IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-up 271 for 19-25 March 2005
CONTENTS:
DRC: Disarmament begins in Ituri, targeting 4,000 rebels
DRC: Another key Ituri leader arrested
BURUNDI: Electoral commission preparing timetable, official says
BURUNDI: Refugee agency receives OPEC funding for reintegration
CONGO: British NGO backs creation of law to protect Batwa
RWANDA: Genocide tribunal abolishes joint trials
TANZANIA: $1 billion needed to provide clean water for half those without
ALSO SEE:
DRC: Q & A with Albrecht Conze, deputy political director of MONUC, on the mission's activities in Ituri since the resurgence of militia fighting in January
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DRC: Ituri militias take war to civilians
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DRC: Disarmament begins in Ituri, targeting 4,000 rebels
Some 550 former combatants surrendered their guns on Sunday and Monday in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) district of Ituri in a disarmament effort targeting 4,000 militiamen, the largest number so far.
"The growing number of militia members giving in their weapons and joining the reintegration process indicates that the recent political and military efforts in the district are starting to bear fruit," the UN Mission in the DRC, MONUC, said on Monday.
Among those who surrendered their guns to MONUC on Sunday at the Aru transit camp were members of the Forces armées du peuple Congolais, one of six armed groups in Ituri. Once in MONUC's hands, the former combatants are due to undergo a demobilisation and reintegration programme.
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DRC: Another key Ituri leader arrested
The Congolese government arrested on Saturday Thomas Lubanga, the leader of the larger faction of the Union des patriotes Congolais (UPC), a key political movement in Ituri, a government official announced.
"Lubanga is in the central penitentiary in Kinshasa and from now on the matter is in the hands of the judicial authorities," Henri Mova Sakanyi, the government spokesman, said on Tuesday.
Lubanga, whose UPC faction is accused of widespread human rights abuses, was arrested in Kinshasa, the nation's capital. Other militia leaders from Ituri were arrested earlier in March and placed in the same prison. They include Floribert Ndjabu Ngabu, leader of the Front des nationalistes et integrationniste [FNI], and his aides, Goda Sukpa and Germain Katanga, who were recently promoted to generals in the national army.
The arrests follow the killing on 25 February of nine MONUC Bangladeshi soldiers in the village of Kafe, a FNI stronghold, 60 km northeast of Bunia - the main town in Ituri.
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BURUNDI: Electoral commission preparing timetable, official says
Burundi's electoral body, the CENI, is preparing an electoral timetable now that President Domitien Ndayizeye has promulgated the country's new constitution and the National Assembly has approved the communal law and electoral code, which are required for the polls due on 22 April.
"It [the timetable] needs careful study," Paul Ngarambe, chairman of the National Independent Electoral Commission, or CENI, said at a news conference on 18 March in the capital, Bujumbura.
He said the CENI must wait until the Senate, the upper chamber of Parliament, has approved the electoral code and the communal law before an electoral timetable could be finalised. Senate approval is also needed before the communal law and electoral code can be sent to President Ndayizeye to sign into law.
The National Assembly, the lower chamber of Parliament, adopted the communal law on 15 March, in a 141-4 vote with 28 abstentions. On 11 March, the National Assembly voted 163-0 to adopt the new electoral code. There were six abstentions.
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BURUNDI: Refugee agency receives OPEC funding for reintegration
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has received US $300,000 from the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries Fund for International Development to help returning Burundian refugees to reintegrate, the UN agency reported on Monday.
The money would be used to "finance an urgent operation to assist some 4,000 families who recently returned to two provinces in northeastern Burundi", Ron Redmond, the UNHCR spokesperson, was quoted as saying. Some of the funds would go towards the reconstruction of refugees' homes.
UNHCR in Burundi is one of the largest programmes in Africa. In 2004, the agency oversaw the return of 90,000 refugees from neighbouring Tanzania. Of these returnees, 12,000 went to the eastern province of Muyinga, and 6,000 others went to Kirundo Province in the north.
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CONGO: British NGO backs creation of law to protect Batwa
A British NGO has donated £40,000 (US $75,960) to a human rights organisation in the Republic of Congo to help it lobby for the establishment of a law protecting and promoting the interests of the Batwa, an official told IRIN on Monday.
The Batwa are a minority indigenous hunter-gatherer community within the country that has complained of being marginalized by their Bantu countrymen and women.
"We intend to propose a law that will protect the Batwa population's rights," Roger Bouka-Owoko, the executive director of Congolese Observatory of Human Rights, said when he confirmed receipt of the money from the Rainforest Foundation of Britain.
He said the lobbying would be done over three years in three phases. This would involve the Congolese Observatory of Human Rights meeting with its partners and other NGOs to analyse instruments such as the constitution, the environmental code, and the forestry and labour codes, all of which could have an impact on the status of the Batwa in the country. This would be followed by a series of activities: first, discussions with representatives of the Batwa communities would commence, and then workshops would be held to raise awareness among parliamentarians on issues affecting the Batwa.
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RWANDA: Genocide tribunal abolishes joint trials
The UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has abolished group trials for genocide suspects whose cases are pending before the court, the court's registrar, Adama Dieng, said on Wednesday.
"We have decided to do away with the system of grouping suspects together under one trial," he said in Kigali, the Rwandan capital. "It creates a lot of voluminous work, and slows down the pace of conducting the trials."
Dieng said the tribunal was conducting eight trials, five of which were group trials, with only three suspects being tried singly. The Arusha-based tribunal in Tanzania has been under pressure to complete its work in 2008. The UN Security Council set up the tribunal in 1994 to bring to trial the masterminds of Rwanda's 1994 genocide, in which up to 937,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutu were killed, according to Rwandan government estimates.
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TANZANIA: $1 billion needed to provide clean water for half those without
Tanzania's government said on Tuesday that it would need $1 billion to halve the number of people who do not have access to clean water, which is currently 14 million – 39 percent of the population.
The government launched its 10-year water plan on Tuesday to coincide with UN World Water Day, observed globally.
On the occasion, Tanzanian Vice-President Ali Mohamed Shein said the country's target for 2015 was to make sure that 87 percent of urban and 77 percent of rural dwellers had easy access to clean and safe water.
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