DAKAR, 11 May 2007 (IRIN) - CONTENTS:

GUINEA: Government on the brink as soldiers rampage COTE D'IVOIRE: Growing poverty worsens malnutrition CHAD: New wave of displaced leaves aid workers foundering NIGERIA: Who owns the land? CHAD: Rapprochement with Sudan unlikely to ease humanitarian suffering NIGER: Not just more wells but clean wells

GUINEA: Government on the brink as soldiers rampage Hundreds of marauding soldiers fired guns in the air in the streets of Conakry and other towns around the country on Friday, further threatening the ability of Guinea's beleaguered president Lansana Conte to govern. Banks, schools, markets and shops all closed at around 11.30am as news spread that heavily armed soldiers were marching into town, after talks between senior military officials and soldiers at a military base near the airport collapsed. In the morning IRIN also saw presidential guards, distinguished by their red berets, in the centre of the city. They were shooting in the air in what appeared to be an attempt to scare off the mutinous soldiers, but the presidential guards were outnumbered and eventually fled. Also in the city centre, witnesses said uniformed soldiers shot at an unmarked car carrying an army officer, who was then dragged out of his vehicle. The army's agenda is unclear and it is currently "very disorganised," said Elisabeth Cote, who represents the Washington-based election support NGO IFES in Guinea told IRIN. "It seems likely the army doesn't want [President] Conte anymore," she said ."[If so] it doesn't take much organising and then one considers it a coup." http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=72112

COTE D'IVOIRE: Growing poverty worsens malnutrition Positive steps have been made toward consolidating peace in Côte d'Ivoire; however, hundreds of thousands of people continue to suffer the effects of the conflict that divided the country and forced more than a half-million people from their homes. At least 566,000 people, representing nine percent of rural households in Côte d'Ivoire, are considered food insecure, and another 1.1 million, or 20 percent of rural households, are on the brink of this threshold, according to the World Food Programme (WFP). Cote d'Ivoire's Health Ministry estimates that 40,000 children under the age of five are malnourished in the country, although levels of malnutrition vary across the country. The most affected region is Moyen Cavally in the southeast, with 43 percent of households living in a situation of food insecurity, and another 27 percent of households at risk of falling to that level, according to WFP. http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=72055

CHAD: New wave of displaced leaves aid workers foundering The United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have revised earlier appeals for emergency assistance in eastern Chad largely due to a sudden increase in the number of people displaced by violence in the area. "We only knew of a total of about 40,000 displaced when we were preparing the previous CAP [Consolidated Appeal Process] in August," said Daniel Augstburger, senior emergency officer for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), "but in November the violence started spreading," he said. Now around 140,000 people are known to have been displaced, mainly in the departments of Dar Sila and Dar Assongha, although aid groups are yet to complete a survey of all parts of the east, a vast and remote area with few roads, where aid workers are frequently robbed and attacked. http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=72058

NIGERIA: Who owns the land? The Niger Delta is the eighth most productive oil region in the world; the people living there are amongst the poorest in Nigeria, and the poorest anywhere on earth. Many people in the Delta blame their poverty on two federal laws, the 1969 Petroleum Act, which gave the state sole ownership and control of the country's oil and gas reserves; and the Land Use Act of 1978 which makes the government the owner of all land in Nigeria. Many activists in the Niger Delta say oil companies should pay rents and royalties for the use of the land directly to land owners and to local communities instead of to the central government. They are also calling for a return to Nigeria's 1960s constitution which calls for revenue to be shared equally between federal and local governments. But they say the land act has undermined efforts by individuals and communities to get compensation when their land is requisitioned for oil activities or when oil companies pollute the land. http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=72032

CHAD: Rapprochement with Sudan unlikely to ease humanitarian suffering The presidents of Chad and Sudan last week agreed to stop conflict spilling across their borders but critics say the agreement is unlikely to reduce the level of violence and will have little impact on the humanitarian crisis that has displaced an estimated 140,000 Chadians. http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=72014

NIGER: Not just more wells but clean wells Many Nigeriens live next to wells yet still they don't have access to water. Thousands of wells built two decades ago by the Nigerien government have become polluted. Other traditional wells are simple holes dug into the ground with a rope dangling down. The rope drags in the mud and animal muck around and then falls inside. All wells can become blocked with sand so that buckets can no longer pick up fresh groundwater beneath. During rainy seasons, sewage floods into the wells, spreading diseases such as cholera. In the Tahoua, Zinder and Tillaberi regions of southern Niger, the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC) found at least 250,000 people living in 235 villages without reliable access to clean water, many because their wells were blocked, polluted or had dried up. http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=72015

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