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 109
02 - 08 February 2002


CONTENTS:

LIBERIA: Government declares state of emergency
WEST AFRICA: Blair says peace is key to African development
NIGERIA: Fears of reprisals in north following Lagos clashes
SIERRA LEONE: Voter registration extended by three days
SIERRA LEONE: UN appeals to international donors
BURKINA FASO: Amnesty calls for investigation into killings
GUINEA-BISSAU: Watchdog says rights defenders are being harassed
BENIN: Gendarmes seize Nigeria-bound ammunition
GABON: EU gives US $260,370 to fight Ebola
COTE D'IVOIRE: World Bank talks of closer collaboration

LIBERIA: Government declares state of emergency

Liberian President Charles Taylor declared a state of emergency with
immediate effect on Friday, Information Minister Reginald Goodridge said.
Speaking on CNN, Goodridge said the measure was taken because of "imminent
danger" in Liberia as a result of the activity of armed rebels.

On Thursday, shooting had been heard at Klay Junction, about 50 km north
of the capital, and internally displaced people (IDPs) fled the area, the
head of delegation of Medecins sans Frontieres-France in Monrovia,
Giuseppe Scollo, told IRIN on Friday. "We have no more access to the
area," he said.

The IDPs had moved south to Klay following a rebel attack nearly two weeks
ago near a temporary IDP camp at Sawmill, some 100 km north of Monrovia.
Scollo said there were around 10,000 IDPs at Klay a few days ago, but "we
have no idea how many there are now".

Goodridge claimed on Friday that "the dissidents have received sanctuary
and an unlimited supply of weapons in Guinea". Taylor has often accused
the Guinean government of harbouring dissidents on their territory, a
charge denied by Conakry.

Defence Minister Daniel Chea recently told reporters that government
forces were hard pressed to defeat the rebels because of an international
ban on weapon sales to Liberia, according to media reports. He was quoted
as saying that unless the embargo was lifted, the rebels could defeat the
army within one month.

There were media reports on Friday that some people were trying to leave
Monrovia. However, Goodridge said the legislature was operating normally,
while Scollo said it was business as usual in the city.

Women and children have borne the brunt of suffering in the war in
Liberia, which for long had been concentrated in the northern and
northwestern counties of Lofa and Gbarpolu. The Church World Service
(CWS), a US-based relief agency, has appealed for US $55,000 for a
programme to help displaced women and children who were sexually abused by
fighters.

The money would go towards basic emergency health care for rape victims,
material aid and small grants for income-generating activities, according
to CWS, the relief agency of the National Council of Churches of Christ in
the US. The organisation said its Liberian partner, Concerned Christian
Communities, had already started providing the target group with
psychosocial assistance, including craft training and seeds and tools.

[For more information see
http://www.cwserp.org/reportview.php3?entry=264 ]

WEST AFRICA: Blair says peace is key to African development

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who started a whistlestop tour of West
Africa this week, told a joint session of the Nigerian legislature on
Thursday that peace was the key to Africa's development.

During the first leg of his tour, Blair met with President Olusegun
Obasanjo on Thursday before addressing the Nigerian parliament on a
potential partnership between Africa and the international community to
rescue the continent from poverty. The prerequisite for development in
Africa is peace, Blair said, adding that since 1960, various violent
conflicts across the continent had resulted in the deaths of some eight
million Africans.

In an open letter to Blair ahead of his visit, the international watchdog
Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged him to speak out about Nigeria's declining
respect for human rights. HRW said the overall human rights picture in
Nigeria remained poor, accusing the government of continuing a policy of
brutal repression. It also highlighted the recurring violence between
ethnic or religious groups in several parts of the country since
Obasanjo's election in 1999 ended more than 15 years of military rule.

Blair, who was in Ghana on Friday, will visit Sierra Leone and Senegal
this weekend.

