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 211
17 23 January 2004


CONTENTS:

COTE D'IVOIRE: 17 years in prison for killing journalist
LIBERIA : UN accused of "slow deployment"
NIGERIA : Kano State maintains "no" to polio vaccines
MAURITANIA : Former mayor release
BURKINA FASO: High rate of abortions in Ouagadougou
WESTERN SAHARA: Annan proposes three-months extension of UN mission 
CHAD: Update on Sudanese refuges in eastern Chad


COTE D'IVOIRE: 17 years in prison for killing journalists

A court in Abidjan on Thursday found Ivorian sergeant, Seri Dago, guilty
of "culpable homicide" and sentenced him to 17 years in jail for the
October 2003 shooting death of a French journalist outside the offices of
the national police headquarters.

The panel of judges fined Dago US $1,000 and ordered the Ivorian
government, Dago's employer, to pay $275,000 in compensation to the family
of the victim, Radio France International correspondent Jean Helene.

Jean Helene died in Abidjan on 21 October after receiving a single bullet
shot at point blank range by Dago who was on duty that day. Helene had
been waiting to interview opposition activists who were about to be
released from the police headquarters.

Helene's death took place at a time of tension in Cote d'Ivoire when the
country's peace process appeared to be on the verge of collapsing.

On Friday, media watchdog Reporters sans Frontieres expressed satisfaction
with the verdict, but called on the Ivorian government to protect better
Ivorian and international journalists.

Prior to Thursday's verdict, Government Prosecutor Ange Kessy told IRIN
that the Helene trial marked the beginning of six trials, to be conducted
by the end of March, in which members of the armed forces have gunned down
taxi and communal bus drivers.

In other news, Alain Donwahi, the head of Cote d'Ivoire's disarmament,
demobilization and reintegration programme announced on Monday that the
much-anticipated DDR programme would begin on 31 January.

Donwahi said that as much as 30,000 former combatants, including militia,
armed civilians and all those who fought for either side, would go through
the programme whose preliminary cost has been estimated at US $111
million. The government has said that it will contribute $22 million,
while the World Bank, the European Union, the French Cooperation Agency
would foot the bulk of the bill.

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


LIBERIA: UN accused of "slow deployment"

In a report released on Wednesday, Human Rights Watch said former
combatants continued to terrorise civilians because the United Nations had
been slow in deploying in the Liberian countryside.

The fact that the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) had been slow in deploying
in full its 15,000 peacekeepers was putting at risk Liberian civilians,
HRW said, but the New York-based rights group acknowledged that the
situation had improved as 3,000 have been deployed in the Liberian
hinterland.

This week, the mission deployed 1,000 peacekeepers near the border with
Cote d'Ivoire.

According to Human Rights Watch, former combatants were still carrying out
human rights abuses, looting, imposing forced labour, rape and other forms
of sexual violence.

Abou Moussa, a senior UNMIL official, told IRIN that deployment alone
could not be the reason why rights violations were continuing.

"Deployment is only one aspect of coping with curbing human rights abuses. 
Training and desensitization are also important components", Moussa said.

"UNMIL have to deploy internationally, this takes time", Justice Minister
Kabineh Ja'neh told IRIN. "Many troops are coming from far-flung
countries. In my opinion, so far so good- we are on track", Ja'neh replied
to HRW's accusation.

The rights group warned that until all of Liberia is brought under
control, armed combatants would continue to terrorise civilians.

Liberia's precarious security situation has however not discouraged
thousands of Liberians from returning to their homeland.

Liberian transitional leader Gyude Bryant said on Wednesday that he would
intervene in a feud within the main rebel movement, Liberians United For
Reconciliation and Democracy, that threatens to split the group and could
derail peace efforts. The rift is between LURD leader Sekou Conneh and his
wife Aisha, following last week's decision by some hard-line military
commanders to ask Aisha to take over the leadership of the organization.

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


NIGERIA: Kano State maintains "no" to polio vaccines

Nigeria's northern state of Kano announced on Sunday that it is
maintaining its ban on polio vaccination until it is convinced that the
vaccines are safe.

Kano State was reacting to a pledged made days earlier by Nigeria's health
minister that the government would vaccinate children against polio during
the year.

In October last year, Kano, along with two northern other states, stopped
a polio vaccination campaign on grounds that the vaccine was contaminated
with the HIV virus and anti-fertility agents. Islamic leaders said it was
a plot by western countries to reduce Nigeria's Muslim population.

The vaccination suspension has caused neighbouring countries, such as
Ghana, Chad, Burkina, Benin and Cameroon, to become re-infected with the
debilitating disease.

The World Health Organization held a meeting last week in Geneva to
address Nigeria's ban, the resurgence of cases and how to eliminate the
disease by the end of 2004.

According to WHO, it plans to vaccinate some 250 million children in
Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Niger, Nigeria - the world's six
remaining polio reservoirs - and in the re-infected countries to eradicate
the disease.

Nigeria's trade unions on Wednesday suspended a nationwide strike they had
called to protest higher fuel prices introduced by the government on 1
January.

A Nigerian court ordered the government to halt the collection of US. $0.1
on every litre of fuel, and ordered the trade union to call off the strike
until Monday when it will rule on the case.

For IRIN coverage of Nigeria please visit
http://www.irinnews.org/frontpage.asp?SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=Nigeria


MAURITANIA: Former mayor released

Mauritanian authorities released on Tuesday opposition activist Jemil Ould
Mansour who was arrested two weeks ago for breaking from jail during the
June 2003 coup d'etat.

