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WEST AFRICA: IRIN-WA Weekly Round-up 40 covering the period 2-8 October
CONTENTS:
NIGERIA: Flood-ravaged communities sue NEPA, Niger State SIERRA LEONE: Commonwealth calls for reconstruction aid SIERRA LEONE: Britain to ship arms SIERRA LEONE: Child soldiers released SIERRA LEONE: Humanitarian situation in Kailahun "bad but not desperate" SIERRA LEONE: Cholera cases increase in Freetown, death rate down SIERRA LEONE: Rebel leaders return home GUINEA-BISSAU: Humanitarian situation better but Annan appeals for aid GUINEA-BISSAU: UNOGBIS organises training for 20 lawyers GABON: More refugees from Congo LIBERIA: Government appeals for help to rebuild economy LIBERIA: Rehabilitation of basic services still needed - USAID LIBERIA: USAID promotes relief to recovery LIBERIA: Relocation of Sierra Leonean refugees suspended LIBERIA: Press union, rights advocates worried about abuses LIBERIA: Police chief warns extortionists LIBERIA: MSF office looted
NIGERIA: Flood-ravaged communities sue NEPA, Niger State
Communities in northwest Nigeria have sued the National Electricity Power Authority (NEPA) and the Niger State government for the equivalent of US $15.77 million for opening sluice gates on two dams and submerging hundreds of villages, `The Guardian' newspaper in Lagos reported on Thursday.
NEPA opened the flood gates of its Jabba and Kainji dams, on the River Niger, to ease the pressure caused by heavy rains.
Different sources have put the death toll at between 15 and hundreds. Tens of thousands of people have reportedly been forced to flee to higher ground. A news source told IRIN on Thursday that there was also severe flooding 40 km downstream of the Shiroro Dam near Minna, capital of Niger state.
SIERRA LEONE: Commonwealth calls for reconstruction aid
The Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) called on the international community on Monday to help Sierra Leone rebuild after its devastating war. Requesting this at the end of the group's 12th meeting that started on 30 September, the group also urged Commonwealth member countries to implement the Action Plan for Sierra Leone that aims to support UN and regional efforts to rehabilitate the country. The director of information at the Commonwealth Secretariat in London, Kaye Whiteman, told IRIN that concrete commitments were expected at a Commonwealth summit scheduled for 12-15 November in Durban, South Africa.
The eight-member Action Group, headed by Commonwealth Secretary-General Emeka Anyaoku, was established in 1995 to review serious and persistent violations of Commonwealth principles. The Commonwealth is one of the 10 moral guarantors of the Lome agreement signed on 7 July.
SIERRA LEONE: Britain to ship arms
Britain has notified a UN Security Council sanctions committee that it will be exporting live ammunition and military equipment to Sierra Leone for use by the new army, the second such shipment from the United Kingdom to Freetown this year.
A British foreign ministry spokesman told IRIN that the military supplies comprised "a small part" of Britain's 4.5-million-pound pledge to retrain the Sierra Leonean army. Britain, has given another 5.5 million pounds directly to ECOMOG, the West African peacekeeping force.
A UN Security Council Resolution of 1998 requires all states to notify the Council's sanctions committee when shipping arms and related materiel to Sierra Leone.
SIERRA LEONE: Child soldiers released
Former rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC - Sierra Leone's former military junta) on 2 October released 70 child soldiers to UNOMSIL and ECOMOG in Lunsar, some 70 km east of Freetown.
The military spokesman of the UN Observer Mission in Sierra Leone (UNOMSIL), Major Toby Lyle, told IRIN on Thursday the Committee on the Release of Prisoners of War and Non-combatants, chaired by UNOMSIL, had set up one reception centre in Waterloo on the outskirts of Freetown and another in the eastern town of Kenema.
SIERRA LEONE: Humanitarian situation in Kailahun "bad but not desperate"
The overall humanitarian situation in RUF-held towns between Kenema and Kailahun in eastern Sierra Leone is "bad but not desperate", the UN Humanitarian Assistance Coordination Unit (HACU) said in a recent report.
