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

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WEST AFRICA
IRIN-WA Weekly Round-Up 447
27 September - 3 October 2008


CONTENTS:

GUINEA: State of suspended development after 50 years of independence
MALI: Violence against women on rise
COTE D'IVOIRE: Toxic waste criminal investigations may indict
   higher-ups
COTE D'IVOIRE: Shaky peace leading into elections
BENIN: Cotonou's overlooked killer: air pollution
COTE D'IVOIRE: Who is to blame for dumping toxic oil sludge?
TOGO: 17,000 poultry killed in latest flu outbreak
LIBERIA: Growing mental health needs, but only one doctor
MALI-NIGER: Insecurity persists despite militia leader's arrest
COTE D'IVOIRE: Urban displaced slip into obscurity


GUINEA: State of suspended development after 50 years of independence

As regional leaders gathered in Conakry on 2 October to celebrate
Guinea's 50 years of independence from France, on the other side of the
capital, doctors emerging from a ten-day strike said when it comes to
healthcare, there is little to celebrate. "There has not been much
progress in the health sector in Guinea over the past few decades.
Health centres and hospitals still do not have enough equipment or
staff. And we experience frequent difficulty in acquiring even basic
life-saving medicines," said government health adviser Dr. Sekou
Doukoure. "The public health sector lacks support staff such as nurses,
lab technicians and midwives, and this has dire consequences on the
population," Doukoure added. Even the few ambulances for use by the
nations' hospitals are in poor repair, or simply not running because
hospitals cannot afford to fill their tanks.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=80717


MALI: Violence against women on rise

At least 300 women are victims of sexual violence every year in Bamako,
according to local police records, but the actual figure is much higher
said the president of the Bamako-based non-profit, Women in Law and
Development in Africa. "Victims and their families rarely denounce
rapists in order to preserve the family's dignity and honour," said the
group's president Sidibe Djenba Diop, "Rape cases are on the rise, yet
neither the [Malian] culture nor its laws recognise, yet, that rape is
an act of violence against women." The group recently released results
from a year-long study on women's vulnerability to sexual violence.
Based on police reports, the study noted at least one reported case of
rape every four days, with the police launching a new investigation
every week. But these inquiries rarely lead to any punishment, said
Diop.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=80716


COTE D'IVOIRE: Toxic waste criminal investigations may indict higher-ups

Ivorian government lawyers have said they may pursue criminal
investigations against the Netherlands-based oil trader Trafigura, which
owned the oil waste dumped in open-air sites in Abidjan in 2006. Ivorian
health officials, an independent investigation panel, and European
lawyers have said the poisonous sludge led to more than one dozen deaths
and tens of thousands of people to fall ill in Abidjan. Trafigura
settled a civil case with the government in February 2007 for US$214
million, which the multimillion dollar international commodities trader
said prevented the government from pursuing it for liability or damages,
according to the 13 February 2007 agreement. But on 1 October 2008, on
the sidelines of a criminal investigation underway in Abidjan against
local port authorities-which Trafigura blames for the illegal dumping-
government lawyer, Christophe Koussougro Sery, said the state can pursue
Trafigura on criminal charges of poisoning Ivorians, even with the civil
settlement.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=80710


COTE D'IVOIRE: Shaky peace leading into elections

As presidential elections approach at year-end after repeated delays,
analysts worry slow progress on meeting the demands of the Ouagadougou
peace agreement, combined with what they see as continued hostility
among some in power towards foreign-born Ivorians, threaten the elusive
stability in the still-divided country. "Ouagadougou was a breakthrough
because the protagonists of the crisis came together to agree on their
own timetable and roadmap to peace rather than at the behest of the
international community," said Kissy Agyeman, country analyst for
Sub-Saharan Africa for London-based think-tank Global Insight. "The
pressure is now on because if there is further stalling, President
Laurent Gbagbo's legitimacy is at stake and people fear it could
precipitate violence in the country." The rebels and government signed a
power-sharing peace accord in Ouagadougou in March 2007 that called for
disarming and demobilising rebel troops; identifying voters in
preparation for elections; building up the state infrastructure in the
north; and helping hundreds of thousands of people displaced during the
civil war that broke out in 2002 return to their towns and villages.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=80702


BENIN: Cotonou's overlooked killer: air pollution

Health officials say air pollution in Benin's economic capital, Cotonou,
is an often-overlooked, undiagnosed killer that is as much of a health
threat as the country's leading cause of death, malaria. "People
banalise pollution because no one ever made the link.between pollution,
illness and death," said UN Development Programme coordinator Mathieu
Houinato. "They think as long as they can put up with it, it is okay.
People do not understand the deadly cumulative [long-term] impact it has
on their health." Air pollution has grown worse in Cotonou with the
increase in population, old cars, carbon dioxide-emitting motorbikes and
high-lead smuggled gasoline. On average, 50,000 people have moved to the
capital every year, swelling the population from 638,000 in 2001 to more
than one million in 2008, according to the National Institute of
Statistics.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=80701


COTE D'IVOIRE: Who is to blame for dumping toxic oil sludge?

