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 210
10 - 16 January 2004


CONTENTS:

LIBERIA: Disarmament delayed till late February
COTE D'IVOIRE: 18 killed as ethnic clashes continue in west
BURKINA FASO: Government seeks $12 m to tackle meningitis
NIGERIA: Stock of subsidised drugs for AIDS runs out
WEST AFRICA: 250 millions to receive polio vaccine
WESTERN SAHARA: Refugees phone home after 30 years of isolation
CHAD: UNHCR to relocate refugees
GUINEA: 50,000 returnees in need of assistance, OCHA says
MAURITANIA: Former mayor arrested, held incommunicado

ALSO SEE:

LIBERIA: Conneh's enstranged wife emerges as power broker in LURD
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38934&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=LIBERIA

LIBERIA: Disarmament delayed till late February

The United Nations said on Thursday that the planned resumption of its
campaign to disarm an estimated 40,000 former combatants in Liberia would
be delayed by a further 20 to 30 days.

The United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) said that extra time was
needed to prepare four new reception and cantonment sites and to conduct
an information campaign throughout the country to make all former
combatants fully aware of how the disarmament process would work.

UNMIL tried unsuccessfully to launch a disarmament, demobilisation and
demobilisation (DDR) campaign on 7 December with just one cantonment site
on the outskirts of Monrovia. More than 8,600 weapons were handed in
during the 10-day period.

Meanwhile with peace becoming a reality in Liberia for the first time in
14 years, thousands of the 320,000 Liberian refugees living in other West
African countries have started to make their own way home, by boat, by bus
and even on foot.

Officials of the UN refugee agency UNHCR told IRIN that several hundred
Liberian refugees had made their own way back to Monrovia since
mid-December and the influx was continuing.

The agency has appealed for US $39 m for its operations in Liberia this
year. It aims to assist 150,000 internally displaced people and refugees
from abroad return to their homes.

In another developement, the United Nations police officers on Monday
began a two-week intensive course to retrain 400 Liberian policemen.

Mark Kroeker, the UN police commissioner in Liberia, said at a ceremony at
the National Police Training Academy in Monrovia: "We are here to be of
service to your police force, to help them to become what everybody had
wanted them to be - the finest police force in this region."

Recently, Kroeker told reporters that the interim police force would be
trained in human rights, rule of law and democratic principles. The United
Nations has agreed to send 1,115 international policemen to Liberia to
totally restructure and retrain the country's discredited police force,
which had become a by-word for corruption and brutality.

For IRIN coverage of Liberia see:
http://www.irinnews.org/frontpage.asp?SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=Liberia


COTE D'IVOIRE: 18 killed as ethnic clashes continue in "Wild West"

The French peacekeeping force in Cote d'Ivoire urged the government army
and police to send reinforcements to help it maintain order in the
troubled west of the country on Tuesday after reporting that 18 people had
been killed there in two weeks of ethnic clashes.

Colonel Georges Peillon, the official spokesman of the 4,000-strong French
peacekeeping force, said tension was rising in villages around the town of
Bangolo, 600 km northwest of the capital Abidjan, where French soldiers
had found the bodies of 18 people killed in ethnic fighting since 29
December.

In another development, Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo met rebel leader
Guillaume Soro at the presidential palace on Monday to discuss the way
forward in Cote d'Ivoire's fragile peace process following the rebels'
return to a broad-based government of national reconciliation.

It was the first meeting between the two men since the rebels, who occupy
the northern half of Cote d'Ivoire, withdrew from the cabinet on 23
September in protest at Gbagbo's delays in implementing a French-brokered
peace agreement in full.

The rebel leader said after his hour-long talk with Gbagbo: "I am here to
show Ivorians our determination and our will to make peace and to
undertake national reconciliation. But it is up to each one of us to act
in all sincerity and openness so that we move towards a durable peace in
Cote d'Ivoire."

Soro, a former student leader, went on to express his disagreement with
Gbagbo's plan to hold a referendum on all three key law reforms provided
for by the 24 January 2003 Linas-Marcoussis peace agreement.

For IRIN coverage of Cote d'Ivoire see:
http://www.irinnews.org/frontpage.asp?SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=Cote_d_Ivoire


BURKINA FASO: Government seeks $12m to tackle meningitis

Burkina Faso has unveiled a rapid response plan to combat meningitis,
which strikes thousands of people in this poor West African country every
year, but the government still needs to find six billion CFA (US $12
million) to fund the programme.

Health Minister Alain Yoda said the government expected the World Health
Organization (WHO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and
the European Union (EU), to contribute.

Meningitis is endemic in Burkina Faso. Last year, 8,674 became infected
with the disease, which causes an inflamation of the brain, and 1,363
died.

Yoda said his ministry aimed to control the spread of meningitis through
vaccination and reduce the death rate through rapid diagnosis and
treatment.

Meanwhile, the government of Burkina Faso has launched a nationwide survey
to find out just how successful its 12-year campaign against female
circumcision has been and the first results are mighty encouraging.

In 1992, when the campaign against female genital mutilation (FMG) was
launched, two thirds of all women in this poor landlocked country suffered
the ritual cutting out of their clitoris around the age of puberty.

The first results from the latest national survey show that in some areas
of Burkina Faso the proportion of girls subjected to FMG has fallento just
one or two percent. However, the ritual remains common in many poor,
remote conservative and staunchly Muslim villages, even though the custom
was outlawed in 1996.

For IRIN coverage of Burkina Faso see:
http://www.irinnews.org/frontpage.asp?SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=Burkina_Faso


NIGERIA: Stock of subsidised drugs for AIDS runs out

A Nigerian government programme to provide antiretroviral treatment at
subsidised prices for people living with HIV/AIDS is under threat because
the initial stock of drugs is running out and has not been replenished,
officials said on Thursday.

