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Monday 31 October 2005 |
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IRIN-WA Weekly 286 covering 16 July - 22 July 2005[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]CONTENTS: SENEGAL: Ivorian exiles stranded as UN debates whether they are refugees or economic migrants In a house overlooking the sea in Dakar, about 120 Ivorian men, women and children sleep 15 or 20 to a room on plastic mats and strips of cardboard. They survive on a single plate of rice a day and wonder where they will be tomorrow. They have all been stranded in Senegal for three months after travelling from Guinea where conmen posing as UN officials promised them US and Canadian visas in exchange for money. The Ivorians, most of whom lived in the rebel-held city of Danane in the west of the country, say they are refugees fleeing civil war. But the UN refugee agency UNHCR says that not one of them can produce a refugee registration card issued in Guinea. Full report LIBERIA: Alan Doss confirmed as new UN special representative The United Nations has confirmed the appointment of Alan Doss, a Briton with several years experience of conflict resolution in West Africa, as the new head of its large mission in Liberia, a UN spokesman said on Thursday. For the past year Doss has been deputy head of the UN mission in neighbouring Cote d'Ivoire, where international mediators are still trying to end a civil war that broke out in 2002. Before that, he held the same position in Sierra Leone, which is slowly recovering from a 1991-2001 conflict. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan informed the Security Council of his intention to appoint Doss as his new Special Representative in Liberia on 15 July. The post has been vacant since Jacques Paul Klein, a charismatic American, departed from Monrovia at the end of April. Full report COTE D IVOIRE-LIBERIA: Insecurity in west accelerates return home of Liberian refugees There has been a recent surge in the number of Liberian refugees returning home from Cote d€™Ivoire as conditions within Liberia improve and the security situation in the volatile west of Cote d'Ivoire deteriorates, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said. Some 5,100 refugees had returned from Cote d'Ivoire to Maryland county in southeastern Liberia and Nimba county in north central Liberia during the past four weeks, the UNHCR said in a statement on Tuesday. That compared with only 700 returnees from Cote d'Ivoire during the first five months of the year, it added. €œThe improved security situation in Liberia is the top reason that people are now returning,€ Fatoumata Kaba, UNHCR spokeswoman for West Africa, told IRIN. But some said they are leaving Cote d€™Ivoire in fear of the growing insecurity in the Wild West. Full report GUINEA-BISSAU: Government accuses close ally of Kumba Yala of organising attack on Interior Ministry The recent assault on the Interior Ministry of Guinea-Bissau, which led to the death of security guards, was carried out by a group of dissident soldiers who had been financed by a close ally of former president Kumba Yala, Interior Minister Mumine Embalo said on Tuesday. Embalo did not name the politician, but made clear through a series of indirect references that he was referring to Biaia Guab na Pana, a member of parliament belonging to Yala's Social Renovation Party (PRS). The Interior Minister said this politician had financed the pre-dawn attack last Saturday. The attack itself had been led by a former state security official that worked in the port of Bissau, he added. Embalo said four members of the insurgent group had been arrested, all of whom were former members of the parachute commando battalion of the army, who had recently been expelled for "acts of indiscipline". Several others were still on the run, he added. The attack on the Interior Ministry, which the army high command described as an "isolated incident" took place during campaigning for the second round vote in Guinea-Bissau's presidential election, which is due to take place on Sunday. Full report BENIN: Fears of witchcraft lead to widespread infanticide in remote north Unless a baby is born head first and face upwards, many communities in northern Benin believe the child is a witch or sorcerer. And tradition demands that the infant must be killed, sometimes by dashing its brains out against a tree trunk. In the eyes of the Baatonou, Boko and Peul people, a child whose birth and early development deviates in any way from the accepted norm is cursed and must be destroyed. If the parents are compassionate, the baby is simply abandoned to die in the bush or be found and rescued by a charitable soul. €œFarmers going to their fields or women on their way to the market regularly pick up abandoned babies and bring them to us,€ said Alexis Agbo of the Child Reception and Protection Centre (CASE), a local child welfare group. But if the parents of an ill-born baby obey the demands of tradition, the infant is handed over to a "fixer". He ties a rope around the child's feet, walks several times round a tree and then dashes its head against the trunk. Alternatively, the fixer may drown the child or poison it to exorcise the evil which it is deemed to have brought into the world. It doesn't take much for a child to be sentenced to death in this way. It is enough for the infant to be born feet, shoulders or bottom first or head first but facing towards the ground. But some fight against those practices, often link to a lack of proper perinatal care in this desperately poor country of West Africa. They deliver the story of those babies considered as witch to-be. Full report [ENDS]
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