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.ci


WEST AFRICA
IRIN-WA Weekly Roundup 87
25 - 31 August 2001


CONTENTS:

SIERRA LEONE: Disarmament quickens in the north
SIERRA LEONE: No elections until disarmament is completed
SIERRA LEONE: US $1.2 million for city cleaning project
SIERRA LEONE: Women need greater donor help - UN official says
SIERRA LEONE: Police arrest woman with suspected "blood diamonds"
SIERRA LEONE: Britain to halve its military training team
NIGERIA: Floods, religious clashes claim more lives
NIGERIA: More former ECOMOG peacekeepers released
NIGERIA: Oil rig hostages freed
NIGERIA: Drugs giant accused of rights violations
LIBERIA: NGOs denounce shortwave restriction
GUINEA: Medecins du Monde worried about abuses against refugees
GUINEA-BISSAU: Court rules expulsion of Ahmadiyya unconstitutional
CHAD: New cholera outbreak kills 16
COTE D'IVOIRE: Politicians incited ethnic conflict, HRW says
BURKINA FASO: Former refugee leader arrested
BENIN: US $5 million anti-poverty grant

SIERRA LEONE: Disarmament quickens in north

Disarmament has begun to pick up in Koinadugu, northern Sierra Leone,
after a slow start due to poor roads and a lack of transport, a
humanitarian source in Freetown told IRIN on Monday. The area is densely
forested and combatants have to travel long distances to disarmament
camps. The UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) has been providing
transport for them to reach the camps.

The peacekeeping force is made up of nationals of various countries, and
new contingents have been arriving in recent days.

A batch of Pakistani troops left Islamabad for Freetown on Tuesday,
according to Pakistan television. Their tasks will include improving roads
and tracks in the eastern mining district of Kono, where Pakistani army
engineers have already repaired 90 km of road. UNAMSIL Military spokesman
Major Mohammed Yerima told IRIN on Tuesday that the engineers were
rebuilding a 120-km road from the north central town of Magburaka to
Koidu, Kono's capital.

UNAMSIL also reported that acting UNAMSIL Force Commander Maj-Gen Martin
Agwai, paid a confidence-building visit to Tongo in the eastern district
of Kenema, on Wednesday ahead of the deployment of a Zambian battalion
(ZAMBATT 2) to the area. UNAMSIL said the Revolutionary United Front (RUF)
commander in Tongo told Agwai the security situation in the diamond-mining
area was calm and that his forces would allow UNAMSIL to deploy unhindered
since they were committed to the peace process.

Yerima said that with roughly 16,081 peacekeepers and observers, UNAMSIL
was close to its approved strength of 17,500. A Nepalese battalion is
expected to join UNAMSIL soon to help with the disarmament drive under
which 16,822 fighters have handed in their weapons since January.

Meanwhile, Sierra Leone Web, a US-based news service provider, has agreed
to host a web site for UNAMSIL to make first-hand information on a Truth
and Reconciliation Commission for Sierra Leone accessible from anywhere in
the world, UNAMSIL reported on Tuesday.

UNAMSIL launched a sensitisation drive about the proposed commission in
May, when it opened its first regional human rights office in the eastern
town of Kenema. Since then, UNAMSIL's Human Rights Section has organised
several sensitisation workshops involving ex-fighters, traditional
leaders, women's organisations and law enforcers.

The TRC web site can be accessed at: http://www.sierra-leone.org/trc.html

SIERRA LEONE: No elections until disarmament is completed

Elections cannot be held in Sierra Leone until the disarmament of pro- and
anti-government forces is completed, President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah
announced on 26 August.

The government has also rejected a demand by the Revolutionary United
Front and the opposition All People's Congress for an interim government
leading up to elections, saying it would be unconstitutional, state radio
reported.

Although no date has been set for the elections, national electoral
commissioner Walter Nicol told reporters in Freetown that preparations had
begun. The Commonwealth Secretariat in London has sent a team to Sierra
Leone, including legal and voter registration advisers, to help prepare
the poll, the BBC reported him as saying.

SIERRA LEONE: US $1.2 million for city cleaning project

The World Bank had approved US $1.2 million for six cleaning and
sanitation projects in Sierra Leone, the Sierra Leone News Agency reported
President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah as saying in the southern town of Bo. He said
four of the projects would be in Freetown, and the others in Bo and the
eastern town of Kenema.

SIERRA LEONE: Women need greater donor help - UN official says

Sierra Leonean women, particularly the internally displaced, need more
help from donors because their plight has been worsened by 10 years of
civil strife, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Radhika
Coomaraswamy, said on Tuesday.

Speaking at a news conference that capped a week-long visit to Sierra
Leone, she said women had been used as sex slaves, raped, drugged,
subjected to harmful traditional practices such as female genital
mutilation and forced into accepting discriminatory inheritance laws.

