BRAZZAVILLE, 16 March (IRIN) - Four years after a peace agreement brought an end to the
conflict in the Republic of Congo's Pool region, in the south of the country, residents still face considerable humanitarian challenges. "Without the peace agreements of 2003, the humanitarian
community would not have been able to do what they have done today. But true peace means abandoning the weapons and must be followed by development in order to keep the people away from anti-social
behaviour," said Dieudonné Boumani, head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The government of Congo and the Comité national pour le
résistance (CNR) of Frédéric Bintsangou, alias Pasteur Ntoumi, signed a peace agreement on 17 March 2003, bringing to an end a series of civil wars that blighted the Pool region between
1998 and 2002. Of the 13 districts that make up Pool, only Kinkala, the administrative centre, can be considered to have made tangible progress towards normality. Despite the absence of war,
gangsters still use weapons to rob an already destitute people. "The relative reduction in levels of violence since the peace agreements has led to freedom of movement in Pool, but problems remain
in terms of the provision of services and infrastructure. Qualified medical personnel fear to work in a region where people have not yet been disarmed," said Justine McConnery of Médecins Sans
Frontières (MSF-Netherlands), one of the main humanitarian agencies working in Pool. "Currently, there is only one doctor for every 30,000 inhabitants, which is six times less than in the rest
of the country, and one nurse for 12,754 inhabitants, which is nine times less than elsewhere in Congo," she said. Kinkala hospital, which serves an estimated 90,000 people, has only two doctors,
according to Etienne Mouanga, the doctor in charge. "We have sick and destitute people who when they present themselves at health centres cannot afford the consultation fee or the prescribed drugs,"
said Fructueux Babela, the officer in charge of the Integrated Health Centre at Kinkala. "We would have liked to have at least four to five doctors because we constitute a big hospital of 100 beds
with an average of 125 hospitalisations per month," said Mouanga. In 2005 it was estimated that 20.9 percent of all health facilities in Pool remained closed because of destruction, disrepair or
lack of staff. The population of pool rose from 186,481 in 2000 to 362,358 in 2005 as people returned to the area following the peace agreement, according to the Consolidated Appeals Process (CAP)
2007 for Congo launched in December 2006. There has, however, been no commensurate investment in rebuilding the infrastructure and shelter. Only 8 percent of Pool's population has access to clean
water, malnutrition is high among children and the rate of school attendance is about 30 percent. Pool remains one of the most isolated regions, with most transport and telecommunications facilities
in disrepair, despite the fact that Brazzaville, the country's capital, falls within the administrative area. The European Union has provided more than US$62 million to rehabilitate the road between
Brazzaville and Kinkala, a distance of about 75km. Construction work started in 2006. Insecurity rife Former combatants are still waiting for the national disarmament, demobilisation and
reintegration programme to begin. This first phase will run from 2007 to 2009 and has already received $17 million from the World Bank. Illegal circulation of arms continues unabated, creating an
atmosphere of uncertainty among the general population and aid workers. A study by the Swiss NGO, Small Arms Survey, published at the beginning of 2006, revealed that between 37,000 and 40,000 weapons
of all calibres continue to circulate in the country. Eight of the area's 14 constituencies did not participate in the 2002 presidential elections because of the general insecurity, so the
government has decided to hold polls along with legislative elections scheduled for June and July 2007. "We have to create conditions in order to reduce, as much as possible, some difficulties and
give the population of Pool the opportunity to go and choose the candidates," said the minister in charge of administration and of decentralisation, François Ibovi, who described insecurity in
the region as general banditry. "There are some cases of banditry that we deplore in Pool, but that does not mean the situation is unbearable. The administration has been rehabilitated," he added. The most notable sign of hope for a return to lasting peace in Pool is the transformation of CNR from an armed insurgency to a political party. "The new law on political parties strictly forbids
parties to have weapons and to support militias," said Ibovi. lmm/re/jn/mw
