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WEST AFRICA
IRIN-WA Weekly Round-Up 292
27 August - 2 September 2005


CONTENTS:

COTE D IVOIRE: S.Africa says continuing mediation, cautious on
   sanctions
WEST AFRICA: Cholera kills nearly 500 people, more deaths feared
NIGER: Joy and relief as hungry villagers tentatively reap first
   harvests
LIBERIA: Funding crunch threatens return of 64,000 IDPs before polls
SIERRA LEONE: UN approves assistance team to move in after peacekeeper
   exit
SENEGAL: Opposition blasts president's scheme to delay polls to fund
   flood relief
CAMEROON: Fragile dam - a time bomb that could kill thousands, but when
   will it go off?


COTE D'IVOIRE: South Africa says continuing mediation, cautious on
sanctions

South Africa denied on Wednesday that it was concluding its mediation in
the Cote d'Ivoire crisis as it warned the UN Security Council to take
care that any sanctions action did not negatively affect the peace
process.

"The South African Mediation stated that it will continue its efforts...
to ensure the holding of free, fair and transparent elections in Cote
d'Ivoire as scheduled, which is the only solution to the crisis," the
Security Council said in a statement after a closed-door briefing.

Elections on 30 October are at the heart of the international
community's blueprint for peace in Cote d'Ivoire but progress towards
that goal has been slow.

Mediators have already said that rebels and opposition parties are to
blame for the impasse and warned that the world's top cocoa grower could
explode into another cycle of violence.

Diplomats and UN officials have been warning that individual sanctions,
already approved by the Security Council, could now be enforced against
spoilers of the peace process.

During his briefing, South Africa Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota told
the 15-member body it should only act on sanctions "in a manner that
does not negatively affect the peace process."

"We are not keen to punish people, we are keen to solve the situation
and we need to get the elections in place so that people can decide on
who runs the country," Lekota told reporters. "If we find that we have
sanctions in place, then we would see this as a failure."

Full report: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=48851



WEST AFRICA: Cholera kills nearly 500 people, more deaths feared

Cholera has killed 500 people across West Africa and UN officials fear
the death toll will rise as cash-strapped health services struggle to
cope, heavy rains continue, and populations start moving about to find
work during the harvest season.

The World Health Organisation said on Thursday that 31,259 cases of
cholera had been reported in nine West African countries so far this
year. The waterborne disease, which can kill within 24 hours by inducing
severe vomiting and diarrhoea, has also claimed 488 lives.

And the end is not yet in sight.

"If we look at this year's trends, the figures are still going up in
many countries," John Mulangu, a senior regional advisor for the WHO,
told a press conference in Dakar.

"If cholera is not brought under control in certain regions, we will
soon be talking of... 100,000 cases," he said. "And hospitals and health
centres will be overwhelmed."

Although cholera outbreaks flare up every year in impoverished West
Africa, where heavy rains flood latrines and contaminate wells, UN
experts says the situation this year is particularly bad.

"Last year we were not on this scale. The problem is getting worse,"
Mulangu said.

Full report: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=48871



NIGER: Joy and relief as hungry villagers tentatively reap first
harvests

After five hard months of living hand to mouth, villagers in this corner
of Niger gaze in wonder at the ears of millet ready for picking in the
fields and allow themselves to hope that this year's harvest will put an
end to their hardship.

"We can breathe again. Thanks be to God," sighs Halilou Habou, one of
500 people living in Damana, a village more than 100 km east of the
capital, Niamey. "Look at all this millet, it's ripe and ready to reap.
And in a week, or maybe 10 days I'll be able to start harvesting my
beans too."

In 2004, one of the worst droughts in recent years combined with a
locust invasion and deep-rooted poverty with disastrous effect in Niger.

The UN estimates that almost a third of Niger's 12 million population
are now affected by the food crisis hanging over the world's second
poorest nation, with some 2.5 million people identified as extremely
vulnerable and requiring food assistance.

Damana lies just south of the 14th parallel that cuts a swathe across
the arid Sahel region on the fringes of the Sahara desert and that
experts say is often an area affected by food shortages.

Full report: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=48806



LIBERIA: Funding crunch threatens return of 64,000 IDPs before polls

Funding shortages could delay the resettlement of around 64,000
Liberians, who remain displaced more than two years after the end of the
civil war, many of whom are keen to return home ahead of October
elections, government and UN officials have said.

