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HORN OF AFRICA: IRIN-HOA Weekly Round-up 232 for 19-25 February 2005 - OCHA IRIN

Saturday 19 March 2005


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IRIN-HOA Weekly Round-up 232 for 19-25 February 2005

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

CONTENTS:

ETHIOPIA: UN appeals for more donor support
ETHIOPIA: Growing concern over "safety nets" policy
ETHIOPIA: Electoral board appeals for peaceful poll
ETHIOPIA: Poverty outlook reveals yet many challenges
SOMALIA: President, prime minister begin week-long tour
SUDAN: WFP warns of potential food crisis
SUDAN: World must act on Darfur situation, urges Egeland
SUDAN: Basic infrastructure lacking as thousands return to the south - UNHCR
SUDAN: Several killed as ammunition depot explodes in Juba

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ETHIOPIA: UN appeals for more donor support

The UN country team in Ethiopia has called for more donor support to the Horn of Africa country, saying it had received less than five percent of the US $112 million needed for emergency interventions in sectors like health, water, nutrition and sanitation. "Unless new pledges are announced and made available in the coming weeks thousands of people will suffer," Modibo Toure, UN Development Programme (UNDP) country representative, said in a fresh appeal. "There have been very limited contributions for non-food items such as for emergency water and health and nutrition activities," the UN team said in a report. "Emergency nutritional needs involving targeted supplementary feeding are particularly important and require urgent donor attention."

It added: "New crises and the emergence of hot spots have also increased emergency assistance needs since the launching of the Appeal in December 2004." Aid organisations have warned of continued drought and loss of livestock in parts of Afar, and high mortality rates in parts of Ethiopia’s Somali Region. They also added that ethnic conflict had sparked displacement of large numbers of people in border areas between Oromiya and Somali Region. "Assistance is being provided, but additional resources are required in the coming weeks," said the UN team.

Full report

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ETHIOPIA: Growing concern over "safety nets" policy

Concern is mounting over Ethiopia's flagship "safetys net" policy set up to end dependency on aid for five million people, the UN said. Paul Herbert, head of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the needy had still not received any food or cash under the scheme. "Safety net transfers to beneficiaries have not yet started and this is raising serious concerns," he told IRIN on Wednesday.

The scheme, which had been due to start on 1 January, provides food or cash (US $0.70 cents a day) to people for employment in public work programmes. Working for food or cash, the government says, would end aid dependency. Bill Hammink, head of the US Agency For International Development, told Prime Minister Meles Zenawi earlier this month that major challenges surrounded the programme. "We cannot underestimate the challenge involved in moving 5.1 million people into the productive safety nets programme over the next 12 month transition period," he said.

Full report

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ETHIOPIA: Electoral board appeals for peaceful poll

Elections in Ethiopia could be affected if widespread violence occurs in the run-up to polling, the chairman of the country's national election board (NEB) warned on Tuesday. Kemal Bedri, the country's chief justice, spoke out after confirming that two people were killed in recent attacks. "We can assure the opposition that if there are abuses, we will take action," Kemal told journalists. The Coalition for Unity and Democracy said the attacks last month were meant to intimidate opposition leaders in the run-up to national elections, set for 15 May. Kemal rejected claims by the opposition group that as many as 14 people were killed and dozens wounded in clashes, saying the evidence had never been presented to them.

"Our role is to ensure free and fair elections and we will do that," he said. "The elections will be held peacefully as they have [been] before. If the incidents are of such gravity that it could affect the outcome then the NEB can freeze the elections and order a re-election." The attacks, which were investigated by NEB officials, took place in the northeastern region of eastern Gojam on 19 January, he added.

Full report

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ETHIOPIA: Poverty outlook reveals yet many challenges

When Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi outlined his government's latest scorecard in its fight against poverty on 14 February, he posed a quandary to wealthy nations. Ethiopia is one of the poorest nations on earth, yet it receives one of the lowest levels of aid, he said at the UN Conference Centre in the capital, Addis Ababa. The World Bank and UN say the country has the capacity to spend more, wide-scale reforms are being implemented and the international community has pledged its support. Yet Ethiopia receives a little over US $13 per head in foreign aid, compared to an African average of $27.

Little wonder then, Meles added, that the Horn of Africa nation remained burdened by massive poverty, hunger and disease.
The UN estimates that 42 million people in Ethiopia receive what is considered to be below the minimum nutritional requirement. Around seven million are dependent on food aid, while HIV/AIDS claimed the lives of 100,000 people in 2004. Added to that is the $116 million a year Ethiopia must pay in interest on debts - a sum equivalent to health care spending in Ethiopia - and the challenges are colossal. Yet the economy grew last year by 11.6 percent, inflation was cut to nine percent, school enrolment was dramatically increased and health care coverage rolled out, Mekonnen Manyazewal, state minister for finance and economic development told IRIN.

Full report

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SOMALIA: President, prime minister begin week-long tour

Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed and Prime Minister Ali Muhammad Gedi on Thursday arrived in the town of Jowhar, 90 km north of Mogadishu, the Somali capital, to begin a week-long "meet the people" tour of various regions in the country, a local journalist told IRIN. "Thousands of residents lined up the 16-km stretch of road between the town and the airstrip and many more waited at the residence where the President is expected to stay," Yusuf Ali Usman, a Jowhar-based journalist, said. In Nairobi, the director of communications in Gedi's office, Hussein Jabiri, confirmed the leaders' departure. Yusuf and Gedi, accompanied by a large delegation of the Kenyan-based interim Somali government, arrived at Jowhar "at around noon local time".

