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 114
09 - 15 March 2002


CONTENTS:

LIBERIA: Peace talks open in Abuja without LURD rebels
SIERRA LEONE: Election race begins
MANO RIVER UNION: Refugees return to Sierra Leone, flee Liberia
MANO RIVER UNION: UN official ends probe trip
NIGERIA: 40 die in southeast clashes over land
MAURITANIA-SENEGAL: Fish stocks in decline
GABON: Child trafficking workshop opens
THE GAMBIA: Human rights record poor, says US report
WEST AFRICA: Buruli ulcer infections increasing rapidly, says WHO

LIBERIA: Peace talks open in Abuja without LURD rebels

Representatives of Liberia's government, opposition parties and civil
society began talks on Friday in Abuja, Nigeria, aimed at preparing for a
national reconciliation conference. However, the rebel Liberians United
for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) was not represented.

The government of President Charles Taylor is represented at the meeting
by a 15-member delegation led by Minister of Agriculture Rowland
Massaquoi.

Also attending the talks, organised by the Economic Community of West
African States (ECOWAS), are former presidents Ruth Perry and Amos Sawyer,
leading politicians Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and Gabriel Bacchus-Mathews,
former rebel leader Alhaji Kromah and representatives of civil society.

Declaring the proceedings open, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo urged
the various groups to work to overcome their differences in the interest
of war-torn Liberia.

ECOWAS Executive Secretary Mohammed Ibn Chambas said that apart from
deciding modalities for the proposed national reconciliation conference -
tentatively set for July - the mandate of the meeting included "the
elaboration of the draft agenda which broadly includes security and
election issues". Rather than allow their differences to come in the way
of progress, Chambas said, Liberians should strive to attain unity in
diversity.

Taylor, in a message read by Massaquoi, said he planned to "seek help to
organise similar meetings in other countries like Ghana, Ivory Coast and
the United States where many of our citizens reside so that they can have
a chance to contribute".

But the absence of the LURD rebels, who took up arms against Taylor's
government in 2000, makes it virtually impossible to obtain the consensus
needed for a comprehensive peace package ahead of the reconciliation
conference. ECOWAS officials said the group was invited and was expected
to attend.

LURD spokesman Charles Bennie told IRIN earlier in the week they had
received the invitation late but would try to be in Abuja. However, he
added: "There is no way we will go to Monrovia for that (reconciliation)
meeting."

In a related development Taylor this week granted clemency to, and
released, 21 alleged supporters of a former rival warlord who had been
jailed after a shootout nearly four years ago with security forces in the
capital, Monrovia.

The 21 government officials and military officers had been arrested and
convicted of treason after former faction leader Roosevelt Johnson and
some of his supporters sought refuge in the US Embassy in Monrovia
following clashes with government forces in Monrovia in September 1998.
Johnson later left the country.

During Liberia's civil war (1989-1997), Johnson had led ULIMO-J, a faction
comprising mainly people from his Krahn ethnic group. The prisoners
released this week were also Krahn.

Taylor said that the release demonstrated his "commitment to true
reconciliation" following the civil war. However he warned that those
seeking to overthrow him "through the barrel of the gun" would not succeed
and refused to discuss a power-sharing option proposed last week by LURD.
He called on the LURD dissidents to lay down their arms.

Liberia's government has been calling on the UN to lift an embargo on arms
sales to Monrovia, saying that it needs to defend the country against the
dissidents. The Liberian government has also said that the embargo and
other sanctions should be lifted because, it claims, the reasons for which
they were imposed were no longer valid.

The sanctions, which include a ban on Liberian diamond sales and a travel
ban on senior government officials, were imposed by the UN Security
Council in a resolution passed in mid 2001 to force Liberia to stop
providing financial and military support to Sierra Leonean rebels.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan last week appointed a panel to verify
Liberia's compliance with the Security Council's resolution. Robert
Lormic, the public affairs officer at the Liberian Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, told IRIN on Monday that the government was "ready to cooperate
with the panel," and welcomed its appointment.

The four panellists, Atabou Bodian (Senegal), Johan Peleman (Belgium),
Harjit Singh Sandhu (India) and Alex Vines (United Kingdom) will compile
"a brief independent audit" of the government's adherence to the
resolution and report on their findings by 8 April.

SIERRA LEONE: Election race begins

President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah declared on 8 March that he would be
contesting the forthcoming presidential elections as leader of the ruling
Sierra Leone People's Party. He joins several other presidential hopefuls
including former prominent civil society activist, Zainab Bangura,
candidate for the Movement for Progress Party, and former military junta
leader, Johnny Paul Koroma, who ruled Sierra Leone between May 1997 and
February 1998.

