IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-up 262 for 15-21 Jan 2005
CONTENTS:
BURNDI: Severity of food shortage in two provinces made clearer
BURUNDI: South African, Ugandan leaders meet
BURUNDI: Medical charity reopens its cholera treatment centre
KENYA: Inadequate rainfall dashes hopes of good maize harvest
RWANDA: Investigations begin for Gacaca genocide trials
DRC: Dutch general named commander of UN troops in east
DRC: Looting forces MSF to suspend activities in part of North Kivu
DRC-UGANDA: Refugees move back and forth across border
UGANDA: Polio alert following reported cases in Sudan
UGANDA: Public transport to be used to combat HIV/AIDS
UGANDA: Death row inmates challenge capital punishment
SUDAN: Cairo deal to help consolidate peace
BURNDI: Severity of food shortage in two provinces made clearer
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) confirmed on Wednesday that more than half a million people are in need of food aid in northern Burundi.
"WFP will assist at least 520,000 people in the provinces of Kirundo and Muyinga for the next two months," WFP said in a statement issued on Wednesday.
Earlier in January, Burundi’s president, Domitien Ndayizeye, issued a decree calling the situation in the two provinces "a famine". However, the WFP spokesperson in Burundi, Guillaume Folio, told IRIN that the situation was different, calling it instead "a serious food shortage".
The shortages follow poor harvests in 2004, WFP said, adding that "a combination of drought and manioc mosaic virus has seriously reduced crop production".
Full report
BURUNDI: South African, Ugandan leaders meet
The chief mediator in the Burundian peace process, South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma, arrived in the Uganda capital, Kampala, on Monday for private talks with President Yoweri Museveni who chairs a regional peace initiative for Burundi.
Uganda’s ambassador to Rwanda and Burundi, Odonia Ayebale, said in Kampala the two leaders would discuss whether it would be possible for Burundi to hold elections within three months as planned.
The elections are the last phase of a 36-month transitional peace process, following a decade-long civil war that has claimed some 300,000 lives. The war was triggered by the assassination in October 1993 of the country's first elected Hutu president, Melchoir Ndadaye, by a small segment of the Tutsi-dominated army. Ethnic tensions continued until President Pierre Buyoya, who had previously ruled from 1987-93, seized power again in a bloodless coup on 25 July 1996.
The government and most rebel groups signed a peace and reconciliation accord in August 2000 in Arusha, Tanzania, and established a joint transitional government until elections are held.
But the election timetable has been postponed repeatedly. A referendum on Burundi's post-transitional constitution was initially scheduled for 26 October 2004, and then put off to December and again for a third time with no new date being set.
BURUNDI: Medical charity reopens its cholera treatment centre
The medical charity, Medecins Sans Frontieres, said on Friday it was reopening its specialised cholera treatment centre, following an alert on the outbreak of the disease.
The Ministry of Public Health raised the alarm on Monday, and on by the following day it announced it had registered 88 cases.
MSF said its centre had existed since 1995, when it was first set up to treat people displaced following the razing of Kamenge, a neighbourhood north of the capital, Bujumbura, during the civil war. Since then, it added, the centre had served as a supplementary feeding facility for malnourished children, a cholera clinic and an extension to the neighbouring MSF centre for war-wounded.
The centre was closed following the signing of power-sharing accords in 2003 and 2004 between the government and other political groups, MSF said, "but kept on stand-by" as very poor hygienic conditions and lack of clean water in the suburbs could lead to a cholera outbreak. Many poor neighbourhoods lack water because the utility, Regideso, cut supplies to public fountains when the city council failed to pay bills.
[On the Net: MSF reacts to new cholera outbreak in Burundi: www.msf.org]
[BURUNDI: Capital hit by cholera outbreak]
KENYA: Inadequate rainfall dashes hopes of good maize harvest
Hopes for a good maize harvest in Kenya this year have been dashed following poor rainfall in December 2004, the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET) reported. Crops reaching the critical tasselling stage were unlikely to mature, it added.
The most affected areas were the lowlands of Eastern, Coast and Central provinces, FEWS NET said in its latest update on Kenya issued on Tuesday.
