DAKAR, 22 December (IRIN) - IRIN-WA Weekly round-up 361 for 16-22 December 2006

CONTENTS:

NIGERIA: New insurance scheme for poor SENEGAL: Utopian plan belies dismal reality for flood victims COTE D IVOIRE: President proposes alternative peace plan to the UN LIBERIA: UN maintains diamond sanction, demanding better government controls BURKINA FASO: Sahelian cotton farmers on their knees

NIGERIA: New insurance scheme for poor Thousands of low-income Nigerians will get access to inexpensive, basic healthcare as the new year begins under an ambitious five-year donor scheme aimed at improving health facilities in Nigeria. http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56779 and SelectRegion=West_Africa and SelectCountry=NIGERIA

SENEGAL: Utopian plan belies dismal reality for flood victims When floods in August 2005 made some of Dakar's most impoverished suburbs uninhabitable, Senegal's long-standing plan to transform its slums into modern housing took on a new urgency. More than a year later, across much of Dakar's periphery where the Jaxaay houses were to be built only empty fields remain, while thousands of the flood victims still live in temporary tented camps. http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56793 and SelectRegion=West_Africa and SelectCountry=SENEGAL

COTE D IVOIRE: President proposes alternative peace plan to the UN In a nationally televised address, Gbagbo proposed dismantling the buffer zone that divides the rebel-held north from the government-run south. It would include direct talks with his adversaries, establishing a new national unemployment scheme for youth and combatants and a programme to assist people displaced by war to return to their homes.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56803 and SelectRegion=West_Africa and SelectCountry=COTE_D_IVOIRE

LIBERIA: UN maintains diamond sanction, demanding better government controls The United Nations Security Council has renewed its ban on Liberian diamond exports calling for better documentation of where exactly each diamond comes from, how much it is worth and where it has been sent.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56817 and SelectRegion=West_Africa and SelectCountry=LIBERIA

BURKINA FASO: Sahelian cotton farmers on their knees The head of a delegation from the main cotton buying company in Burkina Faso, Sofitex, recently met with some 200 local farmers under a mango tree in western Burkina Faso to explain to them that they should expect to get 150 CFA (US 30 cents) a kilo for their next harvest, or 9 percent less than they got for the previous year. http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56831 and SelectRegion=West_Africa and SelectCountry=BURKINA_FASO

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