IRIN-WA Weekly 264 covering 12 – 18 February 2005
CONTENTS:
TOGO: Gnassingbe bows to pressure for elections, but stays in power
LIBERIA: UNHCR starts refugee resettlement in Lofa county
WEST AFRICA: Sahel states and donors gear up to fight locusts more effectively
GUINEA-BISSAU: Donors to firm up aid pledges after 2005 presidential election
GUINEA: Newspaper editor and lawyer detained
MAURITANIA: Sex work for survival and profit
COTE D IVOIRE: Lost generation feared as schools in rebel north struggle to stay open
TOGO: Gnassingbe bows to pressure for elections, but stays in power
Faure Gnassingbe, who seized power in Togo following the death of his father, has caved in to international demands for quick presidential elections but has said he will not quit until they are held.
“I have decided in the superior interest of the nation, to follow the transition process in accordance with the constitution... and to organise a presidential election within the constitutional timeframe of 60 days,” Gnassingbe said late Friday in a long-awaited television broadcast to the nation.
“I will assure the continuity of the country while we wait for a new president to be elected,” said Gnassingbe, dressed in a dark suit, his eyes flitting off-camera.
Riots have erupted on the streets of the capital, Lome, since the army installed the burly 39-year-old as successor to his father, Gnassingbe Eyadema, who ruled this small West African country with a rod of iron for 38 years until his death on 5 February.
The government has admitted that at least four protesters were shot dead by security forces during clashes over the last week.
Another opposition rally to protest at the father-to-son-transmission of power took place in Lome on Saturday, but passed off without any trouble.
Meanwhile, thousands of Gnassingbe supporters gathered peacefully across town outside Lome 2, the presidential residence, for a counter rally.
Togo’s alliance of six opposition parties immediately slammed Gnassingbe’s decision to remain in power and forged ahead with a fresh protest demonstration.
IRIN coverage on Togo
LIBERIA: UNHCR starts refugee resettlement in Lofa county
The UN refugee agency UNCHR began transporting Liberian refugees back to Lofa county in Northwestern Liberia on Monday, a fertile region stripped of its population by heavy fighting during the country's 14-year civil war, Francesca Fontanini, the UNHCR spokeswoman in Liberia told IRIN.
According to an official UN map of displaced persons more than 89,000 of the 350,000 Liberian refugees who fled abroad during the 1989-2003 conflict are from Lofa County. Most of them trekked into Guinea and Sierra Leone.
Lofa County, once known as the breadbasket of Liberia, also accounts for more than 95,000 of the 500,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) registered nationally.
The heavily forested district, which until recently was a stronghold of the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) rebel movement, was finally declared safe for the return of IDPs and refugees by the Liberian government and the United Nations at the end of January.
Full report
WEST AFRICA: Sahel states and donors gear up to fight locusts more effectively
International donors and the governments of West Africa have agreed to activate a new mechanism to coordinate locust control measures more effectively and donors have earmarked funds to make it work, Clive Elliott, the head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation's (FAO) locust control unit said.
Speaking after a week-long meeting of locust control experts and government officials in Dakar, Elliott told IRIN that the participants had agreed to set up the mechanism, known as EMPRES. This is designed to prevent a repetition of last year's confusion, when donors and governments in the region reacted late and in a poorly coordinated fashion to the biggest locust invasion of West Africa for 15 years.
The Emergency Prevention System for Transboundary Animal and Plant Pests and Diseases should also enable the Sahel states to be better prepared if fresh swarms emerge from the Sahara desert to ravage their crops at the onset of the rainy season in June. Governments in the Sahel should also be able to count on money and pesticide stocks left over from the 2004 locust control campaign.
Full report
GUINEA-BISSAU: Donors to firm up aid pledges after 2005 presidential election
International donors have pledged new money to help reform Guinea-Bissau's armed forces and guarantee the payment of civil service salaries during the run-up to presidential elections due in May, Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Junior said.
But most of those attending a round table donor conference in Lisbon last Friday said they would wait to see the outcome of the presidential election before firming up other pledges to help the government cover an expected 42 billion CFA franc (US$84 million) budget deficit this year, he told reporters on Saturday.
A second donor's conference will be held in Portugal, the former colonial ruler of Guinea-Bissau, during the second half of this year, the prime minister added.
The government is expected to announce shortly the date of the presidential election. This will complete the West African country's return to democracy following a bloodless coup in September 2003 which removed the former president Kumba Yala.
Full report
GUINEA: Newspaper editor and lawyer detained
Benn Pepito, the news editor of the independent weekly newspaper La Lance, and Paul Yomba Korouma, the lawyer of opposition politician Antoine Soromou who disappeared following last month's assassination attempt on President Lansana Conte, have been arrested, their colleagues said on Thursday.
It was initially thought that Pepito had been arrested in connection with an article in La Lance which drew comparisons between the political crisis in Togo triggered by the death of President Gnassingbe Eyadema, and what might happen in Guinea when Conte, who is 71 and in poor health, finally quits the scene.
However, news of Korouma's arrest encouraged speculation that Pepito's arrest might have more to do with the disappearance of Soromou, the leader of the small National Alliance for Development (AND) opposition party.
Soromou, the former mayor of the southeastern town of Lola, disappeared completely following an incident on 19 January when armed men fired on the president's motorcade in the capital Conakry, seriously injuring a bodyguard.
Korouma claimed publicly that his client had been kidnapped, ostensibly by government agents. Pepito had followed the Soromou saga closely and had written several articles about the harassment of the politician and his eventual disappearance.
Full report
MAURITANIA: Sex work for survival and profit
Every night hundreds of women sell their bodies for sex in darkened brothels in El Mina, a poor district of the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott. For them it is a means of survival, but for others facilitating this illegal trade it is big business.
It is well past midnight and the occasional bare light bulb hanging in a doorway provides sparse illumination, making it difficult to negotiate the rubbish and uneven sandy ground underfoot.
"At the brothel, we try to keep a low profile. We use only candles so as not to draw attention to the place," explains Janine, which is not her real name, a rotund 48-year-old sex worker from Senegal.
Prostitution and all activities relating to it are illegal in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania. Women caught selling their bodies for sex can be sent to jail for up to three years. It is even a crime to live with someone who is habitually involved in the trade.
Prosecutions are rare, but police harassment is constant.
The sex workers of El Mina say the police are more interested in extorting money from them than in enforcing the law.
"The only problem I have working in Mauritania is with the police," Janine said. "I service all sorts of men at the brothel and have no problems, but when the police come they take everything that everyone has."
IRIN coverage on Mauritania
COTE D IVOIRE: Lost generation feared as schools in rebel north struggle to stay open
It looks deceptively as if Cote d’Ivoire is at peace again. Many schools have reopened in the rebel-run north and noisy groups of children wearing black and white or gingham check uniforms kick up the dust on their way to class in the morning.
But after two and a half years of armed confrontation, the war is far from over. And despite appearances, the schools are not running normally.
Classes and exams have been disrupted for three years running and a generation of young Ivorians risks being left out in the cold.
Most schools, hospitals, courts, tax offices and other state-run services closed down in the northern half of Cote d’Ivoire in September 2002, when civil war broke out, partitioning the country of 16 million people between the government-controlled south and insurgent north.
Teachers and other civil servants fled the dusty villages and towns of the dry savannah for the lush south and its lagoon-side capital Abidjan, while the government cut off funding to rebel-held areas.
War interrupted schooling for 700,000 children, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
Full report
[ENDS]
|
|