During her visit she heard testimonies from female victims of
psychological and physical atrocities perpetrated during the war, UNAMSIL
reported.

SIERRA LEONE: Police arrest woman with suspected "blood diamonds"

Police detectives acting on a tip-off arrested a woman in Freetown on
Tuesday and seized 179 stones suspected to be illegal diamonds at her
home, Inspector Khrushchev Kargbo told IRIN. "The stones have been sent to
the Gold and Diamond Office for investigation," he said on Wednesday.
Kargbo also said that in recent weeks police had arrested two Lebanese men
with stones suspected to be illegal diamonds.

SIERRA LEONE: Britain to halve its military training team

Britain will cut its 600-member military training force in Sierra Leone to
between 300 and 400 in September, news organisations reported a defence
source in London as saying on Wednesday.

According to Sierra Leone Web, the source told Reuters that the British
military was able to reduce its presence because the Sierra Leone
government had regained control of much more rebel-held territory.

After general elections tentatively scheduled for the first half of 2002,
the number of trainers is to be reduced to between 100 and 150.

NIGERIA: Floods, religious clashes claim more lives

Floods resulting from rains on 25-26 August that caused dams to overflow
in Kano State, northern Nigeria, killed more than 30 people and rendered
at least 10,000 homeless, local officials said on Thursday. Newspapers
said the final casualty toll was expected to be higher. Food security is
likely to be affected since large swathes of farmland have been flooded.

Northern Nigeria was also affected by communal strife this month,
including fighting last week between Christians and Muslims in the state
of Bauchi over plans by the state government to introduce Islamic law. A
witness said on Wednesday that at least 15 people died in the Bauchi
clashes.

NIGERIA: More former ECOMOG peacekeepers released

Fifteen out of 25 Nigerian soldiers convicted of mutiny in December 2000
were released last week, bringing to 17 the total number freed, AFP
reported on Wednesday. The soldiers had been wounded while serving with
ECOMOG, the West African peacekeeping force, in Sierra Leone and were sent
to Egypt for medical treatment. However, they claimed they were not given
adequate medical care and overseas allowances, staged a protest and were
court-martialled. They were sentenced to life imprisonment but their terms
were later reduced to between one and five years.

NIGERIA: Oil rig hostages freed

Militant youths in southeastern Nigeria released 99 local and foreign oil
workers they had held hostage since 23 August on an offshore oil rig, news
organisations reported this week. The rig, owned by Texas-based Transocean
Sedco Forex, was drilling on behalf of Royal/Dutch Shell, the BBC
reported.

NIGERIA: Drugs giant accused of rights violations

A new lawsuit filed against the US-based drugs giant Pfizer alleges that
it violated international law by testing an experimental drug on children
during a meningitis epidemic in northern Nigeria in 1996, news
organisations reported on Thursday.

The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday in a federal court in New York on behalf
of 30 Nigerian families, alleges that the world's largest pharmaceutical
company "exploited the chaos" caused by the epidemic in Kano and performed
risky drug trials on children, news organisations reported.

Some 200 children were subjected without their knowledge or consent to
clinical trials of a Pfizer antibiotic known as Trovan, the 'Washington
Post' revealed in December 2000 after an 11-month investigation. Eleven
children died during the test and others suffered injuries including brain
damage, paralysis and deafness. In response to the article a company
spokeswoman said the trial was "sound from medical, scientific, regulatory
and ethical standpoints," adding that it may have saved lives.

The families are seeking an unspecified amount in punitive damages and an
order barring Pfizer from conducting illegal experiments in the future.
They say that Pfizer violated UN human rights standards and the Nuremberg
Code of 1947, enacted in part to prevent the horrors of medical
experimentation performed during the Jewish Holocaust from ever happening
again.

LIBERIA: NGOs denounce shortwave restriction

Liberian non-governmental organisations denounced on Monday a decision by
President Charles Taylor not to allow any more shortwave stations, AFP
reported. Taylor announced on 23 August that he would only allow his
private Liberia Communications Network (LCN), the state-owned Liberia
Broadcasting System (LBS) and the religious station ELWA to operate on
short-wave. A humanitarian source told IRIN that LBS did not have a
transmitter and ELWA has only been carrying out "test transmissions", so
LCN is the only station operating frequently on shortwave. Liberia's Roman
Catholic church has filed a suit against the government for not allowing
its radio, Veritas, from broadcasting on shortwave, AFP reported.

GUINEA: Medecins du Monde worried about abuses against refugees

Medecins du Monde expressed concern on Tuesday about rights abuses in
Guinea's Forest Region. "It would appear that several human rights and
international humanitarian law problems are having dramatic consequences
for the refugees in Guinea, particularly for women," it said in its
newsletter.

