IRIN-HOA Weekly Round-up 273 for 2-8 April 2005
CONTENTS:
ERITREA-ETHIOPIA: Stalemate could lead to war, Eritrean gov't says
ERITREA: Mortality rates decrease by 30 percent
ERITREA: Humanitarian situation worsening, UN says
ETHIOPIA: Child deaths and malnutrition at emergency levels in IDP camp
ETHIOPIA: Prime Minister promises Internet access for all
SOMALIA: War and tsunami force Somalis into slums
SOMALIA: Malnutrition over 20 percent, says UN agency
SOMALIA: New law brings elections closer in Somaliland
SUDAN: Beja people's problems exacerbated by rebels
SUDAN: UN envoy tours Darfur; ICC receives list of war-crimes suspects
SUDAN: Darfur war-crime suspects won't go to ICC, government says
ERITREA-ETHIOPIA: Stalemate could lead to war, Eritrean gov't says
The continuing stalemate between Ethiopia and Eritrea could lead to another war, a senior Eritrean government official said on Friday, noting that under international law, Ethiopia continued to occupy Eritrean territory. Under the Algiers Peace Agreement of December 2000 - which ended a two-year war between the two countries - they agreed to accept the decision of an independent boundary commission on where the border between them should be. But after the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC) presented its conclusions in April 2002, Ethiopia rejected the ruling.
In November last year, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi announced a five-point peace plan that said that it accepted the ruling "in principle" but insisted on dialogue first. Eritrea, on the other hand, insisted on full demarcation of the boundary as set out in the EEBC report. Efforts by the UN and international community to resolve the situation and demarcate the Ethiopia-Eritrea frontier have so far been unsuccessful. "What is clear is that the present scenario is not sustainable," said Yemane Ghebremeskel, director of the Eritrean Office of President, on Friday.
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ERITREA: Mortality rates decrease by 30 percent
Maternal, child and infant mortality rates in Eritrea have all fallen by about a third since 1995, mainly thanks to better healthcare for pregnant women, more immunisations and less malaria, a senior healthcare official said on Thursday. "In spite of the massive reduction, we are not very happy with it, and we need to work very hard to reduce it even more," said Zemui Alemu, director of the Family and Community Health Division at the Eritrean Ministry of Health. Alemu said that large numbers of home deliveries, lack of transport and obstetric knowledge, distance from health facilities and malnutrition were all factors that were keeping maternal mortality high.
A UN Children's Fund and World Health Organisation estimate in 2004 put maternal mortality in Eritrea at about 630 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. This compares with a 1995 figure of 998 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, from a Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) undertaken by Eritrean government departments and international partners, mainly funded by the US Agency for International Development.
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ERITREA: Humanitarian situation worsening, UN says
A UN report released on Monday warned that the humanitarian situation in Eritrea was deteriorating, mainly due to recurrent drought and the protracted stalemate in the peace process with Ethiopia. Drought has caused "failed harvests, loss of livestock and food insecurity throughout all parts of the country - both rural and urban," according to the report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Rains have failed for the fifth consecutive year, said the report, and recent surveys showed that pastures in Eritrea's three most fertile regions - Anseba, Gash Barka, and Debub - were at their driest since 1998.
Experts were quoted as saying that coping mechanisms were being worn down by the continued drought, and that the closure of Eritrea's borders with Ethiopia and Sudan had hindered the search for better farmland. Research in the report revealed that in four out of six administrative regions (zobas), acute malnutrition affected up to 15 percent of children under five.
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ETHIOPIA: Child deaths and malnutrition at emergency levels in IDP camp
Mortality and malnutrition rates among children at Hartishek, a former refugee camp in southeastern Ethiopia, are critically high, aid agencies warned on Wednesday. Save the Children UK (SCFUK) has called for immediate food distribution, medical support and proper sanitation at Hartishek, which was once the world's largest refugee camp, and home to thousands of Somalis. Hartishek now houses internally displaced persons (IDPs) from within Ethiopia. Humanitarian sources told IRIN that the IDPs - who are said to number 5,400 - say they have received no assistance for the last four months.
"The situation is critical and getting worse unless something is done promptly," SCFUK said in a report presented to the Ethiopian government, the UN and aid agencies at a meeting of the government's Emergency Nutrition Coordination Unit (ENCU) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital. According to accepted international guidelines, any under-five mortality rates that are above two per 10,000 children per day should be treated as an emergency. SCFUK said the figure in Hartishek has reached 4.87 per 10,000 per day. Severe acute malnutrition of children under five years old has reached 5 percent - which is also an emergency level.
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ETHIOPIA: Prime Minister promises Internet access for all
Ethiopia, one of the poorest nations on earth, will boost Internet coverage from a handful of users to the entire country in three years, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi announced on Tuesday. At an information technology (ICT) conference in the nation's capital, Addis Ababa, Meles said that high-tech information technology lay at the heart of transforming the impoverished country, where millions are dependent on foreign aid. "We are fully committed to ensuring that as many of our poor as possible have this weapon that they need to fight poverty at the earliest possible time," he said. "We plan to ensure universal access and Internet connectivity to all the tens of thousands of rural kebeles [districts] of our country over the next two to three years."
Currently there are just 30,000 Internet lines in a country of 71 million people. Within six months that figure will be expanded to 500,000. The government has begun laying 10,000 km of fibre optic cables, and has invested around US $40 million in developing its Internet service. Ethiopia has a rural population of 57 million, most of whom eke out an existence as subsistence farmers.
