IRIN-WA Weekly 293 covering 3-9 September 2005
CONTENTS:
COTE D’IVOIRE: Annan acknowledges October election is “not possible”
LIBERIA: Donors spell out harsh consequences if anti-graft plan not agreed
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC-CHAD: Insecurity, lack of basic services drive thousands more from their homes
MAURITANIA: Junta declares general amnesty for political prisoners
CHAD-SUDAN: Locust swarms threaten turbulent border region, experts on close watch
CAMEROON-CHAD: Oil project thrusts aside human rights, Amnesty says
COTE D’IVOIRE: Annan acknowledges October election is “not possible”
In a tough blow to hopes for an imminent peace in Cote d’Ivoire, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has acknowledged that plans to hold a key election in Cote d’Ivoire on 30 October are technically unfeasible.
"It's not going to be possible because the political leaders and parties have not cooperated," Annan said in an interview with Radio France Internationale. "There are certain things that must be done before the elections in October. We haven’t even been able to constitute the electoral commission. Practically, on a technical level, it is not possible."
Annan's statements are the first official acknowledgement from the United Nations that the presidential elections need to be postponed. Doubts about the possibility of holding the ballot have been circulating for weeks in public in Cote d’Ivoire.
Free and fair presidential elections are considered key to restoring peace to the war-divided nation but with only seven weeks left before the polls, voters' lists have not been updated and the electoral commission due to oversee the ballot is not even up and running
After three years of international mediation efforts to restore peace to the country divided since September 2002, Annan warned that sanctions may be imposed on parties believed to be holding up the peace process. "I think that sooner or later the UN Security Council will be obliged to act," he said in response to a question on the likely imposition of sanctions.
The postponement of the ballot however will open up a new can of worms on what happens next. President Laurent Gbagbo claims his five-year mandate cannot expire before a new head of state can be sworn in, while his opponents claim there will be a constitutional void after 30 October.
Full report
LIBERIA: Donors spell out harsh consequences if anti-graft plan not agreed
Liberia stands to lose millions of dollars of aid and billions of dollars of debt relief if it does not sign up to a plan to wipe out rampant corruption in the war-scarred West African nation, donors warned on Thursday.
Authorities have been haggling with the international community for months over the so-called Governance and Economic Management Assistance Programme (GEMAP), designed to ensure funds do not end up in the pockets of politicians but go towards approving the lot of Liberia's three million population who suffered 14 years of civil war.
And with just over a month to go before crunch elections, the International Contact Group -- made up of Western and African diplomats that helped forge a 2003 peace deal -- spelled out the stark consequences if no deal was struck.
"Without GEMAP, Liberia risks repeating its recent history of conflict," the group said in a statement.
It said if there was no deal, the European Commission would be forced to reconsider a US $44 million aid package for a nation that is still without running water and electricity more than two years after the war ended.
Global lenders like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund would not expand their programmes, and there would be little chance of Liberia being eligible for US $3 billion of debt relief, the International Contact Group said.
There would also be knock-on effects in terms of the UN lifting the sanctions it imposed during the final years of the civil war on the export of diamonds and timber.
Full report
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC-CHAD: Insecurity, lack of basic services drive thousands more from their homes
Security is absent in parts of northern Central African Republic, but so are many other basic necessities, and that is what’s driving out many of the thousands of people fleeing to Chad in recent months, newly arrived refugees say.
The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) estimates that some 12,000 Central Africans have fled into southern Chad from northwestern CAR since June. UNHCR has yet to verify the number after a new wave of refugees in the past two weeks.
“We were frightened and our children were receiving no care at all,” Christophe Mbaidjella, who fled Bebingui village in northwestern CAR, said. “In those conditions, how do you expect us to stay there?”
Some Central Africans have been sending their children to school in Chad for years for lack of schools in their villages, Beosso Roangar, chief of Kaba Roangar district a few kilometres from the border in Chad, told IRIN last week.
