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U N I T E D  N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Integrated Regional Information Network for West Africa

Tel: +225 22-40-4440
Fax: +225 22-41-9339
e-mail: irin-wa@irin.ci

WEST AFRICA: IRIN-WA Update 892 (Friday 19 January)

CONTENTS:

GUINEA: Relief agencies return to parts of the southwest
GUINEA: Alarming situation in the Parrot's Beak  
GUINEA: Food distribution in the southwest
LIBERIA: 600 IDPs return home
SIERRA LEONE: Prison get money for rehabilitation
SIERRA LEONE: WFP completes distribution in Waterloo
MALI: Tackling Trachoma
BENIN: Police beat journalists, break up demonstration
GHANA: State official promises better times for media
WEST AFRICA: Regional parliament to meet in Abuja
AFRICA: Africa wants to face up to its problems, Annan says
AFRICA: OAU leaders condemn violence against elected leaders

GUINEA: Relief agencies return to parts of the southwest

Relief agencies have again been able to operate in some regions of southwest
Guinea from where they had withdrawn earlier this week after rebel attacks
in the area, UNHCR reported on Friday. 

However, the situation remains tense across southwest Guinea, and stringent
security measures are in place, it said.

A small UNHCR team visited the border town of Guekedou on Thursday. The town
has suffered from repeated rebel assaults since December, including attacks
on Saturday and Monday that were repulsed by the Guinean army and allied
militia forces. 

A military operation is now underway in regions bordering on Sierra Leone
and Liberia, UNHCR learnt. Checkpoints are in place at the entrance to every
village in the region, and Guinean army armoured vehicles are visible along
the roads, the refugee agency reported. 

Towns east of Guekedou along the road to Macenta have been cleared of
rebels, UNHCR was told, including two that had fallen to rebels on Saturday.
Some villages in the area were completely burned before the attackers pulled
out, adding to the thousands of Guineans already displaced by fighting and
insecurity in recent months, the agency said. 

GUINEA: Alarming situation in the Parrot's Beak  

The fragile security situation along Guinea's southwestern border has
prevented aid agencies from re-establishing relief operations in the
Parrot's Beak region, UNHCR reported on Friday.

In this area, which juts into Sierra Leone, about 180,000 refugees live in
scores of camps alongside some 70,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs). 
Relief workers believe they face an alarming nutritional situation: some
rice stocks were harvested locally and fruits are available, but the people
in the zone have not received any outside food aid since early November,
UNHCR said.  However, Guinea's health department has been distributing
medical aid recently provided by UNHCR and other partner agencies throughout
the Guekedou area, including in the Parrot's Beak zone, the agency said.

Meanwhile, UNHCR has expressed concern that militia groups allied with the
Conakry government are apparently taking on some day-to-day security roles
previously tackled by the regular armed forces. These militia are active in
the refugee-hosting regions, which could make the refugee camps targets
should rebels again make forays deep into Guinea, the agency warned.
Banditry is also on the rise, it said, noting that two NGOs had their
vehicles confiscated by the militia in separate incidents this week. One
vehicle was returned after being vandalized, but the other was seen being
re-painted while its roof was being cut off for use as a paramilitary
vehicle.

GUINEA: Food distribution in the southwest

UNHCR and the Guinean Red Cross-Red Crescent began distributing food on
Wednesday in Nyaedou camp, 10 km north of the southwestern town of Guekedou.
Each of the over 25,000 Sierra Leonean and Liberian refugees in the camp
were being given one month's rations of just about 1,600 kilo calories
(kcals) per person, and consisting of corn flour, dried beans and vegetable
oil, UNHCR reported. This is far below the UN-recommended 2,100 kcals
normally provided to refugees, but it is the maximum amount of food aid now
available, the agency said. 

Similar rations were also being distributed to the 30,000 refugees in
Massakoundou camp, 10 km southwest of Kissidougou, and about 12,000 refugees
who fled to several sites along the road north of the town. Kissidougou is
north of Guekedou. Aid was also being distributed to some 1,000 Guinean
displaced persons camped among the refugees. 

MSF has established health posts in the camps and has been vaccinating
children against measles, UNHCR said. Other medical agencies, including the
Red Cross-Red Crescent and the Guinean government are also providing health
care. 

Refugees in Nyaedou camp told UNHCR staff on Thursday that they preferred to
go back to Sierra Leone rather than depend on the precarious aid pipeline in
what has become one of the most dangerous situations worldwide where UNHCR
and its humanitarian partners are still trying to operate. 