It is not yet clear who will represent the Revolutionary United Front
Party, whose members were responsible for many of the atrocities carried
out during the recently ended, decade-long war. The party's interim
secretary-general, Pallo Bangura, said that the party would nominate its
jailed leader, Foday Sankoh.  He has been in detention for nearly two
years and was charged with murder and related offences on 4 March. The
charges Sankoh faces relate to an incident outside his house in May 2000,
when his bodyguards opened fire on demonstrators outside, killing at least
20 people. His trial, which opened briefly on Monday, has been adjourned
until 18 March to allow time for one of the defence lawyers to get a
license allowing him to practice law in Sierra Leone.

Also appearing in court on Monday were members of the former West Side
Boys militia who were charged with rape, murder and robbery. That case was
also adjourned until next week.

The closing date for nominations for parliamentary and presidential
candidates is 1600 GMT on 2 April, Walter Nichol, head of the National
Electoral Commission told IRIN on Friday.

Meanwhile Sierra Leonean police officers started a training-for-trainers
course on Monday in preparation for elections on 14 May, the UN Mission in
Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) reported. The course, run by UNAMSIL civilian
police officers (CIVPOL), will initially train 26 Sierra Leonean police
officers as instructors in areas including the new electoral laws, human
rghts violations and the role of the police during the electoral period.
On completion of the course, the graduates will, in turn, train more than
300 field training officers and field unit commanders. The training of all
police officers due to take up election duties is expected to be completed
by the first week of May, UNAMSIL said.

MANO RIVER UNION: Refugees return to Sierra Leone, flee Liberia

UNHCR this week continued repatriating Sierra Leonean refugees from Guinea
and Liberia, while helping Liberians forced from their country by
insecurity in February.

UNHCR reported on Tuesday that more than 6,400 Sierra Leoneans had
returned home from Liberia since mid-February on convoys organised by the
refugee agency. It said it had also ferried 2,023 spontaneous returnees
from the Sierra Leone-Liberia border to locations within Sierra Leone.

The UN agency said it was transporting an average 2,400 Sierra Leoneans
per week from refugee camps in Liberia to their home country. About 800
Sierra Leonean returnees, it said, were awaiting relocation in the border
town of Jendema, along with 2,000 Liberian refugees.

A total of 3,352 Liberians had already been transported from the border to
four settlements further inland that had originally been built for Sierra
Leonean returnees, it said.

In addition to the many Liberians who have sought refuge in Sierra Leone
and Guinea, about 35,000 others are among the more than 72,000 IDPs who,
according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
(OCHA) in Monrovia, live in 10 camps in Liberia.

Another 2,236 new arrivals from Liberia were registered in Cote d'Ivoire
between 1 January 2002 and 14 March 2002, a UNHCR source in Abidjan told
IRIN on Friday. Some of these may be among over 1,400 Liberian refugees
registered in Ghana so far, the source said.

MANO RIVER UNION: UN official ends probe trip

A senior UNHCR official who has been looking into allegations of sexual
exploitation of refugees by humanitarian workers in West Africa ended his
four-day trip to the region last weekend.

UNHCR Assistant High Commissioner, Kamel Morjane's mission to Guinea and
Sierra Leone came a week after the publication of a joint UNHCR-Save the
Children UK report, which claimed that refugee children in Guinea, Liberia
and Sierra Leone had suffered sexual abuse and exploitation at the hands
of aid workers and others, including UN peacekeepers.

The purpose of Morjane's trip, UNHCR said, was to get a first-hand view of
efforts planned or underway to strengthen the protection of young refugees
following publication of the report on 26 February. It also aimed to
review UNHCR's operations in Guinea and Sierra Leone regarding the
facilitated repatriation of Sierra Leonean refugees, UNHCR Sierra Leone
reported.

Meanwhile the Acting Force Commander of the United Nations Mission in
Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL), Maj. Gen. Martin Agwai, continued a sensitization
tour this week to UN peacekeepers deployed in northern Sierra Leone
following the publication of the UNHCR-Save the Children report.  He met
with local UNAMSIL commanders to discuss ways to prevent misconduct among
peacekeepers and to ensure strict adherence to the United Nations code of
conduct.

NIGERIA: 40 die in southeast clashes over land

At least 40 people died in clashes over ownership of agricultural land
that erupted last week between two communities in Nigeria's southeastern
Cross River State, Joseph Eze, a police spokesman, told journalists.

Speaking on 8 March at Calabar, the Cross River capital, Eze said the
fighting was between the Apiapum and Ufatura communities in the Obubra
local council. In addition to those killed, property worth some five
billion naira (US $43.8 million) was lost during the fighting.

Contingents of anti-riot police have since been deployed to the area to
maintain peace and the situation was reportedly under control.

