Weekly Round-Up - IRINWA-402: 16-Nov-07
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 402
10 - 16 November 2007
CONTENTS:
BURKINA FASO: Producers reluctant to sell crops, market prices rising
CAMEROON-NIGERIA: Settling Bakassi - interview with UN envoy Ahmedou
Ould-Abdallah
CAMEROON-NIGERIA: Bakassi - more than one place, more than one problem
CAMEROON-NIGERIA: The Bakassi Zone - the twilight of a Nigerian enclave
COTE D'IVOIRE: Awash in arms
GUINEA-LIBERIA: Nathaniel Dorbor, "Blood comes from my ears and nose
and my school paper gets red"
MALI: Making pipe dreams come true
MAURITANIA: High food prices spark protests
MAURITANIA-SENEGAL: Is Mauritania ready for its refugees?
NIGERIA: Grain merchants price gouging, some officials say
WEST AFRICA: Region's children worse off despite legislation
BURKINA FASO: Producers reluctant to sell crops, market prices rising
Even in a "good" year, around one million of the 12.8 million people who
live in Burkina Faso do not get enough to eat every year, mostly due to
poverty. This year, grain prices are rising sharply, putting more at
risk.
Producers are accused of hoarding and merchants of price gouging.
Despite government predictions of a national surplus overall, shortfalls
are reported in key production areas - and internal markets and exports
mean there may be shortages.
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75331
CAMEROON-NIGERIA: Settling Bakassi - interview with UN envoy Ahmedou
Ould-Abdallah
After 43 years of border tensions and occasional violence, Nigeria and
Cameroon appear to have resolved their border issues once and for all.
In October, the first of six UN observers arrived in Nigeria near the
disputed Bakassi peninsula to monitor the final phase of Nigeria's pull
out and transfer of authority to Cameroon. The handover, which began in
August 2006, should be complete by June 2008.
The agreement on Bakassi is one of four that the two countries reached
over their 2,300 km boundary from Lake Chad in the north to the coast.
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75306
CAMEROON-NIGERIA: Bakassi - more than one place, more than one problem
Some 20 Cameroonian soldiers were reportedly killed on 13 November by
men in military uniforms in the Bakassi peninsula, a territory won from
Nigeria in the International Court of Justice in 2002.
A Nigeria analyst told IRIN that suspicion was focussing on militants
from the nearby Niger Delta but observers also say locals may be
involved.
In a recent visit to the peninsula many locals expressed a strong
antipathy to Cameroonian rule. Most interviewed preferred to be under
Nigerian sovereignty. Some said they would fight to be free from
Cameroon.
Halfway through a two-year process of transferring the long-disputed
region from Nigeria to Cameroon, there are three areas of Bakassi, each
with its own issues. In all three areas, residents told IRIN of their
anger and frustration with a transition process that began in August
2006 marked by the formal pullout of Nigerian civilian and military
elements.
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75287
CAMEROON-NIGERIA: The Bakassi Zone - the twilight of a Nigerian enclave
Nigeria handed day-to-day control of most of the Bakassi peninsula to
Cameroon in June 2006, implementing a ruling by the International Court
of Justice. However Nigerian police will remain in control of southern
and western parts of the enclave until June 2008. This enclave, cut off
from Nigeria proper by Cameroonian territory and the sea, is called the
Bakassi Zone.
The twilight of Nigerian administration has left the zone in an
administrative limbo, and much of the zone's population live in crowded
and unsanitary conditions without basic services.
Local leaders blame the transitional process. "The health clinic no
longer functions. The water pumps are broken and we have no teachers so
the school has been abandoned," said a man who identified himself as
Chief Cassidy and said he was a local leader in Abana, one of two
car-less towns along a beach that overlooks Nigerian-controlled offshore
oil rigs.
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75330
COTE D'IVOIRE: Awash in arms
While Ivorian politicians and the international community lament a lack
of progress in disarmament and other aspects of the country's peace
accord, ordinary citizens are increasingly falling victim to violent
crime in their daily activities.
In one incident in October, seven masked men, each carrying two AK-47s,
held up market trucks in the northwest.
