"); NewWindow.document.close(); return false; } // end hiding from old browsers -->

Wednesday 16 November 2005


Search

Regions

IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-up 290 for 30 July to 5 August 2005

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

CONTENTS:

UGANDA-SUDAN: Garang death may hurt northern Uganda peace - commentators
BURUNDI: Displaced families end protest after new land offer
BURUNDI: Seed fair to serve 70,000 households
BURUNDI: World Bank announces US $1.5 billion in debt relief
BURUNDI: UN mission report cites army, rebels in rights abuses
DRC: Voters registration ends in Kinshasa
DRC: Unidentified fever kills 12 diamond miners in Maniema
DRC-NIGER: Businessmen donate food aid to Niger
DRC: Katanga’s forgotten strife displacing thousands
DRC-TANZANIA: Refugees begin returning for voter registration
CAR: France adds 4 million euro to post-conflict recovery
TANZANIA: At least 6 million children immunised against measles
CONGO: Work begins on power generator for Brazzaville
CONGO: Tens of thousands to get clean drinking water
CONGO: Government agrees to allocate more money to fight HIV/AIDS
KENYA: Anti-malaria project to receive additional UK funding

UGANDA-SUDAN: Garang death may hurt northern Uganda peace - commentators

The death of Sudan's first vice-president, John Garang, in a helicopter crash on 30 July could have an adverse effect on efforts to bring peace to war-torn northern Uganda, commentators said.

Northern Uganda, which borders southern Sudan, has been ravaged by two decades of a war that pits the Ugandan government against the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a group accused of committing widespread atrocities against civilians in the north and east of the country.

"I understand from contacts that the LRA is rejoicing because a key enemy has been removed," John Prendergast, a special adviser to the global think-tank, the International Crisis Group, said on Monday from Kampala.

The LRA has launched many of its attacks from rear bases in government-controlled areas of southern Sudan. Its leader, the elusive Joseph Kony, is widely believed to live in the Imatong mountain range in southern Sudan.

Garang died when a Ugandan military MI-72 helicopter flying him to southern Sudan after a meeting with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni crashed in bad weather the Uganda-Sudan border. All of 14 people on board were killed. The two leaders are reported to have discussed how Garang's administration in southern Sudan could help deal with Uganda's LRA insurgency.

Full report

[Top of the Page]

BURUNDI: Displaced families end protest after new land offer

Hundreds IDPs who have been camping out in front of a government building in Bujumbura since 25 July say they will end their protest now that the government has agreed to give them land on which to settle.

The protesters represent 609 families who have been displaced since Burundi’s civil war started in 1993. They claim to have been given land in Bujumbura’s Kinama neighbourhood by the nation's former president, Pierre Buyoya.

The former president visited the IDPs at Kinama in 1997 and announced on national radio that the IDPs would get land. However, the IDPs have no documents to prove ownership. The current government has since parcelled the land out to civil servants. Two weeks ago bulldozers from the Ministry of Public Works destroyed the IDPs homes on the land.

The new land is in another part of Kinama neighbourhood.

Full report

[Top of the Page]

BURUNDI: Seed fair to serve 70,000 households

Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Burundi and its partners, under the coordination of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, announced on Monday that they would serve more than 70,000 Burundian farming families with seed during the September-October planting season.

On average the Burundi household consists of six.

In a statement made available to IRIN on Friday; CRS said it and its partners, through using an approach that provides needy households with a subsidy to buy agricultural inputs, also expected to inject nearly US $500,000 into local agricultural markets during the season.

CRS said the programme responded to seed access problems, where farming families lack income, resources, and/or the "social capital" to access seed. It said the approach involved supplying needy households with a voucher usable to acquire seed from local traders. Local seed traders then redeem the vouchers for cash.

Full report

[Top of the Page]

BURUNDI: World Bank announces $1.5 billion in debt relief

The World Bank announced on Thursday that Burundi's government had met the economic reforms for international creditors to write off what would have amounted to $1.5 billion in debt servicing.

"Burundi has made good progress in strengthening macroeconomic policy performance and deepening the structural reform agenda," said Agustin Carstens, acting chair of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Executive Board.

In light of these reforms, the IMF and the World Bank said Burundi was now the 28th country to reach "a decision point" under their enhanced debt relief programme known as the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative, or HIPC.

Most of the relief will be for debts Burundi owes to the World Bank's no-interest lending arm, the International Development Association. The bank said the relief would allow a 90-percent reduction in debt service payments of the hundreds of millions of dollars that Burundi would have had to make from now until 2039.

Full report

[Top of the Page]

BURUNDI: UN mission report cites army, rebels in rights abuses

The UN Mission in Burundi (ONUB) has blamed the country's only remaining rebel movement, the Front National de Libération (FNL), and the regular army for human rights violations in the country.