NIGERIA: Fears of reprisals in north following Lagos clashes

Relief organisations continued efforts on Friday to provide aid to victims
of recent ethnic clashes in Nigeria's commercial capital, Lagos, amid
fears of reprisal attacks in the north of the country, officials said.

About 100 people were killed in about four days of fighting, which broke
out on Saturday between Hausa-speakers from the north and members of the
local Yoruba ethnic group following a dispute between individuals. A
statement by the Nigerian Red Cross said 578 families (more than 2,000
people) displaced by the clashes had been registered. They were evacuated
to camps set up in the city by the Red Cross and the National Emergency
Management Agency.

In the northern city of Kano, where Hausas are in the majority, troops and
policemen patrolled the streets in anticipation of reprisal attacks
against Yorubas. Many people were reported to have taken refuge in police
and military barracks in the city.

Fears of imminent reprisal attacks heightened after the Arewa Consulative
Forum (ACF), a group of influential northern leaders, issued a statement
on Thursday accusing President Olusegun Obasanjo's government of not
making any significant effort to enforce a ban issued last year on the
Oodua People's Congress, a Yoruba militia accused of spearheading attacks
on northerners in southwest Nigeria.

The clashes came about a week after a disaster at a munitions dump, caused
by a fire and subsequent explosions. More than 1,000 people died as a
result of the disaster, most of them women and children who drowned in a
canal while fleeing the explosions. Many children were separated from
their families and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF)is working with the
Lagos State government and other humanitarian bodies to carry out a census
of those still missing.

A Nigerian Red Cross official told IRIN that some 200 children were still
unaccounted for according to the organisation's register of missing
persons. However it was unclear how many of these were really missing, the
official said, as many parents and guardians do not inform the Red Cross
when they find their relatives.

Earlier this week Lagos State Governor Bola Tinubu promised substantial
rewards for people who return children in their custody since the
explosions. UNICEF's spokesman in Nigeria, Batilloi Warritay, dismissed
recent press speculation that some missing children were being kept
against their will and could become victims of child trafficking gangs.

SIERRA LEONE: Voter registration extended by three days

Sierra Leone's National Electoral Commission (NEC) said on Wednesday that
it was extending voter registration by three days because of logistical
difficulties at the start of the exercise, the UN Mission in Sierra Leone
(UNAMSIL) reported.

The two-week exercise, scheduled to end on Thursday, will now end on
Sunday in response to "demands made by the public", UNAMSIL reported an
NEC statement as saying. The statement, signed by NEC Chairman Walter
Nichol, added that there would be no further extension.

Meanwhile an electoral information campaign targeting Sierra Leonean
refugees in Guinea was launched on Saturday, UNAMSIL reported. The
campaign, expected to last about a week, will extend to all refugee camps
in Guinea. It will focus on informing refugees about the peace and
election processes, including the registration of voters inside Sierra
Leone, the registration timetable for returning refugees and conditions
for voluntary returnees.

Presidential and legislative elections are slated to take place in Sierra
Leone on 14 May.

SIERRA LEONE: UN appeals to international donors

The Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General in Sierra Leone,
Oluyemi Adeniji, appealed on Monday to international donors for
humanitarian and development aid for the West African nation.

Addressing representatives from donor countries who began a week-long
fact-finding visit to Sierra Leone on Monday, he said Sierra Leone's
government needed help to restore its authority quickly across the
country. He also appealed for assistance for returning refugees, the
reintegration of former combatants, and displaced people.

The 22 donor representatives are from Canada, the European Community
Humanitarian Office, the European Union, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden,
Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. During their visit
they have looked at humanitarian and post-war recovery needs in Sierra
Leone, for which the United Nations launched a consolidated interagency
appeal of US $88.6 million in November 2001.

BURKINA FASO: Amnesty calls for investigation into killings

Amnesty International (AI) has called on the government of Burkina Faso to
investigate allegations made by the Burkina Faso Human and Peoples' Rights
Movement that security forces, in a crackdown against increasing
insecurity, have committed extrajudicial killings.

