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 110
09 - 15 February 2002


CONTENTS:

LIBERIA: Fighting continues, according to reports
SIERRA LEONE: Voter registration ends; repatriations from Liberia begin
TOGO: New electoral code draws criticism
CHAD: European Commission funds development programme
CHAD: Highest food harvest in five years expected
NIGERIA: Local Red Cross aids 20,000 IDPs
NIGERIA: UNDAC issues a report following Lagos explosions
NIGERIA: Boreholes to be sunk to stem disease
GUINEA-BISSAU: Government releases opposition leader
GHANA: Cocoa farming can empower women - study
WEST AFRICA: Blair ends four-nation visit


LIBERIA: Fighting continues, according to reports

Fighting continued in Liberia this week, with anti-government forces
attacking the town of Tubmanburg on Wednesday, forcing 1,000 people who
had sought refuge at a Roman Catholic mission there to flee, news
organisations reported.

There were conflicting reports over who carried out the attack on the
town, some 60 km north of the capital, Monrovia. Some reports blamed the
rebel group, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD).
However, the BBC said the identity of the attackers was unclear. Liberian
government officials could not be reached for comment.

Rebel activity, previously restricted to the north of the country, came to
within 47 km of Monrovia last week when LURD fighters were reported in
Klay Town. The government later said it had pushed back the dissidents to
over 96 km north of Monrovia. The British NGO, ActionAid, said this week
that one of its staff members, Togba Momoh, was killed in an ambush during
last week's upheavals. Two of his colleagues escaped unhurt.

There were separate appeals this week for an end to the fighting by the
secretaries-general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, and the
Organisation of African Unity, Amara Essy.

Last week's fighting triggered an exodus of thousands of internally
displaced people, villagers and refugees from the area, and was followed
by the declaration of a state of emergency by President Charles Taylor on
8 February. Taylor accused the international community on Thursday of
being part of a "conspiracy of silence" and called on it to help end the
two-year-old rebellion against his government, the Associated Press (AP)
reported.

Since declaring a state of emergency, the government has announced that
Liberians must now obtain exit visas to leave the country. A diplomat in
Monrovia told IRIN on Friday that Liberians were forming long queues
outside the Immigration Department. The diplomat said the "official
reason" the government gave for introducing the exit visas was to prevent
state officials from "spiriting away their friends and relatives" because
of the state of emergency.

Amnesty International (AI) said on Monday that the state of emergency was
being used as a justification by the security forces to abuse power and
commit human rights violations against civilians. It said around 39 young
men and boys "were reportedly rounded up" from churches around Monrovia on
Sunday (10 February), taken to a field, forced to sit with their shirts
tied together for several hours and told they had to fight with the army.

AP reported that police began raiding parts of Monrovia on Monday in
search of rebels. The news agency quoted Police Chief Paul Mulbah as
saying that 55 people were released on Tuesday after they were cleared of
any association with the rebels.

Another watchdog, Reporters sans Frontieres (RSF) urged the Liberian
authorities not to use the state of emergency as a "pretext to censor and
muzzle the independent press". RSF made the call on Wednesday in reaction
to the arrest of several journalists and the government's closure of
Analyst, a private newspaper, for publishing articles which, the state
claimed, were "not out for peace". RSF also called for the journalists'
immediate release.

RSF reported Mulbah as saying that several articles published by the paper
"poisoned the minds of the people". Since the imposition of the state of
emergency, the paper had printed articles with titles such as "Liberians
drowning in horrors" and "What rights and freedoms can the President
suspend?"

SIERRA LEONE: Voter registration ends; repatriations from Liberia begin

Over two million people are believed to have signed up to vote in upcoming
presidential and legislative elections in Sierra Leone, the head of the
country's National Electoral Commission (NEC), Walter Nicol, told IRIN on
Monday.

The target of the exercise, which ended on Sunday, had been to register
some 2.7 million people at about 4,910 centres, according to Nicol.
Special provision has been made for refugees who hold a UNHCR registration
card, allowing them to register "tentatively until a month before the
election - 15 April", he said. About 50,000 to 70,000 Sierra Leonean
refugees might be eligible to vote, he added.

Meanwhile, as part of efforts by the state to extend its authority across
the country, a police station rehabilitated by former fighters was opened
on Wednesday in Koidu, a former rebel stronghold in the east, the UN
Mission in Sierra Leone reported.

Elections are scheduled to take place on 14 May, just over four months
after President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah formally declared the end of a
decade-long civil war.

The war forced hundreds of thousands of people to seek refuge in
neighbouring countries, including Liberia, from where UNHCR began
repatriating Sierra Leoneans this week. The first group - 243 refugees -
arrived on Wednesday after a seven-hour trip from camps near the Liberian
capital, Monrovia, UNHCR reported.

There are more than 30,000 Sierra Leoneans in Liberia.

TOGO: New electoral code draws criticism

Changes to Togo's electoral code, approved by parliament on 8 February
ahead of legislative elections scheduled for next month, are aimed at
facilitating the holding of polls and the functioning of the country's
electoral commission, legislators said in a communique.

However, the changes have drawn a sharp reaction from the country's
opposition parties and the international community with the EU announcing
on Friday 8 February that it would suspend support to the electoral
process. France regretted the changes and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan
expressed concern.

The new code states, among other things, that the National Electoral
Commission (CENI - French acronym), responsible for organising and
overseeing all activities related to the 10 March polls, will be reduced
in size and future decisions by the CENI will no longer be taken by
consensus but by simple majority. It also says that presidential and
legislative candidates must be solely of Togolese nationality and those
with multiple nationalities will be obliged to relinquish the others. To
be eligible for the presidency, it adds, candidates must have resided in
Togo for a full year before the poll.

