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

Wednesday 21 December 2005


Search��		�

tr>

Regions

IRIN-HOA Weekly Round-up 294 for 10-16 September 2005

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

CONTENTS:

ERITREA-ETHIOPIA: Security Council extends UNMEE mandate
ETHIOPIA: UNICEF receives Sweden's donation for AIDS orphans
SOMALIA: HIV/AIDS commission launched in Somaliland
SOMALIA: UN envoy welcomes call for cabinet meeting in Mogadishu
SOMALIA: The TFG wants the UN back
SOMALIA: UNHCR head urges action against human trafficking
SUDAN: Food situation remains precarious in the south, WFP warns
SUDAN: Darfur risks descending into anarchy - observers
SUDAN: Three quarters of southern children without education - MDG report

ALSO SEE:
SUDAN: The long road to embracing peace
Full report

HORN OF AFRICA: Polio vaccination campaign targets 34 million kids
Full report

ERITREA-ETHIOPIA: Security Council extends UNMEE mandate

The UN Security Council extended the mandate of the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) on Tuesday until 15 March 2006, but expressed concern over the high concentration of troops from both parties near the border, over which the countries fought a two-year war. According to the resolution, the Council "calls upon Ethiopia to accept fully the decision of the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission and to enable, without preconditions, the Commission to demarcate the border completely and promptly."

Efforts by the international community to resolve the border dispute between the two countries since the end of a bloody war in 2000 have so far been fruitless. Under the terms of the 2000 Algiers Peace Agreement that ended the fighting, both sides agreed to accept as binding a ruling by an independent boundary commission on where the border should be.

Full report

[Top of the Page]

ETHIOPIA: UNICEF receives Sweden's donation for AIDS orphans

Sweden has donated nearly US $5 million to the UN children's agency (UNICEF) to strengthen the organisation's capacity to deal with the growing number of AIDS orphans in Ethiopia. UNICEF and its partners in the Orphans and Vulnerable Children National Task Force had asked for $11 million to implement the first phase of Ethiopia's National Plan of Action for children who have been affected by HIV/AIDS. The programme will address the needs of 56,000 orphans initially, the agency said in a statement issued on Friday.

"Despite our modest initial goals, responses from donors towards the plan of action have been poor," said Bjorn Ljungqvist, UNICEF's representative in Ethiopia. "This Swedish contribution is the first major contribution we have received since the plan was announced last December. "In Ethiopia, this poor showing from the donor community has meant that our response to HIV/AIDS, particularly with regard to orphans, remains at very rudimentary levels," he added.

Full report

[Top of the Page]

SOMALIA: HIV/AIDS commission launched in Somaliland

Authorities in the self-declared republic of Somaliland, in northwestern Somalia, launched a national HIV/AIDS commission on Thursday which will plan and coordinate multisectoral efforts to curb the spread of the pandemic in the region. The commission would also design strategies for providing affordable and effective drugs to those living with HIV/AIDS.

"It's real that the HIV/AIDS epidemic is in the country and already contributing to increased mortality, morbidity, fear, family disintegration, orphans, stigma and discrimination in our society," Somaliland's President Dahir Riyale Kahin said during the launch of the commission in Hargeysa, Somaliland's capital. "Denial of the disease serves as a negative fuelling factor of the epidemic and creates an environment of more stigma and discrimination in society," Kahin added.

Full report

[Top of the Page]

SOMALIA: UN envoy welcomes call for cabinet meeting in Mogadishu

The UN Secretary-General�s Special Representative for Somalia, Francois Lonseny Fall, welcomed on Thursday a decision by Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Gedi to convene a meeting of the interim Somali cabinet in the capital, Mogadishu. Fall took note of the fact that the meeting of the Transitional Federal Government's (TFG) cabinet would be preceded by consultations. Gedi's invitation to ministers to attend the Mogadishu meeting was circulated at a gathering of representatives of the international community in Nairobi on Wednesday.

"The international community welcomed the prime minister�s initiative and promised material support for it," a statement issued by the Nairobi-based UN Political Office for Somalia, said. It did not say when the cabinet meeting would be held.
The invitation follows months of international efforts to help foster dialogue to resolve differences within Somalia's Transitional Federal Institutions (TFIs), including disagreement over where the TFIs should be located.

Full report

[Top of the Page]

SOMALIA: The TFG wants the UN back

The Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of Somalia wants the UN to return its staff to the town of Jowhar and continue its operations there, following the temporary relocation of all UN international staff from the town, a senior government official said. "There are no security problems in Jowhar to warrant the removal of UN staff from the town. We want to urge the UN to return and resume its operations," Muhammad Abdi Hayir, the minister of information, announced on Tuesday.