It said the women were victims of systematic acts of violence by Sierra
Leone's Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels, accused of making
incursions into Guinea since late last year, and that abuses had also been
committed by Guinean authorities and civilians inside refugee camps.

Meanwhile, at least 120 people fleeing conflict in Liberia arrived
recently in Macenta, southeastern Guinean, UNHCR reported on 24 August.
They joined another 80,000 Liberian refugees, some of whom have been in
Guinea for the past decade. UNHCR reported that the new refugees fled when
fresh fighting broke out on 10 August in the northern Liberian county of
Lofa, between government and dissident forces. Guinean authorities in
Macenta detained "an unknown number" of the new arrivals, according to
UNHCR. The UN agency did not know why they were held but said able-bodied
males from Liberia were likely to be suspected of belonging to forces
hostile to the Guinean army. There has been tension for some time between
Guinea and Liberia, with each accusing the other of supporting armed
groups opposed to its government.

GUINEA-BISSAU: Court rules expulsion of Ahmadiyya unconstitutional

A court in Bissau has suspended a 20 August presidential order giving the
Ahmadiyya Islamic group 48 hours to leave Guinea-Bissau. The court upheld
an appeal by the group against the measure, which it termed
"unconstitutional" and a threat to religious freedom, the Portuguese news
agency, Lusa, reported on 24 August. President Kumba Yala had accused the
group of causing "serious misunderstandings" among Muslims and deported
its foreign members. Muslims make up about half of Guinea-Bissau's
population.

CHAD: New cholera outbreak kills 16

A new outbreak of cholera in the Chadian town of Gitte, 112 km north of
the capital, Njamena, has left 16 people dead while scores have been
hospitalised, the secretary-general of the Chadian Red Cross, Andreas
Koume, told IRIN on Tuesday. The deaths, which occurred from Thursday to
Tuesday, were among the 150 cases registered up to then in the town. The
Chadian Red Cross sent teams to chlorinate wells, and to advise the
population on personal and public hygiene. Markets in the area were
closed, while people suffering from vomiting and diarrhoea were told to
report to hospitals.

Cholera broke out in Chad in June. There were 1,954 cases registered in
the country up to Tuesday, including 72 deaths.

Humanitarian organisations reported that the outbreak had caused alarm in
the south, where heavy rains have caused floods. An MSF-Belgium doctor in
Chad, Francoise Wuillaume, told IRIN her organisation was taking
precautions against the possibility of an outbreak of flood-related
diseases, the most likely of which were diarrhoea and malaria. "Our
problem is that we don't have enough money," she said.

COTE D'IVOIRE: Politicians incited ethnic conflict, HRW says

Leading government officials in Cote d'Ivoire have deliberately encouraged
a culture of violent xenophobia that is threatening to destabilise the
country, Human Rights Watch (HRW) of New York reported on Tuesday.

In a new report titled 'The New Racism: The Political Manipulation of
Ethnicity in Cote d'Ivoire,' HRW describes atrocities committed during
presidential and parliamentary elections in October and December 2000
based on interviews with victims and witnesses. It reports more than 200
killings in the past year as well as incidents of torture, rape and
arbitrary detentions. Most of the victims came from the largely Muslim
north or were immigrants, it said.

A national committee mandated to investigate the events concluded in a
report submitted on Wednesday to Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo that 303
people died and 65 went missing in political upheavals between October
2000 and January 2001 while more than 1,546 were injured.

HRW published its report just a few days before the opening of the World
Conference against Racism in Durban on 31 August.

The HRW report can be found at: http:www.hrw.org/reports/2001/ivorycoast/

BURKINA FASO: Former refugee leader arrested

The chief of staff of Burkina Faso's gendarmerie, Colonel Mamadou Traore,
said on Saturday in Ouagadougou that his command would not allow any group
to destabilise neighbouring Mali. His statement came two days after
gendarmes arrested Alassane Ould Mohamed, leader of a group of Tuareg
living at a former refugee camp 200 km north of Ouagadougou. Mohamed's
wife told IRIN her husband had been arrested because of an interview he
gave to international media on 20 August. He had said that some 2,000
Tuareg had been abandoned by UNHCR since 1997, when the official
repatriation of Tuareg refugees ended, and would "take action" unless
UNHCR and Mali's government provided US $3 million for their return home.

BENIN: US $5 million anti-poverty grant

The West African Development Bank granted 3.8 billion francs CFA (US $5
million) to Benin on Tuesday as part of a poverty-reduction package
targeting the health, education and rural development sectors, the
organisation said in a statement. The money is to cover activities in
2001-2002.

Abidjan, 31 August 2001; 19:15 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 2001


distributed by
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Center for International Disaster Information
Volunteers in Technical Assistance
                                          web: www.cidi.org
                                     listserv: www.cidi.org/listsub.htm
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
West Africa                      www.cidi.org/humanitarian/irin/wafrica