin.ciWEST AFRICA IRIN-WA Weekly Roundup 36 2 to 8 September 2000
CONTENTS: GUINEA: Fears of reprisals against refugees GUINEA: Efforts underway to free abducted missionaries GUINEA: Attack on border village reported from Liberia COTE D'IVOIRE: Hundreds of migrants displaced COTE D'IVOIRE-MALI: States agree to fight child trafficking SIERRA LEONE: Lassa fever isolation unit for Freetown SIERRA LEONE: WHO warns of yellow fever SIERRA LEONE: British paratroop liaison team arrives SIERRA LEONE: Human rights situation precarious SIERRA LEONE: Truth Commission still needed SIERRA LEONE: UN Security Council extends UNAMSIL's mandate SENEGAL: Government to step up security along border LIBERIA: President suspends defence minister LIBERIA: UN Money for female ex-combatants NIGERIA: Federal government threatens to use troops to halt oil vandals NIGER: Twenty-seven die of unknown disease GUINEA-BISSAU: Ruling PRS dismisses coalition partner TOGO: Ban on uncertified diamonds from Angola UNITED NATIONS: Annan calls for concrete steps on global problems UNITED NATIONS: Conference for war-affected children GUINEA: Fears of reprisals against refugees Humanitarian workers in Guinea said Friday that recent cross-border attacks from Liberia and Sierra Leone were endangering nearly 500,000 refugees from those two countries. After Wednesday's attack on the town of Pamalap, on the border of Sierra Leone, Guinean troops encircled a refugee camp about 13 km away to prevent retaliatory attacks by Guinean civilians, Chris Ache, the resident representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Conakry told IRIN. Suspected Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels killed at least 27 people in the raid on Pamalap, said Ache, who visited the village on Thursday. "All the shops are looted, some homes were burned down. It was completely deserted. Only the army was there," he said. Angry Guineans have stormed the Conakry homes of Liberians and Sierra Leoneans in search of weapons over the past week and authorities are trying to prevent demonstrations to call for the expulsion of the refugees. [For full story see separate item titled `GUINEA: Fears of reprisals against refugees'] GUINEA: Efforts underway to free abducted Italian missionaries The Roman Catholic Church in Sierra Leone is trying to secure the release of two Italian missionaries who were abducted by armed men who had crossed into Guinea from Sierra Leone on Wednesday, Bishop Giorgio Biguzzi told IRIN on Friday. Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels are suspected of kidnapping the reverends Franco Manganello, 62, and Vittorio Mosele, 64, in a pre-dawn attack on the town of Pamalap, about 100 km southeast of Guinea's capital, Conakry. An Italian layman, Giuseppe Giacomello, was with the Xaverian missionaries as gunfire approached the town. He left the house, despite warnings from the priests, and was immediately robbed by two gunmen. [for full story see item titled `GUINEA: Efforts underway to secure release of abducted Italian missionaries'] GUINEA: Attack on border village reported Guinea has accused armed men allegedly based in Liberia of attacking the village of Massadou, 25 km inside the border, and killing 47 people, according to news reports. Guinean soldiers were among the dead in the attack on 1 September. Thousands of refugees from Liberia and Sierra Leone are camped in Guinea. Guinea and Liberia have been trading accusations for more than a year about rebel incursions from across each other's borders. COTE D'IVOIRE: Hundreds of migrants displaced Hundreds of migrants from Burkina Faso were reluctant to return to their homes in Cote d'Ivoire on Thursday after fleeing, following a dispute with villagers. A source at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) told IRIN that about 1,500 people had been displaced from an area near the town of Grand Berebi, 417 km west of Abidjan. They displaced include people originally from other parts of Cote d'Ivoire, he said. An Ivorian Red Cross doctor and a logistics officer travelled to the area earlier this week, a source from that organisation said. The displacement was caused by a conflict over land rights that broke out a little more than a week ago between Burkinabe immigrants and Krus, the ethnic group indigenous to the area. Two Burkinabe and one Kru reportedly died and a village was burned. COTE D'IVOIRE-MALI: West African nations agree to fight child trafficking Mali and Cote d'Ivoire signed a bilateral cooperation agreement on 1 September to fight cross-border child trafficking, the first such deal in Africa, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) regional office in Abidjan reported. The agreement in February by West and Central African nations follows the adoption of a common plan, worked out at a conference in Libreville co-sponsored by UNICEF and the ILO, to end child trafficking and exploitation. SIERRA LEONE: Lassa death prompts new isolation unit for Freetown Freetown is to get a Lassa fever isolation unit following the death last week of another person with the disease, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Wednesday. WHO's disease prevention and control adviser, Dr. Abdul Rahman Wurie, said the unit would be sited at the Ministry of Health's Waterloo Clinic, a 32-km drive from Freetown. Sierra Leone has a Lassa Fever Treatment Centre in Kenema, set up in 1996 by the US Centers for Disease Control. WHO said the facility - now operated by the British health NGO, MERLIN - was the only specialist Lassa fever unit in Africa and the staff were among those worldwide with "the greatest