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Tuesday 21 February 2006


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IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-up 302 for 22-28 October 2005

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

CONTENTS:

TANZANIA: Elections postponed following candidate's death
BURUNDI: "Asylum seekers" need urgent relief aid, UN official says
BURUNDI: UNICEF in drive to reduce HIV/AIDS prevalence in children
RWANDA: Ex-president appeals against imprisonment
RWANDA: "Genocide mastermind" begins testifying
UGANDA: Relief agencies cut back operations after attacks
CAR: Anti-measles campaign begins
CONGO: Civil war cause of massive displacement, food shortage
CONGO: Seed fairs, distribution benefits thousands in Pool region
DRC: Eight guardsmen sentenced to life for killing aviation official
DRC: Court sentences militia leader to 15 years imprisonment
KENYA: Sexual and domestic violence prevalent
EAST AFRICA: Countries prepare to control possible spread of avian flu

ALSO SEE:

TANZANIA: Profiles of presidential candidates
Full report

TANZANIA: Interview with opposition party presidential candidate for Zanzibar, Seif Sharif Hamad
Full report

BURUNDI: Dropping water level threatens port of Bujumbura
Full report

TANZANIA: Elections postponed following candidate's death

Tanzania's general election, due Sunday, has been postponed to 18 December because of the death on Wednesday of opposition vice-presidential candidate Jumbe Rajab Jumbe. Jumbe, 65, died in a Dar es Salaam hospital two weeks after he was admitted with complications related to high blood pressure.

Announcing the postponement on Thursday, National Electoral Commission Chairman Lewis Makame said, however, that presidential and parliamentary elections would go ahead as planned in the semi-autonomous Zanzibar archipelago.

Jumbe was the running mate of Freeman Mbowe, presidential candidate for the opposition Chama Cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo (CHADEMA - Democracy and Development Party).

Under the electoral laws, an election must be postponed for at least 21 days if a presidential or vice-presidential candidate dies. The postponement would allow the affected party to nominate another candidate and enable the commission to print and distribute new ballot papers.

Full report

[Top of the Page]

BURUNDI: "Asylum seekers" need urgent relief aid, UN official says

Some 1,110 Rwandans who have sought refuge in northern Burundi urgently need relief aid, an official of Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Tuesday.

"They left the Gatsinda site in Ngozi [Province] as the head of the zone requested it considering their security was threatened," Catherine Lune-Grayson, the UNHCR public relations officer, said. "They are now at a site where there is not much for them."

The Rwandans are now at a playing ground, two kilometres from a school in Mivo Zone in Burundi's northern province of Ngozi. The Burundian news agency, ABP, reported on Tuesday that the Rwandans were without food or shelter.

Full report

[Top of the Page]

BURUNDI: UNICEF in drive to reduce HIV/AIDS prevalence in children

The UN Children's Fund launched on Monday a campaign to support and protect tens of thousands of Burundian children living with or affected by HIV/AIDS.

The UNICEF representative to Burundi, Catherine Mbegue, said the campaign aimed to reduce the number of HIV/AIDS infections among adolescents, providing treatment to children, reducing by 80 percent the number of mother-to-child transmissions by 2010; as well as to support and protect children affected by HIV/AIDS. She said children had been largely left out of most anti-HIV/AIDS campaigns.

Monday's campaign is a joint global initiative of UNICEF and UNAIDS.

Full report

[Top of the Page]

RWANDA: Ex-president appeals against imprisonment

Rwanda's first post-genocide president, Pasteur Bizimungu, appeared before the country's Supreme Court on Tuesday, seeking to quash a 15-year prison sentence handed down to him by a lower court.

A Court of First Instance convicted Bizimungu in June 2004 for inciting civil disobedience, embezzling state funds and forming a militia group. He received a sentence of five years imprisonment for each of these three charges.

Bizimungu has said the charges are politically motivated. He told the Supreme Court that he was detained and put on trial on charges different from those for which he was arrested

Full report

[Top of the Page]

RWANDA: "Genocide mastermind" begins testifying

The former director of the cabinet in the Rwanda's Ministry of Defence and alleged architect of the 1994 genocide began his testimony on Monday before the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha.

Col Theoneste Bagosora, 64, denied that he masterminded the killings in Rwanda, which claimed the lives some 937,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus.

The prosecution has alleged that Bagosora was the brain behind the killings. He allegedly ordered military commanders to start killings soon after President Juvenal Habyarimana died in a plane crash near the capital, Kigali, on 6 April 1994.

Full report

[Top of the Page]

UGANDA: Relief agencies cut back operations after attacks

Relief agencies in northern Uganda have curtailed their operations following the recent attacks on aid workers by suspected Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels.

The head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Uganda, Stephen Lukudu, said agencies had suspended all non-essential field missions as precautionary measure until the situation was reviewed.

"All staff have been called back to towns, pending another security meeting that is going to take place on 31 October," Lukudu added.

Various relief agencies had also decided to limit their work to towns and protected camps for internally displaced people. These included Oxfam, Medecins Sans Frontiers-Holland (MSF-Holland) and Christian Children's Fund (CCF).

Two aid workers were killed and four wounded in three separate attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday on vehicles belonging to the Catholic charity, Caritas, and the British NGO, ACORD. Two of the wounded worked for CCF.