A trial is under way in Abidjan of local officials accused of conniving
in the dumping of toxic oil sludge in August 2006 and causing over a
dozen deaths, and illnesses to tens of thousands. Victims of the Abidjan
dumping scandal, environmentalists and lawyers say the real culprits
have slipped away. The president of the Union of Abidjan and Surrounding
Areas' Victims of Toxic Waste, Ouattara Aboubacar, told IRIN the trial
of 12 Abidjan port and customs officials was missing the big players:
"This trial sanctions impunity. We are sending underlings to trial
without trying their silent partner, [Netherlands-based oil trader]
Trafigura. For us, this trial has the bitter taste of impunity."
Trafigura said an Ivorian waste disposal company, Tommy Company, which
had offloaded oil waste from the Panamanian-registered tanker Probo
Koala, was responsible for the damage caused. Tonnes of sludge, the
leftover low-quality oil that cannot be sold, were dumped near Abidjan's
residential communities.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=80684


TOGO: 17,000 poultry killed in latest flu outbreak

Some 17,000 birds died or have been culled since the outbreak of the
H5N1 avian flu virus on 9 September on three poultry farms in Agbata,
located 10km east of Lome, according to the country's livestock
director, Komla Batawui. The UN Food and Agricultural Organization
adviser to the government, Jacques Conforti, says the risk has been
contained. "We focused on free-range poultry, and did not cull poultry
in coops in the areas surrounding Agbata. This [the culling] should
reduce the risk of the virus spreading to zero." Conforti says the
disinfection has moved along quickly in the past three weeks, "We do not
want to lose any time. We try to disinfect a zone in less than 24 hours
before moving to the next at-risk area." He says officials meet with
farmers who point out any sick birds, cull the birds, and pay the
farmers for the value of the bird, eggs or bird feed that is destroyed.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=80678


LIBERIA: Growing mental health needs, but only one doctor

Only five years out of a brutal 14-year-civil war that killed an
estimated 150,000, according to the UN, and displaced and wounded tens
of thousands more, Liberia only has one mental health specialist to
treat trauma and depression. Health officials are preparing to meet on 2
October to find a way to treat the country's growing mental health
needs, despite the lack of trained doctors. Bernice Dahn, the Ministry
of Health director in charge of Liberia's health system and its
employees told IRIN the country is ill-equipped to treat trauma, "To the
best of my knowledge, there is one licensed doctor in the country to
deal with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We actually do not have
[enough] doctors to deal with this. There is one recognised health
centre in [a community located on the outskirts of Monrovia] to deal
with this problem." Liberian fighters who were victims of sexual
violence are more likely to report higher rates of depression, PTSD- a
severe, ongoing emotional reaction to extreme trauma- and suicidal
thoughts than non-combatants or former combatants who did not report
experiencing sexual violence, according to a study published August 2008
in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=80671


MALI-NIGER: Insecurity persists despite militia leader's arrest

Analysts say despite the government's efforts to secure the north
through its clampdown of a militia accused of masterminding recent
Tuareg killings, lasting peace is still elusive because of restive
ex-fighters, extreme Sahelian poverty, and drug trafficking. Mali
officials have reported arresting dozens of suspects in the Ganda Izo
militia, or "children of the earth," including its leader Amadou Diallo
who had fled to neighbouring Niger after four ethnic Tuareg civilians
were abducted and killed during a Muslim holiday fair in Gao, Mali on 1
September. Rather than feeling appeased by the government crackdown,
Tuareg human rights lobbyist Raichatou Wallet Altanata says even good
intentions may provoke a violent backlash, "I fear the government's hunt
and mass arrests of militia members may have the opposite effect on
their [militia] movement."

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=80660


COTE D'IVOIRE: Urban displaced slip into obscurity People who flee to
cities because of conflicts or natural disasters tend to become
invisible to the authorities and organisations that can help them, says
US-based Tufts University and the Geneva-based International
Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC). The Tufts University and IMDC
study researched the specific protection needs of the urban displaced in
Sudan's Khartoum, Colombia's Santa Marta, and Abidjan in Cote d'Ivoire.
As opposed to rural displacements in which communities are more likely
to move in groups and to enclosed camps, in cities, "people often arrive
in individual [family] units and can become lost.many of them will not
have friends or family connections, and will not know where to go," said
urban risk lecturer Dr. Mark Pelling of King's College in London. "As a
result, they can become invisible to those in power," said Pelling.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=80649


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