http://www.irinnews.org/irin-fp.aspxUpdated everydayen-gbFri, 12 Mar 2010 13:34:03 GMTNIAMEY/ZINDER Thursday, March 11, 2010 (IRIN) - A severe food and malnutrition crisis is looming in Niger, according to aid agencies. More than 20,000 under-five children are being treated for malnutrition nationwide and at least another 200,000 are at risk of severe malnutrition, according to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).NIAMEY/ZINDER Thursday, March 11, 2010 (IRIN) - A severe food and malnutrition crisis is looming in Niger, according to aid agencies.

More than 20,000 under-five children are being treated for malnutrition nationwide and at least another 200,000 are at risk of severe malnutrition, according to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

“You need to go to the field to realize that we need to act now,” said Kalil Hamadoun, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) field director for Zinder region in southern Niger, which had the country’s second highest percentage of children underweight for their height, according to a December 2009 government study.

Selling prized cattle, cutting meals, eating food intended for animals and scrounging for anything to sell as firewood or animal feed have become increasingly common, according to local officials and the national information system for livestock sales.

Access to food, rather than its availability, is turning out to be the main problem in 2010, according to the US famine monitoring group, FEWS NET.

The needs are urgent and the response must be immediate, UN Office of Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) head of mission Modibo Traoré told IRIN. “Everything takes time. [Aid delivery] is long and difficult and it can take weeks before it makes it to its destination.”

Food prices up, incomes down

Food and fodder prices in parts of the south are up around 30 percent on 2009, according to FAO and Belgian NGO Aquadev.

But March incomes have dropped to half of what they were last September due to more agriculture workers competing for dwindling jobs, according to the US famine monitoring group FEWS NET.

“We need to ensure people have access to food… We are not even in the hungry season yet,” Aboubacar Mahamadou, the Health Ministry’s deputy director of nutrition services, told IRIN, referring to the June-September planting season when most families have finished eating their previous harvests and are waiting for the next one in October.

Interventions

The World Food Programme (WFP) is planning "blanket" food distributions - months earlier than usual if needed - to 500,000 children aged 6-23 months in 20 of the neediest communities.

“If we look at a map of interventions at the moment, we see they are drops of water in the ocean [of need],” WFP regional director in Zinder, Doumbaye Djimadoumngar, told IRIN.

OCHA has estimated it will cost more than US$200 million to cover 60 percent of Zinder’s food needs before the next harvest, and to continue nutrition activities.

The European Commission for Humanitarian Aid (ECHO) has pledged an additional US$27 million to fight malnutrition in Niger and neighbouring Sahelian countries. The exact amount for Niger will be decided in the coming months. Last year, Niger received $17.7 million from ECHO.

The UK government has recently announced additional emergency funding for Niger. This comes on top of $81 million emergency aid from the European Commission, Islamic Development Bank, and the governments of Japan, Spain and the USA.

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88402DAKAR Wednesday, March 10, 2010 (IRIN) - It costs more to vaccinate a child in Chad against polio - almost 70 US cents per child - than in any other country in the world at risk of polio outbreaks, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).DAKAR Wednesday, March 10, 2010 (IRIN) - It costs more to vaccinate a child in Chad against polio - almost 70 US cents per child - than in any other country in the world at risk of polio outbreaks, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

It costs half as much to vaccinate a child in violence-wracked Afghanistan, Sudan or Somalia.

WHO polio coordinator Mohammed Mohammedi, who was kidnapped in Somalia in 2001 by militias and held hostage for four days, is now working in Chari Baguirmi, the Chad region with the second highest number of reported polio cases in 2009 after the capital, N'Djamena.

He told IRIN the main reason Chad had not been able to wipe out an outbreak after almost two years was lack of money and poor management. "Not enough of the money intended for polio campaigns makes it to the population in Chad." He reckoned only 60 percent of the funds for polio vaccination campaigns were used to fight polio.

In 2010 donors have been called on to raise US$10 million for polio eradication in Chad.

Corruption

Speaking to IRIN last December, Oliver Rosenbauer, spokesman for the multi-agency Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), said corruption boosts polio costs in Chad. "Less than half the children who need vaccinations are being reached in the capital, the most affected area. Campaigns have been poorly run and managed. There is poor financial tracking and almost non-existent management. "

The government's coordinator for polio vaccinations, Sylvain Djimrangar, told IRIN it had been a "challenge" to trace polio spending from the national level to health centres.

Chad's WHO representative Youssouf Gamatié told IRIN that while it is difficult to know how much money is misdirected, his team frequently reports that during campaigns there are no cars to transport vaccines - sometimes even no vaccinators. The government receives money for car rentals and US$10 per vaccination team of two people per day. A typical campaign lasts three days.

While GPEI's Rosenbauer pointed out the lack of political will and buy-in as longstanding impediments to eradicating polio in Chad, Gamatié told IRIN President Idriss Deby Itno is steadfast in cracking down on corruption. "[The president] explicitly said [in a recent meeting]: 'We have seen behaviour of local health staff that goes contrary to government action... It is the responsibility of the minister of health to take charge so that there is no longer this type of behaviour.'"

Role for regional governors

As of February, polio vaccination funds are sent to regional governors to increase their involvement - and oversight - of polio activities. No more costly trips for supervisors from the capital into the field, said Gamatié.

"Progress is being made," he told IRIN. "More and more, [decentralized] financial oversight committees are becoming operational; more and more authorities are involved, [and] national staff are sacked for mismanagement."

Government coordinator Djimrangar told IRIN regional financial committees should improve oversight. Starting in 2010, the government has started investing more money in health education for all vaccination campaigns.

There were 66 reported cases of polio in Chad in 2009, 15 of which were in the N'Djamena region. The virus causing polio is highly infectious; once it invades the nervous system, it can cause total paralysis in a matter of hours. WHO considers even one reported case an outbreak.

The health district reporting the most cases was in the Chari Baguirmi region, which has a population of 621,000, according to the latest census. It is suspected of being the origin of the latest polio outbreak, in April 2008.

WHO's Gamatié said polio vaccinations in Chari Baguirmi started one week earlier than the nationwide campaign - to allow enough time to reach all the children, some of whom have not been vaccinated in years. Vaccination plans and maps were drawn up for the first time.

One village vaccinator per village

The cases reported here in 2009 were "just the tip of the iceberg", WHO polio coordinator Mohammedi told IRIN. "Those cases were accidental discoveries. During vaccinations, we saw children who were paralyzed who may have been infected with polio." Twenty of 59 WHO designated health "catchments" do not have functioning health centres, he said.

WHO is piloting the recruitment of one village vaccinator per village - about 3,000 for Chari Baguirmi - rather than using roving vaccination teams that were required to be literate.

"What is important for a vaccinator is not so much that this person can read and write, but rather that the community respects them. Ideally, we can get the village chief. There is no missing children this way because the vaccinator lives right there," Mohammedi said.

The government receives 10 US cents per child vaccinated (proved by finger markings) rather than getting money upfront per vaccination team.

Once a village completes it vaccinations, a supervisor reviews progress. If a village vaccinated at least 90 percent of its under-five children, the vaccinators are paid.

"There is no reason we cannot wipe this virus out in the next six months," Mohammedi told IRIN. "Or even sooner."

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88381TANOUT Wednesday, March 10, 2010 (IRIN) - "Empty" increasingly describes villages around the southern Niger town of Tanout in Zinder Region: Water wells and pastures, fields and food banks - and slowly - entire villages, are emptying.TANOUT Wednesday, March 10, 2010 (IRIN) - “Empty” increasingly describes the southern Niger town of Tanout in Zinder Region: Water wells and pastures, fields and food banks - and slowly - entire villages, are emptying.

Of the 42 families in the village of Garin Dagabi, 13 have left in search of food and water, along with the heads of 20 other families.

During a typically four-month rainy season, the village had two good rains, said its leader, Issouf Boukary. “During the first rain, we planted millet, which started to grow… but then the entire harvest dried up.”

Insufficient rains nationwide [http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=85296] led to a 31 percent slump in crop production compared to last year - 410,000 tons less - according to the government’s latest estimates.

