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 442
23 - 29 August 2008


CONTENTS:

NIGER: Flood victims continue crowding into city schools
MALI: Saving elephants, saving communities
NIGER: Army seizes outlawed anti-personnel mines
CAMEROON: Rapid intervention military unit strays from its mission
GUINEA-BISSAU: Security sector reform must go ahead
GUINEA-BISSAU: Cholera epidemic claims more lives
NIGER: Northern desert conflict disrupts maternal health care
WEST AFRICA: Coastline to be submerged by 2099


CONTENTS:

NIGER: Flood victims continue crowding into city schools

Weeks after floods ripped through Tillaberi, 120 kilometres west of
Niamey, and Niger's second-largest city Zinder, 900 kilometres east of
Niamey, thousands of people are still homeless. According to the UN
Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), storms starting
on 17 July and on 8 August have affected more than 40,000 people and
destroyed about 400 agricultural fields and hundreds of homes.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=80081


MALI: Saving elephants, saving communities

Implementers of an international project to help endangered elephants in
Mali want to prove that by doing so, they can also help local
communities adapt to climate change in the Sahel. The Malian government
lists elephants in Gourma in the country's far desert north as highly
endangered. A drought in the 1970's killed most of the country's
elephants leading the population to dwindle from several thousand down
to 350. "The drought in the Sahel in the 1970's created a shortage of
watering holes," says Namory Traore, a director at Mali's National
Centre for Nature Conservation. Conservationists say that climate change
is leading to increased tensions as elephants and the local population
vie for access to water.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=80079


NIGER: Army seizes outlawed anti-personnel mines

The Niger army says it has seized a stockpile of more than 1,000
anti-personnel landmines it found abandoned on the Niger-Chad border. If
confirmed as anti-personnel mines, this would be the first time such a
large quantity of these outlawed mines, intended to maim and kill
individuals rather than blow up vehicles, has been discovered in Niger.
Both the Niger army and rebels have admitted using anti-vehicle mines,
but deny using anti-personnel mines, in an ongoing conflict that has
claimed at least 300 lives and displaced more than ten thousand in the
north.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=80076


CAMEROON: Rapid intervention military unit strays from its mission

In 2001 the Cameroonian government created a special rapid intervention
battalion (BIR) to quell hostage-taking and looting by criminal gangs
operating on its eastern and northern borders, but this force is now
straying from its original mission, causing anger among human rights
groups. The BIR was originally set up to fight criminal gangs known as
'coupeurs de routes' who operate on the borders with the Central African
Republic in the east and Chad and Nigeria in the north taking hostages
for ransom, stealing cattle, as well as attacking and looting passenger
vehicles. But in February 2008 in the cities of Douala and Yaounde the
BIR was called on to crack down on rioters protesting against the high
cost of living. Jean Bertin Kemayou, leader of human rights organisation
Freedom Services, claims up to 100 people died in these protests, most
of them unarmed civilians at the hands of the BIR.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=80065


GUINEA-BISSAU: Security sector reform must go ahead

Recent political instability including the early August dissolution of
government could delay long-awaited plans to reform Guinea-Bissau's
swollen security sector which could impact the country's long-term
security says the president of the national defence institute Baciro
Dja. Nine police units, the army, air force, navy and judiciary, are to
be reformed over the next few years as part of an ambitious government
exercise underpinned by the European Union and headed by a Spanish army
general, Juan Esteban Verastegui. "Installing a new government could
demotivate the [security sector reform] process. If we say we'll reform
and then nothing happens that will be very dangerous," said Dja.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=80051


GUINEA-BISSAU: Cholera epidemic claims more lives

Up to 3,160 people have now contracted cholera and 73 people have died
across the country and health minister Camilo Simoes Lopes told IRIN the
authorities are struggling to win the fight again the epidemic. The
majority of the victims are in the capital, Bissau, which has recorded
2,301 cases. "The situation is bad across the country," Lopes said,
"Only the Bijagos islands have been spared."

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=80028


NIGER: Northern desert conflict disrupts maternal health care

All she saw was blood. Ouma Ibrahim knew it was not normal to have so
much blood after delivering her son at home. She consulted a midwife at
the nearby Dagamanet Clinic near her Agadez home, who sent her to the
regional hospital five kilometres away. But as evening approached,
Ibrahim could not find a neighbour willing to drive her. Normally, a
taxi should have cost US$0.50, but the only taxi driver she found
charged $3, "Just because they know they can," said Ibrahim. "No one
wants to be on the streets at night. It just is not safe. Neighbours
will pretend they don't hear knocking, and pleas to borrow their car. If
it had been any later, I would have just had to stay at home and wait
until morning."

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=80005


WEST AFRICA: Coastline to be submerged by 2099

Swathes of West Africa's coastline extending from the orange dunes in
Mauritania to the dense tropical forests in Cameroon will be underwater
by the end of the century as a direct consequence of climate change,
environmental experts warn. "The coastline [as it is now] will be
completely changed by the end of this century because the sea level is
rising along the coast at around two centimetres every year," said
Stefan Cramer, Nigeria director of Heinrich Boll Stiftung, a German
environmental NGO. Even where urban areas appear unscathed, sea level
rise will still challenge towns and cities by threatening the
underground water supplies from which millions of people across the
region draw their water.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=79986


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