The programme was launched in January 2002 by President Olusegun Obasanjo
with the aim of providing more affordable antiretroviral treatment for
10,000 people at 25 designated centres across the country.

The government charged just over US $7 per month for the treatment which
can improve the health of people living with AIDS and extend their life,
but cannot cure them. It costs about $300 per month at commercial prices.

In another development, ethnic tension rose once again in the volatile
Niger Delta after unidentified gunmen attacked two boats near the oil city
of Warri, killing at least 18 of the passengers on board.

Delta State government secretary Emmanuel Uduaghan told reporters that all
the men, women and children killed in the incident last Friday belonged to
the Ijaw ethnic group. Their attackers were suspected to be members of the
rival Itsekiri tribe, he added.

The attack raised fears about the future of a fragile truce between Ijaw
and Itsekiri militia groups that was negotiated in October. More than 200
people died last year as a result of armed clashes between the two tribes.

For IRIN coverage of Nigeria see:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38959&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=NIGERIA


WEST AFRICA: 250 millions to receive polio vaccine

The World Health Organisation on Thursday held a meeting with health
ministers of the world's remaining six polio-infected countries, as well
as Ghana, Burkina Faso and Togo, three countries who were previously
polio-free, to map out how to eradicate polio by the end of 2004.

Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Niger and Nigeria are the six endemic
countries, and WHO plans to vaccinate some 250 million children throughout
the nine countries.

Eradication efforts were dampened last week when WHO announced that Benin
and Cameroon had been re-infected. Efforts had already taken a setback in
late 2003 when polio vaccination rounds were stopped.

Nigeria, where polio vaccinations rounds were suspended in some northern
states on suspicion from Islamic leaders that the vaccines were
contaminated with the HIV virus and anti-fertility agents, remains the
WHO's greatest concern and could derail global efforts if vaccination is
not resumed.

For IRIN coverage of West Africa see:
http://www.irinnews.org/frontpage.asp?SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=West_Africa


WESTERN SAHARA: Refugees phone home after 30 years of isolation

After nearly 30 years of isolation at remote camps in the Algerian desert,
165,000 refugees from the Western Sahara have finally been given the
chance to phone their relatives back home for free.

The service was launched at a school in one camp last Monday and more than
50 calls were placed to relatives in the Moroccan-ruled territory within
the first two days. About 80 percent of the calls were made by women.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR aims to extend the free phone facility at all
five refugee camps near Tindouf in western Algeria. UNHCR said
negotiations were under way to begin a mail service between the refugee
camps and people living inside Western Sahara.

For IRIN coverage of Western Sahara see:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38958&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=WESTERN_SAHARA


CHAD: UNHCR to relocate some 1,000 refugees

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) will gbegin on 17 January,
the relocation of 1,000 Sudanese refugees stranded in eastern Chad, the
agency said this week.

Meanwhile the UN appealed on Tuesday for US $4.3 m of emergency aid to
meet the immediate needs of 95,000 refugees from Sudan's western Darfur
province who have fled into eastern Chad.

Tom Vraalsen, the UN special humanitarian envoy to Sudan, issued the
appeal at a press conference in the Chadian capital N'Djamena at the end
of a week-long visit to the country, during which he visited the refugees.

A UN official present at the briefing told IRIN that the $4.3 million
would cover the immediate needs of the refugees until the end of March.

She said $3.0 million of the emergency aid would be earmarked for the UN
World Food Programme (WFP) to provide food for the refugees. Most of the
rest - $817,000, would go the UN refugee agency UNHCR, which has begun
setting up camps in eastern Chad.

The refugees fled a conflict in Darfur between Sudanese government forces,
supported by Arab tribal militias and two rebel movements seeking autonomy
for the province.

In a related development UNHCR said on Monday it had identified a site for
a second refugee camp in eastern Chad to accommodate some of the 95,000
Sudanese refugees.

Helene Caux, the UNHCR spokesman for eastern Chad, said on Monday that
UNHCR had agreed with the Chadian government to establish a new camp for
8,000 people at Koloungo, 70 km inside the Chadian border.

For IRIN coverage of Chad see:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=38908&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=CHAD-SUDAN


GUINEA: 50,000 returnees in need of assistance, OCHA says

Over 48,000 Guinean migrants who returned from Cote d'Ivoire after the
outbreak of civil war in that country, are living in precarious conditions
in remote areas inGuinea near the Ivorian border and urgently need
assistance, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
(OCHA) said.

OCHA said it conducted a survey of the returnee populations in five
prefectures along the border with Cote d'Ivoire between September and
November 2003 and found the local communities were hosting about half the
estimated total of 100,000 returnees to Guinea without any external
assistance.

The full OCHA report on Guinean returnees is posted at:
http://www.humanitarianinfo.org/guinea"


MAURITANIA: Former mayor arrested, held incommunicado

Mauritanian police arrested opposition activist Mohamed Jemil Ould Mansour
on his return from exile in Belgium last week and are still holding him
incommunicado without charge, one of his defence lawyers said on Monday.

Lawyer Diabira Maroufa, one of the man's lawyers, told IRIN on Monday that
neither he nor any of his colleagues had been able to see Mansour, who is
the former mayor of Nouakchott's middle-income suburb of Arafat, a
stronghold of Islamic radicals.

For IRIN coverage of Mauritania see:
http://www.irinnews.org/frontpage.asp?SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=Mauritania


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Fax: +225 22-41-9339
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