Part of the 40 political activists and Islamic leaders who were arrested
in early 2003 for anti-state activities, Mansour escaped from jail on 8
June 2003 when army soldiers tried to topple President Maaouya Ould
Sid'Ahmed Taya. He fled to Senegal then gained political asylum in
Belgium.

However in an unexpected move, Masour returned on 8 January to Nouakchott
and was immediately arrested upon landing on the tarmac of the airport.

Lawyer Brahim Ould Ebety told IRIN on Wednesday that he was granted
conditional release.

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


BURKINA FASO: High rate of illegal abortions in Ouagadougou

In Burkina Faso's capital, Ouagadougou, over 8,000 illegal abortions are
carried out every year, a survey showed.

While abortion is illegal in Burkina Faso, 62 percent of abortions in the
capital were facilitated by health workers, 25 percent of them were
self-induced and another 12 percent were conducted by traditional healers.
The survey also noted that 28 women died in Ouagadougou after going
through abortion.

Clandestine abortions were the results of unprotected sex, according to
Baya Banza, the project's coordinator. He said 60 percent of the girls
questioned in the survey said they had unprotected sexual relations.

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


WESTERN SAHARA: Annan proposes three-months extension of UN mission

The United Nations proposed extending its mission to the Western Sahara
for three months amid signs that Morocco will respond positively to the
latest UN proposal for resolving a 28-year-old dispute over control of
disputed former Spanish colony.

On Wednesday, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan proposed that the mandate
for the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) be
extended until the end of April in order to give Morocco more time to
respond to the peace plan recommended by his Special envoy James Baker.

In another development earlier this week, representatives of two UN
agencies and nine embassies, including two ambassadors, arrived in the
Algerian desert town of Tindouf, where some 165,000 Western Sahara
refugees have lived for nearly 30 years.

The four-day mission, jointly organised by the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the World Food Programme (WFP) aimed
to assess the food and general situation in the five camps inhabited by
the refugees in Tindouf.

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


CHAD: Update on Sudanese refugees

A further 18,000 Sudanese refugees flooded into eastern Chad over the past
week following further heavy fighting in Sudan's western Darfur region,
the UN refugee agency UNHCR said on Friday.

UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski told a press briefing in Geneva that the
latest influx of frightened people had poured across the border following
attacks on 10 villages in the canton of Djerbira by government forces on
16 January .

Janowski said the refugees had fled the shooting with little or no
belongings, some on foot and some on donkeys. He quoted them as saying the
troops who attacked their villages had burned houses and dynamited wells,
provoking an exodus of villagers across the border.

Janowski said most of the new arrivals were now camped in the open in the
harsh semi-desert of eastern Chad, with little in the way of food, water
or shelter, exposed to the hot sun by day and temperatures that dropped to
near freezing at night.

Their arrival brings to well over 110,000 the number of refugees who have
flooded into Chad since two rebel groups seeking autonomy for Darfur
launched a guerrilla war against the Sudanese government early last year.

Nearly half these people have arrived in the past two months.

Janowski said UNHCR teams were urgently assessing the needs of the latest
arrivals who were spread out in groups along a 300 km stretch of the
Sudanese border.

The largest group of about 4,000 people was camped in a field near
Guereda, a small town 150 km northeast of Abeche, the main town in eastern
Chad, he added.

Janowski said UNHCR was pre-positioning blankets, jerry cans and food in
Guereda. The UN World Food Programme (WFP)planned to start distributing
sorghum white beans and corn soya blend from there at the beginning of
next week, he added.

Relief agencies have only recently stepped in help out with this hidden
crisis in one of the most remote and inaccessible corners of Africa.

On January 15, UNHCR opened its first official refugee camp at Farchana,
55 km east of the border town Adre.It is designed to eventually hold 9,000
to 12,000 people.

"So far, 621 people have been transferred in the first three relocation
movements last Saturday, Monday and Wednesday", Janowski said.

On each trip, about 250 people were relocated to Farchana after a
three-hour along trip in trucks tavelling on dirt roads.

Helene Caux, UNHCR's spokesperson in eastern Chad, said earlier this week
that each relocated familiy would be allocated a plot of land, 15 days of
food rations and a relief package containing supplies like blankets, soap
and mosquito nets.

Caux told IRIN by satellite phone on Wednesday that UNHCR ultimately aimed
to transport 300 people per day to Farchana.

She said two other sites for refugee camps in eastern Chad had been
selected to host 20,000 and 8,000 people respectively.

UNHCR was also negotiating with the Chadian authorities to identify more
safer sites, at least 50 km away from the volatile border, Caux added.

Although international aid has been slow to arrive, many of the refugees
from Darfur belong to ethnic groups such as Fur, Zaghawa and Massalit, who
also live on the Chadian side of the border. They have therefore benefited
from a warm welcome and considerable generosity from their host
communities.

Relief agencies have repeatedly quoted refugees as saying that the
Sudanese armed forces and their Arab militia allies are systematically
forcing farmers off their land and looting and destroying villages.

The United Nations estimates that about 600,000 people have been
internally displaced within Darfur as a result of the conflict in addition
to those who have fled to Chad.

Only 15 percent of those internally displaced can currently be reached by
humanitarian workers.


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