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

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e-mail: irin-wa@irin.ci


WEST AFRICA
IRIN-WA Weekly Roundup 100
24 - 30 November 2001


CONTENTS:

MANO RIVER UNION: UN SOS for vulnerable groups as instability continues
GUINEA: Parliamentary election postponed
NIGERIA: Gearing up for bandits and pirates
NIGERIA: Anti-polio campaign; cholera spreads
GHANA: France to increase support
GUINEA-BISSAU: New foreign minister
WEST AFRICA: FAO, ECOWAS sign US $558,000 assistance
TOGO: Amnesty calls for release of prisoners
NIGER: Organisation implements education initiative

MANO RIVER UNION: UN SOS for vulnerable groups as instability continues

As UN agencies appealed this week for some US $170 million for vulnerable
populations in West Africa - mainly Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia -
events on the ground came as a reminder that the struggle for peace had
not yet been won in the Mano River Union, the subregional grouping that
comprises the three countries.

In Liberia, fighting resumed after a weeks-long lull in the western
district of Gbarpolu, on the border with Sierra Leone. It forced thousands
of people to flee, including aid workers who had been vaccinating children
against polio in camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs).

Gbarpolu is just south of Lofa County, which has seen the bulk of periodic
fighting since 1998 between dissidents and pro-government forces. A
humanitarian source in Monrovia told IRIN on Friday that aid workers were
trying to maintain contact with IDPs in Gbarpolu to make sure basic
services were maintained.

Across the border in eastern Sierra Leone, a disarmament process that was
to have ended on 1 December was stalled this week in parts of the
diamond-mining district of Kenema and neighbouring Kailahun. The National
Committee for Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (NCDDR) said
on Thursday that about 4,000 pro-government militiamen had handed in their
weapons in the town of Kenema. However, in Tongo Field, a diamond-mining
area in Kenema District, Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels refused
to disarm. NCDDR head Francis Kaikai told IRIN illegal mining was
continuing in eastern Sierra Leone and that this could not be ruled out as
a factor in the RUF's reluctance to give up their arms. "They are mining
in Tongo very frantically," he said.

In Kailahun District, the RUF announced two weeks ago that it would stop
disarming because it was unhappy with the outcome of a consultative
conference at which Sierra Leone's political forces discussed elections to
be held in May 2002. RUF representatives also expressed dissatisfaction at
the time it was taking to register their movement as a party and the
continued detention of their leader, Foday Sankoh, arrested in May 2001
after his guards killed protesters outside his residence in Freetown.

A UN source told IRIN on Monday that the RUF had also raised concern over
the presence of Guinean soldiers stationed near Koindu town in Kailahun.
The area had been the scene of cross-border fighting between Guinean and
RUF forces between late 2000 and early 2001. However, Guinean authorities
have maintained that the troops are on Guinean territory.

Kenema and Kailahun are the last districts on Sierra Leone's disarmament
list. Elsewhere, formerly displaced people have begun to move back into
previously unsafe areas. In the northwestern district of Kambia, for
example, WFP and UNHCR are preparing to help about 7,500 former refugees
go back to their homes. They had been living in temporary camps after
returning from Guinea, where fighting along the borders with Liberia and
Sierra Leone displaced the refugees as well as Guineans between September
2000 and March 2001.

Some are still displaced. UN, NGO and Guinean officials are now assessing
the IDPs' needs and those of people affected by floods that battered other
parts of Guinea in September. The evaluation began on 28 November and is
scheduled to end on 22 December.

One-fifth of the 15 million people in the Mano River Union are displaced,
the UN said on Tuesday in its Consolidated Inter-Agency Appeal for 2002.
The area still needs the concerted engagement of the international
community if a humanitarian crisis is to be avoided, it said.

GUINEA: Parliamentary election postponed

Guinea's parliamentary election, which had been scheduled for 27 December,
has been postponed.  Minister of Territorial Administration Moussa Solano,
who made the announcement, cited logistical and political reasons for the
delay, a diplomatic source told IRIN on Friday. No new date has been set.
Solano said the postponement would allow for a revision of voters' lists
and the establishment of a supervisory body to be called the High Council
for Electoral Affairs. It would also enable the government to carry out
further consultations with opposition parties with a view to getting them
to change an earlier decision to boycott the polls, he said.

NIGERIA: Gearing up for bandits and pirates

Banditry on sea and land has prompted Nigeria to plan joint patrols with
three other African nations.