Per-capita gross cereal production for Niger’s 15 million people is likely to be the lowest in 20 years, with more than half the country facing production deficits similar to those in 2004 that contributed to the country’s 2005 food crisis, according to the US famine monitoring group, FEWS NET.

The government has estimated that poor rains have forced some two million people to finish off their food reserves seven months before the next harvest. Another five million may soon follow.

A cereal bank set up three years ago in Garin Dagabi with 10 tons of cereal now has only three tons remaining. “We have a little money in the bank to buy other sacks [of millet], but at current [elevated] prices [in Zinder], we would have to go far to be able to afford it,” Boukary told IRIN.

Gouragass

It is not much better in the nearby village of Gouragass where farmers harvested about 10 percent of the millet, sorghum and beans they typically grow. “In a normal [rain] year, we can cover 9-10 months of our [food] needs, but this year was really bad: We did not get even one month of food after the harvest [October 2009],” said village chief Alhadji Idi.

A government distribution of 140 tons of millet in October 2009 to nine villages in the region is long gone. Remittances have done little to cover the gap, as in the past, both village chiefs told IRIN.

“The village has not known a situation this difficult since [the 1984 food crisis]. Even [2005] was not this bad. And the hardest part is only beginning,” Idi told IRIN. Villagers have cut in half how much they eat, he added.

Nigerien sociologist Issouf Bayard, originally from Zinder, told IRIN that 1984 was a pastoral and agricultural crisis, whereas 2005 was primarily agricultural.

“Now in 2010 we have agricultural and pastoral problems, plus a population that has doubled in size and health epidemics we did not have two decades ago.”

It will take some US$166 million to avoid a food crisis in Zinder, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Famine food

With food prices on average 30 percent higher in December in Zinder than in previous years, according to Belgian NGO Aquadev, households are turning to a wild weed known locally as ‘jiga’ - normally the fare of camels and locusts.

“Jiga is a famine food,” the local Agriculture Ministry director, Yacouba Adjaharou, told IRIN. “People normally eat it in small quantities. When they start eating more of it so early [in the season], it is a sign of hard times.”

Cattle sell-off

Families are selling their cows - including pregnant ones and calves - to afford food, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). “This phenomenon is a sign of crisis, as a breeder would never sell his cow that recently gave birth if he were not in serious difficulty,” FAO emergency programme officer, Nourou Tall, told IRIN.

Malnourished animals and weak demand from Niger’s biggest customer, Nigeria, whose currency is worth less this year against the French franc (CFA), have reduced asking prices by up to half.

“Before, we could sell a ewe for at least US$42 and now we only get half as much,” said Gouragass chief Idi.

Digging deeper

Poor rains have worsened the shortage of hay - estimated at five million tons in 2008 by FAO - used as animal feed. This year, there is only enough for one-third of Niger’s cattle.

Even that will last at most another two months, according to a recent discussion hosted by FAO for groups working on food security. “The situation will be very critical starting in April,” FAO’s Tall told IRIN.

The government estimates an additional shortage of 32,000 tons of animal food, such as corn, of which FAO will provide 8,450 tons. Most will go to the most easterly region of Niger, Diffa, followed by Zinder.

Meanwhile, residents with no cattle are digging deeper - literally - to find cash, by selling anything that can be transformed into animal feed or firewood. “Because so many trees have been cut down, people are digging two to three metres to unearth the roots of large trees,” said Tanout Department’s agriculture director, Souleymane Roufaï Kane.

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88385NAIROBI Tuesday, March 09, 2010 (IRIN) - Global funding shortfalls for fighting AIDS could make it impossible for developing countries to implement new World Health Organization treatment guidelines, activists have said. NAIROBI Tuesday, March 09, 2010 (IRIN) - Global funding shortfalls for fighting AIDS could make it impossible for developing countries to implement new World Health Organization treatment guidelines, activists have said.

WHO released new guidelines on antiretroviral therapy (ART) in December 2009, raising the CD4 count - a measure of immune strength - at which HIV-positive people should start ART from 200 to 350. Research has shown that starting ART earlier reduces the rate of death and opportunistic disease.

"WHO's new recommendations are excellent in theory, but they did not give us a practical way of implementing the guidelines - already we have shortages of drugs in trying to put people with CD4s below 200 on treatment," said James Kamau, coordinator of the Kenya Treatment Access Movement.

"How will we now put so many more people on ARVs? The increased number of people on drugs means not just more drugs, but more labs, more health centres and health workers, more general care - the expense is enormous."

An estimated four million people around the world are currently on ART - a 10-fold increase since 2003, when the drugs became widely available - but this figure still represents just over one-third of the people who need the medication.

"If WHO's new recommendations are not implemented, the international community risks subsidising less expensive yet sub-standard care for developing countries," said Sharonann Lynch, MSF's HIV/AIDS policy advisor, in a press release.

"Avoiding this will depend on the willingness of donors to make new commitments. Although this is not easy in today's financial environment, donor countries cannot back away from supporting the promise of universal access to treatment made five years ago."

"The situation is now an emergency"

In Uganda, where the government plans to release new treatment guidelines reflecting WHO's recommendations, officials said the number of people needing treatment would rise from 300,000 to about 750,000. The country recently suffered drug shortages in its public health sector, partially caused by funding problems.

"The numbers will be too great for us to manage," said Dr David Kigawalama, head of prevention services at the Uganda AIDS Commission. "We need to sit with our AIDS development partners to forge a way forward."

Ahead of a high-level meeting between Group of Eight (G8) leaders and AIDS advocates in London on 10 March, AIDS activists met with British International Development Minister Gareth Thomas on 9 March and called on the world's wealthiest nations to honour their 2005 Gleneagles pledge to achieve universal access to HIV prevention, treatment and care by 2010.

"Instead of building on progress, some donor nations and governments of highly affected countries are backing away from the universal access commitment with a series of poorly funded half-measures on AIDS," the executive director of the International AIDS Society, Robin Gorna, said in a press statement.

"The situation is now an emergency: new treatment enrolments in many countries are coming to a standstill, the risk of drug resistance is increasing, and fragile gains made over the last 10 years may soon erode, with potentially serious consequences for future efforts to control this epidemic."

The activists singled out Canada - the only G8 nation firmly opposed to the Financial Transactions Tax, a tiny tax on financial transactions that could raise the billions of dollars needed to fulfil the universal access pledge.

The global economic downturn forced the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the world's largest funder, to cut disbursements by 10 percent in 2008, while the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has flat-lined funding to many countries, limiting the growth of PEPFAR-funded treatment programmes.

kr/kn/he http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88368DAKAR Tuesday, March 09, 2010 (IRIN) - A polio vaccination campaign in the violence-wracked central Nigerian city of Jos has been delayed until 13 March due to the violence and a recent health worker strike, aid workers said.DAKAR Tuesday, March 09, 2010 (IRIN) - A polio vaccination campaign in the violence-wracked central Nigerian city of Jos has been delayed until 13 March due to the violence and an on-going health worker strike, aid workers said.

"We needed more time to plan because of the displacement that happened after the previous violence [in January] said Mathew Dabup, The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) polio immunization manager in Plateau State, which includes Jos.

IFRC has been conducting training for health workers who did not join the strike in Plateau State he told IRIN. IFRC is one of the agencies running a weeklong regional campaign to vaccinate at least 85 million children in West Africa against polio, a highly infectious viral disease that invades the nervous system and can cause total paralysis in a matter of hours.

The Nigeria Red Cross has estimated that some 20,000 people were displaced by violence in Jos during January. When asked if the latest violence, which has again displaced unknown numbers and killed hundreds, would disrupt the campaign, Dabup said he hoped the vaccinations would take place as planned. "We have taken into consideration in our ... [vaccination plan] the camps for the displaced, along with the other sites to target."

Violence and polio

Chris Maher, head of country operations for polio eradication at the World Health Organization (WHO), told IRIN: "Implementing vaccination activities in security-compromised areas is both logistically and operationally challenging, and it is obviously more dangerous for the staff working on the ground."

He said strategies in southern Afghanistan and the conflict-affected areas of Pakistan and Somalia included quick campaigns carried out during "lulls in conflict".

