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Sunday 25 December 2005


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IRIN-WA Weekly 292 covering 27 August - 2 September 2005

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

CONTENTS:

COTE D IVOIRE: S.Africa says continuing mediation, cautious on sanctions
WEST AFRICA: Cholera kills nearly 500 people, more deaths feared
NIGER: Joy and relief as hungry villagers tentatively reap first harvests
LIBERIA: Funding crunch threatens return of 64,000 IDPs before polls
SIERRA LEONE: UN approves assistance team to move in after peacekeeper exit
SENEGAL: Opposition blasts president’s scheme to delay polls to fund flood relief
CAMEROON: Fragile dam - a time bomb that could kill thousands, but when will it go off?

COTE D IVOIRE: South Africa says continuing mediation, cautious on sanctions

South Africa denied on Wednesday that it was concluding its mediation in the Cote d'Ivoire crisis as it warned the UN Security Council to take care that any sanctions action did not negatively affect the peace process.

"The South African Mediation stated that it will continue its efforts... to ensure the holding of free, fair and transparent elections in Cote d'Ivoire as scheduled, which is the only solution to the crisis," the Security Council said in a statement after a closed-door briefing.

Elections on 30 October are at the heart of the international community's blueprint for peace in Cote d'Ivoire but progress towards that goal has been slow.

Mediators have already said that rebels and opposition parties are to blame for the impasse and warned that the world's top cocoa grower could explode into another cycle of violence.

Diplomats and UN officials have been warning that individual sanctions, already approved by the Security Council, could now be enforced against spoilers of the peace process.

During his briefing, South Africa Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota told the 15-member body it should only act on sanctions "in a manner that does not negatively affect the peace process."

"We are not keen to punish people, we are keen to solve the situation and we need to get the elections in place so that people can decide on who runs the country," Lekota told reporters. "If we find that we have sanctions in place, then we would see this as a failure."

Full report

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WEST AFRICA: Cholera kills nearly 500 people, more deaths feared

Cholera has killed 500 people across West Africa and UN officials fear the death toll will rise as cash-strapped health services struggle to cope, heavy rains continue, and populations start moving about to find work during the harvest season.

The World Health Organisation said on Thursday that 31,259 cases of cholera had been reported in nine West African countries so far this year. The waterborne disease, which can kill within 24 hours by inducing severe vomiting and diarrhoea, has also claimed 488 lives.

And the end is not yet in sight.

"If we look at this year's trends, the figures are still going up in many countries," John Mulangu, a senior regional advisor for the WHO, told a press conference in Dakar.

"If cholera is not brought under control in certain regions, we will soon be talking of... 100,000 cases," he said. "And hospitals and health centres will be overwhelmed."

Although cholera outbreaks flare up every year in impoverished West Africa, where heavy rains flood latrines and contaminate wells, UN experts says the situation this year is particularly bad.

"Last year we were not on this scale. The problem is getting worse," Mulangu said.

Full report

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NIGER: Joy and relief as hungry villagers tentatively reap first harvests

After five hard months of living hand to mouth, villagers in this corner of Niger gaze in wonder at the ears of millet ready for picking in the fields and allow themselves to hope that this year's harvest will put an end to their hardship.

"We can breathe again. Thanks be to God," sighs Halilou Habou, one of 500 people living in Damana, a village more than 100 km east of the capital, Niamey. "Look at all this millet, it's ripe and ready to reap. And in a week, or maybe 10 days I'll be able to start harvesting my beans too."

In 2004, one of the worst droughts in recent years combined with a locust invasion and deep-rooted poverty with disastrous effect in Niger.

The UN estimates that almost a third of Niger's 12 million population are now affected by the food crisis hanging over the world's second poorest nation, with some 2.5 million people identified as extremely vulnerable and requiring food assistance.

Damana lies just south of the 14th parallel that cuts a swathe across the arid Sahel region on the fringes of the Sahara desert and that experts say is often an area affected by food shortages.

Full report

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LIBERIA: Funding crunch threatens return of 64,000 IDPs before polls

Funding shortages could delay the resettlement of around 64,000 Liberians, who remain displaced more than two years after the end of the civil war, many of whom are keen to return home ahead of October elections, government and UN officials have said.

"These are IDPs (internally displaced persons) who are residing in spontaneous settlements," Philip Dwuye, the head of the Liberia Refugees, Repatriation and Resettlement Commission told IRIN. "The government along with its international partners is searching for means of securing funding to resettle them."

