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 388
6 - 10 August 2007


CONTENTS:

BENIN: Internet new frontline in AIDS awareness
CAMEROON: Help arrives for 26,000 refugees from Central African
   Republic
COTE D'IVOIRE: Observers, opposition wary of Gbagbo's rush to elections
COTE D'IVOIRE: Estelle Kouakou: "I want my life back"
GUINEA-BISSAU: Famine or not, aid agencies are concerned
LIBERIA: Some fake orphans reunify with their parents
LIBERIA: Josephine Morgan: "The orphanage was taking our pictures and
   sending them to America."
MAURITANIA: Flash flood displaces thousands
NIGERIA: Floods leave thousands homeless
NIGERIA: More death and destruction as floods spread to central region
NIGERIA: More floods expected as emergency response struggles
SENEGAL: FGM continues 10 years after villagers claim to abandon it
SIERRA LEONE: Election campaign focuses on youth
SIERRA LEONE: As vote nears less violence than expected
SIERRA LEONE: Who will lead new phase in country stepping away from war
   past?
SIERRA LEONE: The election issue -- basic services


BENIN: Internet new frontline in AIDS awareness

Dieudonne Sourou never leaves the cybercafe in Cotonou, Benin's
commercial capital, where he comes every week to check his personal
emails, without sending what this 25-year-old calls "useful messages"
raising HIV awareness. In this little cybercafe in the northern
outskirts of Cotonou, Sourou focuses on typing his note, a process he
repeats week after week. A long list of addresses awaits him in the
corner of his screen. "Last week, I sent a message to this list of
people about the new report by the World Health Organization on the
preventative role of circumcision in the fight against transmission of
HIV," he told IRIN/PlusNews.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=73674


CAMEROON: Help arrives for 26,000 refugees from Central African Republic

Some 26,000 refugees from Central African Republic who are scattered
along the eastern border of Cameroon are set to receive assistance
starting 8 August but the lead aid organisation warns there may be some
delays. "There are a number of logistical challenges in getting the aid
to the refugees, who are living in more than 50 sites spread over
thousands of square kilometres along the border with CAR in the
departments of Mbere (in Adamaoua), Lom and Djerem and Kadei," UN
Refugee Agency (UNHCR) spokeswoman Jennifer Pagonis said at a press
briefing in Geneva on 7 August. "The imminent start of the rainy season
may hamper the delivery of the relief supplies and security conditions
caused by banditry also need to be taken into account," she added.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=73634


COTE D'IVOIRE: Observers, opposition wary of Gbagbo's rush to elections

President Laurent Gbagbo's recent announcement that the crisis-ravaged
country will be able to hold general elections before the end of the
year has been met with scepticism and concern. "It's extremely unlikely
it would be possible to complete the identification process or to
prepare electoral lists for elections in December," Daniel Balint-Kurti,
West Africa researcher with the London-based think tank Chatham House
told IRIN. "[Gbagbo's] speech raises as many questions as it answers."

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=73629


COTE D'IVOIRE: Estelle Kouakou: "I want my life back"

Untold numbers of women have become victims of sexual violence at the
hands of rebel and government forces in Cote d'Ivoire, according to
human rights organisations. Estelle Kouakou, 21, is one such woman who
told her story to IRIN:

"When the war began I was living with my grandmother in the village of
Afoumossou but she said it would be better if I went to Abidjan [the
commercial capital] to be with my brothers. To get there I had to take
the train at Bamoro. At the railway station four men came up to me. They
had weapons and wore military garb though I don't know which camp they
belonged to.

http://www.irinnews.org/HOVReport.aspx?ReportId=73612


GUINEA-BISSAU: Famine or not, aid agencies are concerned

The people of Guinea Bissau recently heard their agriculture minister
tell them on national radio that their country was facing an impending
"famine" but aid officials are not so sure. Minister of Agriculture and
Rural Development Daniel Suleimane Emballo said on the radio: "Guinea
Bissau's agricultural production is facing a 50 percent shortfall this
year, thus rural populations today are seriously threatened by famine."

"Yes the rains are late which is a cause for some worry," Rui Jorge
Fonseca, programme officer for the Food and Agriculture Organisation
(FAO), told IRIN on 7 August. "But at this point, we don't have enough
information or concrete data to determine the extent of the problem."

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=73647


LIBERIA: Some fake orphans reunify with their parents

The Liberian government says it has started reunifying hundreds of
parents with their children who were placed in orphanages under false
pretenses. "Under the laws of Liberia orphanages are only meant for
orphans," Alexander Stemn, a pastor and head the Union of Liberian
Orphanages, the umbrella organisation of Liberian orphan homes, told
IRIN on Monday. Orphanage owners had been taking children from their
families to inflate their numbers so as to be able to compete for funds
from international faith-based organisations, according to the
department of social welfare at the Liberian ministry of health.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=73620


LIBERIA: Josephine Morgan: "The orphanage was taking our pictures and
sending them to America."

Josephine Morgan comes from a poor family. Her father, hoping for a
better life for his children, agreed to an offer made by the head of an
orphanage to take Josephine, her sister and her young brother. But the
head of the orphanage is alleged to have taken the children so he could
claim he needed an increase in international assistance. Very little of
the money he got appears to have been spent on the children. Now, after
three years, Josephine has been reunited with her parents. She told IRIN
of her ordeal. "It was on a Sunday afternoon when my father and mother
took me, my younger brother and my elder sister to an orphanage home. My
dad told me that the orphanage is owned by a church and they would feed
us, buy clothes for us, and send us to a good hospital and school. We
all were happy to be at the orphanage, because of what daddy told us.

http://www.irinnews.org/HOVReport.aspx?ReportId=73625


MAURITANIA: Flash flood displaces thousands

Thousands of Mauritanians have been forced from their homes by floods in
the southeastern town of Tintane with water levels reaching two metres
in some areas.