In areas like Jos, where there were "periodic acute flare-ups of civil unrest, rather than the constant levels of insecurity", WHO's strategy was to adjust the timing of vaccinations so as to reach as many children as possible while protecting health workers.

"Their dedication to ensuring that all children, even in security-compromised areas, are reached with vaccine and protected from polio, is heroic." he told IRIN.

Two hundred thousand vaccinators are trying to vaccinate 43 million children younger than five, the age group most vulnerable to infection. In Jos the goal is to reach 215,000 children - the official census of under-five children - although the actual number of children is higher, based on the more than 300,000 children vaccinated against polio in December 2009, according to IFRC.

Nigeria is the epicentre of the current outbreak in the region that erupted again in the second half of 2008. After multiple rounds of vaccinations, in 2009 the number of reported cases in Nigeria fell by half to 387, according to the multi-agency global polio eradication initiative.

Neighbouring countries in West Africa have discontinued polio vaccination campaigns in recent years, making them vulnerable to re-infection during Nigeria's 2008 outbreak. Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo have reported polio cases in the past 12 months.

pt/he http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88369DAKAR Tuesday, March 09, 2010 (IRIN) - The poorest households in Chad will find themselves with no food reserves in the coming weeks, according to the US famine early warning systems network, FEWSNET.DAKAR Tuesday, March 09, 2010 (IRIN) - The poorest households in Chad will find themselves with no food reserves in the coming weeks, according to the US famine early warning systems network, FEWSNET.

FEWSNET’s prediction of the country’s food situation from January until June says the poorest households, notably in pastoral regions, will be forced to resort to harsh strategies such as selling off their productive assets, cutting food intake, and mass migration to more hospitable areas.

According to the government, erratic or late rains led to a 2009 harvest that was 30 percent less than in recent years, and two million people who would normally still be living off the land are having trouble affording food.

Estimates do not take into account the populations living in the remote northern desert regions of Tibesti, Borkou and Ennedi, which cover almost half the country.

These sparsely populated regions are readily accessible only by helicopter, and are heavily mined from previous conflicts and have few projects funded by international agencies.

Underweight children

A nutrition survey conducted last December in Bahr El Ghazel, a semi-arid pastoral region in the west of the country, showed that 27 percent of the 687 under five children surveyed were underweight. This is almost double the emergency threshold set by the World Health Organization at 15 percent.

Loan Tran-Thanh, the head of Action Against Hunger (ACF) in Chad which conducted the survey, told IRIN the results were alarming.

"This was in the middle of the harvest period when malnutrition rates should be lower than [during] the lean rain season,” she said. “If it is already that high in a harvest period, then how bad could it get during the lean period?"

In the nearby district of Noukou in western Kanem region bordering Niger, 19 percent of 540 children surveyed had acute levels of malnutrition.

Acute malnutrition tends to change based on the season, as opposed to chronic malnutrition which results from year-round lack of life-enriching nutrients.

The region has always had chronic malnutrition, said Tran-Thanh, who has worked in Chad since 2004.

Animals wasted to death

"When ACF arrived in the Kanem region, all the attention was in the east [of Chad] with the violence in [neighbouring] Darfur. The rains this year did exacerbate acute malnutrition in Kanem and the areas we surveyed, but these are zones that have always had chronic hunger problems,” she said.

Because of lack of funds, ACF closed its Kanem office but returned to the region in 2008 with funding from the European Commission Humanitarian Aid (ECHO).

Animals in the pastoral zones from the western Kanem region to the eastern region of Biltine wasted to death when pastures dried out because of late 2009 rains, according to the government.

Cattle that survived the erratic rains had problems reproducing and producing milk, according to a government and multi-agency survey in October 2009.

The survey says the animals and their herders started heading south in late October seeking greener pastures - months before the typical migration season.

This "first strategy of nomadic herders” will lead to conflicts between herders and farmers, according to the survey.

Dwindling grazing and cultivable land has led to bloody clashes between pastoralists and farmers in at least two of Chad's neighbouring countries, Sudan and Nigeria.

Emergency needs

The government has about 23,000 tons of cereals, 350 tons of rice seeds and 200 sacks of animal feed, but "the fight against malnutrition is an emergency operation and needs more", said Chadian Minister of Economy Ousmane Mater Brémé.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization has pledged $500,000 worth of animal feed for the arid Bahr El Ghazel region and $1 million worth of seeds for the regions referred to as the Sahelian band in west and central Chad.

The UN Children's Fund, World Food Programme and ACF are also preparing to open more than 100 nutritional feeding centres in the same regions.

The agencies will distribute 50,000 cartons of high-energy `Plumpy'nut’ peanut paste and give high fat `Plumpy'doz’ brown paste supplement to 45,000 children aged 6-23 months during the peak hunger months from May to August.

ACF is analyzing findings from its water and sanitation study conducted in Bahr El Ghazel, Tran-Thanh told IRIN.

"If we do not address the underlying issues of malnutrition - Is there access to water or health services? - then malnutrition will continue to exist. The trouble with addressing all these different issues is that there are just not enough actors coming together to study [the various facets]."

pt/pm/cb http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88370ABUJA Monday, March 08, 2010 (IRIN) - Hundreds of people in the city of Jos, 350km northeast of Nigeria's capital, Abuja, have been buried in mass graves after machete-wielding intruders attacked residents at 3 a.m. (local time) on 7 March.ABUJA Monday, March 08, 2010 (IRIN) - Hundreds of people in the city of Jos, 350km northeast of Nigeria's capital, Abuja, have been buried in mass graves after machete-wielding intruders attacked residents at 3 a.m. (local time) on 7 March.

"There was a mass burial of the dead last night [7 March], organized by the state government under tight security. No resident was allowed near the mass grave during the burial, as the graveyard was cordoned off by soldiers," Fidelis Tawkek told IRIN.

"There is a heavy military presence in the area, with the deployment of three trucks of soldiers and two armoured cars to [prevent] escalation of violence," Shamaki Gad Peter, of the League for Human Rights, a local NGO, told IRIN on 8 March. He said villagers had counted 202 cadavers.

Peter said the attacks were "well-coordinated and indiscriminate, as they were launched simultaneously, and women, children and the handicapped were macheted and then burnt."

In the dead of night

"Hundreds of Fulani herdsmen [a primarily nomadic ethnic group] invaded our village [Dogo Nahawa] and two neighbouring villages of Zot and Ratsat. My wife and two children were killed in the attack," Peter Gyang told IRIN. "The attackers fired gunshots just to scare people out of their houses, and then hacked them with machetes before setting them on fire."

Another resident, Yusuf Alkali, told IRIN he thought the attacks were reprisal killings for violence in January, when hundreds of Fulani nomadic herders were killed.

"It is obvious that the attacks were reprisals for the raid carried out on Fulani settlements in the area during the January violence by Berom [ethnic group, mostly Christian] youth, in which scores of the nomads, including women and children, were killed and hundreds of cattle taken away," said Alkali.

Why?

A local NGO working to prevent desertification in northern Nigeria, Green Shield of Nations, said there were an estimated 15 million pastoralists in northern Nigeria.

Dwindling cultivable land, political gerrymandering and impunity have increased the risk of violence, making Plateau State vulnerable to recurring violence, according to the government and rights groups.

The perpetrators of sectarian violence are rarely prosecuted, according to Human Rights Watch. Local police said more than 300 people arrested after the January killings were still in police custody in Jos and Abuja in late February.

The government is still in the process of demarcating grazing reserves in the northern states of Katsina and Bauchi, in an effort to curb deadly clashes between nomads and farmers over shrinking cultivable pastures caused by poor seeds and soil.

When the northern state of Jigawa – long a focus of community violence – cordoned off livestock routes several years ago, conflicts dropped from an average of 20 per year to only three in 2009, the state's director of livestock services told IRIN in October 2009.

Displaced again

Most of the estimated 20,000 people displaced during the violence in January have started leaving the nine camps set up to house them in Jos.

Auwalu Mohammed, director of the Red Cross in Jos, noted that "The number of IDPs [internally displaced persons] in those camps has significantly dwindled, as we now have not more than 6,000 people in them."

