IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-up 273 for 2-8 April 2005
CONTENTS:
DRC: UN agency expresses concern over thousands of children in armed groups
DRC: Rwandan militias clash with army troops
DRC: Thousands displaced after Mayi-Mayi, army clash
CONGO: DDR office opens in Pool region
RWANDA: Officials must appear before traditional courts, Kagame says
BURUNDI: Camps with low refugee populations to close
BURUNDI: Polls body to revise voter lists
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC: 17 MPs elected in 1st round poll
TANZANIA: Violence in Zanzibar stops voter registration
UGANDA: NGOs suggest new ceasefire in north
AFRICA: Transport costs a trade barrier for the continent
ALSO SEE:
DRC-RWANDA: Interview with FDLR leader, Ignace Murwanashyaka
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DRC: Insecurity creates food shortages in Ituri
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DRC: UN agency expresses concern over thousands of children in armed groups
Despite 3,313 children being disarmed in the last six months in Congo's northeastern district of Ituri, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) expressed concerned on Monday over thousands others yet to be released by armed groups.
The UNICEF child protection officer in the DRC, Trish Hiddleston, said the agency was "deeply concerned" about the low numbers of girls who had been released. UNICEF called on all armed groups to release, immediately, all children irrespective of their role in the group.
Hiddleston said UNICEF estimated that in Ituri alone, at least 3,000 children were still in the hands of armed groups and that an even greater number remained with other similar groups in the rest of the country.
UNICEF said the 3,313 who had left the armed groups had undergone a disarmament and community reintegration process. Of these, child protection agencies had received 399; 2,914 others - 2,353 boys and 561 girls - have undergone disarmament and reintegration in seven centres across Ituri since September 2004.
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DRC: Rwandan militias clash with army troops
Provincial authorities in South Kivu, eastern DRC, said on Tuesday that there had been fighting between Congolese troops and Rwandan Hutu militias, known as Interahamwe, at a village 150 km north of the provincial capital, Goma.
"Interahamwe had, as they often do it in this corner, attacked the national Congolese army [known as FARDC]," Eugene Serufuli, the provincial governor, told IRIN. "FARDC pushed them back and they dispersed in the bush not far from Lusamabo village."
He said no assessment had been made of the fighting, which occurred on Saturday in Miliki village, therefore casualty figures were unavailable.
The government army spokesperson was unavailable for comment. However, a military spokesman for the UN Mission in the DRC (MONUC), Col Domenica Demange, said the mission had received contradictory information about the fighting.
UN-supported Radio Okapi reported that earlier fighting between the Interahamwe and the army caused confusion, and led to more exchange of fire between two units of the Congolese army. The radio said soldiers of the army's 8th Brigade thought they had been attacked and exchanged fire with their colleagues who were pursuing Interahamwe militiamen.
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DRC: Thousands displaced after Mayi-Mayi, army clash
Nine women were killed and 5,300 civilians displaced in the southwestern province of Katanga following fighting between government troops and Mayi-Mayi militias, a UN official told IRIN on Wednesday.
The fighting took place on 17 March but information of the event reached the capital, Kinshasa, late due to lack of communication with the village of Konga, 446 km northwest of the provincial capital, Lubumbashi, where the fighting took place.
An officer in charge of special investigations in the UN Mission in the DRC (MONUC), Sonia Bakar, said a UN inter-agency meeting in Kinshasa on Friday discussed the incident. "These people fled their village, heading to Mitwaba, 60 km to the south, after a Mayi-Mayi attack," she said.
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CONGO: DDR office opens in Pool region
A branch office of the Republic of Congo's commission for the reintegration of ex-combatants was opened on Saturday in Kinkala, the main town in the troubled Pool Department.
The prefect of Pool, Michel Sangha, said the office would facilitate the effective implementation of a disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration programme under way in the area.
Opening the office on Saturday, the head of the national DDR Commission, Michel Ngakala, said 450 ex-combatants registered in a previous disarmament programme had already undergone the process.
The commission launched the Pool's DDR emergency programme on 5 March. The commission was set up following the signing of ceasefire agreement in November and December 1999 between the government and Ninja rebels, led by the Reverend Frederic Bitsangou, alias Pasteur Ntoumi. The Pool is the stronghold of the Ninjas.
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RWANDA: Officials must appear before traditional courts, Kagame says
Rwandan President Paul Kagame said on Thursday, for the fist time, that if summoned members of his government must testify before traditional courts hearing cases of the 1994 genocide.
"They must appear before these courts and speak the truth on what their roles were during the killings." Kagame said. They "know what transpired and must therefore speak it out."