Refugees said they hear shooting throughout the night. They told UNHCR that
they might soon be safer inside Sierra Leone where they at least know the
territory and the local languages rather than living as refugees in a
country facing an increasingly precarious security situation.  

LIBERIA: 600 IDPs return home

The ICRC, aided by the Liberia National Red Cross Society, returned 600 IDPs
to their homes last week, the ICRC said in its news bulletin on Thursday.

The IDPs, over half of whom were children and teenagers, were trucked to
Voinjama, Kolahun and Foya in northwestern Liberia near the border with
Guinea. They had all fled lower Lofa County after fighting in upper Lofa in
mid-2000. Some had been living on the premises of an oil company and others
with relatives. The ICRC said about 200 decided to remain in lower Lofa
where they had found work with logging companies. 

SIERRA LEONE: Prison get money for rehabilitation

Sierra Leone's government has allocated 800 million leones (US $421,274) to
refurbish its Prisons Department and provide convicts with regular food and
fuel, the state-owned news agency, SLENA, reported on Wednesday. SLENA
reported the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, A.C.
Ngaujah, as making the disclosure during a familiarization visit to the
department. The news agency said the allocation was in line with the state's
commitment to improve prison conditions.

SIERRA LEONE: WFP completes distribution in Waterloo

The World Food Programme has distributed 54 mt of food to 4,020 returning
refugees in the Waterloo and Jui transit camps near Freetown, the agency
said in its situation report for 10-17 January.

WFP said it would continue this month to feed 1,200 mothers and their
malnourished children in Bumbuna, in the north of the country. It has
already distributed four mt to 285 beneficiaries in a supplementary feeding
programme run by Medicins sans frontieres-Holland in the town.

In southern Sierra Leone, WFP distributed 19 mt of food to 1,150 patients in
clinics in Bo and Yonibana, run by Action Contre la Faim, while 1,173 war
amputees and their families received 16 mt.

Poor water and sanitation conditions are a growing problem in the towns of
Zimmi and Gissowoloh in the eastern chiefdoms of Sorogbema and Makpele, WFP
said. WFP and UNHCR sent a food security evaluation mission to the areas and
WFP concluded that the best way to help the towns' 5,000 residents would be
to channel food and agricultural support through the ICRC.
 
WFP said "only a small amount" of refugees, heading toward Kenema, pass
through these towns. It described as "more alarming" the food security
situation in Sorogbema, home to some 8,170 people. It quoted farmers as
saying that seeds donated by an NGO arrived too late for planting and that
heavy rains destroyed crops, a situation that could lead to a poor harvest.


Food security was better in Gendema, a town close to Liberia, it said.
However, water and sanitation remained in a "deplorable state" because of
the scarcity of pumps and latrines. The single MSF-run medical facility in
the chiefdom is insufficient to serve the population, WFP said, adding "the
majority of people travel to Liberia to receive medical attention." 

WFP has recommended immediate "food-for-agriculture and food-for-work" aid
to farmers.  

MALI: Tackling Trachoma

The US-based International Trachoma Initiative (ITI) and Mali's Public
Health Ministry have launched a six-week campaign to distribute antibiotics
against trachoma, a bacterial infection of the upper eyelid that causes
blindness, ITI's country representative, Christian Stengel told IRIN. He
said over 75,000 women and 145,000 children were expected to receive
Zithromax, an antibiotic which, he said, was effective against the disease.

The project started on Monday and targets 400 villages in the Koulikoro
region, near Mali's capital Bamako. It will also educate the population
through an information, education and communication programme. The
distribution of Zithromax have begun in Kati and Kaganba, two districts
where 4 percent of the women over the age of 15 show symptoms of the
disease. Men are not targeted by the health initiative because trachoma is
virtually inexistent among men, Stengel added.

Mali, Morocco and Tanzania have already launched similar initiatives. Sudan
has been selected as the next pilot site. ITT, created in 1998, plans to
eliminate the disease by the year 2020.

BENIN: Police beat journalists, break up demonstration

Police in Benin beat up two journalists working for private media and
violently broke up a demonstration they were covering at a university near
the commercial capital, Cotonou, AFP reported on Friday.