Relief workers are now determining the number of people displaced by the violence on 7 March.

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88354LOMÉ Sunday, March 07, 2010 (IRIN) - An empty market, tightened security and a general wariness of possible violence have greeted the announcement of President Fauré Gnassingbé’s re-election, pending constitutional court approval, with 61 percent of the two million votes cast on 4 March. LOMÉ Sunday, March 07, 2010 (IRIN) - An empty market, tightened security and a general wariness of possible violence have greeted the announcement of President Fauré Gnassingbé’s re-election, pending constitutional court approval, with 61 percent of the two million votes cast on 4 March.

Business at the largest market in the capital, Lomé, has slowed after anxious merchants shuttered their stands. “I am waiting to see how the country will be after results are announced to continue my work in the market,” fish vendor, Da Vivi, told IRIN. “Since Friday [5 March] I have not been to the market because I do not know what will happen. My life is more important than money.”

Demonstrations were quickly dispersed with tear gas during the vote count and again on 7 March. There have not been reports of excessive use of force, according to local human rights groups. Hotlines set up to report poll violence remained silent.

President Gnassingbé was elected in a 2005 contested poll that led to a bloody security crackdown, hundreds of deaths and tens of thousands of Togolese fleeing to neighbouring countries, according to the UN.


Photo: Etonam Ahianyo/ IRIN
Lomé's largest market was empty on 7 March during an electoral row
Leading opposition candidate, Jean-Pierre Fabre, told IRIN on 7 March that his party, the Union of Forces for Change, will dispute the vote with daily demonstrations. “We will launch a popular uprising until victory is ours.” Even though counting has proceeded publicly, this has not stemmed the opposition’s accusations of fraud. “They [ruling party] want to hide the real results to put forth false ones. And we will not accept it,” Fabre told IRIN.

The ruling party has dismissed claims of fraud as “fantasies from the opposition to foment violence” in the country’s most closely observed election since Togo started holding multi-party elections in 1993. There were more than 3,000 local and international election observers covering almost 6,000 voting stations.

A newly formed youth group – Citizen Movement for Change – claiming hundreds of members trained in “democracy vigilance” is ready to take to the streets, said one of its leaders, Guillaume Messan. “People of Togo, if you love your country and are ready to die for it, know that the time has come to fight for the liberation of your country,” he told IRIN on 6 March.

A political and security professor at the University of Lomé, Sodokin Koffi, told IRIN how the armed forces responds to these threats and any eventual outbreak will determine if lives are lost. “The security forces were trained before the elections and I hope they use conventional methods [to put down violence] that we have seen [used] elsewhere so the worst cannot happen.”

Relief workers have been trained in every potential election outcome, Togolese Red Cross director of relief services, Amah Victor Sodogas, told IRIN. “We went through simulation exercises in January and have been on alert. Given the tension, anything can happen and we are ready.”

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/// This article includes updates to the report first published on 6 March.///http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88337NAIROBI Friday, March 05, 2010 (IRIN) - Here are the most popular new articles on the IRIN website over the last 24 hours. Updated hourly. This feature was launched on 18 July, but will display the latest, most popular items of today.NAIROBI Friday, March 05, 2010 (IRIN) - ---http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=73277LOMÉ Friday, March 05, 2010 (IRIN) - Vote counting is underway in Togo, a day after presidential polls closed, with electoral authorities saying they are concerned not to repeat the mistakes of the violence-marred 2005 ballot. LOMÉ Friday, March 05, 2010 (IRIN) - Vote counting is underway in Togo, a day after presidential polls closed, with electoral authorities saying they are concerned not to repeat the mistakes of the violence-marred 2005 ballot.

The head of the independent electoral commission, Tafa Tabiou, told IRIN that the results would not be announced progressively by voting districts, as in previous elections. "We are still learning our lessons about democracy, and we fear that partial results that would be a bit different from the final ones would only incite unrest."

Counting is taking place publicly so voters can see which ballots are rejected. The president of the truth and reconciliation commission - created to address past human rights abuses - said the largely peaceful election was a "significant" step on the country's road to reconciliation.

Togo's 2005 presidential election was condemned by much of the international community, and hundreds died in the ensuing opposition protest. Casting his ballot on 4 March, voter Ayaba Esiomlé commented, "It is not easy to pardon [past crimes] ... but if these elections are transparent, that will show us that reconciliation is possible, and we would be more likely to forget more quickly the past."

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88329LOMÉ Thursday, March 04, 2010 (IRIN) - As up to 3.2 million Togolese cast their ballots in the presidential election on 4 March, IRIN asked voters and experts what it would take to reach true reconciliation after decades of political violence. This is the first of a two-part series on Togo's road to reconciliation.LOMÉ Thursday, March 04, 2010 (IRIN) - As up to 3.2 million Togolese cast their ballots in the presidential election on 4 March, IRIN asked voters and experts what it would take to reach true reconciliation after decades of political violence. This is the first of a two-part series on Togo's road to reconciliation.

"Impunity will no longer be tolerated, the blood of Togo's sons and daughters will no longer flow freely on our land, the land of our ancestors." These words, penned five months after a bloody poll in April 2005 that killed at least 400 and dispersed tens of thousands, formed the basis of a truth and reconciliation commission, created to help the country move past decades of recurring political violence.

"Elections will not be enough to bring together the people," said Gameti Akuyo, a fabric vendor in the capital, Lomé. "Those who carried out violence must recognize their wrong and ask for pardon. If not, reconciliation is just a joke, and evil will continue."

President Fauré Gnassingbé, whose post is up for grabs, took power after his father died in early 2005 in an election marred by a security crackdown that included torture, rape and extrajudicial killings, according to Amnesty International, a human rights watchdog.

The truth and reconciliation commission was formed in 2006 as part of a peace pact between the opposition and ruling parties, but its president, Christian Barrigah, told IRIN that the commission had not yet begun the formal process of reconciliation so as to not destabilize the country before the elections.

When to start?

"We decided not to inflame again the hearts of Togolese [so near the election], but instead to ensure the holding of transparent elections ... to begin the reconciliation process afterwards," Barrigah told IRIN.

The commission interviewed more than 20,000 people in July 2008 about their vision of justice and reconciliation, and decided not to proceed with identifying the perpetrators of human rights abuses, or rendering justice.

But peace pacts and elections do not always guarantee lasting peace. "The commission is here to offer to Togolese the peace of mind of 'never again'. We have had violence, but still do not know who is guilty," a Lomé-based traditional justice expert, André Anfanou, told IRIN. "Beyond raising awareness [about its mission], which is a good thing, the commission should have the courage to propose harsh punishments."

Until the Togolese could close this chapter, there would always be the risk of renewed political violence, he said. "The same causes can produce the same effects ... You have to somehow attack as much as possible these germs of violence."

Voter Ankra Wiliam was sceptical about lasting reconciliation. "It is the same ruling party that was in place during the 2005 violence, and I am sceptical we will reach a true reconciliation when the process is managed by the same people who have hurt us - I strongly doubt it."

Next steps

Commission president Barrigah told IRIN that once the elections were over, the group would start identifying the perpetrators of human rights abuses and "soothe the hearts of Togolese, and help them heal their wounds."

The 2007 legislative election was judged to be mostly fair and free, which unlocked a 13-year partial freeze on funding by the European Union (EU), imposed in protest over Togo's human rights record. The EU, Togo's largest bilateral donor, has re-launched programmes and committed US$441 million from 2008 to 2013.

Yet elections were only a first step in reconciliation. "A presidential election is not enough to reunite Togolese, but a well-run one would mark a very important step in the process of reconciliation," Barrigah commented.

Unlike the presidential poll in 2005, the 2010 presidential election is being scrutinized by hundreds of international election observers and more than 3,000 local observers.

The office of the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights in Togo is on alert; two hotlines have been set up to report any violence; 600 Togolese Red Cross volunteers were trained in election day scenarios and have been posted at all voting stations, and a number of Togolese simply chose to abstain from the vote.

