Weekly Round-Up - IRINWA-192: 12-Sep-03
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 192
6 - 12 September 2003
CONTENTS:
LIBERIA: Peacekeepers fan out to rural Liberia
BURKINA FASO-COTE D'IVOIRE: Common border re-opens
SAHEL: Bumper harvest expected, but many people will still go hungry
SAHEL: WFP launches drive to get 6 million children into class
MALI: Anti-malaria vaccine trials start
GUINEA-BISSAU: President dismisses information minister
NIGERIA: Floods displace 80,000 in Kaduna
GAMBIA: Agricultural cooperation with Bangladesh
GHANA: 1,200 children sold by their parents returned home
LIBERIA: Peacekeepers fan out to rural Liberia
West African peacekeepers ventured outside the capital, Liberia, deploying
600 Guinea-Bissau troops in the volatile areas of central Liberia.
Thousands of displaced civilians, who fled renewed fighting between
government forces and rebels a week ago in the area, began returning to
their camps following the deployment in Bong County on Wednesday.
ECOMIL Spokesman Major Ogun Sanya told IRIN on Thursday that the
peacekeeping force had fully deployed along the road from Kakata, 45 km
north of Monrovia to Totota, 64 km further north.
Over 50,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) fled four large camps in
Totota, 109 km north of Monrovia, and moved southwards to Salala because
of fighting between the government and rebels of the Liberians United for
Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD).
Government fighters, who were encircled in Salala, 90 km north of
Monrovia, by rebel advances south and north of their positions looted
vehicles and drugs from Phebe, the only referral medical center operating
in central Liberia.
In Monrovia, UN agencies including the Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), World Food Programme (WFP), the UN Joint
Logistics Committee, UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and ECOMIL commenced
transporting 30,000 IDPs from schools to camps on the city's western
outskirts. Most of them took refuge in schools, churches and public
buildings during attacks by LURD rebels on city's western suburbs in
June-July.
Last week, the government gave a 15 September ultimatum to the displaced
in Monrovia to move out of the temporary shelters especially school
buildings, to allow the schools to reopen for the next school year which
runs from October-June.
With ECOMIL's mandate due to end in October, the United Nations Secretary
General's Special Representative to Liberia, Jacques Klein, told reporters
that he would ask the Security Council for 15,000 UN peacekeepers and 900
international police officers to help train and rebuild the Liberian
police force.
Meanwhile corpses of fighters killed in recent fighting were found in
water wells in the rebel-held southeastern port city of Buchanan, 120 km
from Monrovia, posing a public health threat, the World Health
Organization reported.
For IRIN coverage of Liberia go to:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?selectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=LIBERIA
BURKINA FASO-COTE D'IVOIRE: Common border re-opens
Cote d'Ivoire's strained relations with neighbouring Burkina Faso, took a
turn for the better with the re-opening of their common border on
Wednesday afternoon. The re-opening of the border, which was delayed
earlier this year pending the resolution of security concerns, followed a
visit by a Burkina Faso delegation to the Ivorian economic capital of
Abidjan on Tuesday.
Cote d'Ivoire closed its border with Burkina Faso on 19 September 2002 as
mutinous soldiers attempted to overthrow President Laurent Gbagbo's
government. A rebellion followed in which the mutinous soldiers seized
control of the northern and eastern parts of the country. Gbagbo accused
Burkina Faso officials of supporting the rebellion.
For IRIN coverage of the Cote d'Ivoire crisis go to:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountryCOTE_D_IVOIRE
SAHEL: Bumper harvest expected, but many people will still go hungry
Heavy rainfall across the Sahel should lead to bumper harvests throughout
the region this year from Senegal to Chad. But experts said that many
people are likely to go hungry and will still need food aid.
However, the overall picture in the drought-prone Sahel is much brighter
than it has been for a long time. Rains which began in June, have been
heavier than the average for the past 30 years. In some areas, such as
Matam in northeastern Senegal, they have been up to 50 percent heavier
than usual.
The Sahel only produces 80 to 85 percent of its food requirements and in
some countries the chronic deficit is much bigger. The arid Cape Verde
Islands, 450 km west of Senegal, rarely produce more than 13 percent of
the food needed to sustain their 300,000 inhabitants.
For the full story go to:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36534&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=BURKINA_FASO-CHAD-MALI-NIGER-SENEGAL
SAHEL: WFP launches drive to get 6 million children into class
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) on Tuesday launched a drive to get
nearly six million more children into school in the Sahel region, over the
next 12 years by extending its school meals programme and combining it
with other measures to improve child health.
Across the Sahel, only half the children of school age receive a basic
primary education and in Niger and Mali, only a third of children go to
school. WFP hopes to improve the situation by making free school meals
more widely available in the areas of greatest poverty. Girls will be
particularly targeted.