AFP said Joel Gbegan, of Golfe FM radio, and Laurent Akobi of 'La Cloche'
daily newspaper were attacked on Thursday while covering the violent
dispersal by police of the protest march at Abomey Calavi University, some
25 km north of Cotonou.

The Union des journalistes de la presse privee du Benin (UJPB) condemned the
act on Friday. It appealed to journalists and citizens to fight for press
freedom and legally challenge such abuses so that they would not be
repeated. 

As a sign of support for their two colleagues, the UJPB did not attend an
official ceremony at which the Minister of Culture and Communication, Gaston
Zossou, was to have offered his new year wishes to the press.

GHANA: State official promises better times for media

Ghana's new government will not prosecute journalists under an existing
criminal libel law as has happened in the past, the Ghana News Agency (GNA)
reported on Thursday. The announcement was made by Elizabeth Ohene, public
affairs adviser to President John Kufuor, who took office on 7 January.

Ohene, who was speaking during a Radio Ghana programme, said the new
government would make a clear distinction between the right to information
and the libel law. The President of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA),
Gifty Affenyi-Dadzie, who also participated in the programme, said her
organization would oppose the law until it is repealed.

WEST AFRICA: Regional parliament to meet in Abuja

A regional parliament set up by the Economic Community of West African
States (ECOWAS) will begin a one-week meeting on Sunday in the Nigerian
capital, Abuja, to elect officers and establish procedures for the conduct
of its affairs, officials said.

"The parliament will meet in Abuja between the 21 and 27 December. A special
committee has been meeting in Abuja in the past few days to work out the
full details of the agenda," an ECOWAS spokeswoman told IRIN.

The 120-member ECOWAS parliament was inaugurated by the chairman of the
community, President Alpha Konare of Mali, at an annual summit of regional
leaders in Bamako in November 2000. It is intended to draw up legislation to
foster regional economic integration.

A report on Thursday in the Nigerian daily 'Thisday' said President Olusegun
Obasanjo has proposed the country's old National Assembly building in Abuja
as the parliament's secretariat. 

The paper reported the chairman of Nigeria's House of Representatives
Committee on Cooperation and Integration in Africa, Chukwuemeka Chikelu, as
saying that the parliament's purview included legislating on human rights
and fundamental freedoms.

Chikelu said the parliament would also be used to harmonise legislation
among ECOWAS member states on matters regarding regional communications and
energy links, public policy, community citizenship, environment, and
scientific and technological research. It will also review treaties, he
said.

AFRICA: Africa wants to face up to its problems, Annan says

Africans are showing a new will and capacity to face up to their problems
but need to convince industrialised countries of Africa's importance and the
need to keep supporting the continent, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan told
the 21st Franco-African Summit on Thursday.

"We must appeal to their enlightened self-interest," Annan said. "We must
convince them that Africa matters, and that this is a time to increase, not
diminish, their positive engagement with us."

He said industrialised countries could help Africa by lifting barriers
against its products and reducing subsidies to their own farmers, practices
which make it hard for African farmers to compete. However, most African
countries will first need help in the form of debt relief, he said.

The focus of 17-19 January summit is globalisation, and Annan warned that
Africa would fall further behind if it allowed itself to be left on the
margins of the new knowledge-based world economy. "But that need not
happen," he said. "For a relatively small investment - mainly an investment
in basic education, for girls and boys alike - we can bring all kinds of
knowledge within reach of poor people." 

He also urged leaders to remove impediments to new technology in many
African countries. "Too often, state monopolies charge exorbitant prices for
the use of bandwidths, thereby putting the new world economy beyond the
reach of most of their citizens," he said. 

AFRICA: OAU leaders condemn violence against elected leaders

Members of the conflict-prevention mechanism of the Organisation of African
Unity (OAU) issued a strong condemnation of coups in Africa at a meeting on
Friday in Yaounde alongside the 21st Franco-African summit. The meeting,
attended by representatives of 17 OAU member states, reiterated that regimes
which seize power would be marginalised by the continental body in keeping
with a decision made at an OAU summit some years ago. 

The declaration came less than two weeks after an attempt to overthrow Cote
d'Ivoire's government, which accused neighbouring governments of being
behind the plot. Leaders of Cote d'Ivoire, Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger
and Togo met in Yaounde on Thursday. They agreed that their ministers
responsible for security would meet in Yamoussoukro, the Ivorian capital, on
25 January to discuss security issues.

Abidjan, 19 January 2001; 18:45 GMT

[ENDS]

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