"These are IDPs (internally displaced persons) who are residing in
spontaneous settlements," Philip Dwuye, the head of the Liberia
Refugees, Repatriation and Resettlement Commission told IRIN. "The
government along with its international partners is searching for means
of securing funding to resettle them."

Dwuye put the cost of helping these IDPs home at US $9.6 million. The
money would be used to provide returnees with basic items and transport.

In a recent humanitarian update, the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL)
warned that a funding crunch lay around the corner.

"64,000 IDPs who are not covered by the current planning figures would
have to wait until resources are identified. This would effectively
bring the (return) process to a halt," the UNMIL briefing note said.

Full report: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=48849



SIERRA LEONE: UN approves assistance team to move in after peacekeeper
exit

Human rights and government accountability will top the list of
priorities for a new UN assistance team, set to step into Sierra Leone
after the last peacekeepers leave at the end of the year.

The UN Security Council unanimously approved the establishment of the UN
Integrated Office for Sierra Leone (UNIOSL) in a resolution late
Wednesday, saying it was crucial that international support continued to
help the West African country rebound from a decade of civil war.

The last of the blue-hatted peacekeepers in Sierra Leone are due to
leave this December, just over six years after the UN peacekeeping
mission (UNAMSIL) first went in.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said in a report earlier this year that
while Sierra Leone had made impressive progress toward peace since the
official end of the war in early 2002, the country remains fragile and
needed "concrete steps aimed at addressing the root causes of the
conflict and nurturing a culture of human rights."

The new assistance mission was given an initial mandate of one year
beginning on 1 January, 2006.

Full report: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=48872



SENEGAL: Opposition blasts president's scheme to delay polls to fund
flood relief

Senegalese opposition leaders are up in arms over a plan by President
Abdoulaye Wade to postpone parliamentary elections by a year to free up
funds for a flood relief plan for the capital, Dakar.

In a broadcast to the nation over the weekend, Wade said by fusing the
parliamentary elections, due in 2006, with presidential elections
scheduled for 2007, Senegal could cut costs and free up money to help
those people who had been hardest hit by some of the heaviest rains in
20 years.

He mapped out a US $96.5 million plan to relocate people from low-lying
shantytowns around the capital that have been flooded and overhaul the
communities.

"The success of the operation depends on a decision by the national
assembly to push back the legislative elections," Wade said. "In fact,
it is not reasonable for a poor country to devote $13 million for
elections in 2006 and the same amount for other elections in 2007."

Opposition leaders are vowing to resist the plan, saying Wade is
capitalising on the floods to fix political problems within his ruling
Democratic Party of Senegal. They say the move would be a blow to
democracy, undercutting the system of separate elections on which all
parties reached consensus 13 years ago.

"The floods are nothing but a pretext," said Serigne Mbaye Thiam of the
Socialist Party, Senegal's biggest opposition party which ruled from
independence in 1960 until Wade won elections in 2000.

Full report: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=48828



CAMEROON: Fragile dam - a time bomb that could kill thousands, but when
will it go off?

When the natural dam at Lake Nyos in north west Cameroon collapses,
tonnes of water will course through the surrounding valleys and 10,000
villagers could be killed, geologists say.

Those not swept away or drowned in the careering wall of water could
risk suffocation by a poisonous gas cloud released from the bowels of
the lake that sits atop a dormant volcano.

"There are two outstanding dangers if the dam breaks - the release of
carbon dioxide that will certainly kill the surrounding population and
the water running downstream which will kill 10,000 people in Cameroon
and Nigeria," said Isaac Njilah, a geologist at the University of
Yaounde.

The problem is, no one knows when the dam might break.

Njilah has just come back from studying the dam which lies just over 300
km from the capital Yaounde. He says that that the volcanic rocks
holding back tonnes of water could give way at any time.

"If forces [eroding the dam] are not checked, the dam could collapse
imminently," Njilah told IRIN this week.

But not everyone agrees with the predictions of imminent disaster.

Geologist Gregory Tanyi-Leke, who works for the Institute of Mining and
Geological Research under the government's Ministry of Mines, agrees
that the dam is fragile and that 10,000 lives would be at risk from any
dam burst, but thinks that that is unlikely to happen tomorrow.

Full report: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=48862


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Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
2005


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