AFRICANEWS
Views and news on peace, justice and reconciliation in Africa
May 2001
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DR CongoA final report by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) on mortality rates in eastern DRC says the level and indiscriminate nature of violence since August 1998 is disturbing. It is estimated that one in every eight households has experienced a violent death since the start of the war, about 40 percent of the victims of which are women and children. The report stressed that the mortality rate in eastern DRC was extraordinarily high.Four of the seven areas surveyed showed eight percent or more of the population dying each year. Between August 1998 and April 2001 there had been about 2.5 million deaths "in excess of the number normally expected". IRC therefore estimated the total number of deaths at 3.5 million among a population of 19.9 million in eastern DRC. Some 350,000 of the excess deaths were from violence, but most were due to malnutrition and disease, the report added. "This emergency is perhaps worse than any to unfold in Africa in recent decades," the report stressed. "The situation demands the world's attention and the IRC urges humanitarian and diplomatic action in proportion to the magnitude of the crisis. The recent positive political developments provide an opportunity. However without a marked improvement of conditions for Congolese civilians, the recent past will likely foreshadow the near future." [Full report available at: http://www.intrescom.org/index.cfm
ETHIOPIAThe whereabouts of two prominent academics arrested by police on 8 May is still unknown, the international human rights organisation, Amnesty International, has said. A statement said that Professor Mesfin Woldemariam, 72, the former secretary-general of the Ethiopia Human Rights Council (EHRCO), and Dr Berhanu Nega, President of the non-governmental Ethiopian Economic Association, were being held incommunicado and without charge".The human rights activists were brought before a court on 9 May, but did not have access to legal representation. Bail was refused, but they were not charged, and had not been able to see their families, Amnesty said. The Ethiopian authorities had apparently accused the two men of "inciting students to violence" during a meeting hosted by EHRCO at Addis Ababa University on 8 April. According to Amnesty, they were due to appear before the court again on 18 May. On the day of the arrests, EHRCO's offices in Addis Ababa had been forcibly shut down by armed police officers, the statement said. (Source: IRIN)
RwandaThe first president of the Arusha-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), Judge Laity Kama, died at the weekend in a Nairobi hospital. The Arusha-based Internews service on 2 May reported that Kama, 62, fell ill two weeks ago and was evacuated by a UN plane from a local hospital to Nairobi's Aga Khan hospital. He had heart and lung complications and was put on a life support system. Internews quoted the current president of the Tribunal, Judge Naventhem Pillay, as saying in an address to ICTR staff on Monday in honour of Kama, that she had visited him in hospital on 4 May and found him responding well to the treatment."He was off the life support and was looking forward to returning to Arusha," she said. She expressed "shock and regret" over Kama's death. Pillay called on all the staff members to "rededicate themselves to carry on Kama's work in justice". Kama was appointed ICTR judge in 1995. According to Pillay, he was respected and revered by his colleagues, "a fact attested to by his election for two consecutive terms as the ICTR president". (Source: IRIN)
SomaliPresident Muhammad Ibrahim Egal's administration in the self-declared state of Somaliland, northwestern Somalia, is heavily involved in preparing for the forthcoming referendum, planned for the end of this month. The administration had trained teams to ensure security of the ballot boxes, and to oversee the voting, sources in Hargeysa told IRIN.Elders in each region will observe the counting. In the absence of a population census or tax role, it will fall on elders to determine who will vote, the source said. All preparations are funded by the administration, which is also responsible for the training of the referendum teams. Ministers and officials would go out into the regions next week to campaign, the source said. The planned referendum concerns the new Somaliland constitution, in which the first article relates to the independent sovereignty of the territory, whose boundaries follow the old British Somaliland borders. Preparations for the referendum have sparked complaints in some areas, specifically Boroma to the west, bordering Ethiopia, and Las Anod (8.13N 48.16E) bordering the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland, northeastern Somalia. These are areas where minority clans have at times expressed opposition to the independence declared by Somaliland in 1991. (Source: IRIN)
SundanSevere drought across many parts of Sudan continued to affect several million people, many of whom are at acute risk of severe food insecurity over the coming months, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) reported on Thursday. The WFP has warned that as many as three million people face disaster (600,000 as a result of drought and 2.4 million because of the civil war) unless food assistance reaches them. Low and sporadic rainfall had severely affected agricultural production and depleted water resources; in addition, stagnation in the livestock trade had reduced access to this traditional source of extra income, further eroding the coping capacities of the affected communities, according to the IFRC. Low immunisation coverage and the usual health risks related to a scarcity of safe drinking water threatened to increase the incidence of death and illness through preventable diseases, the IFRC stated. Access to safe water, emergency food and medical care had been identified as the most critical interventions required, it added.Meanwhile, a localised nutritional assessment by the international NGO Medair in Northern Darfur State indicated that an average of 11.4 percent of children were moderately or severely malnourished. This was below the 20 percent threshold that would have indicated a really serious situation, but it was still worrying given that there were still six months before the next harvest can be expected, the agency reported. A lack of food and water had already caused many people to migrate to the state capital, Al-Fashir, where a nutritional survey indicating that 26 percent of migrant children were malnourished was "of great concern," Medair added. (Source: IRIN)
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