Nigeria has been wracked by many incidents of communal clashes over
ethnic, religious or land disputes since President Olusegun Obasanjo was
elected in 1999 to end more than 15 years of military rule in the country
of 120 million people. Government officials have sometimes blamed the
disturbances, which have claimed several thousand lives, on former
military officers said to be undermining democracy.

MAURITANIA-SENEGAL: Fish stocks in decline

Fish catches on the West African coast have declined sharply and some
species have completely disappeared following over-fishing by foreign
fleets, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) reported on
Friday. In Mauritania, UNEP reported, catches of octopus fell by at least
50 percent in the last four years while local people employed in the
traditional octopus fishery dropped from 5,000 in 1996 to 1,800 in 2002.
At least 251 industrial, factory-style, foreign vessels from the European
Union, Japan and China, operate in Mauritania.

[The report can be found at
http://www.unep.ch/etu/etp/events/upcming/15March_fisheries.htm.]

Meanwhile Senegal and Mauritania signed a cooperation agreement on Monday
that covers fisheries research and training as well as the exploitation of
their fish resources. The agreement, signed at the end of talks in the
Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, stipulates that "fishermen established
temporarily or definitively in one of the two countries and operating in
the waters within the jurisdiction of that country, are allowed carry out
their activities in the same conditions as nationals," PANA reported.

GABON: Child trafficking workshop opens

A three-day workshop aimed at strengthening efforts to fight child
trafficking in West and Central Africa began on Wednesday in Libreville,
Gabon.

The Second Sub-Regional Consultation on Cross-Border Child Trafficking has
been organised by Gabon's government, the UN Children's Fund and the
International Labour Organisation. Its agenda includes reviewing regional
efforts since February 2000 when the first workshop was held, exchanging
information on national anti-trafficking strategies and discussing closer
regional cooperation. It is also a forum to encourage governments to
ratify international agreements that seek to protect children, especially
ILO conventions 138 (on the minimum age for employment) and 182, which
calls for immediate action to ban the worst forms of child labour.

Participants include legal experts, NGOs representatives, ministers and
security officials.

THE GAMBIA: Human rights record poor, says US report

The Gambia's human rights record in 2001 was poor and characterised by
widespread female genital mutilation, extrajudicial killings, harassment
of journalists, and limitations on freedom of speech, a United States
government report said on Monday.

Female genital mutilation (FGM) was legal and entrenched in the country's
culture, 'The Gambia Country Report on Human Rights Practices - 2001',
released by the US Bureau of Democracy and Human Rights, said. In 1999,
President Yahya Jammeh publicly stated that the government would not ban
FGM, and that the practise was part of the country's culture, according to
the report.

It noted that members of the country's security forces committed serious
human rights abuses, including several extrajudicial killings and
beatings, and harassed or otherwise mistreated journalists, detainees and
prisoners.

However it hailed Jammeh for lifting some restrictions on political party
activity, thereby creating a fairer political climate.

The full report is available on


Meanwhile the international Christian relief ocean vessel, Mercy Ship MV
Anastasis, is due to visit Gambia on 17 March for three months, The Daily
Observer newspaper quoted sources at the Department of State for Health as
saying. Mercy Ship is an organisation that uses ocean-going vessels to
bring "hope and healing" to the needy, by offering surgical and dental
care, doing relief and development work, and providing training in water,
sanitation projects and primary health care.

The ship has just spent four months in Sierra Leone.

WEST AFRICA: Buruli ulcer infections increasing rapidly, says WHO

Buruli ulcer disease is on the increase in several West African countries,
including Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d`Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, and
Nigeria, a World Health Organisation spokesman told IRIN on Tuesday.

Thousands of cases of the disease, which eats through skin, muscle and
bone, leaving victims disfigured, have been reported in recent years in
West Africa, Dick Thompson said. More than 50 percent of the cases occur
in children under 15 years of age.

In Cote d`Ivoire 15,000 cases have been reported since 1978, affecting
nearly 16 percent of people in some villages. In Ghana 6,000 cases were
found in a survey in 1999, affecting 22 percent of people in some
villages, while Benin has recorded 4,000 cases since 1989. These cases
were apparently an underestimate and WHO has noted a recent dramatic
increase in reported infections, Thompson said.

Although research into the disease has been hampered by poor funding,
Thompson said, a small group of experts started on Monday a four-day
meeting at WHO headquarters in Geneva to discuss some recent findings.

The disease is considered the third most common mycobacterial infection in
human beings after tuberculosis and leprosy, and is endemic in at least 31
countries in Africa, the Western Pacific, Asia and South America.


IRIN-WA
Tel: +225 22-40-4440
Fax: +225 22-41-9339
Email: IRIN-WA@irin.ci

[This Item is Delivered to 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.irinnews.org . 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 2002


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