DAKAR, 13 August 2007 (IRIN) - WEST AFRICA: IRIN-WA Weekly Round-up 388 for 6 – 10 August 2007

CONTENTS:

BENIN: Internet new frontline in AIDS awareness CAMEROON: Help arrives for 26,000 refugees from Central African Republic COTE D'IVOIRE: Observers, opposition wary of Gbagbo's rush to elections COTE D'IVOIRE: Estelle Kouakou: "I want my life back" GUINEA-BISSAU: Famine or not, aid agencies are concerned LIBERIA: Some fake orphans reunify with their parents LIBERIA: Josephine Morgan: "The orphanage was taking our pictures and sending them to America." MAURITANIA: Flash flood displaces thousands NIGERIA: Floods leave thousands homeless NIGERIA: More death and destruction as floods spread to central region NIGERIA: More floods expected as emergency response struggles SENEGAL: FGM continues 10 years after villagers claim to abandon it SIERRA LEONE: Election campaign focuses on youth SIERRA LEONE: As vote nears less violence than expected SIERRA LEONE: Who will lead new phase in country stepping away from war past?

SIERRA LEONE: The election issue -- basic services

BENIN: Internet new frontline in AIDS awareness Dieudonné Sourou never leaves the cybercafé in Cotonou, Benin's commercial capital, where he comes every week to check his personal emails, without sending what this 25-year-old calls "useful messages" raising HIV awareness. In this little cybercafe in the northern outskirts of Cotonou, Sourou focuses on typing his note, a process he repeats week after week. A long list of addresses awaits him in the corner of his screen. "Last week, I sent a message to this list of people about the new report by the World Health Organization on the preventative role of circumcision in the fight against transmission of HIV," he told IRIN/PlusNews.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=73674

CAMEROON: Help arrives for 26,000 refugees from Central African Republic Some 26,000 refugees from Central African Republic who are scattered along the eastern border of Cameroon are set to receive assistance starting 8 August but the lead aid organisation warns there may be some delays. "There are a number of logistical challenges in getting the aid to the refugees, who are living in more than 50 sites spread over thousands of square kilometres along the border with CAR in the departments of Mbéré (in Adamaoua), Lom and Djerem and Kadei," UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) spokeswoman Jennifer Pagonis said at a press briefing in Geneva on 7 August. "The imminent start of the rainy season may hamper the delivery of the relief supplies and security conditions caused by banditry also need to be taken into account," she added.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=73634

COTE D'IVOIRE: Observers, opposition wary of Gbagbo's rush to elections President Laurent Gbagbo's recent announcement that the crisis-ravaged country will be able to hold general elections before the end of the year has been met with scepticism and concern. "It's extremely unlikely it would be possible to complete the identification process or to prepare electoral lists for elections in December," Daniel Balint-Kurti, West Africa researcher with the London-based think tank Chatham House told IRIN. "[Gbagbo's] speech raises as many questions as it answers."

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=73629

COTE D'IVOIRE: Estelle Kouakou: "I want my life back" Untold numbers of women have become victims of sexual violence at the hands of rebel and government forces in Cote d'Ivoire, according to human rights organisations. Estelle Kouakou, 21, is one such woman who told her story to IRIN:

"When the war began I was living with my grandmother in the village of Afoumossou but she said it would be better if I went to Abidjan [the commercial capital] to be with my brothers. To get there I had to take the train at Bamoro. At the railway station four men came up to me. They had weapons and wore military garb though I don't know which camp they belonged to.

http://www.irinnews.org/HOVReport.aspx?ReportId=73612

GUINEA-BISSAU: Famine or not, aid agencies are concerned The people of Guinea Bissau recently heard their agriculture minister tell them on national radio that their country was facing an impending "famine" but aid officials are not so sure. Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Daniel Suleimane Emballo said on the radio: "Guinea Bissau's agricultural production is facing a 50 percent shortfall this year, thus rural populations today are seriously threatened by famine." "Yes the rains are late which is a cause for some worry," Rui Jorge Fonseca, programme officer for the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), told IRIN on 7 August. "But at this point, we don't have enough information or concrete data to determine the extent of the problem." http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=73647

LIBERIA: Some fake orphans reunify with their parents The Liberian government says it has started reunifying hundreds of parents with their children who were placed in orphanages under false pretenses. "Under the laws of Liberia orphanages are only meant for orphans," Alexander Stemn, a pastor and head the Union of Liberian Orphanages, the umbrella organisation of Liberian orphan homes, told IRIN on Monday. Orphanage owners had been taking children from their families to inflate their numbers so as to be able to compete for funds from international faith-based organisations, according to the department of social welfare at the Liberian ministry of health. http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=73620

LIBERIA: Josephine Morgan: "The orphanage was taking our pictures and sending them to America." Josephine Morgan comes from a poor family. Her father, hoping for a better life for his children, agreed to an offer made by the head of an orphanage to take Josephine, her sister and her young brother. But the head of the orphanage is alleged to have taken the children so he could claim he needed an increase in international assistance. Very little of the money he got appears to have been spent on the children. Now, after three years, Josephine has been reunited with her parents. She told IRIN of her ordeal. "It was on a Sunday afternoon when my father and mother took me, my younger brother and my elder sister to an orphanage home. My dad told me that the orphanage is owned by a church and they would feed us, buy clothes for us, and send us to a good hospital and school. We all were happy to be at the orphanage, because of what daddy told us. http://www.irinnews.org/HOVReport.aspx?ReportId=73625