experience" of treating the disease. Lassa fever is a highly infections rat-borne disease. It can be passed by direct person to person contact through bodily fluids such as the blood or saliva of an infected individual. WHO has suggested the following precautions: secure all food in rat-proof containers, keep living quarters clean and free of rubbish, wash hands frequently with soap in caring for a person with the disease, keep a cat in the house to discourage rats, and never touch a dead one. Symptoms range from mild to severe fever with fluctuating temperature, headaches, sore throat, cough, nausea, diarrhoea and vomiting, aching muscles, back, chest and abdomen. SIERRA LEONE: WHO warns of yellow fever Local health officials and World Health Organisation (WHO) representatives have begun action to prevent a yellow fever epidemic in neighbouring Liberia from spreading into Sierra Leone. WHO said its disease control experts and those from the Sierra Leone Ministry of Health were traveling to Kenema, Pujehun and Bo - the districts at risk - to train health workers in identifying and managing the mosquito-borne disease. This outbreak, first reported in Liberia's Grand Cape Mount county which borders on eastern Sierra Leone, now affects six of Liberia's 14 counties. WHO has sent 30,000 doses of vaccines to Sierra Leone in response to the threat, in addition to 150,000 doses it supplied last week to Liberia. SIERRA LEONE: British paratroop liaison team arrives A liaison team from the 1st Battalion of the British Army Parachute Regiment based in Colchester, England, has arrived in Freetown where discussions continue to free six soldiers of the Royal Irish Regiment and one Sierra Leonean officer abducted by renegade soldiers known as the West Side Boys, a British military spokesman in Freetown said. The official, Lt-Cmdr Tony Cramp, described the arrival of the "small liaison team" as "standard procedure", according to news reports. A British army information officer at the Permanent Joint Headquarters in Britain, told IRIN on Tuesday that some 150 paratroopers were on standby in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, some 880 km northwest of Freetown. He described the measure as "a sensible precautionary contingency plan". SIERRA LEONE: Human rights situation precarious The human rights situation in Sierra Leone has remained "precarious and unpredictable" since May when RUF fighters resumed hostilities with government forces, UNAMSIL reported in its `Human Rights Newsletter' for September. It said most of the new abuses were committed by the RUF but the West Side Boys were responsible for a fraction of the acts. There have been reported cases of summary executions, abductions, torture, rape, destruction of civilian property and the harassment of civilians which UNAMSIL continues to investigate. SIERRA LEONE: Truth Commission still needed Human rights groups in Sierra Leone continue to pursue the creation of a truth and reconciliation commission, despite the negative political climate since fighting resumed in May and the UN's creation of a special court to judge perpetrators of gross human rights abuses, UNAMSIL said. A national workshop has been tentatively scheduled for October to discuss the commission's role in the present charged political climate. At a forum they organised on 10 July, the NGOs called on the international community and Sierra Leoneans to revive the pre-preparatory stage of the establishment of the body. SIERRA LEONE: UN Security Council extends UNAMSIL's mandate The UN Security Council extended on Monday the mandate of the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone until 20 September, the world body said. In his sixth report to UNAMSIL, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan recommended a six-month extension of UNAMSIL's mandate, a troop strength of 20,500 and 260 military observers to enhance the body's effectiveness. SENEGAL: Government to step up security along border Prime Minister Moustapha Niasse announced on Wednesday additional measures to increase border security to stop armed groups from raiding Senegalese villages, according to news reports. Niasse's announcement came in a discussion with inhabitants of the Department of Kolda, in the south of the country. Last week the area bore the brunt of raids by unidentified armed groups who residents of the area said came from neighbouring Guinea-Bissau, `Le Soleil' of Dakar reported. Villagers are demanding the restitution of their cars, some 5,000 cattle and other possessions. Niasse promised his government would issue light four-wheeled drive vehicles to the army and gendarmerie to patrol the departments most affected by these raids: Ziguinchor, Kolda, Sedhiou and Velingara. Senegal reopened its frontier on Tuesday after a 10-day closure by youths from the Kolda region protesting the cross-border raids. LIBERIA: President suspends defence minister President Charles Taylor on Monday suspended his defence minister, Maj-Gen Daniel Chea, for insubordination and placed him under house arrest amid mounting tension over military activity on the country's border with Guinea. Chea was suspended indefinitely over "an administrative assignment that was not carried out", Information Minister Joe Mulbah told IRIN on Tuesday. Chea's Monrovia home is being guarded by members of the Anti-Terrorist Unit (ATU), which falls under the command of the Executive Mansion, the official home of the president. Anaylsts in Monrovia say if the suspension goes beyond an administrative sanction, it could signal a growing rift within the country's military. LIBERIA: UN Money