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WEST AFRICA: IRIN-WA Update 596 (Wednesday 17 November 1999)
CONTENTS
SIERRA LEONE: Life returns to "normal" in Mile 91 SIERRA LEONE: Abductions reported in Port Loko and Lungi SIERRA LEONE: The weapons need to go, UN official says SIERRA LEONE: Ex-rebels welcome ECOMOG troops to Makeni LIBERIA: Donors say government should lead in reconstruction COTE D'IVOIRE: More opposition officials detained HEALTH: Not everyone feels leprosy can be licked by 2005
SIERRA LEONE: Life returns to "normal" in Mile 91
Schools are frequented and a rudimentary medical service is provided at Mile 91, about half way between Bo and Freetown, according to the bishop of Makeni, the Rev. Giorgio Biguzzi.
"The children are once again attending lessons in the schools, though there is really nothing left of them but the walls," MISNA reports Biguzzi as saying. "The students sit on concrete blocks, some even bring chairs or wooden blocks from home."
At the local dispensary Biguzzi reportedly said that the nurses sleep on improvised beds and "do their best to help the sick, with the little medicine at their disposal."
These activities, says Biguzzi, demonstrate the "incredible willpower and vitality of the tragedy-stricken population."
Mile 91 falls within ECOMOG's area of operations. "We do not have a base there," Lieutenant Colonel Chris Olukolade, ECOMOG's spokesman told IRIN, "but our troops do make regular patrols in the area."
SIERRA LEONE: Abductions reported in Port Loko and Lungi
There are frequent reports of civilians being abducted in areas near Port Loko and Lungi, north of Freetown, the Sierra Leone Human Rights Committee (SLHRC) reported in its latest bulletin, which covers the period from 29 October to 15 November.
"In the worst reported incident it is alleged, but unconfirmed, that ex-SLA (former Sierra Leone army) elements took 40 people from Rosenry village, near Port Loko, on 12 November," the report said. "Some of the abductees are reported to have subsequently either escaped or been released."
SLHRC said evidence has been obtained of attempts by
abductors to extort money from the families of abducted
persons in return for their release, and not just in
the Port Loko/Lungi area. One such case involved an
attempt by letter to obtain 300,000 leones (about US
$330) for the release of a young girl being held in
Makeni. Abductees are also reportedly forced to harvest
rice for their captors.
Nevertheless, "spontaneous releases continue, with
great assistance from ECOMOG which encounters the former
abductees (usually children ) at its checkpoints",
the report says. No figures were available, it added.
The SLHRC, chaired by UNAMSIL, is a consortium of local and international human rights organisations which monitors the implementation of the human rights elements of the Lome accord.
In its report, it also said there had been daily reports of attacks on villages, rapes, looting and intimidation, particularly between Port Loko and Lungi. It cited one incident in which three people drowned when their boat capsized while being pursued by former rebels. "Fear still causes displacement of civilian populations," its said.
"Harsh regimes" are still reportedly operating in areas controlled by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), according to the SLHRC. It said there were accounts of "summary executions, or threats thereof, imposition of harsh food taxes and a general terrorisation of what remains of the civilian populations".
In the northwest and in the Bo area in the east, civilians have reportedly been harassed by elements of the Civil Defence Force, the SLHRC said. Several of these incidents are being investigated by the police, it added.
SIERRA LEONE: The weapons need to go, UN official says
UN Deputy Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Carolyn McAskie said on Monday that many in the international community found it distasteful to help Sierra Leone's fighters to disarm before assisting the victims of the fighting.
This question had been long debated, she said, but the international community and Sierra Leone's people had decided that until the fighters disarmed, the victims could not be reached.
McAskie, who headed a multi-donor mission to Sierra Leone and Guinea from 7 to 13 November, said some NGOs were unwilling to fund disarmament and demobilisation, but would help pay for reintegration and a commission on reconstruction, rehabilitation and resettlement.
Under the Lome Agreement, ex-combatants are supposed to report to disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) camps and surrender their weapons. Only about 1,500 out of an estimated 45,000 former fighters had handed in theirs by last Friday according to the UN Department of Public Information.
Up to early November, donors had pledged about 42 percent of the estimated US $45 million needed for the DDR programme.
SIERRA LEONE: Ex-rebels welcome ECOMOG troops to Makeni
Former RUF fighters have welcomed the recent deployment of ECOMOG troops to the northern town of Makeni, pledging their full cooperation in the task of consolidating peace in Sierra Leone, ECOMOG said in a news release dated 14 November.