President Gnassingbe Eyadema's main opponent, Gilchrist Olympio, has lived
in exile for years, but the parliamentarians said all presidential
candidates should be able to respect the new criteria before the next
presidential election in July 2003.

Disagreement over a 1998 presidential election, which the opposition said
was rigged, led the country's main opposition parties to boycott
parliamentary polls in March 1999. A dialogue between the country's
political forces, facilitated by France, Germany, the European Union and
la Francophonie (the organisation of French-speaking countries), led to
the signing in July 1999 of a framework agreement that has paved the way
for the holding of the upcoming polls.

CHAD: European Commission funds development programme

The European Commission and the government of Chad signed a cooperation
agreement on Monday that will enable the West African nation to benefit
from European funds amounting to 202 million (US $176 million) over the
next five years, the EC said. The money, drawn from the European
Development Fund, will target various sectors, including poverty-reduction
programmes, roads and transportation, health, good governance, promotion
of democracy and civil society. The funds, which the EC says are
non-repayable, will cover programmes from 2002 to 2007.

CHAD: Highest food harvest in five years expected

The 2002 food outlook for Chad is good, due mainly to steady rainfall last
year, and grazing conditions are satisfactory, the Food Early Warning
System (FEWS) reported on Tuesday. It said that yields of the main cereal
in Chad, sorghum, were expected to be the highest in five years with at
least 140,600 mt expected at the end of the harvest season.

The full report, produced by FEWS and Chad's Office of Water Resources and
Meteorological Services can be found on http://www.fews.net/

NIGERIA: Local Red Cross aids 20,000 IDPs

The Nigerian Red Cross began distributing food aid on Thursday to more
than 20,000 people displaced by unrest in central Nigeria since last year,
the Red Cross said in a statement.

The displaced people live in camps in the central state of Benue, which is
populated mainly by the Tiv ethnic group. Some fled clashes in June 2001
between Tivs and Azeris in Nasarawa State (west of Benue). Others were
displaced by fighting between Tivs and Jukuns in Taraba State to the east.
Still others fled reprisal attacks by the military against Tiv communities
after 19 soldiers were killed by a Tiv militia.

The statement said that the food distribution, the fourth phase of relief
assistance to victims of last year's clashes, was being done in
collaboration with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red
Crescent Societies with financial assistance from the British Department
for International Development.

NIGERIA: UNDAC issues a report following Lagos explosions

A UN team issued a report on Thursday following its humanitarian and
environmental assessment mission to Nigeria's commercial capital, Lagos,
where explosions at a munitions depot in late January left over 1,000
people dead.

Based on the 31 January - 7 February assessment in Lagos and analysis of
in-country institutional capacity, the UN Disaster Assessment and
Coordination Team (UNDAC) recommended that in the short-term, the UN
country team should continue to monitor the humanitarian situation which,
it said, appeared to be largely under control. Other recommendations
included further support for displaced people, the expansion of the
current "exclusion zone" within the Ikeja military cantonment where there
was still a significant problem with unexploded ordnance (UXO), and
information and awareness campaigns, especially for children, about the
dangers of touching UXO.

Longer term recommendations included support to relevant federal and state
authorities to carry out environmental impact and structural damage
assessments, and to clear the site of the explosions. Long-term ordnance
issues in Nigeria also need to be addressed to prevent a similar incident
happening in the future, UNDAC said.

NIGERIA: Boreholes to be sunk to stem disease

Some 3,500 boreholes will be drilled this year to supply clean drinking
water to rural communities in southeastern Nigeria's Cross River State so
as to prevent an outbreak of Guinea worm and other water-borne diseases,
ThisDay newspaper reported on Tuesday.

One of the government's main objectives was to ensure that every community
had access to potable water so as to eradicate Guinea worm, the
Lagos-based daily reported the state's governor, Donald Duke, as saying.
Each borehole, Duke said, would serve 200 people.

GUINEA-BISSAU: Government releases opposition leader

Guinea-Bissau's authorities have released on bail the head of the
opposition Socialist Alliance of Guinea-Bissau, Fernando Gomes, who had
been detained since 2 February. Gomes was released on 8 February. The
goverment had accused him of misappropriating a donation of 50,000 euros
(about US $44,000) while he headed the country's human rights league, the
Portuguese news agency, Lusa, reported. Amnesty International had called
for Gomes' unconditional release, stating that neither the foreign donor
nor the league had complained about the alleged misappropriation.

GHANA: Cocoa farming can empower women - study

Cocoa farming in West Africa can empower women, reduce poverty and benefit
the environment, according to a study published recently by the
Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute. The report
was based on the results of a survey of farmers in villages in Western
Ghana which aimed to find out how cocoa benefits women, families,
communities and the environment.

One of the ways women benefit, the 'Land, Trees and Women' report
concludes, is through land acquisition, traditionally denied to women in
many parts of West Africa. Through a process known as "gifting," husbands
give their wives land rights to cocoa fields in exchange for labour during
the early stages of cocoa farming. The report added that when poor women
farmers grow cocoa, the whole family benefits as their increased income is
more likely to be used to meet the family's basic needs, including
nutrition, health care and education.

WEST AFRICA: Blair ends four-nation visit

British Prime Minister Tony Blair ended a four-day West African tour in
Senegal on Sunday saying there should be a strengthened partnership
between African countries and the world's richer countries to help Africa
achieve greater stability and economic advancement, news organisations
reported.

This partnership, he said, demanded that both sides carry out policy
reforms designed to reduce poverty in Africa and spur the continent's
development. The modern development concept, he said, was one that went
beyond the transfer of resources and embraced issues of trade and
investment, conflict, governance and the environment.

Blair also visited Ghana, Sierra Leone and Nigeria.


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