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IRIN-WA Update 533 of events in West Africa (Friday 20 August)
SIERRA LEONE: CRS ends food distribution in Lunsar
An emergency food distribution effort by the Catholic Relief Services ended on Thursday in Lunsar, about 71 km northeast of Freetown, marking the first delivery to the area since December 1998.
The area has been inaccessible because of fighting between the Revolutionary United Front and pro-government troops.
The distribution consisted of at least 150 mt of lentils, bulgur wheat and cooking oil to some 15,000 people in two days, the CRS assistant country representative, Jacques Montouroy, said. Montouroy, who supervised the distribution, said factors that impaired distribution were the poor state of roads and rain swollen rivers.
Rebel control of the region has also hindered the ability of local farmers to plant and harvest crops. Trading in seeds and goods has also been severely restricted.
ECOMOG, police discuss crime fighting arrangements
Senior officials of the ECOWAS Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) and the Sierra Leone police met on Thursday to discuss arrangements to combat a "rising wave of violent crime" in Sierra Leone, ECOMOG announced in a news release faxed to IRIN on Friday.
ECOMOG spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Chris Olukolade told IRIN security arrangements had been modified for the Freetown metropolitan area in response to the increase in crime. The number of fixed check points have been reduced and more mobile patrols have been introduced, he said.
"Now that we are relaxing security we don't want people to take advantage of this," Olukolade said. He said the relaxation of security was meant to spur socio-economic activity and complement the progress made in the peace effort, so far.
At Thursday's meeting, which was also attended by President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, ECOMOG Force Commander Major General Gabriel Kpamber said the peacekeepers' involvement "was necessitated by the urgent need to address the social menace of armed robbery and other violent crimes in recent times".
The deputy inspector-general of police, Kande Bangura, said although the police had the necessary manpower for the task, it still needed ECOMOG support to help bring the situation under control as fast as possible.
ECOMOG willing to continue helping peace effort
At a meeting at the ECOMOG headquarters on Wednesday with officials of the British Defence Ministry and Department for International Development (DFID), Kpamber stressed ECOMOG's readiness to help the United Nations achieve peace in Sierra Leone.
ECOMOG reported Kpamber as saying that he believed the United Nations wanted ECOMOG to remain in the country to see the peace process to its logical conclusion.
However, he warned against relegating ECOMOG to the
background in any arrangement for working out the peace
process, saying that this might discourage the African
countries which have committed troops and money to
the process.
LIBERIA: UNHCR investigates reported refugee movements
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is to send a mission on Saturday to investigate reports that Sierra Leonean refugees have been displaced by fighting in Lofa County, northwest Liberia, a UNHCR source in Monrovia told IRIN.
"We have heard reports of refugees on the move but we have been unable to verify these reports ourselves since the last of our staff left Lofa County on Thursday," the source said.
Reports said that refugees were moving from the northern part of Lofa to an area near Camp Alpha in the south of the county. The UNHCR mission will look into these reports.
The source said another UNHCR team travelled on Friday to Bo Waterside, a border town northwest of Monrovia to investigate reports of arrivals there.
UNHCR and other relief workers were forced to pull out of Lofa County when fighting began last week between government troops and dissidents. Some 500 refugees were reportedly moving from the Kolahun area to Vahun further south, local sources said.
There are 48,000 Sierra Leonean refugees in Lofa County, 35,000 of whom were being assisted by the UNHCR, according to the latest information from the UN agency. Some 20,000 were living in a camp in Kolahun, some 15,000 were in Vahun and most of the others were in villages along the border.
Another 41,000 Sierra Leonean refugees live in other parts of Liberia, giving a total of 89,000.
Three WFP national staff still missing
The WFP in Monrovia said on Friday that three of six members of its staff who had been missing had reached Monrovia. The remaining three Liberian aid workers are believed to be somewhere between Lofa County and the capital.
The six went missing after fighting broke out between government and rebel forces on 10 August in Kolahun in Lofa County.
GUINEA-BISSAU: Donor assistance for elections, infrastructure
Guinea-Bissau has received US $3.5 million from donors for elections to be held in November, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported in its latest report on the West African nation.
Guinea-Bissau's government had asked for US $4.5 million for electoral assistance at a donors' roundtable in May. The EU is committing 1.9 million euros while the first shipment of material provided by Portugal for a voter census arrived on 10 August.
Information on the assistance was released at a meeting the UN Development Programme (UNDP) had with donors on 10 August in Dakar to review the response to commitments made at the May roundtable.