MAURITANIA: Flash flood displaces thousands Thousands of Mauritanians have been forced from their homes by floods in the southeastern town of Tintane with water levels reaching two metres in some areas. Two people are known to have died and 25 others are missing and feared drowned, Nicole Jacquet, deputy country director for the World Food Programme (WFP) in Mauritania, told IRIN on 9 August. "When the rain falls from the hills there is nothing to stop it. No trees, nothing," Jacquet said of Tintane, a Sahelian town in a valley at the foot of the El-Aguer mountain chain in Mauritania's Hodh El-Gharbi region. "It falls very, very abruptly and very strongly and it gets into these lowlands," she said. http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=73664

NIGERIA: Floods leave thousands homeless Floods in various parts of Nigeria have forced thousands of people from their homes, polluted water sources and increased the risk of disease. At least nine people have reportedly died in the flooding, which has been most severe in the southwest and nearly one thousand kilometres away in the northeast. "Some lost their lives but I was lucky; I lost just my home and my business to the flood," said Bola Aloba, a sawmill owner in the Kosofe district of Lagos, Nigeria's biggest city. Her entire stock of wood was washed away after the nearby Ogun River burst its banks. http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=73600

NIGERIA: More death and destruction as floods spread to central region As the rainy season begins to peak throughout Nigeria, a farming district in the centre of the country is the latest area to go underwater. Crops were destroyed and at least 17 people died in the area. Untold homes have also been washed away, local officials said on Monday. As of Monday at least 10 communities on the Wase River in Plateau state had been affected by the floods as a river overflowed its banks, local government official Abubakar Mohammed told reporters. http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=73623

NIGERIA: More floods expected as emergency response struggles Already struggling to help the many flooded communities around the country, Nigeria's emergency response agency warned the nation on Thursday that the height of the rainy season has still not arrived and that people should brace themselves for more floods ahead. The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) is preparing for more flood emergencies, the director General Audu Bida told reporters in Abuja on Thursday but said that local governments needed to improve their preparedness also. "Emergency management must be seen as a collective responsibility and not just the function of NEMA," Audu said. http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=73684

SENEGAL: FGM continues 10 years after villagers claim to abandon it Some 70km southeast of Senegal's capital Dakar, a crowd of journalists and dignitaries gathered in the village of Malicounda Bambara on 5 August to commemorate the day 10 years ago, which made headlines around the world, when the community openly declared that it had abandoned a local tradition known as 'female genital mutilation' or 'female genital cutting' (FGM/C). Yet a decade later, here, and in many of the 2,657 villages in Senegal, Guinea and Burkina Faso that have since made similar declarations, there are worrying signs that FGM/C still exists. Just a few minutes walk from the marching bands, dancing and countless congratulatory speeches, a village elder stood outside her canteen, chastising the fanfare as a farce. "They haven't really abandoned the practice," she said of the women of Malicounda Bambara. "The same women who are publicly declaring it has been abandoned are continuing to cut," she said. http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=73680

SIERRA LEONE: Election campaign focuses on youth During Sierra Leone's war many youth could feed themselves by taking up arms and pillaging. Now, in peace time, with democracy flourishing and a general election set for 11 August, that grim option is less available to them, but few other options have taken its place. The UN estimates that some 65 percent of Sierra Leoneans are jobless, with unemployment as high as 80 to 90 percent in some areas. "When you travel around the country you see huge numbers of young men all over the place, just standing idle," Benedict Sannoh, a UN human rights officer in Sierra Leone, told IRIN before the start of the campaign for the presidential and parliamentary election, the first post-war poll to be held in country without the support of international peacekeepers.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=73638

SIERRA LEONE: As vote nears less violence than expected Almost five years after the civil war ended the majority of Sierra Leoneans still live in grinding poverty, yet even as tensions mount ahead of general elections renewed violence appears unlikely. "People predicted there would be flash points in places like Bo [Sierra Leone's second city] but so far it hasn't happened," said one international official who did not want his name used as he was not authorised to speak about domestic politics. As some 2.6 million of Sierra Leonean's six million people head to the polls on 11 August to choose a president and parliament, most people across the country lack access to basic services such as water, sanitation and electricity. Rampant poverty and massive unemployment are often cited as potentially destablising factors in a country creeping back from a decade-long civil war.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=73663

SIERRA LEONE: Who will lead new phase in country stepping away from war past? Elections in Sierra Leone will have an impact on the future role the UN will play in the country, according to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Until recently the country had the largest UN peacekeeping force in the world and still hosts a substantial UN support office. The elections will "help define an exit strategy" for the UN the Secretary General said in a May report. http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=73686

SIERRA LEONE: The election issue -- basic services Sierra Leoneans go to the polls on 11 August having the second lowest standard of living in the world, according to UN Human Development Report. Of the country's some six million people, nearly 2.5 million have no access to clean water and even fewer have access to electricity. An estimated 1.5 million live in extreme poverty and at least 4.8 million are jobless. Basic health care remains unavailable to most people. The average life expectancy is just 40 years. "Everyone knows [that's] what matters in this election," said one international official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to comment on Sierra Leone politics. "This election is not about what to do but about who is best placed to do it." http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=73687

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