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Sunday 25 December 2005


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IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-up 287 for 9-15 July 2005

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

CONTENTS:

KENYA: Thousands displaced after attack, toll reaches 76
DRC: Army recaptures Nyamilima village, North Kivu
DRC: Donors agree to provide €85 million more for polls
DRC: UN to resume air service in Kasaï Oriental
UGANDA: LRA kills 14 in northern weekend ambush
UGANDA: 1,169 Rwandan asylum seekers denied refugee status
RWANDA-BURUNDI: NGOs say "forced" returnees need monitoring
BURUNDI: Head of former rebel group on track to be president
CENTRAL AFRICA: Ministers says rural electrification a must in war on poverty

KENYA: Thousands displaced after attack, toll reaches 76

At least 6,000 people have been displaced following brutal attacks by armed raiders that started on Tuesday on villages in the northern Kenyan district of Marsabit, relief workers said.

They said the death toll had reached 76 by Thursday. This included 20 children killed when the raiders attacked a local primary school, and 10 members of a church group killed in an apparent revenge attack on Wednesday.

"Initial indications are that 1,000 families - about 6,000 people - have been displaced," Farid Abdulkadir, the disaster preparedness and response director for the Kenya Red Cross Society, told IRIN.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said some 1,000 families affected by the attacks needed emergency aid. It said the priority needs were for health, temporary shelter and food. The Kenya Ministry of Health has appealed for medical oxygen and cylinders, sutures and dressing materials, blood transfusion equipment and help for medical evacuation of critical patients.

Police said 66 of the dead were civilians who died when the assailants, believed to be members of the Borana community, launched their attacks on villages inhabited by the Gabra ethnic group in the Turbi location of Marsabit, 580 km north of Nairobi.

Some 2,000 army, paramilitary and police troops have arrived in the area, the Daily Nation, a Nairobi newspaper, reported on Friday. The semi-arid Eastern Province near the Ethiopian border has a history of banditry and violent cattle rustling among the pastoralist communities living in the area, which often fight over pasture and water points.

Full report

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DRC: Army recaptures Nyamilima village, North Kivu

Government troops recaptured on Tuesday the village of Nyamilima, one of three in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) held by local and Rwandan Hutu rebels, a senior army commander said.

"We routed the assailants," Col Janvier Mayanga, the 12th Brigade commander based in Rutshuru, said.

However, his forces are yet to retake the nearby villages of Nyakakoma and Ishasha from the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda and two Mayi-Mayi militia battalions. These villages are near Nyamilima, which is 150 km northwest of Goma, capital of North Kivu Province.

Mayanga had said the army would recapture Nyakakoma and Ishasha in the next few days. The rebels had seized all three villages on Monday from an infantry battalion of the 12th Brigade.

Mayanga said the army sustained four wounded and killed 12 FDLR rebels in Nyamilima. UN military observers said they saw one dead government soldier there.

An official of a civil society organisation, who did not wish to be identified, said homes had been burnt and that all the fighting groups had engaged in looting. She said "several thousand" residents had fled towards North Kivu's Virunga National Park and to Uganda.

Full report

[DRC: Hutu rebels quit forest area under UN pressure]
[DRC: Two mass graves reported in eastern village of Ntulumamba]

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DRC: Donors agree to provide €85 million more for polls

European donors and the government committed themselves on Tuesday to provide an additional €85 million (US $100 million) for democratic elections in the central African country.

The commitments were made during a two-day meeting at the European Union in Brussels, co-chaired by European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid Louis Michel, and the UN Special Representative to the Secretary-General in the DRC, William Swing.

The donors who committed funds were Belgium, German, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The DRC government pledged €16.6 million (about $20 million). Others that also expressed their intentions to provide more money are Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Greece, Norway, Spain and the United States.

The European Commission’s desk officer for the DRC, Domenico Rosa, said from Brussels that though the money for the actual elections was available, there was still a problem to find more for the logistical support to hold the polls.

Rosa said although the UN Mission in the DRC (MONUC) had the aircraft and technical capacity to put the electoral workers and material in place, and could do so "cheaply and efficiently", it was already overstretched. He said according to MONUC’s calculations it needed an additional €85.8 million ($103 million) to do the job.

"The [UN] Security Council should now consider increasing MONUC’s budget," he said.

Full report

Meanwhile in New York on Tuesday, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the Council in a report that the UN needed some $190 million more to support upcoming elections in DRC.

"The estimate provides for the phased deployment of an additional 2,590 military contingent personnel," he said.

This would bring to 19,290 the number of MONUC military personnel in theatre. Annan also said MONUC would require an additional 216 civilian police personnel to bring their total to 391; and an additional 625 "formed police personnel" to bring that strength to 750; as well as more local and international civilian staff and UN volunteers.

The cost of MONUC for the 12-month period from 2005 to 2006 is projected at $1.3 billion. The timetable for the elections, which would usher the country's first democratic polls in 40 years, has not yet been set. They were supposed to have been completed by June but the country’s national assembly postponed them for at least six months.

