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HORN OF AFRICA: IRIN-HOA Weekly Round-up 234 for 12-18 March 2005 - OCHA IRIN

Friday 25 March 2005


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IRIN-HOA Weekly Round-up 234 for 12-18 March 2005

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

CONTENTS:

ETHIOPIA-ERITREA: Security Council extends UNMEE mandate by six months
ETHIOPIA: Over 50 percent of children stunted - gov't report
ETHIOPIA: Nationwide HIV/AIDS hotline launched
SOMALIA: UN Security Council recommends Sanctions Committee visit
SOMALIA: IGAD to deploy peacekeepers despite opposition by faction leaders
SOMALIA: Arms continue to flow in despite embargo, say monitors
SUDAN: IDPs in Darfur to increase; prosecution of perpetrators discussed
SUDAN: Government urges political solution to Darfur crisis
SUDAN-ERITREA: Darfur rebel groups threaten not to resume peace talks

ALSO SEE:
SUDAN: Nothing in place yet for returnees
Full report

ETHIOPIA: Q/A with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on Africa Commission report
Full report

ETHIOPIA-ERITREA: Security Council extends UNMEE mandate by six months

The UN Security Council on Monday extended the mandate of the United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) until 15 September 2005, and called on both countries to refrain from any threat of use of force against each other. In a unanimous resolution, the Council urged the two Horn of Africa states not to increase troop numbers in areas adjacent to the Temporary Security Zone and to give serious consideration to returning to the 16 December 2004 levels of deployment.

It stressed that Ethiopia and Eritrea had the primary responsibility for the implementation of the 2000 Algiers peace agreement and the decision of the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission. UNMEE, a 3,335-strong peacekeeping force, monitors a buffer zone along the 1,000-km-long border between the two countries. Eritrea and Ethiopia fought a two-year bloody war sparked in 1998 by a border dispute. The war ended with a ceasefire in 2000, but tensions have persisted because of a deadlock over the decision by the international boundary commission to award the town of Badme, previously under Ethiopian administration, to Eritrea.

Full report

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ETHIOPIA: Over 50 percent of children stunted - gov't report

More than half of all Ethiopian children are stunted, according to a government report on the state of the country’s health released on Thursday. One in 10 children were described as "wasted", and just under half as underweight due to poor diet and malnutrition, in the report issued by Ethiopia’s health ministry. The figures also revealed that Ethiopian babies were more likely to die before they reached the age of five than in any other country in the world. Entitled ‘Health and Health-Related Indicators’, the 60-page report detailed the massive gap faced by Ethiopia in meeting global health and poverty reduction targets for 2015.

Vivian Vansteirteghem, head of health and nutrition at the UN’s Children Fund (UNICEF), told IRIN on Thursday that the UN and the Ethiopian government had launched a massive drive to tackle child health. She said a government-led health programme, involving the training of 28,000 health workers over the next five years, was under way. The ministry, she said, had developed a national strategy for child survival. It included the promotion of breast-feeding, the prevention of illness through immunisation programmes and the treatment of pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria. "These areas tackle the three main areas of child mortality," she added.

Full report

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ETHIOPIA: Nationwide HIV/AIDS hotline launched

A new HIV/AIDS hotline was launched in Ethiopia on Thursday, to provide accurate information, counselling and free referrals to callers across the country. "We are now receiving 1,800 calls on average every day since the hotline became available nationwide on 10 March," Gashaw Mengistu, the coordinator of the facility, told IRIN from the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. He said a campaign would be launched to promote the hotline on radio and television, which would hopefully encourage many more people to use the service.

Dubbed the "Wegen AIDS Talkline", the service will provide a range of information, including the location of testing centres, ways to prevent mother-to-child transmission and treatment options such as antiretroviral therapy. The hotline is supported by the United States and two Ethiopian bodies: the HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control Office (HAPCO), and the Ethiopian Telecommunication Cooperation. Dialling 952 from any landline in the country will connect to the service, which has been operating in the Addis Ababa region under a pilot scheme since December 2004.

Full report

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SOMALIA: UN Security Council recommends Sanctions Committee visit

The UN Security Council has recommended that its Sanctions Committee visits Somalia to reinforce the Council’s commitment to fully enforce the arms embargo against the war-ravaged, Horn of Africa country. The Council further recommended that the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, re-establish the group monitoring the Somalia arms embargo for a period of six months, a press statement issued by the Council said on Tuesday. The recommendations followed a report by the UN-appointed monitoring group which said weapons had continued to enter Somalia despite the ban, a trend, they said, that could undermine efforts to install a new government in the country.

The report warned that there was a "seriously elevated level of threat of possible violence" against the peaceful establishment of the transitional federal government (TFG) if the violations continued. The Council’s Sanctions Committee was set up in 1992 to assist in the effective implementation of the arms embargo imposed on Somalia in the same year.
The release urged the Committee to consider and recommend to the Council ways "to improve implementation of and compliance with the arms embargo, including ways to develop capacity of States in the region to implement the embargo".

Full report

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SOMALIA: IGAD to deploy peacekeepers despite opposition by faction leaders

The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) plans to deploy peacekeepers in Somalia next month, regardless of opposition by faction leaders in the war-ravaged country, IGAD chairman and Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, said on Monday. "We are going to deploy with or without the support of the warlords," Museveni said, on the closing day of a meeting of IGAD defence ministers in the central Ugandan town of Entebbe.