On Monday, police public relations officer Haz Iwendi said Nigeria and
Niger had agreed to start joint police patrols to combat cross-border
crime. He said a committee of police officers from the two countries had
been set up to work out funding, staffing and other modalities for
effectively policing their border.

A few months ago, similar patrols were begun along Nigeria's border with
Benin.

On the maritime front, Nigeria and South Africa have agreed to start joint
patrols to secure shipping on Africa's Atlantic coast against sea pirates
and terrorists, Nigeria's chief of naval staff, Vice Admiral Samuel
Afolayan, said on 23 November.

Afolayan said at a reception for the visiting chief of the South African
navy, Vice Admiral John Retief, that the two countries would next year
undertake joint military exercises, which in due course would include
joint naval exercises. He said South Africa would also give Nigeria
technical assistance in ship repairs and provide spare parts for its naval
fleet.

NIGERIA: Anti-polio campaign; cholera spreads

The third stage of a campaign to eradicate polio in Nigeria by 2005 tool
place this week in the capital, Abuja. During phases one and two, in June
and October of this year, over 28 million children were immunised, ThisDay
newspaper quoted the Minister of State for Health as saying. The
immunisation drive, whose third phase was scheduled to end on Friday, is
part of a campaign by governments, UNICEF, WHO and other partners, to
eradicate polio from West Africa.

Meanwhile, more than 100 people have died in a cholera outbreak that began
last week in the northern state of Jigawa, news organisations reported.
According to AFP, the Health Commissioner of Kano said on Wednesday that
at least 600 people had died of cholera in the northern state since last
month.

GHANA: France to increase support

Ghana is to become a major recipient of aid from France, having been
placed on a list of priority partners eligible for French development
assistance, French Ambassador Jean-Michel Berrit told a news conference in
the Ghanaian capital, Accra. He said French investment and trade with
Ghana would also increase, PANA reported.

Ghanaian President John Kufuor said in Paris on Friday that he was
counting "on France's support" for a bid to have Ghana's foreign debt
reduced in December under the Highly Indebted Poor Countries Initiative,
AFP reported. He was speaking at the start of a seven-day visit to France
at the invitation of his French counterpart Jacques Chirac.

GUINEA-BISSAU: New foreign minister

President Kumba Yala has appointed Malam Mane as Guinea-Bissau's new
foreign minister. The appointment was announced in a presidential decree
on Wednesday. Mane, previously secretary of state for international
cooperation, replaces Rosa Gomes, sacked while on an overseas mission. Her
sacking came just weeks after a series of other controversial dismissals,
including those of four Supreme Court judges and the Attorney General.

WEST AFRICA: FAO, ECOWAS sign US $558,000 assistance

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Economic Community
for West African States (ECOWAS) are to carry out a US-$558,000 project to
foster trade and promote food security by improving the collection,
dissemination and use of information in West Africa. Under an agreement
signed on Tuesday, FAO will provide US $395,000 for the two-year project
called 'Strengthening and Coordination of Information Systems on Food
Security, Vulnerability and Food Trade in West African Member States'.
ECOWAS will contribute the remaining US $163,000. The money will
contribute to the creation of a regional food security information system,
whose functions will include monitoring trade in agricultural products.

TOGO: Amnesty calls for release of prisoners

The human rights watchdog Amnesty International has called on Togolese
President Gnassingbe Eyadema to release two critics of his government,
opposition leader Yawovi Agboyibo and student leader Hounjo Mawudzuro.
Amnesty said their detention represented an ongoing pattern of human
rights violations in Togo over the past 30 years. Agboyibo, a past
president of Togo's bar association, is serving a six-month jail sentence
for libel. He was sentenced in August for accusing Prime Minister Mensan
Kodjo of association with suspected criminals when he was head of the Lome
port in 1998. Mawudzuro was jailed this month for saying that paramilitary
police had tortured him when they detained him in September.

NIGER: Organisation implements education initiative

Catholic Relief Services (CRS) in collaboration with local partners is
providing food for more than 800 children in two largely nomadic regions
of Niger under a programme aimed at sustaining and encouraging school
attendance, CRS reported. The programme is being implemented in the
northern area of Tchirozerine, populated by nomadic Tuareg, and in Bermo,
in the east, inhabited mainly by Fulani nomads.


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Email: IRIN-WA@irin.ci

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