IRIN-HOA Weekly 216 for 23-29 October 2004
CONTENTS:
ETHIOPIA: Ruling party wants more women in parliament
ETHIOPIA: Full-blown emergency threatens Somali region, UN warns
ETHIOPIA: 750,000 children vaccinated against polio
ETHIOPIA: Prime Minister orders investigation into Dire Dawa killings
ERITREA: UN agency delivers much-needed food aid
SOMALIA: Boosting of UN role to be gradual and based on consensus
SOMALIA: No government-in-exile, new president says
SOMALIA: New president asks AU for 20,000 peacekeepers
SUDAN: Malnutrition widespread in Darfur - WFP
SUDAN: SPLM/A leader expects final peace deal by year-end
SUDAN: 70,000 Darfur IDPs reportedly taken back to their homes
SUDAN: EU to meet half the cost of AU mission in Darfur
ALSO SEE:
ETHIOPIA: FOCUS: 'Face of famine' has evolved to hope 20 years on
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SUDAN: Fears over increase in HIV/AIDS as calm returns to the south
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ETHIOPIA: Ruling party wants more women in parliament
Ethiopia's ruling party is imposing female quotas on candidates in a bid to have more women in parliament, officials said on Friday. Women are guaranteed up to 30 percent of seats in the national elections for the incumbent Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF).
Opposition groups have also taken up the "historic" move as political parities battle it out in the run up to the May 2005 federal and regional elections. Ethiopia’s parliament has just 42 female members, contrasting with 505 men. Education Minister Genet Zewdie is the only female member of the 16-strong cabinet.
"For the country to be a true democracy women must be properly represented, Ethiopia Beyene, the vice chairman of the parliament women’s affairs standing committee, said. "The current number of women in parliament is just not good enough. Women have a major contribution to make so this is a very important step." In the regional elections half of all candidates must be women, added Ethiopia, who has represented the EPRDF in parliament for the last nine years.
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ETHIOPIA: Full-blown emergency threatens Somali region, UN warns
A full-blown emergency is threatening Ethiopia’s Somali region, the UN warned on Thursday. Wells are drying up and malnutrition is beginning to set in, according to a joint UN rapid-assessment team sent to monitor the crisis. The team included the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, World Food Programme, UN Children’s Fund and the UN Development Programme. It said the first "unconfirmed reports" of deaths from water shortages were beginning to emerge from the region, one of the most remote in the country.
"The Somali region is declining into a crisis situation with some districts already in a state of emergency," said the joint UN agencies report. "There is widespread suffering in the Somali region due to the cumulative effects of years of poor rains. Should the present Deyr (short) rains fail or perform poorly, then many zones in the Somali region are facing a full-blown humanitarian emergency."
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ETHIOPIA: 750,000 children vaccinated against polio
Ethiopia has completed the vaccination of 750,000 children against polio as it seeks to eradicate the last traces of the paralysing disease in the country. The campaign comes amid fears that polio could re-emerge in Ethiopia after new cases were discovered close to the border of neighbouring Sudan. Although no case of wild polio virus has been detected since 2001, Ethiopia is still not certified free of the virus. Under World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines, a country can only be declared free if no cases of the disease are detected for three years.
"Ethiopia is no longer on the list of priority countries," Bjorn Ljungqvist, the head of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) told IRIN. "However, there is the threat of importing wild polio virus from countries still harbouring the virus due to intense transmission in Nigeria and the recent transmission of polio virus to Sudan, which borders Ethiopia." The four-day polio campaign was launched on Friday in key areas of the Oromia region, around the capital, Addis Ababa. Some 1,250 vaccinators and 3,750 volunteers took part.
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ETHIOPIA: Prime Minister orders investigation into Dire Dawa killings
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has ordered an investigation into the killing of six people, reportedly by police, in the eastern town of Dire Dawa, and has spoken with elders to help resolve the issue, government spokesman Zemedkun Teckle said over the weekend. The six were shot dead after police clashed with shopkeepers in the town, some 500 km east of the capital, in a dispute over smuggled goods, the Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO) said on Friday.
Another 19 people were injured as police "indiscriminately" opened fire on demonstrators who claimed their goods had been illegally seized, EHRCO added. The police had raided the shops to confiscate smuggled items. The Ethiopian government has pledged to crack down on smuggling across the highly porous 1,600-km border with Somalia, which, it says, undermines legitimate trading.
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ERITREA: UN agency delivers much-needed food aid
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) announced on Friday that a ship carrying 61,200 mt of wheat from the United States had arrived at Eritrea's Red Sea port of Massawa to help alleviate the suffering of some 600,000 people affected by drought in the Horn of Africa country.
"This shipment, the largest single consignment of food aid to Eritrea since its independence in 1991, comes as the country, in its fourth consecutive year of drought, faces nearly complete crop failure in some key food-producing regions," Jean-Pierre Cebron, the WFP country director, said.
Some 38,500 mt of the food delivered by US-registered 'Liberty Sun' will support WFP's emergency operations in the hard-hit areas of Gash Barka, Debub and Anseba. The other 22,700 mt of wheat is a US contribution to the Eritrean Grain Board.