In its quarterly report for April-June, ONUB described the frequency of human rights violations as increasing; especially in the provinces of Bujumbura Rural and Makamba. It said in May alone the army and the FNL killed 53 people.

However, army spokesman Maj. Adolphe Manirakiza denied the allegations against the military. He said on Friday that soldiers had been deployed to protect civilians from FNL attacks and not to kill them. He termed the report biased and said if the army had been involved in the inquiries into rights abuses ONUB would have been able to produce a more objective account.

Full report

[Top of the Page]

DRC: Voters registration ends in Kinshasa

The Independent Electoral Commission has said 2.9 million people in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), had signed up to vote in the 2006 elections by the time registration centres closed on 31 July.

"We registered more then 80 percent of Kinshasa," Norbert Basengezi, the deputy president of the commission, said.

Registration started in Kinshasa on 20 June and spread to the provinces of Orientale, in the northeast, and Bas-Congo in the west, on 25 July. Officials said in three weeks they would also begin registering in the provinces of Katanga and the Kasais.

Full report

[Top of the Page]

DRC: Unidentified fever kills 12 diamond miners in Maniema, OCHA says

A local official of the UN humanitarian coordinating agency, OCHA, said on Friday that 12 diamond miners working in a pit 84 km northwest of the town of Punia in the DRC’s Maniema Province are dead and many others are seriously ill from what appears to be a hemorrhagic fever.

"Those infected vomit blood," said Gerson Brandao, the humanitarian affairs officer for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Maniema, in the east of the country.

He said the disease could have been caused by the conditions in Punia and at the pit where 10,500 miners recently arrived following news of the discovery of diamonds. He said the health inspector for the Punia Health Zone had reported there was no drinking water in the area and that the miners worked in poor health conditions.

Full report

[Top of the Page]

DRC-NIGER: Businessmen donate food aid to Niger

Congolese businessmen have collected 120 tons of maize flour and other food for 2.5 million hungry people in Niger, a high ranking government official said on Thursday.

"Almost fifty tons have already arrived there and I will be going to give the people of Niger a message of support," Antoine Ghando, a spokesman for the office of President Joeseph Kabila, said on Thursday in Kinshasa before flying to Niamey, the capital of Niger.

Forty tons of the food was airlifted by the Belgium government while the rest is to be transported by the DRC government in three days.

[Top of the Page]

DRC: Katanga’s forgotten strife displacing thousands

Violence in parts of Katanga Province has been displacing thousands of civilians, according to local media and two international NGOs.

"More than 15,000 displaced people have arrived in [the village] of Mukubu since May," said Loick Barriquand, the programme manager for Médecins Sans Frontières that has a new primary health care project in the village.

On Monday he said that fighting there was between the regular army and local Mayi-Mayi militiamen.

"The population is the victim of violence being committed by both parties," he said.

The UN Mission in the DRC (MONUC) does not have any troops in north or central Katanga, the MONUC military spokesman, Lt Col Thierry Provendier, told IRIN on Thursday. Provendier said MONUC was aware of the reports of recent fighting in the area but it had not yet been able to send a mission to verify them.

Full report

[Top of the Page]

DRC-TANZANIA: Refugees begin returning for voter registration

Some 1,000 refugees in Tanzanian camps returned to eastern DRC late in July, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.

In a news conference in July, the UNHCR office in Uvira said at least 150,000 refugees in Tanzania wanted to return home; a move which South Kivu Governor Didas Kaningini also attributed to the refugees' desire to register for the elections. However, UNHCR said it would not be able to begin its voluntary repatriation of refugees until October. Given that, some refugees said they had decided to return on their own immediately.

Voter registration is set to begin in the province of South Kivu on 21 August and will end 21 days later. The National Independent Electoral Commission has said it cannot tour countries bordering the DRC to register refugees. In addition, the commission's deputy president, Norbert Kantitima Bashengezi, said it did not have the means to repatriate the refugees.

Voter registration is underway in the provinces of Orientale and Bas-Congo till 14 August. The process ended in Kinshasa on 31 July with 2.9 million people registered.

Full report

[Top of the Page]

CAR: France adds 4 million euro to post-conflict recovery

The French government added four million euro ($4.85 million) on Monday to its aid package for the Central African Republic (CAR) following a meeting in Paris between CAR President Francois Bozize and his French counterpart, Jacques Chirac.

The money will support the ongoing recovery process in the public finances and good governance, Laurence Auer, the deputy spokeswoman of the French president’s office said from Paris on Monday. Two months ago France granted one million euro ($1.2 million) to its former colony to pay the salaries of its servants who are owed more than 40 months of unpaid wages. In July, the EU agreed to resume in full its 100-million-euro ($121.3 million) aid programme that it partially suspended in 2003 after Bozize overthrew the elected president, Ange-Felix Patassé.