He made the remarks while officiating at the reburial of 250 victims of the genocide, near the hilltop village of Murambi, in the east of the country. The dead were removed from mass graves, placed in individual coffins and reburied in five trenches.
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BURUNDI: Camps with low refugee populations to close
A camp for Burundian refugees in northwestern Tanzania is due to close in "a few weeks", as part of an effort to consolidate these facilities as many occupants return home, according to an agreement between Burundi, Tanzania and the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.
The 5,500 refugees at Karago Camp would relocate to the neighbouring Mtendeli Camp towards the end of April. However, UNHCR said on Tuesday that these refugees would continue to receive the same aid they were getting in Karago.
Under the agreement, all Tanzanian camps with a refugee population of less than 10,000 would be closed to consolidate camps amid the ongoing repatriation programme for Burundian refugees.
UNHCR said more than 158,000 Burundian refugees had repatriated since it started its voluntary return programme from Tanzania in March 2002. The agency said it planned to help another 85,000 to return home in 2005.
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BURUNDI: Polls body to revise voter lists
Burundi's National Independent Electoral Commission, or CENI, will revise voters' lists between 8 and 17 April, ahead of general elections due before the end of the month, an official of the commission said on Wednesday.
The CENI commissioner in charge of electoral operations, Liberate Kiburago, said the process "notably consists of distributing voters cards to those who did not get them during the referendum on the post-transition constitution".
During the revision period, CENI would also register eligible voters who failed to do so before the 28 February referendum on the constitution. Moreover, CENI would transfer names of voters to polling stations of their choice. During the referendum some people voted in stations they were not native to due to various reasons such as travel, work stations and residence out of their native homes.
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CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC: 17 MPs elected in 1st round poll
The electoral commission of the Central African Republic (CAR) announced on Sunday that 17 of 105 parliamentary seats were filled during the first round of general elections.
The chairman of the Mixed Independent Electoral Commission, Jean Willibiro-Sacko, said the rest would be contested during a second round of elections, set for 1 May. A run-off presidential poll, pitting CAR leader Francois Bozizé against former Prime Minister Martin Ziguelé, will also be held on the same day.
Willibiro-Sacko said those elected to parliament in the first round included former Prime Minister Jean-Paul Ngoupandé; Mireille Kolingba, the wife of former President André Kolingba; and a former Speaker of the National Assembly, Luc-Apollinaire Dondon-Konamabaye, who served during the administration of former President Angel-Felix Patassé.
A total of 909 candidates contested the first round of the legislative elections.
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TANZANIA: Violence in Zanzibar stops voter registration
The electoral body in Tanzania's semi-autonomous island of Zanzibar stopped registering voters on Tuesday following incidents of political violence; including an attack on a registration centre near the capital, Stone Town.
The Zanzibar Electoral Commission said voter registration was being suspended for a few days to "avoid unnecessary friction".
The Zanzibar Urban West regional police commander, George Kizuguto, said the home of the Civic United Front (CUF) leader, Abbas Muhunzi, was set ablaze on Sunday. On Monday, a crowd of some 400 people attempted to break into a voter registration centre. Unofficially, the Zanzibar police said the people were CUF supporters disgruntled over what they claimed to be voter registration fraud.
Tensions are rising between supporters of two main parties: the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi and the CUF. Zanzibari voters are scheduled to take part in national elections in October along with voters in the rest of Tanzania.
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UGANDA: NGOs suggest new ceasefire in north
A group of NGOs working in war-torn northern Uganda lobbied the government on Monday to offer a new ceasefire to the rebel movement, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), as an incentive to re-establish peace talks.
In their statement, 38 national and international NGOs under the umbrella group Civil Society Organisations for Peace in Northern Uganda lamented the missed opportunity for peace late in 2004.
They said the only hope lay in a substantial ceasefire, which would enable negotiators to build confidence and work together to plan a process for long-term peace. They added that such a ceasefire should cover internally displaced persons'(IDP) camps, where more then 1.5 million people, mainly children and women, lived in appalling conditions.
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AFRICA: Transport costs a trade barrier for the continent
High transport costs are crippling African economies - more so than trade tariffs imposed by rich nations, UN Under-Secretary-General Anwarul Chowdhury said on Wednesday.
He told African transport ministers meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, that transport costs in Africa were up to four times higher than tariffs imposed by countries like the US, Japan and the European Union.
At the African Union headquarters, he said that Africa’s economic future was intertwined with the continent solving its crumbling infrastructure and transport crisis. Transport costs in African countries are twice those in other developing nations in Asia or South and Central America, Chowdhury said, and four times higher than in wealthy countries.
His comments came as African transport ministers discussed targets necessary for the continent – the world’s poorest – to achieve global anti-poverty goals by 2015.
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