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 332
27 May - 2 June 2006


CONTENTS:

SENEGAL: For out-of-work fishermen, migration offers hope and ready cash
SENEGAL: Migrant repatriations halted after mistreatment claims
COTE D'IVOIRE: Hundreds given Ivorian ID in scheme's trial run
CHAD: Deby win confirmed, but revised down to 64.67 pct
GUINEA-BISSAU: Thirst for education stifled by poverty


SENEGAL: For out-of-work fishermen, migration offers hope and ready cash

In this busy fishing port south of the Senegalese capital, the talk is 
all about the lack of fish and cash and the fortunes waiting to be made 
in the murky waters of illegal migration.

Mbour, a bustling smelly town 80 kilometres south of Dakar, lies a bare 
1,500 kilometres - just a few days' boat-ride away - from Spain's Canary 
Islands, believed to be the Atlantic ocean gateway to a life of plenty 
in Europe, for those who make it across the seas.

The long wooden boats painted in bright blues and yellows and reds that 
ferry growing numbers of would-be migrants from Senegal's beaches to the 
high seas, are called "Mbeukk-mi", or wave-crashers in Woloff, and are 
crafted here and elsewhere along the Senegalese shoreline.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=53626&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=SENEGAL


SENEGAL: Migrant repatriations halted after mistreatment claims

Senegal on Thursday called a halt to the repatriation of illegal 
migrants back home from the Spanish Canary Islands after first returnees 
claim mistreatment.

A total of 99 Senegalese migrants were flown home from the Spanish 
archipelago in the early hours of Thursday, shortly after Spain's 
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Bernardino Leon announced in 
Dakar that Madrid planned to repatriate 600-700 illegal Senegalese 
migrants in the following days.

Those flown home in the first plane however said they had been 
mistreated, had not been told they were being taken home and that some 
had been handcuffed.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=53652&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=SENEGAL


COTE D'IVOIRE: Hundreds given Ivorian ID in scheme's trial run

Mariam Diomande stood patiently clutching her application papers for a 
nationality document as she lined up with dozens of other young women in 
the sun-baked courtyard of the local town hall.

Diomande, a 19-year-old water vendor, is illiterate and has never left 
Abidjan since her mother handed her over to an aunt at the age of three. 
To get around the city, she takes one of the overcrowded Sotra 
state-owned buses that ferry thousands of poor commuters between 
neighbourhoods.

Like tens of thousands of Ivorians, Diomande has no birth certificate 
and thus no identity papers. Taking a shared taxi or travelling outside 
the city is not an option. "I'd end up paying a lot of money and that's 
difficult," she said, referring to the omnipresent roadblocks in this 
conflict-divided nation, where rebels and security forces alike demand 
money from drivers and passengers. "But when you take the bus, nobody 
ever asks for your papers."

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=53601&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=COTE_D_IVOIRE


CHAD: Deby win confirmed, but revised down to 64.67 pct

Hundreds of people spilled onto the streets in this Chad town on Monday 
and cars honked their horns in celebration after the constitutional 
council confirmed Idriss Deby's victory in presidential elections early 
this month.

Deby won a third successive five-year mandate with 64.67 percent of the 
vote, the council said, which although a substantial majority, was below 
the provisional victory figure of 77.6 percent initially released by the 
country's national election commission.

Likewise the council revised turnout down to 53.08 percent, in 
comparison with the commission's earlier estimate of 60 percent. 
Opposition parties had called on the country's 5.8 million voters to 
boycott the 3 May vote.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=53580&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=CHAD


GUINEA-BISSAU: Thirst for education stifled by poverty

In this farming village in Guinea Bissau, many of the children haul 
their own seats to school in the morning, teachers turn up carrying the 
blackboards.

State schooling at primary level is free in this tiny West African 
former Portuguese colony, but the aftershocks of a civil war and lack of 
funds mean there aren't enough schools or teachers to provide every 
child with an education.

So in Kampada Namoante village, some 30 km east of the northern town of 
Sao Domingos, cashew nut farmers, many of them illiterate, took matters 
into their own hands five years ago. Already struggling to fill their 
children's bellies with food, they clubbed together their few resources 
and built their own community school and appointed their own teachers.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=53670&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=GUINEA-BISSAU


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