It said poor rainfall in the predominantly pastoral district of Kajiado in the south was of particular concern and that water scarcity in the northeastern district of Mandera had led to violence in which at least 20 people died in early January. Most other pastoral areas received fairly good rains, it added.
The Ministry of Agriculture had revised the expected 2004-05 national short rains maize harvest down from 450,000 mt to 30,000 mt, FEWS NET reported. The most significant shortfalls, it added, had been observed in Eastern and Coast provinces and in the southern region of the Rift Valley province.
Maize is Kenya's staple food.
Full report
RWANDA: Investigations begin for Gacaca genocide trials
Rwanda's traditional communal courts, known as Gacaca, set up to try crimes committed during the 1994 genocide, began systematic investigations nationwide on Monday.
"Our intention is to have these investigations completed before yearend to enable the Gacaca courts to start by early 2006," Domitilla Mukantaganzwa, the executive secretary of the Gacaca justice service, said in Kigali.
In the current investigative phase, communities are to hold public meetings in which residents identify victims and suspects, Mukantaganzwa said. In the trails, victims and suspects must face each other and talk before a panel of locally elected judges. Later the judges will issue verdicts. Officials said up to one million people - that is one-eight of the population - could be on trial.
Full report
Meanwhile, in Arusha, Tanzania, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Hassan Jallow, said on Wednesday he was ready to start the trials of 17 suspects held in detention for their role in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
Speaking to reporters, he said the trials would be held simultaneously with the ongoing 25 cases in progress.
There are a total of 57 detainees at the special UN Detention Facility in Arusha, location of the tribunal. Upon closure of the investigations deadline in 2004, as directed by the UN Security Council, Jallow, without mentioning the names, said investigations had been completed on 16 targets.
"We are now looking at the files and will decide whether we have enough evidence to proceed," he said. "We have been given up to October [2005] to do that, but our plan is to make sure by June - we will have decided what indictment to file."
Full report
DRC: Dutch general named commander of UN troops in east
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has named Dutch Maj-Gen Patrick Cammaert as commander of UN troops in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a spokesman for the UN Mission there, known as MONUC, said.
The spokesman, Momadou Bah, said in Kinshasa on Tuesday that Cammaert would operate from divisional headquarters in Kisangani, capital of Orientale Province. He is expected to assume command of the division's 9,000 men within the first 15 days of February. The division's three brigades are stationed in the northeastern district of Ituri, Orientale Province, as well as in North and South Kivu provinces.
Cammaert will also serve as MONUC's deputy MONUC force commander.
Prior to his appointment on 7 January, Cammaert was the UN military adviser for peacekeeping operations at UN headquarters, New York. In 1992, he served as commander of the First Dutch Marine Battalion with the UN Transitional Administration in Cambodia; as commander of the Forward Headquarters of Mount Igman of the Multinational Brigade of the Rapid Reaction Forces of the UN Protection Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995; and as force commander on the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Cammaert joined the Royal Netherlands Marine Corps in 1968.
[UGANDA-DRC: 15,000 refugees now fled Ituri fighting, UNHCR says]
[DRC-UGANDA: Congolese refugees at risk of diseases, UNHCR official says]
DRC: Looting forces MSF to suspend activities in part of North Kivu
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has suspended aid activities in one of the most war-torn areas of Congo’s North Kivu Province after people in army uniform attacked the charity's facility late Tuesday.
"They took money, communication equipment and one of our vehicles from our base in the village of Kabati," Jean-Christophe Dollé, the head of the MSF mission in Goma, told IRIN on Thursday.
"The continuation of project activities are severely hampered," he added.
MSF had been using its base in Kabati to provide help to some 100,000 people in the districts of Masisi and Rutshuru, many of whom had fled from nearby Kanyabayonga where regular army units were recently fighting each other.
MSF staff has been providing emergency medical care to the hundreds of thousands of inhabitants of Masisi and Rutshuru districts since 1992. MSF has been operating from Kabati since 2002 helping prevent transmission of HIV/AIDS, treating children for malnutrition and supporting local vaccination campaigns.