RUF "Brigadier" Issa Sesay, described by ECOMOG as the "Commander of the ex-combatants in Makeni," told a delegation including RUF leader Foday Sankoh, ECOMOG, UNAMSIL and government disarmament officials that his men were ready to disarm in compliance with the directives of their leader, ECOMOG reported.
Issa took control of Makeni in the second part of October after a dispute with members of the former Sierra Leone army (ex-SLA) who had been based there.
LIBERIA: Donors say government should lead in reconstruction
A multi-donor assessment team has told the Liberian government that it must lead in the country's reconstruction in order to attract outside help to the effort, Star radio reported on Tuesday.
The 20-member team made the call on Monday in a meeting with Liberian government officials in Monrovia.
Team leader Mamadou Dia, a World Bank official, said the visit was intended to restore donor confidence in Liberia. So far, he said, the government had progressed in ensuring good governance and fiscal transparency. However, he added, it needed to improve living standards and reduce poverty.
"There's a lot of double speak by bureaucrats, some UN officials and our own government," Augustine Toure, director for Liberia Democracy Watch, told IRIN.
Liberia, he said, was still failing in good government. Complaints abound about the poor behaviour of some of the security forces and the National Human Rights Commission has remained toothless because it lacks the power of subpoena.
Toure said the government had stopped lectures which the human rights community was giving to the security forces but was demanding an end to a UN embargo on the sale of arms to Liberia.
If the embargo were lifted, he said, the government would make massive arms purchases instead of building the schools and other infrastructure so badly needed for the country's recovery. Two years after the war, hospitals and clinics still need rehabilitation, he said, and full water and electricity services need to be restored.
The team's visit is a follow-up to a donor conference held in Paris last year to seek support for Liberian reconstruction.
COTE D'IVOIRE: More opposition officials detained
Police have detained the local leadership of former Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara's party in the northern town of Korhogo, a party official told IRIN on Wednesday.
According to the official, seven members of the opposition Rassemblement des Republicains (RDR) were arrested at 5 a.m. on Saturday following public order offences in the town on Friday. According to reports, cars were damaged and at least one building burnt in Korhogo by people protesting against the conviction of 16 RDR politicians.
The seven have been detained under a special law which holds the organisers of demonstrations responsible for the violence that accompanies them.
Under the same law, 11 national leaders of the RDR were sentenced to two years in jail on Friday, and five others given one-year prison terms, following an RDR protest in Abidjan that was accompanied by the destruction of buses and damage to the premises of a pro-government daily.
According to the RDR official, the police were still searching for four other party members.
Ouattara plans to challenge President Konan Bedie in next year's election, but the state charges that the former prime minister is a national of Burkina Faso and thus ineligible. He is now in France and has postponed his return to Cote d'Ivoire on the advice of his party, news organisations reported on Tuesday.
HEALTH: Not everyone feels leprosy can be licked by 2005
The Third International Conference on Elimination of Leprosy closed in Abidjan on Wednesday with less than unanimous acceptance of the year 2005 as target date for wiping out the disease, according to information from the meeting.
(According to the World Health Organisation, leprosy is considered eliminated in a given country if the number of cases falls below one for every 10,000 persons.)
Notes published from a roundtable discussion at the conference showed that some delegates did not accept the target date because they did not see it as realistic. Some felt that activities such as rehabilitation needed to be continued after the year 2005 and that long-term fund-raising activities might be damaged by setting a target date.
Others were more optimistic. "We are going to win by the year 2005," Dr Ebrahim Samba, WHO Regional Director, told delegates on Wednesday.
The Chairman of the Conference, in his closing remarks described the meeting as "a great, maybe last opportunity for us to seriously tackle the problem of leprosy.
"We know better now what the problems are and what to do," Professor Cairns Smith of the Department of Public Health at Aberdeen University, Scotland, told delegates.
Recommendations made by various working groups set up at the conference included calls for increased political commitment through advocacy targeted at all political levels and effective integration of leprosy into the general health services.
Leprosy patients and the communities they live in should be empowered by supporting the formation of pressure groups and leprosy-patient platforms, the conference recommended.
Leprosy, delegates said, should be included in the basic training for medical and health workers, effective feedback and monitoring are needed, and active community involvement, particularly by women and existing organisations like service clubs and youth groups, is necessary.
Abidjan, 17 November 1999; 19:39 GMT
[ENDS]
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Item: irin-english-1984
[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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