There were no threats against the UN "and there are none now," Hayir said. "We [the government] think the decision by the UN to remove its staff from Jowhar was hasty and was not necessary." According to Sandra Macharia, information officer for the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in Somalia, the temporary relocations of the UN international staff was "a precautionary measure due to the recent military movements in and around the area."

Full report

[Top of the Page]

SOMALIA: UNHCR head urges action against human trafficking

The head of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) urged the international community on Friday to take measures to stop desperate people being smuggled out of Somalia to Yemen by unscrupulous traders. At least 150 people have died in dangerous boat journeys across the Gulf of Aden from Somalia during the past three weeks, the agency announced on Friday.

Twenty-five people were reported dead on Friday off the coast of Yemen, while at least 75 bodies washed ashore at the beginning of September after smugglers on four boats carrying some 400 people forced the passengers to jump overboard as they neared the coast. Another 39 people were rescued from their drifting boat by a Danish ship on the night of 7 September, but one man died before he could receive proper medical attention.

Full report

[Top of the Page]

SUDAN: Food situation remains precarious in the south, WFP warns

The food-security situation in south Sudan - particularly Northern Bahr El Ghazal - remains fragile, as malnutrition rates during an already bad hunger season seem to be further deteriorating and the prospects for the next harvest look bleak, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) warned. "Although we don't have the definite figures yet, anecdotal evidence suggests that the numbers [of children admitted to supplementary feeding centres] continued to grow in August," said Simon Crittle, WFP spokesman for southern Sudan, on Thursday.

"Ideally, numbers level off towards the end of the hunger season in August/September, but this year they seem to be going up," he added. Statistics provided by NGOs working in Northern Bahr El Ghazal showed that during the month of July more than 8,500 children at feeding centres were malnourished, with 1,100 diagnosed as severely malnourished.

Full report

[Top of the Page]

SUDAN: Darfur risks descending into anarchy - observers

Darfur risks sliding into a perpetual state of lawlessness even as the Sudanese government and the main rebel groups in the war-torn region discuss the possibility of peacefully resolving the conflict there, observers have warned. Banditry and continuous attacks by armed groups on humanitarian workers, Arab nomads and villages in Darfur have increased significantly over the past weeks and threaten to destabilise the fragile ceasefire in the volatile western Sudanese region.

"The month of September, so far, has not been a good month. There has been quite an increase in both the number and the scale of attacks," Radhia Achouri, spokeswoman for the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS), said on Tuesday. "Overall, there have been at least 10 serious attacks on humanitarian workers in the past 30 days - for the purpose of looting - particularly in West Darfur," Achouri added. "The situation in South Darfur is not better."

Full report

[Top of the Page]

SUDAN: Three quarters of southern children without education - MDG report

Seventy-five percent of the estimated 1.4 million children between the ages of seven and 14 in southern Sudan do not have access to education, according to the Sudan Millennium Development Goals Interim Unified Report. "Access to schools is the single most important factor responsible for the low enrolment rates," the report noted. The study, a joint effort by various UN agencies, the Sudanese government, academia and civil society, maintained that increasing the number of primary schools and positioning them closer to villages was essential to improving the situation.

Much more was needed, however, to reach the stated goal on education to "ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling." The interim report -- based on a December 2004 assessment of Sudan�s progress in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and launched on 4 September -- found that it was difficult to provide schooling in the south given the dangerous environment caused by war.

Full report

[Top of the Page]

[ENDS]

�Theme(s)	Other

Other recent HORN OF AFRICA reports:

IRIN-HOA Weekly Round-up 305 for 10-16 December 2005, �17/Dec/05

UNMEE monitoring tense border despite setbacks, �16/Dec/05

UN relocates expelled staff from Eritrea to Ethiopia, �15/Dec/05

IRIN-HOA Weekly Round-up 304 for 3-9 December 2005, �12/Dec/05

IRIN-HOA Weekly Round-up 303 for 26 November-2 December 2005, �2/Dec/05

Other recent reports:

MOZAMBIQUE: Community radio's sustainability to be put to the test, 21/Dec/05

ZAMBIA: Landmark judgment for women in customary marriages, 21/Dec/05

AFGHANISTAN: Government approves new counter-narcotics law, 20/Dec/05

SOUTHERN AFRICA: Volume of food aid causes transport bottleneck, 19/Dec/05

HORN OF AFRICA: IRIN-HOA Weekly Round-up 305 for 10-16 December 2005, 17/Dec/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.