Dwuye put the cost of helping these IDPs home at US $9.6 million. The money would be used to provide returnees with basic items and transport.

In a recent humanitarian update, the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) warned that a funding crunch lay around the corner.

"64,000 IDPs who are not covered by the current planning figures would have to wait until resources are identified. This would effectively bring the (return) process to a halt," the UNMIL briefing note said.

Full report

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SIERRA LEONE: UN approves assistance team to move in after peacekeeper exit

Human rights and government accountability will top the list of priorities for a new UN assistance team, set to step into Sierra Leone after the last peacekeepers leave at the end of the year.

The UN Security Council unanimously approved the establishment of the UN Integrated Office for Sierra Leone (UNIOSL) in a resolution late Wednesday, saying it was crucial that international support continued to help the West African country rebound from a decade of civil war.

The last of the blue-hatted peacekeepers in Sierra Leone are due to leave this December, just over six years after the UN peacekeeping mission (UNAMSIL) first went in.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said in a report earlier this year that while Sierra Leone had made impressive progress toward peace since the official end of the war in early 2002, the country remains fragile and needed “concrete steps aimed at addressing the root causes of the conflict and nurturing a culture of human rights."

The new assistance mission was given an initial mandate of one year beginning on 1 January, 2006.

Full report

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SENEGAL: Opposition blasts president’s scheme to delay polls to fund flood relief

Senegalese opposition leaders are up in arms over a plan by President Abdoulaye Wade to postpone parliamentary elections by a year to free up funds for a flood relief plan for the capital, Dakar.

In a broadcast to the nation over the weekend, Wade said by fusing the parliamentary elections, due in 2006, with presidential elections scheduled for 2007, Senegal could cut costs and free up money to help those people who had been hardest hit by some of the heaviest rains in 20 years.

He mapped out a US $96.5 million plan to relocate people from low-lying shantytowns around the capital that have been flooded and overhaul the communities.

"The success of the operation depends on a decision by the national assembly to push back the legislative elections,” Wade said. “In fact, it is not reasonable for a poor country to devote $13 million for elections in 2006 and the same amount for other elections in 2007."

Opposition leaders are vowing to resist the plan, saying Wade is capitalising on the floods to fix political problems within his ruling Democratic Party of Senegal. They say the move would be a blow to democracy, undercutting the system of separate elections on which all parties reached consensus 13 years ago.

“The floods are nothing but a pretext,” said Serigne Mbaye Thiam of the Socialist Party, Senegal’s biggest opposition party which ruled from independence in 1960 until Wade won elections in 2000.

Full report

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CAMEROON: Fragile dam - a time bomb that could kill thousands, but when will it go off?

When the natural dam at Lake Nyos in north west Cameroon collapses, tonnes of water will course through the surrounding valleys and 10,000 villagers could be killed, geologists say.

Those not swept away or drowned in the careering wall of water could risk suffocation by a poisonous gas cloud released from the bowels of the lake that sits atop a dormant volcano.

“There are two outstanding dangers if the dam breaks - the release of carbon dioxide that will certainly kill the surrounding population and the water running downstream which will kill 10,000 people in Cameroon and Nigeria,” said Isaac Njilah, a geologist at the University of Yaounde.

The problem is, no one knows when the dam might break.

Njilah has just come back from studying the dam which lies just over 300 km from the capital Yaounde. He says that that the volcanic rocks holding back tonnes of water could give way at any time.

“If forces [eroding the dam] are not checked, the dam could collapse imminently,” Njilah told IRIN this week.

But not everyone agrees with the predictions of imminent disaster.

Geologist Gregory Tanyi-Leke, who works for the Institute of Mining and Geological Research under the government’s Ministry of Mines, agrees that the dam is fragile and that 10,000 lives would be at risk from any dam burst, but thinks that that is unlikely to happen tomorrow.

Full report

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[ENDS]

Theme(s)	Other

Other recent WEST AFRICA reports:

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

IRIN-WA Weekly Round-up 308 covering 10-16 December 2005, 16/Dec/05

IRIN-WA Weekly Round-up 307 covering 3-9 December 2005, 9/Dec/05

Rejecting FGM not an affront to tradition, 7/Dec/05

Youth unemployment threatens regional stability, 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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