Full report
DRC-UGANDA: Refugees move back and forth across border
Out of a wave of more than 10,000 refugees from the DRC who escaped fighting by crossing into Uganda's southwestern Kanungu District, at least 7,000 have now returned, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
"Trapped between fighting on one side and an uneasy exile on the other, thousands of Congolese refugees have spent the past ten days crossing back and forth," UNHCR said in a statement issued on Wednesday.
It reported that 10,100 refugees had arrived in the village of Ishasha, near Lake Edward. According to MSF medical coordinator, Dr Jerome Arties, who was in Ishasha on Monday and Tuesday, only 1,000 of the roughly 10,000 refugees are still in Ishasha.
Full report
UGANDA: Polio alert following reported cases in Sudan
The Ugandan Ministry of Health warned on Monday that children in the northern districts could face the risk of contracting polio following a reported outbreak of the disease in neighbouring Sudan. It urged parents to take children, who had not completed their immunisation schedules, for vaccination.
"The ministry has decided to conduct two rounds of supplementary polio vaccinations, targeting children up to five years, in the districts bordering Sudan," Paul Kagwa, a spokesman for the ministry, told IRIN. "We fear that because of cross border movement, these districts will be at high risk of getting infections.
The Ugandan districts with close to Sudan include Adjumani, Apac, Kitgum, Kotido, Lira, Masindi, Moyo, Moroto, Nakapiripirit and Pader.
The ministry, in a statement, expressed fear that several million children in the country were at risk of contracting the disease because they did not complete their routine immunisation, following the confirmation of 112 cases in 13 Sudanese states since November.
Full report
UGANDA: Public transport to be used to combat HIV/AIDS
Uganda’s public transport system is set to become the latest vehicle to promote behaviour change in the country’s continued fight against HIV/AIDS, according to the Ministry of Health.
The project will make use of the entire range of public transport in the country, which is made up of large long distance buses, 15-seat mini-buses, cabs, motor cycles, known locally as "boda bodas"; canoes and ferries.
Julius Byenkya Uganda's AIDS Control Programme told IRIN on Tuesday that the government aimed to increase the public response to HIV/AIDS by using public transport vehicles as message boards for HIV/AIDS stickers and posters, and as distribution channels for condoms and information flyers.
UGANDA: Death row inmates challenge capital punishment
Hundreds of death row inmates in Uganda launched an unprecedented petition on Wednesday to end capital punishment in the country, insisting that the death sentence was "cruel, inhuman and degrading" and, therefore, illegal.
"The petition by 417 prisoners on death row is seeking to find out whether the death penalty is a constitutional and lawful punishment, or whether the [Ugandan] constitution permits it," John Katende, the convicts' defence lawyer, told the court in the capital, Kampala.
The case, first filed by the convicts in September 2003, kicked off at Uganda's constitutional court on Wednesday, seeking a declaration that the death sentence was unconstitutional and should be expunged from Uganda's law books.
Uganda has executed up to 377 people, including one woman, since 1938. President Yoweri Museveni's government has put 51 people to death since it took over power in 1986, most recently hanging 27 people in 1999.
Full report
SUDAN: Cairo deal to help consolidate peace
The agreement signed by the Sudanese government and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) on Sunday will further consolidate the peace accord signed with the southern Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) on 9 January, sources said.
The NDA, which is based in Eritrea, signed the tentative agreement with the government in the Egyptian capital, Cairo. It supports the southern peace agreement, backs the drafting of a new constitution and calls for the formation of a neutral, professional army.
"This is a positive development," George Somerwill, deputy spokesman of the UN Advance Mission in Sudan (UNAMIS), told IRIN on Tuesday. "At this time of great change for the people of Sudan, we welcome any move that contributes to the consolidation of the peace in the country."
NDA spokesman Khatem Es-Sir also lauded the accord, and was quoted by AFP news agency as saying that it "brings a practical solution to the question of democratic change".
The deal represents a framework for a comprehensive political solution between the two sides. It aims to lift the state of emergency, which has been in place since 1989, and to reintegrate the NDA into Sudan's political life.
A final agreement is expected to be signed on 12 February in Cairo.
Full report
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