Meanwhile, China announced on 4 August a donation of US $6.5 million in emergency aid to build houses for veterans of the independence war and to repair rural roads.
Sweden provided US $40,000 and UNOGBIS US $30,000 for a national reconciliation conference in Bissau on 12-14 August.
NIGER: ECOWAS calls for election assistance
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has called for help for Niger Republic in holding elections in November.
In a communique issued on Thursday, ECOWAS said its "Executive Secretariat launches an appeal to all its partners to provide Niger with the financial or material support needed to hold the election".
It added, "This will enable Niger to organise free and transparent elections, and thus contribute to the advent of a democratic regime."
New presidential elections are to be held on 7 November in Niger, whose president, Ibrahim Barre Mainassara, was killed in a coup on 9 April.
GHANA-TOGO: Joint ministerial team tours border areas
A 16-member Togolese delegation and a team of Ghanaian officials began on Thursday a two-day tour of troubled communities along their common border, the Ghana News Agency (GNA) reported.
Both delegations are headed by their interior ministers and are meeting border communities to verify claims that people on the Togolese side of the frontier had removed boundary pillars.
The commanding officer of the Ghana Army's Medium Mortar Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel John Fokuo, said international boundary pillars 1 to 148 between Togo and Ghana were jointly installed in 1974.
However, he said, the Togolese destroyed most of the pillars and even mounted their flags in some communities where commercial transactions are done in the CFA franc used by Togo and other French-speaking West African states, GNA reported.
Fokuo said this had caused much tension and casualties on both sides especially in the Ho, Hohoe, Jasikan and Kadjebi districts.
Speaking before leaving to inspect the border, Togolese
Interior and Security Minister General Sizing Walla
said the government was anxious to find solutions to
the problem and called for tolerance and a sense of
understanding to ensure peaceful relationship and good
neighbourliness.
His Ghanaian counterpart, Nii Okaija Adamafio, said
the two countries, which share common cultural, historical
and social ties, must live in mutual respect and work
to uplift the well being of their people, GNA reported.
NIGERIA: Calcium important for curing rickets
A team of scientists in Nigeria published new evidence suggesting that a calcium deficiency may cause rickets in young children, according to a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine (TNEJOM) on Thursday.
Rickets, a condition that causes bones to soften and become deformed, remains a major health problem in many developing countries and among some sections of the population in developed countries, according to TNEJOM.
Until now, a lack of Vitamin D was regarded as the primary cause of rickets but it did not explain how rickets could be common in the tropics where children get plenty of Vitamin D through exposure to sunlight.
To test the theory that calcium deficiency, rather than vitamin D, was often responsible for rickets after infancy, scientists from Jos University Hospital conducted a series of tests on Nigerian children with rickets and those without.
They concluded that Nigerian children with rickets have a low intake of calcium and have a better response to treatment with calcium alone or in combination with vitamin D than to treatment with vitamin D alone, the study said.
After weaning, the TNEJOM said, the staple diet of many young African children is maize porridge with low calcium and high fibre content.
Children who develop rickets, typically the disease becomes apparent around the age of 18 months, may suffer from delayed motor movement, knock knees or bowed legs and it is strongly associated with pneumonia in young children in developing countries.
Youths attack Texaco office
A spokeswoman for the oil company Texaco Inc told Reuters that 150 youths who occupied the US company's offices in Warri in the Niger Delta on Wednesday left after causing minor damage.
The incident occurred after company officials met six local youths who had requested jobs with Texaco, she said. The independent `Guardian' reported on Thursday that more than 1,000 youths, protesting at a lack of employment, smashed windows and glass doors, locked staff inside and left a symbolic coffin outside the entrance when they left, according to Reuters.
Texaco said the newspaper's report was inaccurate, Reuters reported.
Recent community unrest in the Niger Delta region has
forced Texaco to evacuate offshore platforms and close
50,000 bpd of crude output. Texaco said it was holding
discussions with community leaders, Reuters reported.
Abidjan, 20 August 1999; 18:07 GMT
[ENDS]
[IRIN-WA: Tel: +225 217366 Fax: +225 216335 e-mail: irin-wa@ocha.unon.org ]
Item: irin-english-1459
[This item is delivered in the "irin-english" service of the UN's IRIN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations. For further information or free subscriptions, or to change your keywords, contact e-mail: irin@ocha.unon.org or fax: +254 2 622129 or Web: http://www.reliefweb.int/IRIN . If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer.]
Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 1999
Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar
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