Full report

[UGANDA: Two aid workers killed in the north by suspected LRA rebels]

[Top of the Page]

CAR: Anti-measles campaign begins

After a two-week public awareness campaign, the government of the Central African Republic began on Monday a nationwide measles vaccination drive, targeting an estimated two million children aged between six months and 14 years.

The campaign aims at increasing anti-measles vaccination coverage, which has fell to 60 percent in recent years. During the campaign, children aged less than one year would also receive deworming tablets.

The Ministry of Health is heading the campaign, which is due to end on Sunday. The UN Children’s Fund and the World Health Organization support the campaign. Top government officials are also supporting the vaccination drive. President François Bozize went to Boali town, 90 km northwest of Bangui - to launch the effort while Prime Minister Elie Dote went to Damara, a city 74 km northeast of Bangui.

Full report

[Top of the Page]

CONGO: Civil war cause of massive displacement, food shortage

Years of civil war in the Republic of Congo (ROC) has resulted in massive population displacement, food shortages and an increase in severe malnutrition, a government official said on Wednesday.

"The situation has caused an increase in severe cases of malnutrition among both children and adults," Jean-Ignace Tendelet, the director of cabinet in the Ministry of Health and Population, said in the capital, Brazzaville.

He said statistics obtained between June and November 1999 showed that 17.5 percent of children aged between 0 and 5 years suffered from severe malnutrition.

Tendelet said the country's different integrated health centres and hospitals lacked adequate technical structures and could not handle the situation.

Full report

[Top of the Page]

CONGO: Seed fairs, distribution benefits thousands in Pool region

Tens of thousands of conflict-affected people in the ROC's Pool Region - a stronghold of rebels known as the Ninjas - have benefited from seed distribution and seed fairs organised in September and October by the NGO Caritas Congo.

In a statement issued on Wednesday from the capital, Brazzaville, Caritas said it, with its partners, had introduced a system known as the "Seed and Voucher Fair" approach to help the residents of Pool to restart agricultural activities.

Caritas said the decision to use the seed fairs in the country was based on results of a detailed evaluation it carried out, together with CRS and Secours Catholique, of the humanitarian situation in the Pool. They conducted a comprehensive seed security assessment in August.

Full report

[Top of the Page]

DRC: Eight guardsmen sentenced to life for killing aviation official

A court in the Democratic Republic of Congo sentenced eight presidential guardsmen to life imprisonment on Tuesday for the murder of an official of the national aviation agency.

"The soldiers beat up an agent of the Regie des Voies Aeriennes [the country's air navigation and air traffic control agency], who died 12 hours later," Col Frank Molisho, the auditor general of the military justice department in Maniema, told IRIN from Kindu.

The soldiers, belonging to the Special Presidential Security Group, committed the crime in August in Kindu, capital of the central province of Maniema, when they were deployed there to prepare for a visit by President Joseph Kabila to the area.

Full report

[Top of the Page]

DRC: Court sentences militia leader to 15 years imprisonment

A county court in the Democratic Republic of Congo's northeastern town of Bunia in Ituri District sentenced a local militia leader to 15 years imprisonment on Thursday for forgery and extorting money from the public.

The Bunia County Court also ordered the militiaman, John Tinanzabo, to pay a fine of 100,000 Congolese francs (US $200).

Reading the sentence, presiding Judge Ruffin Ekabela said Tinanzabo's punishment was part of the fight against impunity in Ituri, in particular, and across the country in general.

Tinanzabo is the secretary-general of the Union des patriotes congolais (UPC), a former armed group led by Thomas Lubanga. The UPC is now a political party.

Full report

[Top of the Page]

KENYA: Sexual and domestic violence prevalent

Sexual violence is increasingly prevalent in Kenya and police statistics show that more than 2,800 cases of rape were reported in 2004 - an increase of close to 500 compared to the previous year.

Domestic violence is also a serious problem in the East African nation. A demographic health survey carried out by the Ministry of Planning in 2003 revealed that at least half of all Kenyan women had experienced violence since the age of 15, with close family members among the perpetrators.

Full report

[Top of the Page]

EASTERN AFRICA: Countries prepare to control possible spread of avian flu

Ethiopia on Thursday became the latest eastern African state to ban poultry imports from countries hit by the deadly strain of bird flu, a government official said.

The ban comes amid fears that the H5N1 virus could spread to Africa from Europe with migratory birds. The move by Ethiopia follows similar measures by Uganda and Kenya.

Ethiopia, one of the most populous nations in Africa with 77 million people, could be devastated by an outbreak, said agriculture ministry official Mulugeta Debalkew.

Full report

[Top of the Page]

[ENDS]

Theme(s)	Other

Other recent KENYA reports:

More ministers resign over graft allegations, 14/Feb/06

Report on graft scandal made public, 13/Feb/06

Gov't appeals for $245 m to assist drought-affected people, 8/Feb/06

Twelve die as meningitis spreads, 8/Feb/06

Finance minister resigns amid graft scandal, 2/Feb/06

Other recent reports:

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC: Donors pledge support for humanitarian crisis, 21/Feb/06

ANGOLA: Ready to play larger security role in Africa, 21/Feb/06

CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap, 17/Feb/06

SOUTHERN AFRICA: IRIN-SA Weekly Round-up 270 for 11-17 February 2006, 17/Feb/06

WEST AFRICA: IRIN-WA Weekly Round-up 317 covering 11-17 February 2006, 17/Feb/06

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