AI said the government "should immediately investigate" the movement's
claim that, in the past three months, 106 extrajudicial killings have
taken place. Amnesty called for an independent inquiry to find out who was
responsible and whether excessive force was used against presumed
criminals. According to AI, the bodies, which the government says are
those of bandits, have been found throughout the country, including the
capital, Ouagadougou.

Burkina Faso's security minister, Djibril Bassole, acknowledged on Monday
that security forces had killed scores of armed robbers in recent months
during an anti-banditry campaign launched in 2001. However, he said they
were killed in shootouts with the security forces. The secretary of state
for human rights, Monique Ilboudou, said the authorities would make sure
that the security forces' current campaign did not violate citizens
rights.

GUINEA-BISSAU: Watchdog says rights defenders are being harassed

Human rights advocates and opposition politicians in Guinea-Bissau are
facing "a sustained clampdown" on peaceful opposition and criticism of
government policy, Amnesty International reported on Monday.

Victims of the latest wave of government harassment, AI reported, include
the founder and former president of the Guinea-Bissau Human Rights League,
Fernando Gomes, and the league's vice-president, Joao Vaz Mane. Amnesty
said they were arrested and accused of misappropriating funds donated to
the league but neither the foreign donor nor the league had complained
about them. "There seems to be no evidence of wrongdoing," Amnesty
reported.

Gomes, who also leads the opposition Alianca Socialista da Guine
(Socialist Alliance of Guinea-Bissau), was arrested on 2 February and is
being held at the main police station in Bissau. Mane was arrested on 26
January, but was released on bail on 1 February.

[For full report visit
http://web.amnesty.org/web/news.nsf/thisweek?openview]

BENIN: Gendarmes seize Nigeria-bound ammunition

Benin's gendarmes recently seized 1,000 firearm cartridges from a vehicle
travelling from Burkina Faso to Nigeria, sources close to the national
gendarmerie reported.

The ammunition was confiscated on 31 January in an operation that led to
the arrest of the suspected mastermind of a network which supplies guns
and ammunition to criminals gangs, the sources said. The arms and
ammunition usually come from Burkina Faso, transit through the towns of
Cotonou and Porto Novo, Benin's commercial and administrative capitals
respectively, and continue on to Nigeria, they added.

GABON: EU gives US $260,370 to fight Ebola

The European Union has donated 300,000 euros (US $260,370) for the fight
against Ebola in northeastern Gabon, an official at the European
Commission's office in Libreville told IRIN on Wednesday.

He said Medecins Sans Frontieres-Belgique would use the money to care for
Ebola patients, train local staff in disease protection methods and help
the government take effective quarantine measures.

The current Ebola outbreak began in December 2001. It has affected mainly
the Mekambo area, some 600 km east of Libreville, and districts across the
border in neighbouring Republic of Congo. The World Health Organisation
said on Thursday that up to 5 February, the Gabonese Ministry of Health
had reported 49 confirmed cases, including 42 deaths. As at 1 February, 20
confirmed cases, including 12 deaths, had been reported in Congo.

COTE D'IVOIRE: World Bank talks of closer collaboration

The World Bank's Vice-President for the Africa Region, Callisto Madavo,
said this week that because of progress made on the political and
macroeconomic fronts in Cote d'Ivoire, "a window of opportunity had opened
up for strengthened collaboration with the Bank". Madavo, who ended a
five-day visit to Cote d'Ivoire on Tuesday, said donors needed to help
consolidate the present advances and meet remaining challenges.

On 31 January, Cote d'Ivoire cleared US $44.5 million in arrears it owed
to the institution. A day later, the bank announced the official
resumption of full economic cooperation between the two. The World Bank
suspended aid to Cote d'Ivoire following a 1999 military coup that toppled
then president Henri Konan Bedie.


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


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