Ajavon Zeus, president of the Collective of Associations Fighting Against Impunity in Togo, a local NGO, told IRIN: "Reconciliation is not an incantation, it is not a slogan, it is concrete acts that must be carried out."

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88317ABIDJAN Wednesday, March 03, 2010 (IRIN) - After weeks of protests, some which turned deadly, the opposition has joined a new government and called off any further demonstrations. Ivoirians took to the streets following the latest delay in legislative and presidential elections, scheduled to take place in March after six postponements in five years. Disputes over the electoral roll – and who is or is not a true Ivoirian and thus eligible to vote – continue, creating an increasingly xenophobic and violent atmosphere across the country, according to rights watchdog Amnesty International. Here is a timeline of events leading to the current political crisis. ABIDJAN Wednesday, March 03, 2010 (IRIN) - After weeks of protests, some which turned deadly, the opposition has joined a new government and called off any further demonstrations.

Ivoirians took to the streets following the latest delay in legislative and presidential elections, scheduled to take place in March after six postponements in five years.

On 12 February Laurent Gbagbo dissolved government and the Independent Electoral Commission; in response, opposition party leaders stopped recognizing President Gbagbo as head of state.

Disputes over the electoral roll – and who is or is not a true Ivoirian and thus eligible to vote – continue, creating an increasingly xenophobic and violent atmosphere across the country, according to rights watchdog Amnesty International.

Here is a timeline of events leading to the current political crisis.

26 February 2010
A new electoral commission headed by a member of the opposition is formed. Opposition leader calls off demonstrations, announces the opposition’s acceptance of 11 positions in the new 27-member government.

23 February 2010
The president's office announces a partial government, without opposition party representation.

22 February 2010
Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso, mediator in the Ivorian political crisis, arrives in Abidjan, the economic hub of Côte d'Ivoire, to try reconciling the parties.

Two demonstrators are killed during protests in Daloa, about 150km west of the capital, Yamoussoukro, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

18-20 February 2010
Protesters take to the streets on the 18th in Issia in the centre-west, on the 19th in Gagnoa, about 130km southwest of Yamoussoukro, on the 20th in Man in the far west, and also in Korhogo in north-central part of the country. Five protesters are killed in Gagnoa.

On 20 February thousands of protesters march in Bouaké, the second largest city in Côte d'Ivoire, smashing shops, looting a government building, and setting fire to cars.

15-17 February 2010
Protest demonstrations take off in Katiola, in the interior of the country, on 15 February and in Bouaké on the 17th .

12 February 2010
President Gbagbo dissolves the Independent Electoral Commission.

Opposition parties call for people to protest on the streets. A group representing Côte d'Ivoire's leading opposition parties, Rally of Houphouétistes for Democracy and Peace, issues a communiqué stating they no longer recognize President Gbagbo as head of state. Elections are deferred for the sixth time.

11 February 2010
Voter registration for pending elections is suspended.

9 January 2010
President Gbagbo accuses electoral commissioner Robert Mambe of fraudulently adding over 429,000 names to the electoral list of people he said were not proven to be native Ivoirians.

3 December 2009
Burkina Faso mediators announce an election deadline of early March.

14 November 2009
The Independent Electoral Commission confirms that elections will not be held on 29 November as planned.

29 October 2009
UN renews sanctions against Côte d'Ivoire until 31 October 2010.

16 October 2009
Independent Electoral Commission announces a provisional voter list will not be ready for another month.

16 June 2009
Independent Electoral Commission proposes holding elections in the last week of November and the beginning of December at the latest.

26 May 2009
Rebels controlling the north of the country officially hand power over to civilian administrators, which aim to restore government control over the whole country. However,rebels still retain much control over local economy and security forces.

14 May 2009
Prime Minister Guillaume Soro announces presidential elections will take place on 29 November.

18 November 2008
Elections supposed to be held in December 2008 are delayed.

30 July 2008
President Gbagbo visits rebel headquarters in Bouaké for a "Flame of Peace" ceremony to symbolically burn weapons.

24 April 2008
Ivorian Political Party Code of Conduct is adopted at a ceremony attended by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, President Gbagbo, Prime Minister Soro, high-ranking members of the diplomatic community and Ivorian civil society representatives.

14 April 2008
Council of Ministers announces presidential elections will take place on 30 November 2008 under the peace plan, as proposed by the Independent Electoral Commission.

15 January 2008
UN Security Council Resolution 1795 is passed, giving the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General in Côte d'Ivoire the power to certify elections.

27 November 2007
President Gbagbo and Guillaume Soro sign a peace accord in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso's capital, fixing the date for legislative and presidential elections for June 2008 at the latest.

20 November 2007
The new Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General in Côte d'Ivoire, YJ Choi, arrives.

15 October 2007
Elections that were to be held in November 2007 are put on hold as voter identification and registration are not complete, according to the government.

30 July 2007
President Laurent Gbagbo travels to central town of Bouaké, stronghold of the former rebels, in his first visit to rebel territory since the rebellion began. Officials burn a pile of arms in a ceremony, declaring “the war in Côte d’Ivoire is over”.

29 June 2007
Prime Minister Guillaume Soro's aircraft comes under attack in the northern Ivorian city of Bouaké, headquarters of his former rebel group. Four people are killed and a number injured from the attack but Prime Minister Soro emerges unhurt. The UN mission in Côte d’Ivoire subsequently endorses the Prime Minister's call for an independent international inquiry into the incident.

18-19 June 2007
A Security Council mission visits Côte d'Ivoire to assess progress of the peace process in the country and to exchange views with parties to the conflict on how to move forward the peace process.

17 May 2007
Government militias start to disarm.

11 April 2007
A quadripartite agreement to eliminate the buffer zone known as the zone of confidence is signed by the Defence and Security Forces of Côte d'Ivoire (FDS-CI), the Armed Forces of the Forces Nouvelles (FAFN), the commanders of the UN Operation in Côte d'Ivoire and the French Licorne forces.

4 March 2007
President Gbagbo and rebel leader Soro sign the Ouagadougou peace deal under the aegis of Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaoré. The pact sets a new timetable for organising elections in Côte d'Ivoire and reuniting the country.

31 October 2006
Presidential elections are cancelled.

17 October 2006
The African Union Peace and UN Security Council extend President Gbagbo's mandate by one year, during which time the roadmap is to be fully implemented. President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa is replaced by the African Union Chairman as mediator.

6 October 2006
An extraordinary summit is held with ECOWAS leaders, at which recommendations for a roadmap to peace in Côte d'Ivoire are put forward.

12 July 2006
The president’s party Front Populaire Ivoirien (FPI) calls for a boycott of the voter identification hearings which sparked bloody demonstrations by the Young Patriots (a militia close to President Gbagbo) who blockaded various cities to prevent the identification process.

4 December 2005
Charles Konan Banny, the governor of the Central Bank of West Africa States, is appointed interim prime minister by mediators.

8 November 2005
The first meeting of the newly established International Working Group (see 21 October 2005) is held.

31 October 2005
Presidential elections are cancelled.

21 October 2005
Security Council adopts resolution 1633, endorsing the previous African Union decision, extending President Gbagbo's term by one year, deciding that a new prime minister acceptable to all parties and with executive powers should be designated; establishing a roadmap for disarmament, identification and organisation of elections supervised by an International Working Group; and strengthening the threat of sanctions against individual spoilers.

29 June 2005
The Declaration on the Implementation of the Pretoria Agreement, signed on 11 April, on the peace process in Côte d'Ivoire is signed in Pretoria under the auspices of the African Union.

6 November 2004
The national armed forces of Côte d'Ivoire attacked the French Licorne forces. The Council condemns the attacks and confirms that French forces and the UN Operation in Côte d'Ivoire (UNOCI) are authorized to use all necessary means to fully carry out their mandate.

30 July, 2004
West African heads of state come together in Accra, capital of Ghana, to get opposition party leaders in Ivory Coast to sign the Accra 3rd Agreement, fixing a calendar for disarmament of the militia and rebels.

27 March 2004
Rebels and the opposition party, Rally for the Republic, pull out of the government after an anti-Gbagbo march is banned, leading to protests in which more than 100 are killed.

