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

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e-mail: irin-wa@irin.ci


WEST AFRICA
IRIN-WA Weekly Roundup 224
1 - 7 May 2004


CONTENTS:

LIBERIA: Recruitment of new police force
NIGERIA: Death toll in Plateau State tops 600
NIGERIA: New HIV prevalence figure lower than in 2001
GHANA: 29,000 targeted for HIV therapy
THE GAMBIA: Rising poverty breeds sexual exploitation of children
COTE D'IVOIRE: RFI leaks UN rights report
CHAD-SUDAN: WFP launches fresh aid appeal for Darfur refugees


LIBERIA: Recruitment of new police force

The Liberian government and the United Nations launched a drive on
Wednesday to recruit and train a new police force, whose 3,500 officers,
would be untainted by accusations of human rights abuse or atrocities
committed during the country's 14-year old civil war.

However former combatants and officers of the existing and widely
discredited police force would not be automatically excluded, according to
the head of the UN civilian police force, Mark Kroeker. He added that the
first of recruits would begin a 10-month training programme- three months
training, six months of in-field training and one final month of training-
before a final certification into the new police. Kroeker gave assurance
that about 1800-1900 members of the new force would be ready for duty in
time for presidential and legislative elections in October 2005.

The Liberian police force, which served under now exile president Charles
Taylor, was estimated to be around 3,000-4,000 strong. However it was
constantly accused of rights abuses and disrespect for the law.

The head of the UN refugee agency UNHCR, Ruud Lubbers, concluded this week
a visit to Liberia where he reiterated that his agency would only resettle
Liberian refugees in neighouring once security was guaranteed throughout
the war-torn country.

Lubbers' statement came as he visited displaced people's camps near the
capital Monrovia where internally displaced people and returnees begged
him for help to resettle in their homes and villages.

UNHCR is planning to launch an official resettlement programme that would
begin in October for 350,000 Liberians living throughout West Africa. The
UN agency announced last week that 50,000 Liberians had returned home on
their own means from Guinea and Sierra Leone since August 2003, when a
peace agreement was signed in Accra to end the civil war.

Lubbers also said that he would seek the repatriation of foreign
combatants who fought in the war, most of whom were from Sierra Leone,
Guinea and Cote d'Ivoire.  He said he would promote meetings between
UNHCR and the three governments to discuss the repatriation of these
foreign combatants, some of who have already handed in their guns as part
of the ongoing DDR programme.


NIGERIA: Death toll in Plateau State tops 600

More than 600 people were killed when militiamen from a mainly Christian
ethnic group attacked Muslims in a small town in central Nigeria last
weekend, Umar Mairiga, a Red Cross official said Friday.

On Thursday, Mairiga led the first team of Red Cross officials into Yelwa,
220 km east of the capital Abuja, to assess the situation. He told
reporters afterwards that he was shown a mass grave where more than 250
people were said to have been buried. Mairiga said he had heard accounts
from survivors indicating that several hundred people had been killed.

A heavily armed group of militiamen from the mainly Christian Tarok ethnic
group raided the small town of Yelwa in Plateau state on Sunday in
reprisal for an earlier Muslim attack on their own community. Their
victims were mainly members of the Hausa and Fulani tribes.

According to Mairiga, an unknown number of people, mostly women and
children, were abducted in the attack by young Tarok men armed with guns
and machetes.

The Red Cross has distributed tents, plastic plates and buckets as well as
food rations to those made homeless by the attack.

More than 1,000 people are believed to have died in successive bouts of
inter-communal violence in Plateau state so far this year.


NIGERIA: New HIV prevalence figure lower than in 2001

The percentage of Nigeria's population infected with the HIV virus fell
from its 2001 figure of 5.8 percent, according to a government survey of
pregnant women tested in ante-natal clinics. The survey concluded that
5.0% of Nigeria's estimated population of 126 million was infected with
the HIV virus in 2003.

However, the sentinel survey conducted by the Ministry of Health showed
that the AIDS epidemic was continuing to grow in some regions of the
country. It also predicted that the number of Nigerians infected with the
virus that causes AIDS would rise sharply over the next five years.

The survey's results were published last week, ahead of a national
HIV/AIDS conference.

The report showed clearly that AIDS is very much a national problem.
Thirteen states showed a prevalence rate of more than five percent and
these were scattered throughout the country. Many rural areas had above
average prevalence rates, along with the Federal Capital Territory around
Abuja. Cross River State, an oil-rich, but heavily forested territory in
the southeastern corner of Nigeria, had the highest prevalence rate of
12%. Osun State in the southwest, which contains many large towns, had the
lowest rate of 1.2%.

The survey, which is intended to be a guideline and cannot be considered
conclusive, predicted that by 2008, there would be a cumulative death toll
from AIDS in Nigeria of 3.6 to 4.2 million.

However a Nigerian government pilot programme to provide subsidized
antiretroviral (ARV) treatment for people living with AIDS is inadequate
and under threat from delayed funding and poor organization, AIDS
activists said on Wednesday.  The programme aims to provide cheap ARV
treatment for 10,000 adults and 5,000 children


GHANA: 29,000 targeted for HIV therapy

The World Health Organization (WHO) has said it wants to place 29,000
Ghanaians living with AIDS on anti-retroviral therapy by 2005 under its
global "three by five" initiative. At present, only about 1,000 people
receive anti-retroviral therapy at four major hospitals, where the drugs
administered are heavily subsidized by government.