Refugees awaiting transfer to a camp told IRIN it is a combination of a lack of the most basic services and a lack of protection that is driving them across the border.
The head of UNHCR in Central African Republic, Bruno Geddo, led a UN interagency mission to Markounda – a border town in northwest CAR – last month.
“Insecurity has caused an utter free-fall in the economy,” Geddo said by phone from the capital Bangui. He said while insecurity is the root cause of displacements, there is indeed a lack of proper medical care and school facilities in the region. Food is scarce because the insecurity blocks villagers from cultivating their land, he said.
“The conditions do not exist for people to be able to return home [from Chad],” he added.
Full report
MAURITANIA: Junta declares general amnesty for political prisoners
One month after seizing power in a bloodless coup, Mauritania’s new military rulers have announced a sweeping amnesty for political crimes, freeing scores of prisoners over the weekend, including a band of coup plotters and alleged Islamic extremists.
Many of those released had been detained earlier this year as part of a crackdown on Islamic militants by then-president Maaouya Ould Taya.
Opposition leaders and some international analysts had said at the time that Ould Taya was exaggerating the Islamic threat to win plaudits from the United States and as an excuse to round up legitimate opponents.
In a speech broadcast on state radio on Friday night, the head of the governing Military Council for Justice and Democracy, Col Ely Ould Mohamed Vall, said the government has decided to allow “a general, full and complete amnesty to all Mauritanians condemned for political crimes or offences, in order to permit them to participate in the work of building the country in complete freedom.”
On Saturday, Justice Minister Mahfoudh Ould Battah told reporters that some 20 people had been excluded from the general pardon. They are alleged to have worked with Algeria’s Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), a movement allied to Al Qaeda.
Analysts have said that the new rulers, although seeking to set themselves firmly apart from the former regime, are keen not to make potentially damaging waves with the United States or other western nations by appearing soft in the "war on terror".
Full report
CHAD-SUDAN: Locust swarms threaten border region, experts on close watch
Locust swarm sightings and favourable breeding conditions have agricultural experts on high alert in eastern Chad and the troubled Darfur region of western Sudan, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation said on Tuesday.
Heavy seasonal rains and lack of security in the region are constraining survey and control efforts, according to agriculture experts in Chad.
In its latest bulletin FAO said a small swarm of the crop-destroying insects formed last month in Chad and there are several unconfirmed reports of other swarms.
“There is a chance that a few swarms will form in September and October along the Chad/Sudan border and some of these could move towards Northwest Africa,” the report added. “Low numbers of small adult groups and swarms are likely to form in Darfur.”
Many arid Sahel countries are still reeling from last year’s devastating locust invasions – the worst seen in the region for 15 years - that destroyed millions of hectares of crops and pasture in Mali, Mauritania, Niger and northern Senegal.
Full report
CAMEROON-CHAD: Oil project thrusts aside human rights, Amnesty says
Amnesty International said on Wednesday that a Chad-Cameroon project to build a 650-kilometre pipeline flouts international human rights guarantees, placing financial interests above the concerns of local populations.
The governments of Chad and Cameroon have signed agreements with oil companies that could force them to pay cash penalties for disrupting operation of the pipeline, even if they are intervening to protect human rights, Amnesty says.
“You can’t have the protection of people’s rights and needs be left to the good will of companies,” Sarah Green, spokesperson for Amnesty International UK, said by phone from the group’s headquarters in London.
One major concern, Green added, is that since the contracts are good through the 70-year life of the project, any human rights treaties the governments sign in the coming years may not be enforced.
Amnesty is calling on investors to amend agreements to include explicit guarantees that human rights cannot be sidelined. It is also urging the World Bank, which has given crucial backing to the Chad-Cameroon pipeline project, to reject projects with this type of contract in future.
The pipeline, which runs from Doba in southern Chad to the port city of Kribi in south west Cameroon, is run by a consortium led by the US company ExxonMobil with Petronas, a Malaysian state oil company, and another US firm, Chevron.
Full report
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