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Sunday 25 December 2005


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IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-up 281 for 28 May to 3 June 2005

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

CONTENTS:

BURUNDI: Communal elections begin
DRC: Refugee camp closes as Angolans go home
DRC: UN Nepalese soldier dies after militia attack
UGANDA: WFP running out of food for three million people
TANZANIA: Local firm to start producing ARVs in 2006
EAST AFRICA: Rwanda may join regional body soon, leaders say

BURUNDI: Communal elections begin

The election of communal councillors in Burundi began on Friday, amid reports of violence in the northwestern province of Bubanza.

State-owned Radio Burundi reported on Friday that incidences of violence and exchange of gunfire in Bubanza had caused local residents to flee. The radio also reported gunfire in the province of Bujumbura Rural, which surrounds the capital, Bujumbura. It said security forces and peacekeepers from the UN Mission in Burundi, ONUB, had been deployed to the areas from which the gunshots came.

It added that reports also indicated that 14 polling stations in Bubanza's Rugazi Commune were still closed and that the residents were not voting. The radio said at least three million voters had since early Friday headed to 6,000 polling stations countrywide to elect over 3,000 communal councillors.

The communal poll is the first in a series of four elections designed to usher in democracy in the country that has experienced 11 years of civil war. An estimated 300,000 people have died and hundreds of thousands others displaced as a result of the conflict, which pitted mainly Hutu rebel movements against the minority Tutsi-dominated army and government.

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DRC: Refugee camp closes as Angolans go home

The remaining 263 Angolan refugees at a camp in Kisenge, in the southern Congolese province of Katanga, have been repatriated; ending a refugees programme there that had run for at least 20 years, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees announced on Tuesday.

The agency's external relations officer, Jens Hesemann, said some 600 refugees chose to remain in the Kisenge area. He added that the agency's "assisted repatriation" programme for the area would come to an end. However, he said, the Angola voluntary repatriation programme would continue for several other sites in the provinces of Bandundu and Bas Congo, bordering Angola's northern provinces and from Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

An estimated 22,000 Angolans remained in refugee camps and settlements elsewhere in the country, Hesemann said, in addition to an estimated 72,000 Angolan refugees who have settled there spontaneously.

The repatriation of refugees at sites around the town of Ngidunga in Bas Congo Province ended in March 2005. UNHCR reports that since the start of its voluntary repatriation in June 2003, it has assisted in the return of about 42,000 Angolans.

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DRC: UN Nepalese soldier dies after militia attack

One of four UN Nepalese troops wounded by militiamen in an attack in village of Lugo in the northeastern district of Ituri died of his wounds on Friday, a UN spokesman said.

The soldier, an officer, is the 18th peacekeeper killed in the current peacekeeping UN Mission in the DRC known as MONUC, the spokesman, Col Thierry Provendier, said in Kinshasa. The injuries of the three other soldiers are not life threatening, he added. They were evacuated to South Africa.

They were wounded while escorting a UN human rights team that went to Lugo by helicopter to investigate allegations that members of a militia had abducted women in April and raped them in a local chapel.

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UGANDA: WFP running out of food for three million people

At least three million Ugandans, including 1.4 million people displaced by fighting in the northern region, are facing serious food shortages, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said on Wednesday.

The agency's director for Uganda, Ken Davies, told IRIN that it needed 90,000 mt, valued at US $45 million, to see it through December.

"We are going to see a terrible situation getting worse if we do not get food immediately," he said.

The needy included 574,000 pastoralists in the northeastern Karamoja region, who are suffering from the effects of drought and have depended on food relief by WFP since January.

Since 1988, northern Uganda has been ravaged by war pitting the Ugandan government against rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army, a brutal insurgency that frequently targets civilians for attacks. The conflict has killed hundreds of people and displaced more than 1.4 million others.

Full report

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TANZANIA: Local firm to start producing ARVs in 2006

The Tanzania Pharmaceutical Industries, a local firm, will begin producing generic anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) in mid-2006 from a factory in the northern town of Arusha, the firm's managing director, Ramadhani Madabida, said on Monday.

"We are optimistic that the locally produced ARVs will be accessible to many HIV/AIDS patients in Tanzania," he told IRIN.

The company has already started importing the raw materials from China, and its factory has successfully produced the drug on a trial basis, Madabida said.

About 7 percent of adult Tanzanians, or about two million people, are HIV positive, according to a recent government study. Many of them do not have access to ARVs.

Full report

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EAST AFRICA: Rwanda may join regional body soon, leaders say

Rwanda could be admitted to the East African Community by November, according to a directive by the heads of state of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda at a two-day extraordinary summit, which ended on Monday in Tanzania's commercial capital, Dar es Salaam.

The leaders of the three countries - Presidents Mwai Kibaki of Kenya, Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda - have directed the community's Council of Ministers to expedite the process of Rwanda's admission.

At their summit, the leaders also discussed a report on fast tracking of the integration of the East African countries and the creation of a political federation, but said there was need for further and wider consultations. They directed the Council of Ministers to form national consultative mechanisms and to collect views from the public and report back to the summit within the next 12 months.

Full report

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[ENDS]

Theme(s)	Other

Other recent CENTRAL & EASTERN AFRICA reports:

IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-up 310 17-23 December 2005, 23/Dec/05

IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-up 309 10-16 December 2005, 16/Dec/05

IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-up 308 3-9 December 2005, 9/Dec/05

UN appeal seeks $154.5 million for recovery efforts , 7/Dec/05

IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-up 307 26 November to 2 December 2005, 2/Dec/05

Other recent reports:

RWANDA: Body found in Brussels canal confirmed that of ex-minister's, 23/Dec/05

CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap, 23/Dec/05

WEST AFRICA: IRIN-WA Weekly Round-up 309 covering 17 - 23 December 2005, 23/Dec/05

CENTRAL ASIA: IRIN-Asia Weekly Round-up 51 covering the period 17 - 23 December 2005, 23/Dec/05

SOUTHERN AFRICA: IRIN-SA Weekly Round-up 262 for 17-23 December 2005, 23/Dec/05

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