"In Ghana, placing 29,000 people on anti-retrovirals under the three by
five initiative amounts to 50% coverage of people currently living with
HIV/AIDS," Napoleon Graham of Ghana's WHO office told IRIN.

WHO's "three by five" initiative aims to scale up the response of
individual countries to AIDS so that three million people can be put on
life-sustaining but expensive anti-retroviral drugs by 2005.

Ghana's 2003 Sentinel survey, which used the results of voluntary testing
carried out at selected ante-natal clinics to come up with an estimation
of the HIV prevalence rate, suggested that the number of people living
with full-blown AIDS could be much higher than the 58,000 estimated by
WHO. According to the Sentinel survey, 3.6 percent of Ghana's 19 million
people were HIV positive last year, up from 3.4 percent in 2002. That
implies there are 684,000 Ghanaian living with the virus, although not all
of them will have developed AIDS-related illnesses yet.

Under the government's current ARV programme, patients pay 50,000 Ghanaian
Cedis (US $6) a month for treatment. They also have to pay the full
250,000 Cedis (US $25) cost of a CD4 cell count - the main test used by
doctors to monitor immune system performance - to establish how advanced
their condition has become prior to commencing treatment. Ghana received a
US$15 million grant from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Malaria and
Tuberculosis in 2003 to finance the country's AIDS treatment programme
over the next two years.


THE GAMBIA: Rising poverty breeds sexual exploitation of
children

The sexual abuse of children in the Gambia is increasing as a result of
rising poverty in the small West African country and Gambian men rather
than European tourists are mainly responsible for the phenomenon, UNICEF
said in new report published this week.

Gambia has long been linked with sex tourism, but the UNICEF study,
published on Wednesday, found that the main abusers of local children were
male Gambian "Sugar Daddies."

"The Sugar Daddy Syndrome," explained Cheryl Faye, head of UNICEF in
Gambia, "is the abuse of young girls lured by money or other gifts -
perhaps some shoes or a mobile phone - into sex."

In the past, reports on the sexual abuse of children in the Gambia have
frequently blamed the practice on foreign, mainly European tourists, who
exploited the low incomes of the local population and the inability of the
police to monitor their corruption of minors.

UNICEF highlighted the link between child abuse and growing poverty among
Gambia's 1.4 million people. According to its report, 59% of Gambians live
on less than US$ 1 a day and poverty is increasing. Poverty, family
breakdowns, absence of nurturing relationships, child abuse and drugs are
also factors that contribute immensely to children's vulnerability,"
UNICEF official Jean-Claude Legrand told IRIN.


COTE D'IVOIRE: RFI leaks UN rights report

French radio broadcaster Radio France Internationale, who has had a thorny
relationship with the government of President Laurent Gbagbo since the
beginning of the war, leaked on Monday the findings of a United Nations
commission who traveled to Abidjan last month to investigate killings
conducted on 25 March.

The leaked report said more than 100 died, 274 wounded and 20 arrested in
two days of violence on 25-26 March.  It placed blame on the government,
its security forces, and its "so-called parallel forces" for the
"indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians by the security forces."

The government has not officially answered to the accusations. But it
castigated RFI for leaking the report. The army has denied any wrongdoing,
while the ruling party and government supporters have described the report
as "unjust and unbalanced."

In addition to these accusations, the government also answered on Thursday
to the family of missing journalist Guy-Andre Kieffer who flew from Paris
to Abidjan to enquire on the whereabouts of Kieffer. He went missing three
weeks ago in an Abidjan supermarket. For three weeks, virtually no
information filtered publicly. But on Thursday, following a meeting
between Kieffer's family and Prime Minister Seydou Diarra, the
state-owned television announced his car had been found in the parking lot
of the Abidjan airport, a five-minute drive from the supermarket where the
car was last seen.

Diarra has still not been able to piece together his 41-strong cabinet
that flew into pieces on 25 March, in reaction to the violent repression
of the march. This Diarra met with the G7, the opposition parties who have
suspended their participation in government, but was not able to convince
to return to government. The cabinet has not met for six weeks, though
some ministers continue to attend official functions.


CHAD-SUDAN: WFP launches fresh aid appeal for Darfur refugees

The head of the World Food Programme (WFP), James Morris, appealed to the
international community on Monday to help more than 100,000 refugees from
Sudan's war-torn Darfur region, after touring some of their camps in the
semi-desert of eastern Chad. He particularly appealed for aid to continue
airlifting food to the refugees once the onset of the rainy season in June
makes the unpaved roads to eastern Chad impassable.

According to WFP more than one million Sudanese have been affected by
fighting in Darfur, western Sudan. Relief agency estimates of those who
have fled across the border range from 95,000 to 110,000.

International human rights organizations accuse the Arab-dominated
government of Sudan of supporting an ethnic cleansing terror campaign
against the black residents of Darfur.

Khartoum has denied such reports, adding that it has nothing to hide from
a UN investigation team that arrived in Darfur at the end of April.

The WFP launched a US$ 19.4 million feeding programme for the refugees in
December 2003. To date WFP has received US$ 14.7 million from Canada,
Finland, Germany, Japan, Norway, Switzerland, the UK and the US.

But as the rainy season approaches, WFP and partners are trying to
stockpile enough food to feed 95,000 refugees for four months - that is
to last them until the end of the rains in September.


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