27 February 2004
Security Council adopts resolution 1528 establishing UN Operation in Côte d'Ivoire (UNOCI). The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) forces and the UN Mission in Côte d'Ivoire's (MINUCI) authority is transferred to the new mission.

13 May 2003
Security Council adopts resolution 1479 establishing the UN Mission in Côte d'Ivoire (MINUCI) with a mandate to facilitate the implementation of the Linas-Marcoussis Agreement and of the ceasefire.

March 2003
A government of national reconciliation is formed with members from the rebel ranks and a consensus prime minister, Seydou Diarra.

24 January 2003
The French sponsored Linas-Marcoussis Agreement is signed between the Ivorian government and all political forces.

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88295AGADEZ Wednesday, March 03, 2010 (IRIN) - The unusually large-scale migration of southern Nigerien farmers and pastoralists, heading north to look for work, has prompted concerns about food shortages in the northern Agadez region, according to local authorities.AGADEZ Wednesday, March 03, 2010 (IRIN) - The unusually large-scale migration of southern Nigerien farmers and pastoralists, heading north to look for work, has prompted concerns about food shortages in the northern Agadez region, according to local authorities.

"This seasonal migration always happens during the period between [harvests] and Agadez always welcomes people with open arms," said Almoumoune Ibrahim, son of the region’s highest ranking traditional leader.

“Normally after the harvest [in the south], the men leave the women and children with a stock of food and they come here to find work as farm labourers,” said Alhadji Guichem Kari, a member of a government committee set up after last September’s floods in the Agadez region, which displaced thousands and destroyed more than 3,000 homes

But this year’s increase in the number of migrants is testing the north’s perennial hospitality.

"Due to the shortages [of food] in the south, people have come earlier and in greater numbers… This year entire families have been coming. Some have found work and others beg," Kari told IRIN.

Flood damage around Agadez is still evident: Destroyed crops and homes, dead cattle, and sand-infested vegetable gardens no longer able to employ seasonal migrants.

Near the airport, Mariama Adao camps out with hundreds of other migrants. Originally from the southern town of Matameye near the Nigerian border, she arrived in Agadez three months ago with six of her eight children.

"This year when we saw that the rain was not coming I came here very quickly," she told IRIN. "Normally we harvest 20-25 sacks [of millet, sorghum, cow peas and peanuts], but this year we did not even harvest five… We needed to make headway and get here quickly to find a way to survive."

Abnormal rains in several parts of the country, including Agadez have led to crop deficits, forcing families nationwide to dip into their food stocks earlier than normal. Over half the population had only two months of food reserves left as of February - to last them until the next harvest in October, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Mariama Adao found work cleaning homes, as did her 17-year-old son. "I come here every year but this year there are a lot more of us than usual. Everyone [from the Matameye region] has had problems," she said.

"People who come here would never die of hunger because there is a real sense of solidarity [between people from the south and the Agadez region]," Hama Dilla Abdoulaye, the mayor of Agadez, told IRIN.

Food prices up

However, the local population is already facing higher food prices as a result of the region's poor harvest and higher demand prompted by the influx of migrants.

Two and a half kilograms of millet, a local food staple, which previously cost at most 500 CFA francs (US$1) between harvests, is now sold for 600 CFA francs in Agadez, according to residents

"Agadez is a small town; we feel the pressure of food and rent prices straight away," said Ousmane Issouf, a driver.

A recent national survey on household food security classified Agadez as one of the least vulnerable regions in the country - 7 percent of households faced problems getting food compared to the national average of 20 percent.

But the authorities were only able to carry out the survey in three urban areas of a 660,000sqkm desert region. A government travel ban and state of alert were recently lifted in the northern half of the country after years of rebel fighting, but rural zones - filled with pastoralists and farmers cut off from markets, hemmed in by sporadic fighting and hit by flooding - are still largely inaccessible.

Meanwhile, some say increased migration to the Agadez region has also been stimulated by rumours of free food handouts in the wake of the flooding. "People heard that food was being distributed in Agadez so they came here, [but that food] was only for people who been affected [by the floods],” Mayor Abdoulaye told IRIN.

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88296AGADEZ Wednesday, March 03, 2010 (IRIN) - Mariama Adao, aged 40 and a mother of eight, makes the 400km journey from Matameye in the south of Niger to Agadez in the north almost every year to make ends meet between growing seasons. However, this year’s poor harvest forced her to leave earlier - and bring six of her children with her. AGADEZ Wednesday, March 03, 2010 (IRIN) - Mariama Adao, aged 40 and a mother of eight, makes the 400km journey from Matameye in the south of Niger to Agadez in the north almost every year to make ends meet between growing seasons. However, this year’s poor harvest forced her to leave earlier - and bring six of her children with her.

She told IRIN about her life:

"My husband is a farmer [in the Matameye region]. We grow millet, sorghum, cow peas and peanuts. Normally we produce 20-25 sacks, but this year we did not even get five. There was not enough rain. We have only known one other year like this [in 2005].

"When we saw that the rains were not coming I came here very quickly... with six of my children. I could not just stay there with my arms folded. I had to make headway and come here quickly [to Agadez] to make money to survive. My husband is old. He stayed with our two eldest daughters, who are married. They manage to provide him with food.

"We travelled for more than two days in a truck. A month after we arrived I managed to find a job doing housework in someone’s home. My [17-year-old] son was also employed in another house. My youngest is two years old. The children do not go to school.

"We come to Agadez because, of the eight regions [of Niger], we feel that we will find the most solidarity here. You can find more food here too. We were told that there was a food distribution [intended for people in the Agadez area affected by the September 2009 floods] here, but we have not received anything yet.

"I come here every year but this year there are a lot more of us than usual. Everyone has had problems [in the Matameye region]. Among my neighbours [in Agadez], a few have managed to find work and the others beg.

"At the moment we are getting by; we help each other. If one person has nothing to eat, we share with them. There is a sense of goodwill, but it is hard. I will not go back before the next rainy season in the south [May]. We need rain."

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88297LOMÉ Wednesday, March 03, 2010 (IRIN) - More than 3,000 local election observers, 6,000 soldiers, and representatives of international election transparency watchdog groups are scattered across Togo on the eve of a presidential election crackling with tension, yet billed as a "national reconciliation" by its leaders.LOMÉ Wednesday, March 03, 2010 (IRIN) - More than 3,000 local election observers, 6,000 soldiers, and representatives of international election transparency watchdog groups are scattered across Togo on the eve of a presidential election crackling with tension, yet billed as a "national reconciliation" by its leaders.

Observers, international agencies and Togolese voters are hoping for the best, but are also preparing for the worst. Godwin Agodzé, who lives in neighbouring Ghana, told IRIN: "Many have come from Togo asking me if I will rent them rooms where they can live if the elections do not go well in Togo. We see, daily, worried Togolese coming to Ghana."

In 2005 tens of thousands of Togolese fled east to neighbouring Benin or west to Ghana after a security crackdown in which hundreds died. Despite a 2007 legislative election ruled to be largely free, fair and peaceful, Togolese rattled by a violent electoral past have been opting for safer havens.

Contingency

"People have already started leaving Togo for Benin, perhaps as a precaution. They cannot be classified as refugees, as this is a pre-emptive movement," Patrick Nicholson, an emergency services director at the Catholic NGO, Caritas, told IRIN.

The UN Refugee Agency-led group of agencies and NGOs in Benin working on human rights have prepared an emergency plan, should tens of thousands again seek refugee in Benin as in 2005.

The plan outlines four scenarios, ranging from a peaceful election to armed civil conflict, with a violently contested election most likely. "Despite the calm appearance of preparations thus far, the UN and partner agencies are still sticking with scenario 3 as the most probable, because there is still the risk," Nicholson told IRIN.

"We will not say there is no more risk until results are announced and there is no violent reaction. People can be unpredictable, and we do not know how they will react."

Various NGOs, including Red Cross Benin, CARITAS, the International Federation of Red Cross, and UN agencies have prepared an early warning system that will be activated if Togolese start fleeing en masse to Benin.

In Togo, the UN office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has monitoring stations throughout the country, and has set up two phone numbers where people can report electoral violence: 800 40 40 and 252.