"They shot in the air and forced us off the trucks," a woman merchant in
the regional capital, Odienne, told IRIN. "Among them they had 14
Kalashnikovs." As citizens face criminals armed with AKs and even rocket
launchers, few weapons have been rounded up in a disarmament process
called for in the peace agreement signed more than eight months ago.
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75302
GUINEA-LIBERIA: Nathaniel Dorbor, Guinea: "Blood comes from my ears and
nose and my school paper gets red"
At first it looks like a trendy haircut, but the shiny hairless strips
across 12-year-old Nathaniel's head are scars from when a Liberian rebel
attacked him with a knife.
He was about six months old when rebels invaded his village in Lofa
County, Liberia. His mother, Helene, wrapped his head and they fled,
eventually making it to Guinea, where they have lived ever since.
Nathaniel is among a group of Liberian, Sierra Leonean and Ivorian men,
women and children at a Conakry shelter for refugees needing medical
treatment.
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75329
MALI: Making pipe dreams come true
For years, women in the Malian village Sotuba squabbled over the two
state-run standpipes, having walked two or three kilometres in search of
water for their families.
Then, three years ago, a young entrepreneur, Bakary Koita, contacted the
national water provider, Energie du Mali (EDM), and drilled his own
private standpipe. He recruited unemployed youths to fill jerry-cans
with water and take them by cart to people's homes.
"Obviously, the price is a little higher, but the women no longer have
to come all the way," Koita told IRIN. "The conflicts, problems and
little quarrels surrounding the water points are now limited."
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75274
MAURITANIA: High food prices spark protests
Several towns and cities in Mauritania have been hit by protests against
rising food prices, according to news reports.
On 12 November, in Zouerate in north central Mauritania the army was
called in to disperse looters who vandalised and burned shops, according
to the French news agency AFP. There has also been unrest in the towns
Nema, Kiffa, Timbedra, Djiguenny, Kobeiny, Kankossa, Rosso and Ayoun,
Radio France Internationale reported.
According to the Mauritanian statistics agency, annual inflation has
reached 28 percent on some locally-grown foodstuffs.
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75286
MAURITANIA-SENEGAL: Is Mauritania ready for its refugees?
Mauritania, Senegal and the UN Refugee Agency recently signed an
agreement that could turn the page on an ugly history in Mauritania,
where 75,000 blacks were forcefully expelled from their country in 1989.
Some of the 30,000 Mauritanian refugees who remain exiled in Senegal and
have now been invited to return home wonder if Mauritania is
logistically ready to receive them.
"Everything remains to be redone," Amadou Ndiaye, spokesperson for the
Collective of Mauritanian Refugees for Solidarity and Durable Solutions
(CRMSSD), said at a press conference in Dakar on 15 November. "Some
villages no longer exist. The roads, the hospitals, the schools,
everything has to be reconstructed."
Mauritania's first democratically elected president, Mohamed Ould Cheikh
Abdallahi, has shown the political will to welcome home the refugees,
but many worry that infrastructure and organisation is lacking in some
parts of the country.
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75345
NIGERIA: Grain merchants price gouging, some officials say
With little information on this year's harvest in northern Nigeria
available market traders are using rumours of imminent food shortages to
push prices beyond most people's reach.
Traders at the Dawanau market in Kano, the largest food market in West
Africa, told IRIN that over the last two months they have raised prices
for a sack of maize - the most common staple food in the region - from
US$20 to $31, a bag of millet from $19 to $28, and cowpeas to from $39
to $54. Rice has risen to $78 from $63.
Northern Nigeria includes many of the poorest provinces in the country
and news of the cuts is causing worries among ordinary people who are
struggling to buy food to eat.
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75269
WEST AFRICA: Region's children worse off despite legislation
Children in West Africa are as likely to be raped, trafficked, beaten or
abused and less likely to go to school, receive proper healthcare or be
properly nourished, compared to 15 years ago, despite binding
legislation meant to improve children's situation.
The findings were announced at a 6-8 November meeting to assess progress
by governments towards implementing the Convention on the Rights of the
Child. The conference was held in the Burkina Faso capital, Ouagadougou.
"We went through the reports countries submit on their progress every
year and realised quickly that nothing really has been done - very few
things have improved in the region over the last 15 years," said
Stefanie Conrad at the NGO Plan International in Dakar, which
participated in the Ouagadougou meeting.
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75285
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