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WEST AFRICA: IRIN-WA Update 582 for West Africa (Thursday 28 October 1999)
CONTENTS:
LIBERIA: IDPs return home to the southeast GUINEA-BISSAU: UN takes steps to build voter confidence SENEGAL: Fresh outbreak of fighting reported in Casamance WEST AFRICA: Carter Centre gets US$30 million to fight blindness NIGERIA: Northern state introduces the Shar'ia
LIBERIA: IDPs return home to the southeast
A shipload of 343 internally displaced persons (IDPs) returned home on Wednesday to south-eastern Liberia, the executive director of the Liberia Refugee Repatriation and Resettlement Commission (LRRRC), Alexander Kunu told IRIN on Thursday.
The IDPs left Monrovia on Sunday and they had arrived within four nautical miles of the south-eastern port of Grenville on Monday, when the engine of their boat failed. They had to wait on board for two days until it could be fixed, according to Kunu.
Their arrival brought to roughly 1,200 the number of people from the southeast who have returned home under a programme run by the LRRRC for some 10,884 persons who were displaced by fighting in Monrovia in September 1997, Kunu said.
The fighting pitted soldiers loyal to President Charles Taylor and former rebels from the Krahn ethnic group from southeast Liberia. The vast majority of the IDPs on the programme, Kunu said, were Krahn.
The LRRRC has also resettled all but 11,000 out of a total of 157,000 persons who had been living in recognised IDP shelters after being forced from their homes by Liberia's 1989-1997 civil war.
The time frame within which it will be able to resettle the other IDPs will depend on how much help it gets from the international community, according to Kunu, who said donor response has been slow.
GUINEA-BISSAU: UN takes steps to build voter confidence
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has taken a series of interim measures to help meet border-security concerns and provide some confidence among Guinea-Bissau's people in the build-up to legislative and presidential elections on 28 November, the UN news service reported on Wednesday.
Annan, in a letter to the President of the Security Council on 13 October, had reported on the results of a recent mission to Guinea-Bissau which recommended the deployment of some 200 military observers along its "tenuous" borders with Senegal and Guinea, the UN said.
Annan said he would keep this option under review and in the meantime he has asked his Representative, Samuel Nana-Sinkam and his military adviser to encourage neighbouring Senegal and Guinea "to set up, with Guinea-Bissau, joint monitoring mechanisms along their common borders and other confidence building measures".
He has also asked the UN Peace-Building Support Office in Guinea-Bissau to develop a programme of visits by UN officials and diplomats to towns and villages nationwide prior to the elections.
After reviewing these interim measures, Annan will approach the Security Council once again on the issue of military observers if the situation warrants it, the UN reported.
SENEGAL: Fresh outbreak of fighting reported in Casamance
Senegalese soldiers and armed men reportedly belonging to the Mouvement des Forces democratiques de Casamance (MFDC) clashed on Wednesday evening in Casamance, southern Senegal, media organisations reported.
There were no reports of casualties but, according to
the BBC, the Senegalese army in Ziguinchor, the main
town in Casamance, reported on Thursday that four of
their men were missing.
A humanitarian source based in Ziguinchor told IRIN
he had not heard of the clash. What was certain, he
said, was that at the beginning of this week, a group
of armed men attacked minibuses travelling on the road
between the capital and Ziguinchor, robbing passengers
of money and other valuables.
The army blamed the attack on the MFDC, but the leader of the rebel movement, Abbe Diamacoune Senghor, denied this, charging that it was either the work of bandits or provocation by the government and the army, the humanitarian source said.
WEST AFRICA: Carter Centre gets US $30 million to fight blindness
The Carter Centre says it has received its largest ever project-specific grant, totalling some US $30 million over the next 10 years, to combat river blindness and trachoma in 15 countries in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.
The grant, from the Lions Clubs International Foundation and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, will allow the Centre to work with both organisations and other partners over the next five years to develop blindness-prevention programmes in the 15 countries, which include Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, Sudan and Uganda.
The initiative's target group is more than 110 million people at risk of contracting river blindness and/or trachoma, the Carter Centre said last week in a news release.
"This funding allows us to expand our efforts to treat river blindness in Africa and Latin America and to initiate programmes to control trachoma, primarily in Africa," former US President Jimmy Carter said.
Trachoma, the world's leading cause of preventable blindness, can be avoided through simple hygiene measures such as washing one's hands and face.
River blindness is spread by parasites that enter the body through bites from black flies that breed in fast-flowing water. Victims experience constant itching, skin rashes, eyesight damage and often blindness, the news release said.
NIGERIA: Northern state introduces the Shar'ia
The Shar'ia - Islamic law - entered into force on Wednesday in the impoverished northwest Nigerian state of Zamfara and, almost immediately, Zamfara Governor Sani Ahmed declared that women and men would now have to ride in segregated public buses and taxis.
The state has brought 11 special buses to be used exclusively by women, according to media reports.
On announcing the impending imposition of Islamic law some weeks ago, the Zamfara authorities said the Shar'ia would be applied strictly to Muslims in the state, including edicts such as the amputation of a hand for convicted thieves.
[See separate item titled `NIGERIA: IRIN Focus on the introduction of the Shar'ia']
Abidjan, 28 October 1999; 18:59 GMT
[ENDS]
[IRIN-WA: Tel: +225 217366 Fax: +225 216335 e-mail: irin-wa@ocha.unon.org ]
Item: irin-english-1876
[This item is delivered in the "irin-english" service of the UN's IRIN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations. For further information, free subscriptions, or to change your keywords, contact e-mail: irin@ocha.unon.org or Web: http://www.reliefweb.int/IRIN . If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer.]
Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 1999
Subscriber: afriweb@sas.upenn.edu Keyword: IRIN
Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar
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