"Why should the warlords for example reject Ethiopia and Kenya?" the chairman questioned. "If the two countries go there, what will happen? It is a shame for one of [the] ancient races in Africa to suffer for so long, as the rest of Africa looks on." It was proposed at the meeting that up to 10,000 peacekeepers, as part of the IGAD Peace Support Mission to Somalia (IGASOM), be deployed from 30 April. The proposal, however, has to be endorsed by the IGAD Council of Ministers before it can be implemented. "What are we waiting for? You should work out the deployment programme as soon as possible," Museveni told the defence ministers.

Full report

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SOMALIA: Arms continue to flow in despite embargo, say monitors

Weapons have continued to enter Somalia, despite a UN ban on the sale of arms to the country, a team of monitors reported on Monday. The UN-appointed team warned that violations of the embargo could undermine efforts to install a new government in the country. "The Monitoring Group learned that arms-embargo violations had continued to occur at a brisk and alarming rate," the team said in its report to the UN Security Council. It also provided the Council with a confidential list of those who continued to violate the arms embargo, for possible future action.

The report described how the group had uncovered 34 individual arms shipments, or violations of the arms embargo, between February 2004 and the time of writing. In 1992, the UN imposed a weapons embargo on Somalia, one year after the country's government collapsed. Serious conflict ensued between various clan-based faction leaders and their militias, who scrambled to claim power, resources and territory. Monday's report said that arms shipments uncovered by the team ranged in size, from individual weapons - such as a large, expensive anti-aircraft guns - to ocean freight-containers carrying small arms, explosives, ammunition, mines and anti-tank weapons.

Full report

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SUDAN: IDPs in Darfur to increase; prosecution of perpetrators discussed

Unless a political settlement is soon reached on the conflict-ridden western Sudanese region of Darfur, and humanitarian agencies are given full freedom to operate, the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) could reach three million by the end of the year, a senior UN official said on Wednesday. In May 2004, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs organised an operation to assist an estimated one million IDPs, Jan Egeland, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, told journalists in Geneva.

However, that number was now fast approaching two million, and unless an agreement was reached soon and humanitarian agencies were given full access, it could reach three million by the end of 2005, Egeland warned. He added that during his recent visit to Sudan, he had been shocked to find that there had been a substantial shortfall in funding for humanitarian relief in the crucial months following the historic southern peace agreement, signed on 9 January by the Sudanese government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army.

Full report

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SUDAN: Government urges political solution to Darfur crisis

The Sudanese government has reiterated its call for a political solution to the crisis in the western region of Darfur, adding that the recently signed peace agreement in the south had provided a framework for settling the Darfur conflict peacefully. "In spite of exceptional and unfavourable circumstance resulting from civil unrest in southern and western Sudan, the Sudanese people have managed to lay a solid foundation for a durable and lasting peace in the entire country," Ali Yassin, Sudanese minister of justice, told the 61st session of the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva on Monday.

Yassin, the official Sudan News Agency reported, said a new federal system of government would provide "a real solution" to the conflict in Darfur and ensure that states had their own constitutions, their own elected state governors and their own elected legislative assemblies. "As far as the crisis in Darfur is concerned, we believe that the African Union [AU], United Nations and other sub-regional organisations share our belief that the Comprehensive Peace Agreement provides a framework for settling the crisis in Darfur," he added.

Full report

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SUDAN-ERITREA: Darfur rebel groups threaten not to resume peace talks

The two main rebel groups in the conflict-affected western Sudanese region of Darfur have said they will not resume talks with the Khartoum government unless "war criminals" in the region are prosecuted. In a statement issued from the Eritrean capital, Asmara, on Thursday, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) said that justice was a precondition for peace in Darfur. They also demanded the removal of African Union (AU) peace monitors from Darfur, saying they were no longer "impartial". According to the rebels, the UN, the European Union and Eritrea should conduct monitoring activities.

"The two movements view the issue of trial of the perpetrators as the foremost priority in resolving the conflict in Darfur, especially after they have been named," the rebels said. "The two [have] resolved to resume the negotiations only after the apprehension and trial of the criminals in an international court or tribunal." However, the Sudanese state minister for foreign affairs, Najib Al-Khair Abdul-Wahab, described the demand by the JEM as "a maneuver and attempt to weaken the African role". The minister, in a statement issued through the official Sudanese News Agency, said, "the responsibility for the solution of Darfur problems will be the task of Africa, adding that any attempt to weaken that role is regarded as a violation of the African consensus".

Full report

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[ENDS]

Other recent HORN OF AFRICA reports:

IRIN-HOA Weekly Round-up 235 for 19-25 March 2005, Ê25/Mar/05

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

FGM and the power of tradition, Ê8/Mar/05

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

IRIN-HOA Weekly Round-up 232 for 19-25 February 2005, Ê25/Feb/05

Other recent reports:

SOUTHERN AFRICA: IRIN-SA Weekly Round-up 223 for 19-25 March 2005, 25/Mar/05

CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap, 25/Mar/05

KYRGYZSTAN: Looters ransack capital following protests, 25/Mar/05

WEST AFRICA: IRIN-WA Weekly 269 covering 19-25 March 2005, 25/Mar/05

ASIA: IRIN-Asia Weekly Round-up 12 covering the period 19 - 25 March 2005, 25/Mar/05

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