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BURKINA FASO-BENIN: IRIN-WA Weekly Round-up 393 for 10–14 September 2007

14 Sep 2007 18:34:24 GMT
Source: IRIN

DAKAR, 14 September 2007 (IRIN) - CONTENTS:

BURKINA FASO: Innovation and education needed to head off water war CHAD: SG Ban highlights country's ignored environmental crisis CHAD: Rebels warn of 'total war' if EU force is not neutral COTE D'IVOIRE: Sexual crimes against children continue with "alarming frequency" – UN COTE D'IVOIRE: Striking state doctors snub health ministry's call for minimum services COTE D'IVOIRE: "This is a double murder perpetrated by the doctors" COTE D'IVOIRE: Thousands of toxic waste victims could miss out on compensation GHANA: 'Nearly 275,000' affected by floods in little-known disaster LIBERIA: Juvenile justice system in tatters LIBERIA: National disaster relief agency inoperable for years MALI: Western diplomats warn about "deterioration" in north NIGERIA: Wave of repression on so-called 'amoral' behaviour NIGERIA: Curfew in Port Harcourt makes life safer but harder

SENEGAL: New efforts underway to educate in local languages SIERRA LEONE: Second round of presidential poll calm SIERRA LEONE: Reinstating rule of law starting with motorcycle licenses

BURKINA FASO: Innovation and education needed to head off water war

Running his fingers over a map of Burkina Faso, stabbing at a dozen vowel-laden names of towns and villages, Abdramane Sow traces out what senior international officials are warning could be the frontline in Africa's next major war. These are all places where local communities have come to blows over who will use the available water.

In one village close to the border with Nigeria, women with fistulas were stopped from using water points because it was thought they would spread infection. In another village in the far north of the country, deep inside the desert, access to water points is being limited according to peoples' religion. On the outskirts of the country's second city Bobo Dioulasso, agriculturalists, animal herders, a local village and the state water company were at loggerheads recently over access to a reservoir.

"Mostly, these are not major conflicts yet," explained Sow, a researcher working on water conflicts at the University of Ouagadougou's Centre for Economic and Social Studies who has mapped out the underlying dynamics behind local squabbles over water all over the country. "The worst fights seem to happen not where there is no water, but where it exists, as people can't agree on how to share among them."

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=74308

CHAD: SG Ban highlights country's ignored environmental crisis

During a visit to Chad last week, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon visited Lake Chad, one of the most striking symbols of Africa's deteriorating environment.

"I came here to visit the lake to see for myself the damage caused by desertification and global warming," Ban said.

In less than 30 years, Lake Chad has shrunk from 25,000km2 to 2,000km2 today. Some 25 million people still live around the basin, many looking out on grounded boats and barren land which was once under water.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=74240

CHAD: Rebels warn of 'total war' if EU force is not neutral

A leader of one of the rebel groups in eastern Chad warned a proposed European Union (EU) force that it will be a target if it takes sides in the country's civil war.

"If they come simply to protect the Darfur refugees in eastern Chad then we have no problem with that," Albissaty Saleh Allazan, the leader of a Chadian rebel group Conseil d'Action Révolutionnaire told IRIN on September 14 after a press conference in Dakar, Senegal.

"But if they end up interposing themselves between us and N'djemena [Chad's capital] then we will fight them."

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=74310

COTE D'IVOIRE: Sexual crimes against children continue with "alarming frequency" - UN

As politicians bicker in Côte d'Ivoire, children are dying from a breakdown of health care and other basic services or falling victim to violent crimes that go unpunished.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called on authorities to step up efforts to protect children whose welfare, he said, was threatened as long as the conflict continued.

A UN report in that connection was published on 30 August just prior to a 4-7 September mission to Cote d'Ivoire by a UN special envoy on children in armed conflict.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=74222

COTE D'IVOIRE: Striking state doctors snub health ministry's call for minimum services

One week into a nationwide strike, the union of state doctors in Cote d'Ivoire has again rebuffed a call by the health ministry to reinstate at least minimum services.

"Doctors must realise that they took an oath and they have the responsibility to provide minimum care," Minister of Public Health and Hygiene Allah Kouadio Remi said in a declaration on state television on 11 September.

"This is utter anguish," the minister said of the strike, in which people in ambulances have been turned away from hospitals, others dying on stretchers with no medical workers in sight. "It is inconceivable – unimaginable."

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=74253

COTE D'IVOIRE: "This is a double murder perpetrated by the doctors"

When she awoke on 11 September to go to work, Valerie Amessan did not imagine that the strike by state doctors in Cote d'Ivoire was going to upend her life and that of her entire family.

Her younger sister, 28-year-old Alice Adja, was about to give birth when she died at hospital, no doctor to be found.

"Alice was in Grand Bassam [a town 45km from the commercial capital, Abidjan]. She called our mother in Abidjan to tell her she was on the way to hospital to have her baby. Our mother told her she would be right there next to her after the birth for moral support and to help take care of the baby.

http://www.irinnews.org/HOVReport.aspx?ReportId=74254

COTE D'IVOIRE: Thousands of toxic waste victims could miss out on compensation

Thousands of people poisoned by toxic waste illegally dumped in Cote d'Ivoire in August 2006 might receive no part of a US$198-million settlement because they sought treatment in health facilities not certified by the government, according to a researcher who has studied the victims' cases.

The researcher said the study provides the only tally of victims who may have been left off of government compensation lists, which were based on registrations at state-certified hospitals.