However, interventions in the areas of health, water and sanitation, education and shelter are urgently needed, an interagency mission which assessed the area from 29 September to 1 October found.
The mission observed no signs of malnutrition among the population, although some essential food items, such as rice, were either not available or in short supply.
Led by the WFP, the 10-member team flew to Kenema before travelling by road to Buedu and Kailahun, stopping en route in the towns of Segbwema, Daru, Kuiva, Mobai and Pendembu. HACU said this was the first mission by road to Kailahun in nearly a decade.
SIERRA LEONE: Cholera cases increase in Freetown
Cholera cases have risen by nearly 25 percent in the Freetown peninsula from 633 on 22 September to 863 by 28 September, the United Nations Humanitarian Assistance Coordination Unit (HACU) reports. Eight people were reported dead as at 30 September, OCHA says. The Ministry of Health and Sanitation and health agencies have prepositioned large consignments of Oral Rehydration Salts and IV fluids in affected areas. Cholera preparedness campaigns have been launched in other parts of the country.
SIERRA LEONE: Rebel leaders return home
Rebel leaders Foday Sankoh and Johnny Paul Koroma returned to Freetown on Sunday - nearly three months after the RUF and the government signed a peace accord - raising hopes their presence in the capital would consolidate the fragile peace in the country.
"By this symbolic occasion we have demonstrated to our people that the war is over," President Ahmad Tejan Kabba said on Sunday after both men arrived from Monrovia, Liberia.
"Their return is long overdue," Zainab Bangura,
coordinator of the non-governmental Campaign for Good
Governance, told IRIN. "They contributed to the
destruction of our country. They must now help us rebuild
it."
In New York, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on
Monday he trusted Sierra Leone's former rebel leader
and ex-junta chief would " work resolutely"
to implement the Lome peace agreement.
Annan's Special Representative in Sierra Leone, Francis
Okelo, said Sankoh and Koroma's return was greeted
with a "sigh of relief" by Freetown residents.
GUINEA-BISSAU: Humanitarian situation improves but Annan
appeals for aid
Some US $4.4 million in humanitarian international aid is needed to help returning refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) resettle, and to help families hosting IDPs to recover from a military revolt that ended in May, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a report on the country released on 2 October.
Quoting UNHCR, he said 1,137 of the estimated 1,572 refugees had so far have been repatriated from Cape Verde, The Gambia, Portugal and Senegal. "Many other refugees are returning of their own volition," he said. An estimated 50,000 internally displaced persons have decided to settle "at least temporarily" with host families, he said, thereby contributing to the ongoing farming activity.
The fighting left thousands of refugees and IDPs homeless. Fewer than half of the estimated 5,000 homes destroyed in and around Bissau had been rebuilt, he said, and lack of construction material had delayed reconstruction.
Trust fund
Annan also urged countries that pledged money for a UN trust fund for Guinea-Bissau to pay so that the UN Peace-building Support Office in Guinea-Bissau (UNOGBIS) could succeed in consolidating peace there.
Donors, he added, should act because the interim government's hold on power was tenuous, as many of its senior members were appointed by the self-styled Military Junta.
Guinea-Bissau, he said, was still without a functioning police, small arms were widely available and acts of banditry were increasing.
Annan said UNOGBIS had already helped reconcile the parties to the conflict that broke out in June 1998 when part of the military rose up against President Joao Bernardo Vieira, whom it eventually overthrew in May this year.
The United Nations has also helped improve confidence and tolerance among Guinea-Bissau's political forces and prepare the country for general elections on 28 November.
GUINEA-BISSAU: UNOGBIS organises training for 20 lawyers
The United Nations Peace-building Support Office in Guinea-Bissau (UNOGBIS) is helping to organise a training programme for 20 lawyers that will hopefully speed up hearings for political and military prisoners detained after the fall of ex-president Joao Bernardo Vieira in May.
GABON: More refugees from Congo
About 3,100 refugees fleeing the war-ravaged Republic of Congo arrived last week in Haut-Ogooue, south-eastern Gabon, bringing to 9,900 the number registered in the country so far, a UNHCR official told IRIN on Thursday.