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SOMALIA: Boosting of UN role to be gradual and based on consensus
Recent progress in efforts to restore peace and stability in Somalia is likely to require the boosting of the UN's role in that country, the UN Security Council said on Tuesday, adding that the strengthening of the world body's involvement would be gradual and based on consultations with the new government. "The Security Council shares the Secretary-General's assessment that, 'at this stage of progress in the Somali peace process, there will likely be a call for an expanded peace-building role and presence for the United Nations, in order that it may assist the Somali parties in implementing their agreement'," the Council said in a statement read by its president for October, Emyr Jones Parry of Britain.
"At the same time, it is clear that any enhanced role for the Organization in Somalia must be incremental, and should be based on the outcome of discussions with the new government," the Council added.
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SOMALIA: No government-in-exile, new president says
Somalia's newly elected president said on Monday his administration would not remain in exile, but would return to the war-ravaged country before security was completely restored. President Abdullahi Yusuf said once his cabinet was selected they would return – although they would initially establish themselves outside the capital, Mogadishu. He rejected calls for the new government to return only when security is restored. "The first thing this new government should tackle is security," he told journalists at a joint press conference with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. "Somalia has been destroyed."
Yusuf has asked the African Union (AU) for between 15 and 20,000 peacekeepers to help restore order in Somalia, which has been devastated by 14 years of civil war. "For the past 14 years that destruction has been going on and all the infrastructure including the military and security forces has been destroyed," he said. "We need forces from Africa to help us in peacemaking. At the same time, it is essential we start building new Somali forces comprise military police and military."
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SOMALIA: New president asks AU for 20,000 peacekeepers
Somalia’s newly elected president, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, has asked the African Union (AU) for 20,000 peacekeepers to help secure the country, officials said on Saturday. The peacekeepers would also help disarm various militias, AU spokesman Adam Thiam said after a meeting between the president and AU chairman Alpha Oumar Konare.
The comments came as European Union (EU) foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, held talks in Addis Ababa about helping rebuild the war-ravaged nation. Solana said the EU could help with physical reconstruction and also help to "put the administration into shape", although he declined to say how much it would contribute. Solana, who also met Sudanese-rebel leader John Garang and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi during his two-day trip to Addis Ababa, said the challenges were enormous.
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SUDAN: Malnutrition widespread in Darfur - WFP
Almost 22 percent of children under the age of five in Darfur, western Sudan, are malnourished and close to half of all families do not have enough food, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) told IRIN on Tuesday. The situation was particularly serious among internally displaced persons (IDPs), according to a comprehensive nutrition and food security assessment conducted in August and September among IDPs and other Darfur residents.
Results of the survey, conducted by WFP in collaboration with other agencies, were released on Tuesday. At the time of the survey, food aid already played a critical role by reaching 70 percent of households among Darfur’s 1.45 million IDPs and 20 percent of resident households in conflict-affected areas, WFP said. A total of 24 percent of IDPs were found to be critically short of food.
Full report
SUDAN: SPLM/A leader expects final peace deal by year-end
Sudanese-rebel leader John Garang said on Friday he hoped a final peace deal between his insurgents and the government of Khartoum would be concluded before the end of the year. Speaking at the African Union (AU) headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, he said peace talks in Naivasha, Kenya, paved the way for a final peace deal. He also said the talks could help bring calm to the Darfur region in western Sudan, where the UN estimates 70,000 people have lost their lives as a result of a conflict that began early last year.
Garang's Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) and the government are currently working out the final details of a peace deal to end a 21-year fight for control of southern Sudan. "It is a political framework for the whole country," said the SPLM/A leader, who is in Ethiopia for a five-day visit.
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SUDAN: 70,000 Darfur IDPs reportedly taken back to their homes
Jan Pronk, the UN special envoy to Sudan, met with Sudan’s Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail on Thursday to discuss the deteriorating security situation in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, Radhia Achouri, spokeswoman for the United Nations Advance Mission in Sudan (UNAMIS), told IRIN on Friday. "Ismail provided Pronk with an update on the measures the government of Sudan had taken to end impunity in Darfur," Achouri said. "A number of people, including Janjawid militia, have been arrested, while 70,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Darfur were claimed to have been repatriated."
She said that Pronk took note of the number of people who had been returned to their homes, but he needed more information to establish whether this had occurred on a voluntary basis. "He was particularly concerned that neither the UN High Commissioner for Refugees nor the International Organisation for Migration had been consulted prior to the repatriation, as had been agreed upon earlier," Achouri added.
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SUDAN: EU to meet half the cost of AU mission in Darfur
The European Union (EU) is to pay more than half the cost of the African Union (AU) peacekeeping mission in Sudan's strife-torn Darfur region, EU's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said on Saturday. Solana said the 25-member body would approve the funding on Monday to support an enhanced AU-peacekeeping mission in Darfur. "Given the situation in Darfur, this mission has to be a success," Solana told journalists after a meeting in Addis Ababa with Alpha Oumar Konare, the chairman of the AU Commission.
"The African Union is going to be a success with the cooperation of the international community," said Solana, who was on a two-day visit to Addis Ababa, where the AU has its headquarters. "I would prefer to see how we solve it before we go into a definition of what it is," Solana said when asked whether he would describe the violence in Darfur as genocide.
The AU’s Peace and Security Council agreed on Wednesday to increase its protection force in Darfur from 390 to over 3,000 troops and civilian police in an effort to end attacks against civilians by armed groups.
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