Manuel Aranda da Silva, WFP's regional director for West Africa, said: "It
is simple, cheap and it works."
That programme will cost about $24 million per year in its early years,
rising to $250 million in its final stages, when WFP will be relying on
donors for cash to buy 522,000 MT of food per year. Wherever possible,
this will be purchased from local farmers, so the school meals programme
should help stimulate the rural economy of West Africa too.
The school feeding programme will cover Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau,
Senegal, Gambia, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad.
For the full story go to:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36476&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=SENEGAL
MALI: Anti-malaria vaccine trials start
Medical experts begun testing a new anti-malaria vaccine in Mali, to
confirm the safety and effectiveness in adults of the vaccine called
FMP-1, which has already been successfully tested in Kenya and the United
States. Forty volunteers aged 18-55 would be enrolled for the experimental
phase. They would each receive three injections over two months.
For the full story go to:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36489&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=MALI
GUINEA-BISSAU: President dismisses information minister
Ahead of Guinea-Bissau's parliamentary elections due on 12 October,
President Kumba Yala on Monday dismissed the Minister of Information,
Juliano Fernandes. On Saturday, four journalists were also arrested after
their radio station broadcast comments from an opposition party. They were
later released.
Yala, who was elected President in 2000, has sacked many of his ministers.
His rule has been characterised by summary arrests, alleged coup plots,
dramatic policy switches and government attacks on both the judiciary and
the independent media. Agnello Ragalla, head of the independent radio
station Radio Bombolom, described Yala as "one of the most important
enemies of the freedom of the press in the country."
For IRIN coverage of Guinea-Bissau go to:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=GUINEA-BISSAU
NIGERIA: Floods displace 80,000 in Kaduna
Eighty thousand people in the northern Nigerian city of Kaduna were
displaced by flooding following torrential rains on Sunday that forced the
Kaduna River to burst its banks. Kaduna state governor's spokesman Murtala
Surajo said: "This sort of thing has not happened in the last 20 years. We
did not anticipate the scale of damage."
Kaduna, in which four million people live, is the political capital of the
mainly Muslim northern Nigeria. It has experienced religious riots several
times between the Muslims and other believers, since Nigeria returned to
civilian rule in 1999.
For the full story go to:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36459&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=NIGERIA
GAMBIA: Agricultural cooperation with Bangladesh
Thirty agricultural experts and technicians from Bangladesh are expected
in The Gambia over the next two to three years to work on small-scale
rural projects. The exchange programme is funded by the Islamic
Development Bank and supported by the UN Food and Agricultural
Organisation (FAO) under the South-South Cooperation Programme.
A similar agreement was signed in 1999 under which Bangladesh provided
appropriate technology, materials and equipment to improve rice
production, horticultural crops, small animal husbandry, fish farming, and
small scale water control technologies.
For the full story go to:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36436&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=GAMBIA
GHANA: 1,200 children sold by their parents returned home
Some 1,200 children who were sold by poor families on the coast of Ghana
to fishermen on Lake Volta were due to be returned to their parents in an
operation organised by the International Organisation of Migration (IOM).
Ernest Taylor, IOM project coordinator, said the 1,203 children being
reunited with their families represented a small fraction of the Ghanaian
children sold by their parents into virtual slavery.
"There are a lot more children out there who are still bonded in forced
labour, especially in fishing communities in the Northern Region," he told
IRIN. "The ones we are freeing come from only 12 communities that we
identified and visited before we started the project."
For the full story go to:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=36423&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=GHANA
MAURITANIA: 129 army men could face trial
The Mauritanian government is investigating the role of 129 people - all
from the country's military - in a failed coup d'etat in June.
In the aftermath of the coup d'etat, the authorities arrested tens of
civilians and military officers, including some officials of the ruling
party, it accused of conspiring in the coup to overthrow the government of
President Maaouya Sid Ahmed Ould Taya on 8-9 June. However over the
ensuing weeks, the government released many, including civilians and
Muslim clerics, as it found no credible against them. On Sunday, the state
prosecutor announced that 129, including senior ranking officers, were
still in custody and were being investigated.
They are accused of high treason and murder among other charges. No trial
date has been set yet.
Sources in Mauritania told IRIN that among this group, it is possible some
be release for lack of evidence. The state could request the death
penalty for those found guilty.
The Islamic nation of 2.5 million inhabitants is scheduled to head to the
polls on 7 November to elect the country's next president. Six candidates
have officially announced their intention to replace Taya, including Taya
himself.
For IRIN coverage of Mauritania please go to
http://www.irinnews.org/frontpage.asp?SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=Mauritania
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 2003
distributed by
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Center for International web: www.cidi.org
Disaster Information listserv: www.cidi.org/listsub.htm
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
West Africa www.cidi.org/humanitarian/irin/wafrica