for female ex-combatants Former female ex-fighters will now benefit from a US $20,000 grant from the United Nations Peace-Building Support Office in Liberia (UNOL) for projects aimed at giving them vocational skills in such areas as tailoring, basket making and computer literacy, a UN official told IRIN on Friday. The former fighters, ranging from 13 to 20 years old, have been asking for help to be reintegrated into society after a seven-year civil war. NIGERIA: Federal government threatens to use troops to halt oil vandals Federal troops will deploy in the Niger Delta if in two-weeks the state governments fail to stop arson attacks on oil pipelines in the oil-rich area, Vice-President Atiku Abubakar said, according to news reports. He handed down the ultimatum following a meeting with service chiefs, governors and representatives of oil-producing states, and oil sector officials, the 'Post Express' reported. The decision followed persistent attacks on pipelines that cost the federal government some US $43 million this year, Atiku's spokesman, Chris Mamam, told reporters in Abuja. When President Olusegun Obasanjo ordered federal troops into the oil town of Odi, Bayelsa State, in December 1999 to arrest the killers of 12 policemen, the soldiers unleashed a level of destruction that shocked the nation. NIGER: Twenty-seven die of unknown disease Health authorities reported 27 people dead from an unidentified disease that last week struck Ladara, a locale 600 km north of Niamey, PANA reported on Thursday, quoting state-owned radio. The disease is characterised by vomiting, diarrhoea, fever, swelling of the stomach, convulsion and coma it said. Health authorities have treated wells with chlorine and residents with tetracycline and Chloroquine. No new cases of the disease were reported four days after medical intervention. Authorities said 48 people had been treated and returned to their homes. Stool samples are being analysed in the capital, Niamey. GUINEA-BISSAU: Ruling PRS dismisses coalition partner President Kumba Yala of Guinea-Bissau has dismissed five cabinet members from the Resistencia da Guine Bissau-Movimento Bafata (RGB), the minority party in his ruling coalition, news organisations reported on Wednesday. A humanitarian source in Bissau told IRIN that "this presents a serious crisis in Bissau" since the government has lost the parliamentary majority it had while the RGB and Yala's Partido da Renovacao Social (PRS) were together. The PRS has just over one-third of the 102 seats in parliament, about half of whose members are either from the RGB or the former ruling Partido Africano da Independencia da Guine e Cabo Verde. According to RDP Antena I, a Portuguese radio station, the rift between the two parties was linked to a letter the RGB sent to Yala protesting the way the country was being governed. The crisis comes just two months before the government is scheduled to present its programme in parliament, the source said. TOGO: Ban on uncertified diamonds from Angola Togo has banned the sale and purchase on its territory of any Angolan diamonds not certified by the government in Luanda, a government source in Lome confirmed to IRIN on Monday. The ban was disclosed on 1 September by an inter-ministerial commission which Togo set up to deal with allegations that it had violated sanctions against the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) by trading in diamonds mined by the rebel group. UNITED NATIONS: Annan calls for concrete steps on global problems UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Tuesday challenged world leaders converging on the United Nations for the Millennium Summit to seize the occasion to renew the UN's mission and purpose. He also called on them to follow up on their political commitment with concrete steps in tackling extreme poverty, conflict and other crucial global problems, UN News reported. Speaking at a news conference at UN Headquarters, Annan described the 6-8 September summit, billed as the largest ever gathering of heads of state and government, as "a defining moment" for the world's leaders and the UN. UNITED NATIONS: Conference for war-affected children A conference that aims to get the international community to fulfil its commitments to protect children affected by war begins on Sunday in Winnipeg, Canada, UNICEF said. The eight-day event will examine how the international community will strengthen mechanisms for preventing the abuse of children during wartime and for making sure perpetrators do not go unpunished. An agenda and plan of action developed at the conference will be presented to the UN Special Session on Children scheduled for 2001, UNICEF said on Tuesday. Abidjan, 8 September 2000; 18:35 GMT [IRIN-WA: Tel: +225 22-40-4440; Fax (Admin): +225 22-40-4435; Fax (Editorial Desk): +225-22-41-9339; e-mail: irin-wa@irin.ci] [This item is delivered in the "africa-english" service of the UN's IRIN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations. For further information, free subscriptions, or to change your keywords, contact e-mail: irin@ocha.unon.org or Web: http://www.reliefweb.int/IRIN . If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Reposting by commercial sites requires written IRIN permission.] Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2000 distributed by - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Volunteers in Technical Assistance Disaster Information Center lists: www.vita.org/listsub.htm sitreps nat-dsr web: www.vita.org fireline - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - West Africa - http://www.vita.org/humanitarian/wafrica