WEST AFRICA: IRIN-WA Weekly Round-up 394 for 15 - 21 September 2007
DAKAR, 21 September 2007 (IRIN) - 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 communiqué 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.
Full report
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.
Full report
COTE D’IVOIRE: Flood damage could slow identification process in north
In northwest Côte 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.”
Full report
COTE D’IVOIRE: No war, no peace five years after rebellion
In Côte 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 Côte d'Ivoire," said Pierre Schori, special representative of the UN secretary-general in Côte 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."
Full report
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.
Full report
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.”
Full report
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.
Full report
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.
Full report
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.
Full report
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.”
Full report
|