Two people are known to have died and 25 others are missing and feared
drowned, Nicole Jacquet, deputy country director for the World Food
Programme (WFP) in Mauritania, told IRIN on 9 August. "When the rain
falls from the hills there is nothing to stop it. No trees, nothing,"
Jacquet said of Tintane, a Sahelian town in a valley at the foot of the
El-Aguer mountain chain in Mauritania's Hodh El-Gharbi region. "It falls
very, very abruptly and very strongly and it gets into these lowlands,"
she said.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=73664


NIGERIA: Floods leave thousands homeless

Floods in various parts of Nigeria have forced thousands of people from
their homes, polluted water sources and increased the risk of disease.
At least nine people have reportedly died in the flooding, which has
been most severe in the southwest and nearly one thousand kilometres
away in the northeast. "Some lost their lives but I was lucky; I lost
just my home and my business to the flood," said Bola Aloba, a sawmill
owner in the Kosofe district of Lagos, Nigeria's biggest city. Her
entire stock of wood was washed away after the nearby Ogun River burst
its banks.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=73600


NIGERIA: More death and destruction as floods spread to central region

As the rainy season begins to peak throughout Nigeria, a farming
district in the centre of the country is the latest area to go
underwater. Crops were destroyed and at least 17 people died in the
area. Untold homes have also been washed away, local officials said on
Monday. As of Monday at least 10 communities on the Wase River in
Plateau state had been affected by the floods as a river overflowed its
banks, local government official Abubakar Mohammed told reporters.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=73623


NIGERIA: More floods expected as emergency response struggles

Already struggling to help the many flooded communities around the
country, Nigeria's emergency response agency warned the nation on
Thursday that the height of the rainy season has still not arrived and
that people should brace themselves for more floods ahead. The National
Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) is preparing for more flood
emergencies, the director General Audu Bida told reporters in Abuja on
Thursday but said that local governments needed to improve their
preparedness also. "Emergency management must be seen as a collective
responsibility and not just the function of NEMA," Audu said.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=73684


SENEGAL: FGM continues 10 years after villagers claim to abandon it

Some 70km southeast of Senegal's capital Dakar, a crowd of journalists
and dignitaries gathered in the village of Malicounda Bambara on 5
August to commemorate the day 10 years ago, which made headlines around
the world, when the community openly declared that it had abandoned a
local tradition known as 'female genital mutilation' or 'female genital
cutting' (FGM/C). Yet a decade later, here, and in many of the 2,657
villages in Senegal, Guinea and Burkina Faso that have since made
similar declarations, there are worrying signs that FGM/C still exists.
Just a few minutes walk from the marching bands, dancing and countless
congratulatory speeches, a village elder stood outside her canteen,
chastising the fanfare as a farce. "They haven't really abandoned the
practice," she said of the women of Malicounda Bambara. "The same women
who are publicly declaring it has been abandoned are continuing to cut,"
she said.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=73680


SIERRA LEONE: Election campaign focuses on youth

During Sierra Leone's war many youth could feed themselves by taking up
arms and pillaging. Now, in peace time, with democracy flourishing and a
general election set for 11 August, that grim option is less available
to them, but few other options have taken its place. The UN estimates
that some 65 percent of Sierra Leoneans are jobless, with unemployment
as high as 80 to 90 percent in some areas. "When you travel around the
country you see huge numbers of young men all over the place, just
standing idle," Benedict Sannoh, a UN human rights officer in Sierra
Leone, told IRIN before the start of the campaign for the presidential
and parliamentary election, the first post-war poll to be held in
country without the support of international peacekeepers.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=73638


SIERRA LEONE: As vote nears less violence than expected

Almost five years after the civil war ended the majority of Sierra
Leoneans still live in grinding poverty, yet even as tensions mount
ahead of general elections renewed violence appears unlikely. "People
predicted there would be flash points in places like Bo [Sierra Leone's
second city] but so far it hasn't happened," said one international
official who did not want his name used as he was not authorised to
speak about domestic politics. As some 2.6 million of Sierra Leonean's
six million people head to the polls on 11 August to choose a president
and parliament, most people across the country lack access to basic
services such as water, sanitation and electricity. Rampant poverty and
massive unemployment are often cited as potentially destablising factors
in a country creeping back from a decade-long civil war.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=73663


SIERRA LEONE: Who will lead new phase in country stepping away from war
past?

Elections in Sierra Leone will have an impact on the future role the UN
will play in the country, according to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
Until recently the country had the largest UN peacekeeping force in the
world and still hosts a substantial UN support office. The elections
will "help define an exit strategy" for the UN the Secretary General
said in a May report.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=73686


SIERRA LEONE: The election issue -- basic services

Sierra Leoneans go to the polls on 11 August having the second lowest
standard of living in the world, according to UN Human Development
Report. Of the country's some six million people, nearly 2.5 million
have no access to clean water and even fewer have access to electricity.
An estimated 1.5 million live in extreme poverty and at least 4.8
million are jobless. Basic health care remains unavailable to most
people. The average life expectancy is just 40 years. "Everyone knows
[that's] what matters in this election," said one international official
who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to
comment on Sierra Leone politics. "This election is not about what to do
but about who is best placed to do it."

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=73687


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