[Top of the Page]

TANZANIA: At least 6 million children immunised against measles

Tanzania completed on Monday the measles immunisation of at least six million children aged five years and below, health officials said.

"Our target was to have 6.8 million children immunised during three days of the exercise and, according to reports, we had a big turn out across the country. We might even have surpassed the target," Anna Abdallah, the minister of health, said on Monday during an occasion marking the countrywide immunisation drive.

She said between 600 and 800 out of every 100,000 Tanzanian children infected with measles died each year.

Full report

[Top of the Page]

CONGO: Work begins on power generator for Brazzaville

Construction began on Wednesday of a 32.5-megawatt power plant in the Republic of Congo's (ROC) capital, Brazzaville, to alleviate the city’s acute power shortages.

The 21-billion-franc CFA (Approx $40 million) project will take 12 months project to complete, the Ministry of Energy and Water Resources said.

Anglo Belgian Corporation is building the generator. The government of Belgium loaned the country one-third of the money, or 6.8 billion francs (Approx $13 million).

Only 49 percent of the country’s urban population and 35 percent of the rural population have access to electricity, according to government figures.

[CONGO: Power shortfall a nightmare for Brazzaville residents]

[Top of the Page]

CONGO: Tens of thousands to get clean drinking water

Congolese President Denis Sassou-Nguesso inaugurated on Monday a project to supply clean drinking water to 160,000 residents in the Brazzaville neighbourhoods of Moukondo Ouest, Massengo and Nkombo.

The China Beijing Enterprise, applying Congolese government funds, has sunk eight boreholes each capable of supplying 35,000 litres of water per day.

Residents have been travelling long distances to fetch clean drinking water, while others have had to use untreated water from streams. A UN Development Programme survey published in 2004 showed that 49 percent of the country's urban population and 40 percent of those in rural areas had access to clean drinking water.

Full report

[Top of the Page]

CONGO: Government agrees to allocate more money to fight HIV/AIDS

The Ministry for Health and Population signed an agreement on 30 July allocating 803.62 million francs CFA ($1.48 million) to support the fight against HIV/AIDS. The money will go to the government’s National Council for the Fight Against AIDS, known by its French acronym CNLS.

CNLS currently provides voluntary testing; counseling and care for HIV infected patients in treatment centres in Brazzaville and Pointe Noire, the council’s executive secretary, Marie Franck Purhuence, said. The new government funds will be used to buy antiretroviral drugs, other medicine and equipment.

According to a CNLS survey made in November 2003, 4.2 percent of the population of ROC was infected with HIV.

Full report

[Top of the Page]

KENYA: Anti-malaria project to receive additional UK funding

Britain announced on Wednesday it would give Kenya additional 19.6 million pounds sterling ($34.8 million) to provide 11 million new insecticide treated bed nets for women and children at risk of contracting malaria.

"This additional funding means that nets will be available to over 75 percent of the vulnerable population by 2007/08, allowing them to sleep free from the threat of malaria," Hilary Benn, Britain's secretary for international development, said in a statement.

The subsidised insecticide treated bed nets would be distributed through Mother and Child Health Clinics and rural retailers.

Malaria is the leading cause of mortality and morbidity in Kenya, particularly among pregnant women and children under the age of five, according to Britain's Department for International Development. Up to 28 million Kenyans (70 percent of the population) are at risk and at a given time 1.5 million pregnant women are susceptible, the agency said.

The DFID and the US Agency for International Development began providing insecticide treated bed nets in Kenya in 2002.

Full report

[Top of the Page]

[ENDS]

Theme(s)	Other

Other recent CENTRAL & EASTERN AFRICA reports:

IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-up 304 5-11 November 2005, 11/Nov/05

UN Security Council team visits five countries, 4/Nov/05

IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-up 303 29 October to 4 November 2005, 4/Nov/05

Governments to meet over rebel menace, 25/Oct/05

IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-up 301 for 15-21 October 2005, 21/Oct/05

Other recent reports:

EGYPT: NGOs react to stalled democracy summit, 15/Nov/05

CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap, 11/Nov/05

CENTRAL & EASTERN AFRICA: IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-up 304 5-11 November 2005, 11/Nov/05

SOUTHERN AFRICA: IRIN-SA Weekly Round-up 256 for 5 - 11 November 2005, 11/Nov/05

WEST AFRICA: IRIN-WA Weekly Round-up 303 covering 5 - 11 November 2005, 11/Nov/05

[Back] [Home Page]

Click here to send any feedback, comments or questions you have about IRIN's Website or if you prefer you can send an Email to Webmaster

Copyright © IRIN 2005
The material contained on www.IRINnews.org comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian news and information service, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies.
All IRIN material may be reposted or reprinted free-of-charge; refer to the IRIN copyright page for conditions of use. IRIN is a project of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.