Change or death?

The seven presidential candidates, including the incumbent, President Fauré Gnassingbé, have repeatedly called for peaceful elections, for people to accept the election results, and to abstain from violence. "Nothing can justify the deaths of Togolese, not even a change of power," Gnassingbé said.

A group of youths calling themselves the Citizen Movement for Change (MCA) have rallied under the motto, "change or death", usually holding meetings at unannounced sites; hundreds turned up at a rally on 27 February.

"We will no longer tolerate disorder in Togo. Members of this group have started to recruit people to seed hatred on voting day and during announcements of results," said the head of Togo's security forces, who has put the group under surveillance.

Fulbert Attisso, an MCA leader, told IRIN that a loss by the opposition would be accepted peacefully – if there is no cheating. "If there is fraud, we are ready to die to extract from the ruling party's hand a victory for the opposition," he insisted.

An opposition youth leader not affiliated with MCA, Sylvio Amedégbé, told IRIN he was ready to contest a fraudulent election. "If the ruling power ever tries to steal this vote, we are ready to take to the streets to reclaim victory."

Hubert Atuyo, a supporter of the ruling party, Rally of Togolese People, told IRIN the president's supporters would accept defeat. "We are prepared to accept election results, whichever is the winning party, but we are sure it will be landslide for the president."

On the day

Land borders will be closed as of midnight on Wednesday 3 March. Restaurants and popular meeting spots have been ordered to close on voting day, 4 March, from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Only authorized vehicles will be allowed on the roads.

The lead-up to this election has been less tense than previous ones, the head of the National Civil Society Commission and an election observer, Colombo Kpakpabia, told IRIN.

"We have put out the message across the entire country that people should accept the results, and we are confident that nothing [violent] will happen," he said. "It would be a shame if the opposite were to happen."

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88305BAMAKO Friday, February 26, 2010 (IRIN) - A husband and wife can keep separate homes, but only with the husband’s approval. A divorcée can keep her ex-husband’s name – if he agrees. A girl should be able to marry at 15. These and a dozen other changes to the family code are being proposed by Mali’s top Islamic council, even though they were blocked last August after strong opposition from some Muslim leaders. BAMAKO Friday, February 26, 2010 (IRIN) - A husband and wife can keep separate homes, but only with the husband’s approval. A divorcée can keep her ex-husband’s name – if he agrees. A girl should be able to marry at 15. These and a dozen other changes to the family code are being proposed by Mali’s top Islamic council, even though they were blocked last August http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=85960 after strong opposition from some Muslim leaders.

Legislative efforts to update a decades-old family code sparked nationwide protests from Muslim associations, which said the new code would threaten religious values.

“Without these amendments, it would be an open road to debauchery,” the head of the group within the council created to propose changes to the family code, Mamadou Diamouténé, told IRIN. He said that while Koranic law allowed spouses to keep separate homes, “it is not that anyone can go wherever she wishes without her husband’s approval, because we cannot forget that the man is the head of the family”.

However, Bakary Togola, a teacher and Malian Association of Human Rights member, told IRIN that Council members pushing for the amendments had to face reality. “The world is evolving every day and we must change with it… there are countries all over the world passing laws to authorize marriage between homosexuals and we Muslims are moving heaven and earth over details that are not worth anything.”

These amendments risk pushing people to extremism, said Rokia Traoré Sanogo, a housecleaner who is Muslim. “Here in Mali, not everyone is Muslim… They [High Islamic Council] are acting as if Mali were an Islamic state. At this rate, they will soon demand that Sharia law be imposed.”

Article 291 currently states that marriages are celebrated publicly in front of a government registrar, to which the Islamic council wants to add “and religious and traditional leaders”. Diamouténé said that otherwise, “it is as if we were trampling over religious and traditional marriage ceremonies”.

Article 311 of the draft currently puts spouses on an equal footing. “Spouses owe each other fidelity, protection, relief and assistance. They commit themselves to the community of life on the basis of affection and respect." The council wants to add: “The wife must obey the husband.”

The council is proposing amending articles on inheritance, marriage, adoption and family responsibilities, which are at the core of Mali’s social and religious values, said the council’s Diamouténé.

April vote

Parliament is treading more carefully this time in trying to pass a new family law. “We recall that the Islamic associations, led by the High Islamic Council, sparked unprecedented protests http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=85676 throughout the country to remove language [they] considered blasphemous,” the head of the national assembly, Dioncounda Traoré, told IRIN.

Two lawmakers, one of whom is a religious leader, are to reconcile the proposed amendments, the code under draft and the existing law, which they will present to parliament for approval in April.

Political analyst and University of Bamako professor, Badra Alou Macalou, told IRIN that lawmakers were hoping to reach a consensus on the contested articles. “The president of the assembly… was clear in saying that the legislators will never adopt a code that will affect again the social climate. I think that in April if the code is not voted [on] and adopted unanimously, it will simply be shelved.”

Domestic worker Sanogo is not optimistic of any significant change even if the code is passed. “Whether or not the code is adopted, it does not matter much to me because we know here in Mali, laws are not enforced. http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=85737”

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88251DAKAR Thursday, February 25, 2010 (IRIN) - Nutrition experts in Guinea are studying options for treating moderately malnourished children, as funding shortages disrupt normal programmes using fortified flour.DAKAR Thursday, February 25, 2010 (IRIN) - Nutrition experts in Guinea are studying options for treating moderately malnourished children, as funding shortages disrupt normal programmes using fortified flour.

In recent months local health centres ran out of supplies and had to refer families to remote facilities for corn-soya blend (CSB), used for the treatment of moderate acute malnutrition and provided by donors through the UN World Food Programme (WFP).

WFP is seeking funds to maintain CSB stocks in Guinea. “We recently received some CSB but needs still outweigh supply,” WFP-Guinea head of programme Foday Turay told IRIN. While recent unrest in the country led some donors to pull back, a lack of funding for WFP nutritional programmes pre-dates the latest instability.

Humanitarian workers told IRIN the current situation reflects the overall difficulty of attracting aid funding for Guinea and underlines the need to find alternative and long-term solutions.

“The break in WFP’s pipeline is representative of the problem everyone has finding [aid] funding for Guinea,” Reza Kasraï, head of Action contre la Faim (ACF) in Guinea, told IRIN.

“We’re in a no-man’s land between a politically stable country where donors would like to give development funds and a full-on emergency where humanitarian donors contribute regardless of the political situation.”

Stop-gap measures

The funding and supply breaks are forcing aid agencies and the Health Ministry to turn to temporary solutions – like using therapeutic foods designed for severe acute malnutrition – but a more sustainable strategy is needed, nutrition experts say.

When CSB stocks ran out, ACF used Plumpy’nut for some moderate malnutrition cases, Kasraï said.

“These are stop-gap measures… Using Plumpy’nut for moderate acute malnutrition is not in the national [malnutrition treatment] protocol, and just because the product is on hand does not mean it’s a long-term solution.” The product is more expensive than foods used to treat moderate acute malnutrition (MAM), he said.

Nutrition workers in Guinea are debating the viability of using Plumpy'nut for moderate cases if the need arises; another option being discussed is using local foods, prepared specially for children’s nutritional needs.

“Stop-gap measures may be better than nothing but a plan is needed to assure adequate funding for the CSB supply and access to contingency funds to mitigate the impact of CSB shortages,” Sheryl Martin of Helen Keller International in Guinea told IRIN.

“We are all frustrated by the lack of funding and are doing the best we can in the short term.”

Integrated

ACF’s Kasraï said it is important to use an integrated approach – not only therapeutic feeding but also programmes to address the principal causes of undernutrition in Guinea, by boosting people’s livelihoods, ensuring proper breastfeeding and weaning practices and improving home hygiene and access to health services, sanitation and safe water.

He said there is a growing movement towards community- and even household-based management of MAM, which would also reduce the strain on health centres. "The challenge is in finding a reliable way of ensuring that moderately malnourished children receive fortified [with vitamins and other micronutrients] and high-caloric diets in the home."