Sixteen people died and tens of thousands fell ill in August 2006 when poisonous waste arriving by ship was then dumped in residential areas of the commercial capital, Abidjan.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=74312

GHANA: 'Nearly 275,000' affected by floods in little-known disaster

Government figures indicate that in northern Ghana flooding has affected more people than in all other West African countries combined, yet the disaster has received little international attention compared to floods elsewhere in the region.

The government's National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) says floods have affected close to 275,000 people in the Upper East, Upper West and Northern Regions of the country. Parts of the Western Region have also seen flooding. Most of the affected people are displaced, although some are still living in what is left of their homes.

"The magnitude is unbelievable but yet … nobody is talking about it on the international scene. It's amazing," Benonita Bismarck, head of operations for the Ghana Red Cross, told IRIN.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=74278

LIBERIA: Juvenile justice system in tatters

A teenager accused of rape, Abraham peers through the rusty bars of his prison cell where he has languished for two months. His wide eyes and childlike manner belie his alleged crime.

"I don't like being the youngest," the 14-year-old told IRIN. "Sometimes other prisoners make me do things I don't want to."

He said that when he first came he could not sleep at night. "Sometimes because I was frightened and sometimes because there was no space to lie down." He shares a cramped, dirty cell with eight other minors accused of similar crimes. At night they fight over the cell's single foam mattress.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=74205

LIBERIA: National disaster relief agency inoperable for years

Liberian officials say the government must reinstate its agency responsible for responding to natural disasters, which has been defunct since the height of the war.

"The National Disaster Relief Commission is inactive," Arthur Tarlue, head of the commission told IRIN. "It exists in name only."

Tarlue said that since 1990 when Liberia's war intensified no resources have been allocated for the commission's operations.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=74263

MALI: Western diplomats warn about "deterioration" in north

Western diplomats in Mali have condemned a spate of attacks by armed militias in the north of the country.

"European Union member states, Switzerland, the United States and Canada represented in Bamako express their deep concern over the deterioration of the situation in northern Mali," the embassies said in a statement.

"They resolutely condemn the taking of hostages and the utilisation of landmines that have already taken several victims and pose a risk to the civilian population in the region."

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=74238

NIGERIA: Wave of repression on so-called 'amoral' behaviour

Human rights advocates in Nigeria are voicing alarm about recent arrests of cross-dressing men and of women allegedly wearing 'indecent' clothes, saying the arrests could signal a deterioration of civil rights.

In the mostly Muslim city of Bauchi in northern Nigeria, 18 men were arrested last month while dressed up as women. In the country's biggest and traditionally more permissive Christian city, Lagos, scores of women have been arrested in recent weeks for allegedly dressing indecently.

"The reports from Bauchi and Lagos are worrying," said Waheed Lawal, an Abuja-based lawyer and member of Civil Rights Congress, a local rights group. "They could have implications for the rights of ordinary people."

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=74258

NIGERIA: Curfew in Port Harcourt makes life safer but harder

Many residents of Port Harcourt, the main city in Nigeria's poor but oil-rich Niger Delta region, are complaining that a night-time curfew imposed more than two weeks ago has undermined their ability to make a living, although the measures do appear to have curbed spiralling violence with a drop in the number of gunshot injuries reported.

Port Harcourt has been wracked by violence as various armed groups battle for control of lucrative guns and oil smuggling rackets. More than 200 foreign oil workers have been taken hostage in and around Port Harcourt in the last year then freed only after paying large ransom.

"As of last week we were treating 60 cases but most of those occurred weeks early when the violence was high," Rosa Aut, head of the international aid organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Nigeria, said on 12 September.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=74284

SENEGAL: New efforts underway to educate in local languages

With formal education systems crumbling in much of sub-Saharan Africa, educationalists are looking more to informal systems of education taught in local languages.

"Every child and adult should be able learn in their own language, especially in the face of staggering failure rates from the French education system," said Sonja Diallo, director of Associates in Research and Education for Development (ARED), a non-profit group based in Senegal that promotes learning in African languages.

She points out that it takes about 300 hours to make a student literate and learn basic maths skills in their own languages, whereas reaching grade six in the formal system takes a total of 7,000 hours.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=74294

SIERRA LEONE: Second round of presidential poll calm

Despite allegations that the two parties in Sierra Leone's 8 September final round of presidential elections were fomenting violence in the run-up to the poll, police were able to stave off major incidents, local and international observers agree.

"Despite heightened tension and several reported instances of election-related violence during the campaign period, the delegation considers that the overall electoral process was generally transparent and peaceful," an observer team with the US-based National Democratic Institute (NDI) said in a statement issued on 10 September.

The European Union Elections Observation Mission in a 10 September communiqué also commended the process, but urged "all parties to remain committed to peace and democracy [and] patiently await the results".

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=74218

SIERRA LEONE: Reinstating rule of law starting with motorcycle licenses

A decade of civil war left Sierra Leone's administration in tatters but when the Catholic diocese in the former rebel stronghold of Makeni set up its Access to Justice Law Centre it found the biggest obstacle to creating a society with rational rules and regulations was in fact the government.

"We thought it would be easy if we started with something simple but we soon had a big problem," said the local bishop, Giorgio Biguzzi.

The problem provides insight into what Sierra Leone's newly elected government will face in creating a functioning bureaucracy and in helping its citizens defend themselves against injustice.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=74247

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Last updated:Fri Sep 14 18:36:45 2007