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SOMALIA: War and tsunami force Somalis into slums
Civil war and December's tsunami have inflicted mass devastation on Somalia's housing situation, a Somali government official said on Tuesday at the 20th Governing Council of the UN Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) in Nairobi, Kenya's capital. "Because of the frequent movements and internal displacements due to the civil war, certain areas of Somali cities are extremely overpopulated, while other areas are not populated at all, and have become ghost neighbourhoods," Qasim Hersi Farah, the permanent secretary in Somalia's ministry of environment, said during a plenary session.
"This has led to heavy garbage disposal everywhere, shortages of shelter [and] water, and the growing spread of communicable diseases," he added. Delegates from 58 UN member-countries are attending the five-day meeting, opened on Monday by Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki. The conference is expected to give new impetus to plans for meeting the UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), in particular target 11 of MDG 7 - improving the living conditions of at least 100 million slum dwellers by the year 2020.
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SOMALIA: Malnutrition over 20 percent, says UN agency
Somalia is continuing to experience food shortages, with some areas reporting malnutrition levels of more than 20 percent, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. In its March update on food security and nutrition in Somalia, the FAO's Food Security Analysis Unit (FSAU) noted that in the southern region of Juba Valley, more than a quarter of children screened were at risk of malnutrition. In the central region of Galgadud, levels of malnutrition were almost as high, at 24 percent.
"Limited services available for malnourished children in Somalia have forced families to travel long distances to Galkayo [central Somalia] in search of therapeutic care," the report stated. It also quoted an interagency tsunami assessment, which said that 22,000 people along the northeastern tsunami-affected coastline would need "sustained resource transfer over the next eight months". Elsewhere, "civil insecurity continues to disrupt pastoral and agro-pastoral livelihoods" in part of the western region of Bakool, according to the analysis unit.
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SOMALIA: New law brings elections closer in Somaliland
The parliament of the self-declared independent republic of Somaliland, in northwest Somalia, passed a bill into law on Saturday that would pave the way for national elections. "All three political parties are in agreement over the bill," Ali Ilmi Gelle, Somaliland's deputy information minister, told IRIN on Tuesday. Saturday's bill was passed - by the lower house of parliament - despite serious disagreements between Somaliland President Dahir Riyale Kahin and parliament, with several legislators demanding a national census and the clear demarcation of regional borders before they would approve it.
The bill's endorsement, according to IRIN sources, is likely to quell discord over the date of the parliamentary election, originally slated for 29 March, but since postponed. "We have not yet set an official date for the election, but we expect it to be held sometime this year," Ilmi said. Observers have criticised the fact that polling booths will only be stationed in regional capitals, a move they say would deprive thousands of people living in the countryside of the right to vote.
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SUDAN: Beja people's problems exacerbated by rebels
The Beja, a semi-nomadic group of people, who live in rebel-held areas of eastern Sudan need a huge amount of humanitarian assistance, a representative from the International Rescue Committee (IRC) said on Tuesday. Although Beja can be found throughout northeast Africa, tens of thousands are currently trapped in an area of eastern Sudan near the Eritrean border, held by Sudanese rebels since the late 1990s. Only two NGOs, both based in Eritrea, are able to access the 15,000 sq km area at the moment, one of which is the IRC. The organisation estimates the Beja population in the area to be between 45,000 and 186,000 people.
"It is the most under-served, most remote area that I have ever worked in, with huge humanitarian needs - even in basic issues of nutrition and safe water, up to more complex health and education needs," said Fergus Thomas, IRC programme coordinator for northeast Sudan. "The community have been left very much to themselves - for thousands of years, really," he said.
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SUDAN: UN envoy tours Darfur; ICC receives list of war-crimes suspects
The UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for Sudan, Jan Pronk, visited the western Sudanese region of Darfur on Monday and Tuesday - days after a UN Security Council resolution called for those implicated in the region's crimes to be tried by the International Criminal Court (ICC), a UN spokesman said. "Pronk is meeting with authorities, the AU [African Union], UN agencies and NGOs," George Somerwill, deputy spokesperson for the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS), told IRIN on Tuesday.
It was hoped that during his tour, Pronk would be able to explain to people on the ground how the three recent Council resolutions, intended to put pressure on Sudan to stop the crisis in Darfur, should be interpreted. "The central message is that the sanctions and the ICC resolution [of 31 March] do not apply to all Sudanese, but only to those who commit human-rights abuses," Somerwill said. On 29 March, the Council adopted a resolution that strengthened the arms embargo and imposed an asset freeze and travel ban on those deemed responsible for the atrocities in Darfur, or thought to be violating the ceasefire agreement.
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SUDAN: Darfur war-crime suspects won't go to ICC, government says
Sudan's government has firmly rejected a UN Security Council resolution calling for those accused of war crimes in the western Sudanese region of Darfur to be tried in the International Criminal Court, officials said on Sunday. According to the Sudanese news agency Suna, the country's Council of Ministers declared its "total rejection" of UN resolution 1593 - issued on Thursday 31 March - and said it lacked "justice and objectivity". Moreover, the resolution violated the principle of national sovereignty, and neglected the vision of the government and its efforts for realising peace and stability, the Council was quoted as saying.
Sudanese President Umar al-Bashir announced in a statement also on Sunday that his government would not hand over any Sudanese citizens to be tried outside the country. Sudan's own judiciary was qualified and ready to try those accused of any violations in Darfur, al-Bashir added. Muhammad Uthman al-Mirghani, leader of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) - a coalition of opposition parties - also made a statement on Sunday, saying he did not agree with the prosecution of Sudanese nationals outside of Sudan.
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