Full report

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DRC: UN to resume air service in Kasaï Oriental

The UN has said it plans to resume flights to two remote areas in Kasaï Oriental Province in response to requests from the humanitarian organistions.

MONUC’s information focal point for humanitarian affairs, Patrice Bogna, said on Tuesday the humanitarian community urged MONUC to consider the re-establishment of its flights from the provincial capital of Mbuji-Mayi to Lubao and Lodja, in the districts of Sankuru and Kabinda. He said the districts were home to some five million people in need of humanitarian aid.

Full report

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UGANDA: LRA kills 14 in northern weekend ambush

At least 14 people were killed on Sunday when rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army ambushed them in Kitkum District, about 400 km north of the Ugandan capital, Kampala, officials said on Monday.

They said a group of rebels ambushed a pick-up truck between Potika and Paloga, 60 km northwest of Kitgum town. Fourteen people have been confirmed dead and more than 10 were wounded, Nahman Ojwee, chairman of the Kitgum District Council, said.

Army spokesman Lt Col Shaban Bantariza said the victims were going to the market in Patika when their vehicle was ambushed and set ablaze. He said the rebels, thought to number about seven, had looted the goods in the vehicle.

Full report

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UGANDA: 1,169 Rwandan asylum seekers denied refugee status

Some 1,169 Rwandans who fled their country in recent months and sought asylum in neighbouring Uganda have been denied refugee status and advised to return home, officials said on Friday.

"We were not convinced by the reasons they gave during our interviews. They told us that they came to Uganda looking for land and they were citing property wrangles back home," David Kazungu, Uganda's assistant commissioner for refugees, said.

"Many said they were told that there is plenty of land in Uganda and they decided to come in," he added.

However, he said the refugee eligibility committee had found 80 of the asylum seekers "with well-founded fears of persecution".

The Rwandans recently fled Omutara, Gitarama, Vyumba and Kibungo provinces in Rwanda, and have since been living in southwestern Uganda, near the refugee settlement of Nakivale.

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, confirmed Uganda’s refusal to accord the refugees refugee status, and said the process did not contravene any international convention.

Uganda already hosts some 14,000 Rwandan refugees, living mainly in settlements in the west.

Full report

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RWANDA-BURUNDI: NGOs say "forced" returnees need monitoring

International Rescue Committee said on Thursday it and nine other international NGOs had requested international monitoring of 8,000 Rwandans who they say were taken from Burundi illegally and by force on 13 June.

In a letter on 1 July to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the NGOs asked her to "insist that the Rwandan government provide guarantees that the safety and dignity of those returned from Burundi will be ensured, and that these guarantees be subject to effective international monitoring".

The NGOs also said: "The government of Burundi, under pressure from the government of Rwanda, declared that the 8,000 Rwandan asylum seekers in Burundi were ineligible for asylum, designating them as illegal immigrants, and thereby clearing the way to forcibly expel them from Burundi."

The Rwandan government has dismissed claims made earlier by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and UNHCR that Rwanda and Burundi had violated their obligations under international refugee law.

"Most of these people were running away fearing charges in the local Gacaca courts," Protais Musoni, Rwanda's minister for local government, told IRIN in June. "It is not in the mandate of UNHCR to accept such a group of people."

Full report

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BURUNDI: Head of former rebel group on track to be president

The longtime leader of the former rebel movement that won Burundi’s recent municipal and legislative elections, Pierre Nkurunziza, accepted on Sunday his party’s choice as presidential candidate in polls due on 19 August.

Nkurunziza heads the Conseil national pour la defense de la democratie–Forces pour la defense de la democratie (CNDD-FDD). The party has the support of the majority of assemblymen and senators.

Under the terms of Burundi’s post transition constitution, the next head of state will be elected in the legislature by assemblymen and senators. The senators will, themselves, be elected on 29 July by the communal councilors.

The CNDD-FDD won the municipal and legislative elections with absolute majorities, clearing the way for an almost certain Nkurunziza victory in the presidential election.

Nkurunziza, 41, is a Hutu from the northern province of Ngozi. He had been a lecturer at the Sports and Physical Education Department of the University of Burundi before joining the CNDD-FDD and becoming its political leader.

Full report

[BURUNDI: Winning the legislature, former rebels vow to negotiate peace]

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CENTRAL AFRICA: Ministers says rural electrification a must in war on poverty

Energy ministers from countries in Central Africa said on Wednesday the provision of electricity must be part of their national strategic plans to end poverty.

Their appeal came at the end of a three-day workshop in Brazzaville, the Republic of Congo, on providing electricity services for rural development. Cheap and reliable electricity would, they said, introduce or modernise clean drinking water, education, health, communication and agriculture systems for millions of their rural poor.

"In spite of the enormous energy resources in our area, its rate of electrification hardly exceeds ten percent," Bruno Jean Richard Itoua, the Congolese minister for energy, told his colleagues from Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Republic of Congo.

The countries are members of the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa, also known as CEMAC, which organised the workshop with the European Initiative for Energy for the Eradication of Poverty and for Durable Development.

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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