The official said that in a survey last week, UNHCR recorded another 3,000 refugees, 80 percent of them Congolese, in the Gabonese capital, Libreville. The first wave of 3,800 Congolese refugees arrived in May at a site in the south-western region of Nyanga, near the border with Congo.
LIBERIA: Government appeals for help to rebuild economy
Liberia needs international help to rebuild its war-shattered economy, institutions and infrastructure, Foreign Minister Monie Captan told the 54th UN General Assembly on Saturday. He appealed to donors to honour a pledge to provide US $230 million toward this effort.
Captan also said the government's determination to rejuvenate the economy, engender productive activities, restore social infrastructure and improve living standards would remain elusive without relief from Liberia's US $3-billion debt. Each Liberian, Captan said, owed US $1,200 in a country where per capita income barely reaches US $275.
LIBERIA: Rehabilitation of basic services still needed, USAID says
Restoration of basic services destroyed during the civil war would constitute a magnet home for Liberia's remaining refugees, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) said in its latest situation report issued on 30 September.
USAID noted that most of the country's infrastructure was destroyed and that the conventional economy had virtually ceased to function. Supplies of potable water and electricity, food, shelter and health care are insufficient and a climate of insecurity hangs over the country.
Yet, USAID said, with three years of relative peace, conditions in Liberia no longer required emergency funding as they did at the height of the civil crisis.
USAID is helping Liberia move from receiving relief to recovery, the agency said in its situation report. USAID said it was encouraging these efforts through programmes in agriculture, education and other community reintegration activities for the victims of war: child soldiers and disabled veterans.
In the fiscal year for 1999, the agency gave US $10.77 million to retrain demobilised soldiers and support agriculture, primary health care, disease control, good governance and the protection of human rights. In the same period, the US State Department's Bureau for Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) gave US $7.78 million for the resettlement of Liberian refugees. The US government has for spent US $32.98 million in humanitarian aid to Liberia in fiscal 1999.
LIBERIA: Relocation of Sierra Leonean refugees suspended
The relocation of Sierra Leonean refugees from Tarvey in lower Lofa County to the Sinje refugee camp in Grand Cape Mount County, 80 km north-west of Monrovia, was suspended on Tuesday because of poor road conditions and dangerous bridges, UNHCR reported.
After fighting broke out in upper Lofa in August, some 10,000 Sierra Leonean refugees walked for five days from the camps near Kolahun in upper Lofa to Tarvey.
On 23 September MSF, which has a medical team in the area, reported that the transit camp in Tarvey was overcrowded with all the associated health risks. Sinje is easier to reach from Monrovia.
LIBERIA: Press union, rights advocates worried about abuses
The Press Union of Liberia (PUL) has expressed concern at human rights abuses by state security forces which, a senior official of the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission told IRIN, have been occurring frequently.
Star Radio quoted PUL President Suah Deddeh as saying on Thursday at a forum marking his union's 35th anniversary that the large number of unsolved crimes, including murders, and rights violations in Liberia had a negative effect on the government's image and created insecurity in society.
The assistant director of the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission, James Cervier, told IRIN his organisation had received several complaints of abuses.
LIBERIA: Police chief warns extortionists
Liberian Police Director Paul Mulbah warned policemen on 3 October to stop extorting money from civilians, especially at checkpoints, independent Star radio reported. Mulbah's warning came in a meeting with commercial drivers in Monrovia. Drivers complained that police often forced them to pay money at the Mount Barclay checkpoint, some 19 km east of the capital.
LIBERIA: MSF office looted
Five armed men broke into the Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) compound in Harper, near Liberia's border with Cote d'Ivoire, on Sunday and stole about US $ 8,000, Claudette Picard, head of MSF's office in Harper, told IRIN.
MSF has been assisting the hospital in Harper, located in the south-eastern county of Maryland, for the past 18 months. Its assistance has included providing surgical support and drugs, and rehabilitating ward infrastructure.
Abidjan, 8 October 1999; 17:55 GMT
[ENDS]
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Item: irin-english-1744
[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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