WEST AFRICA: IRIN WA Weekly round-up 362 for 6-12 January
2007
Source: IRIN
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DAKAR, 12 January (IRIN) - CONTENTS:LIBERIA: Idle fighters cause concern
GUINEA-BISSAU: Former prime minister seeks refuge with UN
CENTRAL AFRICAN
REPUBLIC-CHAD: UN Security Council pursues UN force option
GUINEA: Civil society crystallising around unions
NIGERIA: Bird flu re-emerges, culling underwayLIBERIA: Idle fighters cause concern
Two
years after the conclusion of a nationwide disarmament exercise, about 39,000 former fighters have yet to be placed in skills training programmes, raising fears that they could be open to manipulation
by other armed groups in the region. At the end of the disarmament programme in November 2004, the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), which supervised the exercise, reported that 101,495
fighters had been disarmed and demobilised.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56970 and SelectRegion=West_Africa and SelectCountry=LIBERIA GUINEA-BISSAU: Former prime minister seeks
refuge with UN
Less than a week after a previous head of Guinea-Bissau's navy was assassinated, a former prime minister has taken refuge at the United Nations compound in the capital, Bissau, after
the government issued a warrant for his arrest. The recent events are the latest sign of ongoing instability in Guinea-Bissau, a tiny, impoverished country that was wracked by a year-long civil war
that ended in 1999. The UN has maintained its peacebuilding office in Bissau for the past seven years.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=57027 and SelectRegion=West_Africa and
SelectCountry=GUINEA-BISSAU CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC-CHAD: UN Security Council pursues UN force option
United Nations Security Council members emerged from a lengthy meeting on Chad, the Central
African Republic (CAR) and Darfur on Wednesday, agreeing by consensus to send a new technical assessment mission to Chad and CAR "as quickly as possible" according to current Council president,
Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin. The Council action, which does not need the consent of the UN Secretary-General, runs counter to the last report on the situation in Chad filed by outgoing
Secretary-General Kofi Annan at the end of December. That report said that a UN force deployed to Chad and CAR would take "considerable risks," as "the conditions for an effective United Nations
peacekeeping operation do not…seem to be in place."
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=57028 and SelectRegion=West_Africa and SelectCountry=CENTRAL_AFRICAN_REPUBLIC-CHAD GUINEA: Civil
society crystallising around unions
Guineans in the capital Conakry have already shuttered their shops and stayed home twice in the past year for citywide strikes, but a third, more ambitious
indefinite national strike underway this week is proving a strength and unity among Guinea's civil society not seen since independence. Two non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the National Council
of Civil Society Organisations, an umbrella group for NGOs, and the Civic Alliance, a new grouping with branches nationwide, have coordinated with Guinea's powerful trade unions. They plan to hold
demonstrations calling for "a return to the rule of law" in the wake of persistent human rights abuses and impunity on and after 15 January, despite a government ban on demonstrations issued on
Tuesday night. Both Guinea's main political opposition parties, the Rally for the Guinean People (RPG) and Union of Republican Forces (UFR), have also thrown their support behind the unions and called
for their members to follow a campaign of civil disobedience, also from 15 January onwards.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=57039 and SelectRegion=West_Africa and SelectCountry=GUINEA NIGERIA: Bird flu re-emerges, culling underway
Nigerian veterinary teams were killing thousands of birds in two northern Nigerian states on Friday to halt the spread of fresh cases of the deadly H5N1
virus. Junaid Maina, Nigeria's national director of livestock, said new cases of the virus were confirmed this week in northwestern Sokoto and nearby in Katsina state, 800 kilometres northeast of
Abuja. "Our teams are out there now culling birds," Maina said. Sokoto's cases are the first ever in the state, while Katsina is among 14 of Nigeria's 36 states struck last year. More than 18,000
birds have been culled in the two states since the beginning of the week, with more than 15,000 killed in Sokoto alone, an official involved in the operation told IRIN.http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=57058 and SelectRegion=West_Africa and SelectCountry=NIGERIA
