DAKAR, 4 June 2007 (IRIN) - NIGER: New slavery study welcomed by human rights experts

CAMEROON: Free ARV drugs for all GHANA: 'Grace period' over for buyers and sellers of children, gov't official says GHANA: "Our mother sold us for $60" COTE D'IVOIRE: New political climate favours pivotal identification process CHAD: Good year for President Deby, bad year for Chad NIGER: New slavery study welcomed by human rights experts

DAKAR/NIAMEY, 31 May 2007 (IRIN) - People are still enslaved in Niger, but an announcement that the government has agreed to sponsor an independent investigation into the issue has raised hopes for change among some human rights experts. Lompo Garba, president of the National Commission for Human Rights and Civil Liberties, the group conducting the new study, said: "Slavery as it was in the past in Niger, for example people owned by other people, no longer exists. Today we see other forms of practical slavery, including child and forced labour... It will take time to eradicate that mentality. That is the purpose of our study." Slave markets in Niger were closed during French colonisation, but in 2003 when a study was conducted by the British NGO Anti Slavery International, at least 43,000 Nigeriens were still kept as unpaid workers to do domestic tasks, and in some cases perform as concubines. Most live with nomadic Touareg and Arab groups in the north and west of Niger, according to ASI.

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CAMEROON: Free ARV drugs for all

DAKAR, 31 May 2007 (IRIN) - Cameroon's ministry of health has declared that antiretroviral drugs have been made free to anyone eligible as part of a national distribution programme. The decision, made public by health minister Urbain Olanguena Awono in the capital Yaoundé during a press conference, is part of the 2006-2010 national strategic plan to combat AIDS. The minister stated that the aim is to make ARV's accessible to 75 percent of adults and 100 percent of children requiring this treatment by 2010. First-line and second-line ARV's, which are distributed to all public and private hospitals across the country, will be free, as will treatments for opportunistic infections related to HIV/AIDS. Olanguena Awono stated that, in due course, 43,000 adults and 4,000 children will have access to the ARV's.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=72485

GHANA: 'Grace period' over for buyers and sellers of children, gov't official says

EKUMPOANO, 29 May 2007 (IRIN) - Ghana's government says it is ready to start enforcing a two-year-old law to prosecute parents who sell their children to traffickers. "We have not enforced the law because we first wanted to create enough awareness because of the cultural setting in which we find ourselves," Ghana's Minister for Women and Children Affairs Hajia Alima Mahama told IRIN. "Now we are going to start prosecuting. The grace period is over." In Ghana, as in many parts of Africa, the notion that a child belongs to the community makes it acceptable for parents to give a child away to assist a neighbour or relative. But as Ghanaians have got poorer that custom has been perverted. Sometimes, parents sell their children to strangers, who treat them as commodities to be hired out or sold for work. The exact number of children currently in the hands of traffickers is not known, but Eric Peasah, trafficking expert at the International Organisation for Migration in Ghana, estimated that it is likely to run at least into the hundreds.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=72436

GHANA: "Our mother sold us for $60"

EKUMPOANO, 29 May 2007 (IRIN) - Adjoa Nyenyanu was seven when her mother sold her and her three younger siblings for about US$60 to work for strangers in fishing villages along Ghana's Lake Volta. "My mother called me one night and told me she wanted me to go to school but she had no money," Adjoa said. "She said a rich friend of hers will be coming over the next morning for us. She promised the woman will put us in school if I agree to go with her." For the next five years, Adjoa spent her days diving into Lake Volta to collect fishing nets. Their bosses fed her and her siblings just once a day. Adjoa's mother, Abena Nyenyanu, said she was given 600,000 cedis ($64) for her four children, but told she would receive about double that amount in later payments. At the time Abena was selling porridge to support her family, making at best about 30,000 cedis ($4) a day. "I was in great need. We agreed [the buyers] could have them for five years with regular visits from me but I never saw them till today. I regret what I did and remember crying without control when they left. I am very sorry. I just ask for their forgiveness."

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=72437

COTE D'IVOIRE: New political climate favours pivotal identification process

DAKAR, 31 May 2007 (IRIN) - Logistical challenges might be all that stand in the way of issuing identity papers for millions of undocumented Ivorians - a process that lies at the heart of Cote d'Ivoire's conflict, and one that political hostility and intransigence have rendered impossible up to now. "The commitment of all concerned to pull out of this crisis is what makes us optimistic that the process can work this time," Ahmedou El Becaye Seck, director of the UN mission in Cote d'Ivoire's (ONUCI) electoral assistance division, told IRIN. Cote d'Ivoire's transitional government - formed as part of a new peace accord signed in March - is preparing to launch the identification process in the coming weeks. The process is essential to carrying out elections, which are expected by early 2008. Northerners - descendants of immigrants from neighbouring countries - have complained for years that they face severe discrimination by Ivorian authorities and many have not been able to obtain proper citizenship papers. This call was central to the rebels' cause when their uprising split the country in two in 2002.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=72492

CHAD: Good year for President Deby, bad year for Chad

NDJAMENA, 28 May 2007 (IRIN) - Since winning a second term as president last May, President Idriss Deby has gone from strength to strength, forging alliances with his enemies, and renegotiating terms with international oil companies operating in Chad so as to purchase extra weapons to stave off the many other insurrections he still faces. "A year ago he looked like he was on his last legs but the situation has clearly changed in his favour," said an international diplomat who requested anonymity. "Before April he was Deby Couchant [lying down]; now he has become Deby Rampant [rearing-up]." But while analysts say that for the moment his government seems more secure, they do not say that he is any closer to finding long-term solutions to the armed conflicts taking place in the country, particular in the east near Sudan's Darfur region where between 120,000 and 170,000 Chadians have been displaced from their homes.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=72413

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