Weekly Round-Up - IRINWA-305: 25-Nov-05
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 Round-Up 305
19 - 25 November 2005
CONTENTS:
LIBERIA: "Humbled" Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf confirmed Africa's first female
president
CHAD - SENEGAL: Court refuses to rule on Habre extradition
GABON: Bongo reaches for 45-year stretch as president
COTE D IVOIRE: New peace hitch as African heavyweights fail to overcome
stalemate on PM
NIGER: Nearly two million face food insecurity despite good cereal
harvest
LIBERIA: "Humbled" Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf confirmed Africa's first female
president
Harvard-educated Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf stamped her name in the history
books on Wednesday, when she was confirmed Liberia's, as well as
Africa's, first female president.
Amid tight security enforced by UN peacekeepers and newly-trained
Liberian police officers, the National Electoral Commission officially
pronounced her winner of the final round of the presidential poll on 8
November, with 59.4 percent of the vote against her challenger, football
hero George Weah, with 40.6 percent.
"I declare Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf winner," proclaimed Commission head
Frances Johnson-Morris at a formal ceremony held in the same building
where she is to be sworn in on 16 January.
Weah, whose party has challenged the result though international
observers gave the process the thumbs up, did not attend.
"I feel very pleased and excited, but humbled by the awesome challenges
that we are facing to rebuild our country. It is a victory for the
Liberian people," said Sirleaf after the ceremony.
Weah's Congress for Democratic Change party has complained of fraud
during the historic vote closing an era of unrest, and the National
Election Commission is conducting hearings into the complaint.
Sirleaf, an economist by training, has worked for the UN, the World Bank
and in the 1970s served as finance minister, a job that nearly cost her
her life when the government was overthrown in a 1980 coup by Samuel
Doe. Most of the cabinet were stripped, tied to poles on the seafront
and executed by firing squad.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50265&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=LIBERIA
See also
24 November
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50292&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=LIBERIA
22 November
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50242&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=LIBERIA
21 November
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50214&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=LIBERIA
CHAD - SENEGAL: Court refuses to rule on Habre extradition
A Senegalese court on Friday refused to rule on a request to extradite
former Chad leader Hissene Habre to Belgium to face charges of mass
murder and torture.
Habre was detained last week in Senegal, where he has been in exile for
the past 15 years, pending a decision by the court on whether to
extradite him for alleged human rights abuse during his 1982-1990 rule.
But after deliberations, the court stated that it was not qualified to
make a decision, leaving Habre's immediate fate unclear.
"The court has declared itself incompetent," it said.
The bid to bring the former leader to trial has triggered fierce debate
in Senegal, and there were cries of joy from his supporters and a
stunned silence from alleged victims as the seafront court handed down
its decision to waive the case.
A Chadian truth commission accused him in 1992 of responsibility for at
least 40,000 political killings and mass torture.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50322&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=SENEGAL
See also:
24 November
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50294&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=CHAD-SENEGAL
22 November
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50245&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=CHAD-SENEGAL
GABON: Bongo reaches for 45-year stretch as president
As Gabon's election campaign approaches its end and President Omar Bongo
looks set to cruise to victory, only fraud allegations and voter apathy
still have the potential to rain on his parade, according to analysts.
"The 27 November election is meaningless because the playing field is so
uneven," said Bissielo Anacle, head of the sociology department at Omar
Bongo University in the capital Libreville. "As a result, there could be
very low voter turnout."
After 38 years in power, Bongo is the longest-serving current head of
state in Africa. But although he faces four opposition candidates, a
sixth term, made possible by a 2003 constitutional amendment, is a
virtual certainty.
Despite numerous billboards with messages like "I'm a secretary and I'm
voting!" and calls from candidates urging people to take part in the
Central African country's third multi-party elections, the numbers
reveal a lack of enthusiasm among the general population.
In the oil centre of Port Gentil, for example, under half of registered
voters have gone to the trouble of getting their election card,
according to a Gabonese news agency.
However, this apathy is not due to a lack of effort on Bongo's part,
according to Philippe Ndong of the University of Libreville.
"The president is spending a lot of money to buy votes," he said. "He's
becoming more and more generous at the last minute to encourage people
to vote for him."
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50270&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=GABON
COTE D IVOIRE: New peace hitch as African heavyweights fail to overcome
stalemate on PM
Despite their combined political clout, three of Africa's most prominent
heads of state failed to clear the way to peace by securing agreement on
the name of a new prime minister for war-torn Cote d'Ivoire on
Wednesday.
Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, Thabo Mbeki of South Africa,
and Mamadou Tandja of Niger, returned home empty-handed Wednesday after
a lightning 24-hour visit during which they were unable to deliver on a
promise of finding a new head of government acceptable to all sides in
the divided nation.
Though the African trio, which has been tasked with overseeing the
implementation of a UN peace proposal, succeeded in chipping away at an
original list of 16 names to bring it down to only two, consensus over a
new prime minister remained out of reach.
"Neither of those two persons met the UN resolution's conditions for
acceptability by all parties," Obasanjo told reporters before boarding
his plane home.
"We don't see that as a failure, but as a challenge - The methodology we
used has not met the expected goal and so we will adopt another
methodology and we hope that in the next ten days we will be back."
He did not elaborate.
The mediation by the three was the latest hiccup in a three-year peace
process aimed at wresting an accord between President Laurent Gbagbo,
who controls the south, and rebels who have held the north of the
country since a failed coup in September 2002.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50269&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=COTE_D_IVOIRE
NIGER: Nearly two million face food insecurity despite good cereal
harvest
Close to two million people in arid Niger could go hungry in 2006
despite a bumper cereal harvest this year, warned the government who
blamed the problem on perennial food insecurity.
Earlier this year, images of malnourished Nigerien babies were beamed
across television screens around the world after locusts and drought in
2004 resulted in massive food deficits.
But even though latest government figures indicate cereal surpluses to
the tune of 21,000 tonnes of millet, sorghum and maize as well as a
surplus of animal feed, nearly 2 million people in over 1000 villages
could still go hungry next year.
"Despite that surplus, 1, 810, 356 people in 1,017 villages are at risk
of food crises either because of late planting, the early end of the
rains or because of the deterioration of soil quality," said Nigerien
minister for animal resources, Abdoulaye Jina on Wednesday.
Of the villages that could face difficulties, one third are in
agro-pastoral regions, where semi-nomadic communities always struggle to
produce enough to feed themselves, Jina said.
Niger is the world's poorest country, according to the UN's Human
Development Index. Rampant desertification and the highest birth rate in
the world are just some of the factors making rural life more and more
difficult year by year in this landlocked west African country.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50293&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=NIGER
See also:
21 November
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50216&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=WEST_AFRICA
23 November
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50257&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=NIGER
IRIN-WA
Tel:+221 867.27.30
Fax: +221 867.25.85
Email: IRINWA@IRINnews.org
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Appropriate Donations for International Disaster/Humanitarian Needs
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Center for International web: www.cidi.org
Disaster Information listserv: www.cidi.org/listsub.htm
guidelines: www.cidi.org/donate.htm
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
West Africa www.cidi.org/humanitarian/irin/wafrica