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 394
15 - 21 September 2007


CONTENTS:

BENIN: Tens of thousands displaced by floods
CHAD: Floods block aid to displaced families and refugees
COTE D'IVOIRE: Flood damage could slow identification process in north
COTE D'IVOIRE: No war, no peace five years after rebellion
LIBERIA: Go to school or go to jail
MALI-NIGER: Insecurity halts locust monitoring but threat deemed low -
   FAO
NIGER: Dozens arrested in north as critics targeted
SIERRA LEONE: Ruling party loses vote, opposition leader made president
SIERRA LEONE: Schools without teachers
SIERRA LEONE: Why don't people farm the land?


BENIN: Tens of thousands displaced by floods

At least 50 villages in Benin have been destroyed by floods, an aid
group there says. "Hundreds of homes, crops, granaries, livestock and
poultry have been destroyed by flooding - jeopardising food supply and
increasing the risk of malaria and disease from contaminated water," the
non-governmental organisation Plan International warned in a communique
on 17 September. Plan, one of a handful of NGOs working in the peaceful
but impoverished West African state, has visited villages in the Lalo,
Klouekanme and Toviklin communes of the Couffo region in Benin.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=74388


BURKINA FASO:

CHAD: Floods block aid to displaced families and refugees

Flooding in eastern Chad has "seriously hampered" aid agencies'
assistance to tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees and displaced
Chadians, according to the UN Refugee Agency. "UNHCR is having
difficulty supplying field staff with various goods, while the agency
and others have delayed or cancelled missions in the region," the agency
said in a statement released on 19 September. Many of the roughly
170,000 displaced Chadians in the east are affected.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=74401


COTE D'IVOIRE: Flood damage could slow identification process in north

In northwest Cote d'Ivoire flooded roads and bridges could take the
'mobile' out of 'mobile tribunals', the long-overdue operation to
provide identity papers for undocumented Ivorians, a step seen as
indispensable to peace. "Most roads around Odienne [the regional
capital] are completely impassable," Amidou Kourouma, the city's acting
mayor, told IRIN by phone. "They are so bad, even with 4x4s you have to
deviate from the road and find a way through the bush." "It's a
complicated problem," he said. "If there are no roads we could have some
villages that are excluded."

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=74326


COTE D'IVOIRE: No war, no peace five years after rebellion

In Cote d'Ivoire five years after a rebellion carved up a country and a
people already burdened by ethnic strife, the government is set to begin
an operation to tackle the grievance at the heart of the revolt:
granting undocumented Ivorians ID papers and the rights that go with
them. Observers say the long-overdue identification process is "make or
break". They acknowledge that the open hostilities that marked the early
days of the rebellion are far-off, but also say a return to violence is
not impossible. "There's a schizophrenic situation in Cote d'Ivoire,"
said Pierre Schori, special representative of the UN secretary-general
in Cote d'Ivoire from 2005 to February 2007. "You have no armed conflict
and the former arch enemies [former rebel leader Guillaume Soro and
President Laurent Gbagbo] seem to be working together." African regional
bodies are firmly behind the current peace process, he said. "These
should be real steps in the right direction."

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=74367


LIBERIA: Go to school or go to jail

Seven-year-old Assatou has been selling grilled plantains at a busy
junction on the outskirts of the Liberian capital, Monrovia, for two
years. "My family can't afford to send me to school," she says with a
sigh. "So I learned how to cook plantain instead." Under a new education
policy, parents or guardians of children like Assatou will soon face
fines or even be arrested for allowing their children to sell in the
streets during school hours. President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in early
September announced the measure, which is said to be aimed at increasing
school enrolment and curbing child labour. However, the announcement is
drawing criticism from local rights activists.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=74422


MALI-NIGER: Insecurity halts locust monitoring but threat deemed low -
FAO

A spate of kidnappings and attacks by militias in northern Mali and
Niger has forced governments there to halt locust monitoring work, but
the threat of locust invasion this year is still deemed low by the Food
and Agriculture Organisation. "Normally both countries have national
locust teams which are responsible for visiting desert areas to check if
there is green vegetation and locusts," said Keith Cressman, locust
monitoring officer at the FAO in Rome. "This year in the [northern
desert areas] of Niger and Mali it is not secure so in both countries,
teams cannot get in to do their monitoring." In Mali, a locust
monitoring team was one of the first victims of a spate of kidnappings
in August by a group claiming to be Touareg rebels. "The kidnapping of
army soldiers got more attention," Cressman explained. "It is not known
if the locust team has been released. After that the government recalled
all survey teams to a safe area and stopped surveying, and the same is
true in Niger."

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=74341


NIGER: Dozens arrested in north as critics targeted

Civilians in northern Niger are being arrested without charge after the
government declared a state of emergency there last month, according to
the governor of Agadez. "We are in a situation of insecurity," said
Malam Boukar Abba, who confirmed 10 people had been arrested there since
a state of alert was declared by the president on 24 August. "We have to
ensure public security. This isn't exceptional. It's not unique to
Niger." Activists in Niger said the government is targeting dissenters
who criticise its refusal to negotiate with a rebel group, the Nigerien
Movement for Justice (MNJ), which has claimed responsibility for dozens
of attacks on the army in northern Niger this year - and the killing of
at least 45 Nigerien soldiers.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=74352


SIERRA LEONE: Ruling party loses vote, opposition leader made president

On 17 September, following what observers say were largely peaceful and
fair elections, the former ruling party candidate Solomon Berewa
conceded defeat and the former opposition leader Ernest Bai Koroma was
sworn in as president. "I know how huge your expectations are,"
President Koroma of the All Peoples Congress (APC) said to Sierra
Leoneans in his inaugural speech. "You have suffered for too long." Five
years after the end of a brutal decade-long civil war, the country is
still one of the poorest in the world with low life expectancy, few
basic human services and widespread corruption.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=74354


SIERRA LEONE: Schools without teachers

With only 19 percent of children in school following Sierra Leone's
decade-long civil war, the former government began an ambitious project
to renovate and build more schools. But while brightly painted blue and
white classrooms have already popped up in towns and villages around the
country they come at a time when fewer teachers than before are willing
to work in them. "Graduates from teacher training colleges are
abandoning the classroom looking for greener pastures elsewhere," deputy
director of junior and secondary schools at the Ministry of Education,
Science and Technology, Simon Labour, told IRIN. Before the war, Sierra
Leone had about 20,000 qualified teachers, Labour said, but that number
has dropped to 15,000, mostly because of the proliferation of
non-governmental organisations (NGOs) which offer teachers better
salaries for humanitarian-type work.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=74360


SIERRA LEONE: Why don't people farm the land?

Tens of thousands of hectares of fertile farm land lie fallow in Sierra
Leone, while tens of thousands of able-bodied men are unemployed. There
are many ways to answer the question why, but for Peter Kagbo, project
coordinator of a rural development association at the village of
Masongbo near Makeni, it comes down to three simple words: "Lack of
confidence." "You have to understand that rice farming is hard and
difficult work. You can't do it as a hobby. And when you make a mistake
- when you use the wrong seed or sow at the wrong time - you have wasted
your time and energy, and you and your family goes hungry", he said.
"And so people prefer to sit idle rather then work," he said. "But they
also watch. And I for one firmly believe that if they were confident
that they could make a decent living from farming they would all go out
and do it."

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=74399


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