Local leaders, led by faction leader Muhammad Umar Habeb, who is also the governor of Jowhar, received the delegation, Usman said. Yusuf and Gedi had been due to make the trip on 23 February, but were delayed by logistical problems. The tour marks the first time they have stepped on Somali territory since Yusuf's election in October 2004 and his appointment of Gedi two months later. The president’s spokesman, Yusuf Baribari, told IRIN the trip was part of the new government’s relocation process.

Full report

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SUDAN: WFP warns of potential food crisis

The World Food Programme (WFP) has expressed concern about signs of a potential food crisis in Sudan, saying that rapidly rising prices of staple foodstuffs indicated that stocks were dwindling. "We are beginning to worry that more people than we had anticipated would be unable to feed themselves," Laura Melo, WFP spokesperson told IRIN on Thursday. WFP, she said, had anticipated that 3.2 million people in Sudan, excluding the strife-torn western region of Darfur, would need food aid, and had appealed for US $302 million to fund operations to help those affected by the shortages in 2005.

The agency was in the process of carrying out surveys to ascertain how many more people might be in need, Melo said. However, she added, the response to the existing appeal "had not been very good". Of the $302 million appealed for, only $22 million or eight percent of the requirement had been received so far. Some of the areas worst affected by the emerging crisis included Kordofan, Bahr el-Ghazal, Kassala and the Red Sea State, Melo said. She added that in some of the regions, the price of sorghum, a staple food in much of Sudan, had doubled since last year.

Full report

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SUDAN: World must act on Darfur situation, urges Egeland

Millions of people are at risk of starvation unless the international community acts quickly on the situation in the war-torn western Sudanese region of Darfur, Jan Egeland, the UN's emergency relief coordinator, said. "Some are predicting four million, some are predicting - that [more] people [are] in desperate need of life-saving assistance as we approach the hunger gap in mid-year," Egeland told a news conference in New York on Friday. "We did prevent the massive famine that many predicted, but I think now its time to say we may perhaps not be able to do so in the coming months if the situation keeps on deteriorating," UN News reported him as saying.

Continued violence in Darfur, he added, was seriously hampering aid efforts in the region. "Aid workers have been killed, our helicopters have been shot at, our trucks are being looted there, we are paralysed," Egeland noted. "We could have provided daily bread for more than two million people. We are, at best, giving to 1.5 million. This cannot continue."
He commended the humanitarian community - the UN, NGOs, the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies - for their role in providing relief to the vulnerable of Darfur. He noted that there were about 9,000 aid workers on the ground, with close to 1,000 being international.

Full report

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SUDAN: Basic infrastructure lacking as thousands return to the south - UNHCR

Thousands of displaced Sudanese have returned to the south following the signing in January of a comprehensive peace agreement, but the region totally lacks basic infrastructure, a UN official said. "An estimated 600,000 Sudanese have already returned home spontaneously," Wendy Chamberlin, UNHCR deputy high commissioner, told reporters in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on Friday. "Over 200,000 were non-registered refugees from Uganda, the DRC [Democratic Republic of Congo] and Kenya and perhaps as many as 400,000 were IDPs [internally displaced persons] who returned on their own," she said.

Thousands more, she added, were expected within the next few months. The returnees were, however, arriving in an area lacking basic infrastructure - from roads, schools, clinics and buildings for the local civil authorities, to protection for the returnees. "UNHCR does not encourage people to return without assistance or without information about the situation in their return destination," Chamberlin said. "UNHCR is trying to prepare the ground by implementing community-based programmes in the fields of water, health, education and landmine clearance." She added: "UNHCR is in a race against time to get adequate conditions in place for the Sudanese refugees and IDPs who are anticipated to return within the next few months."

Full report

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SUDAN: Several killed as ammunition depot explodes in Juba

At least seven people were killed and several others injured when an ammunition dump in the southern Sudanese town of Juba exploded, relief sources told IRIN. A police statement said the explosions, which lasted an hour and a half on Wednesday, destroyed a market west of the town and damaged several homes and offices.

The official Sudan News Agency (SUNA), quoted a statement released by armed forces spokesman, Gen Al-Abbas Abdel Rahman al-Khalifa, as saying a warehouse where the ammunition was being kept blew up, causing a series of explosions and scattering live fragments. He said seven people were killed and 13 injured.

Khalifa, however, ruled out the possibility of "any hostile act behind the incident", saying the extreme temperature of the late-morning heat had caused the blast.

Other news sources, however, put the death toll much higher. The Sudan News Service reported that the death toll had risen up to 80 people, with about 250 injured.

Juba, southern Sudan’s largest town, has a population of about 160,000, and was controlled by Khartoum for the duration of the lengthy war between the north and south. The war ended in January.

Meanwhile the UN has said more than US $1 billion would be needed to fund the first year of the proposed UN peacekeeping mission in southern Sudan.

Full report

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[ENDS]

Other recent HORN OF AFRICA reports:

IRIN-HOA Weekly Round-up 234 for 12-18 March 2005, Ê18/Mar/05

IRIN-HOA Weekly Round-up 233 for 5-11 March 2005, Ê11/Mar/05

IRIN-HOA Weekly Round-up 233 for 26 February-4 March 2005, Ê4/Mar/05

IRIN-HOA Weekly Round-up 231 for 12-18 February 2005, Ê18/Feb/05

IRIN-HOA Weekly Round-up 230 for 5-11 February 2005, Ê11/Feb/05

Other recent reports:

SOUTHERN AFRICA: IRIN-SA Weekly Round-up 222 for 12-18 March 2005, 19/Mar/05

CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap, 18/Mar/05

WEST AFRICA: IRIN-WA Weekly 268 round-up for 12-18 March 2005, 18/Mar/05

HORN OF AFRICA: IRIN-HOA Weekly Round-up 234 for 12-18 March 2005, 18/Mar/05

ANGOLA: Report highlights plight of returnees, 17/Mar/05

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