A January 2010 ACF nutritional survey in Conakry’s Matoto commune shows a global acute malnutrition rate of 7.3 percent, with 1.6 percent severe acute malnutrition, he said.

“While these percentages are not alarming, if you look at absolute numbers you’re talking about some 10,000 children suffering acute malnutrition – and that is in just one of five Conakry communes.”

Mamady Daffé, Health Ministry head of nutrition, said the combination of poverty and a lack of knowledge of children’s nutritional needs contributes to child malnutrition. He said even if families understand children’s nutritional needs, many do not have the means to meet them.

“People’s living conditions must improve. Without this we will not be able to tackle malnutrition," he told IRIN. "The cost of living is up; people cannot buy what they need to eat properly.”

In the Dixinn commune of Conakry, health workers conducting a nutritional survey in January saw a malnourished four-year-old girl. Her father is unemployed and her mother barely makes ends meet doing petty commerce.

“Sometimes I go for days without preparing a proper meal,” the mother, Fatoumata Keita, told IRIN. She said she often gives her daughter quinine to ease stomach pain.

The latest monthly nutritional survey in Conakry – carried out by HKI and the Health Ministry – showed a rise in moderate acute malnutrition among under-five children from 3.8 percent in January to 5.5 percent in February.

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88233JOHANNESBURG Wednesday, February 24, 2010 (IRIN) - Temperatures seem set to soar to perilously high levels because of climate change. In another 40 years, would maize still be the staple food in Kenya, already hit by five failed rainy seasons? If not, what could people grow and eat? And if you could grow maize, how much water and fertilizer would it need? JOHANNESBURG Wednesday, February 24, 2010 (IRIN) - Temperatures seem set to soar to perilously high levels because of climate change. In another 40 years, would maize still be the staple food in Kenya, already hit by five failed rainy seasons? If not, what could people grow and eat? And if you could grow maize, how much water and fertilizer would it need?

If you live in the remote semi-arid Karamoja region of northeastern Uganda - beset by 14 droughts in 25 years - you might also want to know what your options are for continued food security.

For the first time, a customized regional climate model linked to crop growing and water models, run on a supercomputer at Michigan State University (MSU), will help provide crop breeders in three East African countries - Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania - with detailed answers on crop yields.

Many research institutions have been working on models to predict the impact of climate change on food production in Africa, but in a few months the MSU model will help scientists and breeders to zoom in at a regional level on the possible impact of climate change on a wide variety of crops in these countries.

The research could help produce climate-resilient varieties of food crops, said Jennifer Olson, lead researcher and associate professor at MSU's College of Communication Arts and Sciences.

"East Africa is already experiencing the impact of climate change - food crops are experiencing extreme water stress," she commented. People living in Kenya's highlands, who have traditionally grown tea and coffee, have begun experimenting with maize and beans as the climate has grown warmer.

Work on the model began 10 years ago with the recording of relevant data, such as the impact of nutrients on a certain food crop, or the impact of water stress on another, which were subsequently fed into the model. "The model is still being perfected," said Olson.

The model can experiment with the impact of climate change, such as high temperature and water stress on a certain crop variety, saving the time that would have been spent on field trials, "which will help speed up the agricultural research cycle", she noted.

The researchers intend to launch the model at a workshop in June. Concern about increasing food insecurity in East Africa has prompted two institutions to set up a research grants to encourage innovative solutions.

The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), based in South Africa, and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), in Nairobi, Kenya, announced a US$10.67 million grant from the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) to support the establishment of a multidisciplinary competitive funding mechanism for biosciences in Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.

ILRI's Bruce Scott said they would be looking for innovative solutions using bioscience to improve crop resilience to climate change, or perhaps to improve the shelf-life of a food product.

jk/he http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88225DAKAR Monday, February 22, 2010 (IRIN) - Groups in Niger continue calling for elections while declaring support for the military "Supreme Council for Restoration of Democracy" that on 18 February 2010 dissolved the government, abducted the president and suspended a contested constitution. The UN, African Union, ECOWAS and a number of donor governments have condemned the power grab as illegal and are calling for constitutional order.DAKAR Monday, February 22, 2010 (IRIN) - Voided 18 Feb 2010 BP---http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=84996DAKAR Monday, February 22, 2010 (IRIN) - A meningitis epidemic has struck earlier than usual and is spreading across sub-Saharan Africa's "meningitis belt" from Senegal to Ethiopia, according to health ministries in the region. The disease occurs during the dry season, with most cases reported in mid-April. DAKAR Monday, February 22, 2010 (IRIN) - A meningitis epidemic has struck earlier than usual and is spreading across sub-Saharan Africa's "meningitis belt" from Senegal to Ethiopia, according to health ministries in the region. The disease occurs during the dry season, with most cases reported in mid-April.

As of 7 February, health ministries in high-risk countries reported 2,298 cases, with a 13-percent fatality rate. Burkina Faso has reported the highest number of cases, but Togo has experienced the highest fatality rate, where 25 of 108 infected people died.

The World Health Organization (WHO) described the situation as "alarming".

Mamoudou Harouna Djingarey, a WHO epidemiologist and meningitis expert, told IRIN it was still not clear why infections were spreading earlier than expected. "This [timing] is a sign of a major epidemic risk if no action is taken," he warned. Extensive meningitis outbreaks tended to occur every eight to 10 years, he said, but were now occurring about every four years.

In the 2009 meningitis season, 14 African countries reported a total of 78,416 suspected cases, including 4,053 deaths, the largest number of infections since the 1996 epidemic.

Studies are being carried out to determine whether climatic and environmental factors might be influencing the extent of the current epidemic. Djingarey told IRIN that infections had also been reported further south than usual, including in Uganda, Kenya and Democratic Republic of Congo.

Burkina Faso

On 17 February the Health Ministry in Burkina Faso reported 1,251 meningitis cases, with a 15.4 percent fatality rate. This time last year there were 25 percent less infections, but a similar percentage of deaths.

The disease has reached epidemic proportions in Pama in the east, Titao in the north, Sapouy in the centre west, and Batié in the southeast, defined by WHO as areas where at least 10 out of 100,000 people are infected. Three other districts with half as many reported infections are on alert, according to Burkina Faso's Ministry of Health.

Vaccinations have been carried out in Pama and Titao, and more are scheduled to take place in the centre west on 20 February. "If we can react quickly the numbers will drop," Health Ministry epidemiologist Jean Ludovic Kambou told IRIN.

WHO recommends vaccinating everyone aged from 2 to 29 years and living in an epidemic zone, as well as people in neighbouring areas that are on "alert". If the country does not have enough vaccine, it can request no-cost or minimal-cost vaccines from a meningitis vaccine stock managed by WHO. Alejandro Costa, a WHO vaccine scientist, told IRIN no countries have requested vaccines as of 19 February.

Costa told IRIN 100,000 doses of vaccine from the stockpile had been sent to Chad, which did not have vaccines on hand but was facing an epidemic in the southern regions of Mandoul and Logone Orientale. Chad's Ministry of Health said 42,000 people in the southern town of Doba needed vaccination.

On 19 February the government reported 507 meningitis infections that have led to 56 deaths, an 11 percent fatality rate.


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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88179ABIDJAN Monday, February 22, 2010 (IRIN) - An uneasy calm has been restored in cities across Côte d’Ivoire following fresh protests over the past few days, according to aid workers. ABIDJAN Monday, February 22, 2010 (IRIN) - An uneasy calm has been restored in cities across Côte d’Ivoire following fresh protests over the past few days, according to aid workers.

The latest protests in the central-western city of Gagnoa left five dead and a dozen injured on 19 February. In the rebel-stronghold of Bouaké in central Côte d’Ivoire protesters set fire to cars, smashed up shops and looted a government office on 20 February, according to the defence minister.

Angry protests have affected Korhogo in the rebel-held north, Divo in the southwest, Man in the far west, Toumodi in the centre of the country, as well as the commercial capital Abidjan.

"The situation has become so alarming so quickly,” Abidjan-based teacher Patricia Konan told IRIN. “We have reached the stage where there is a large risk of wider conflict, with each further protest just adding more fuel to the fire.”

Teachers and children across Abidjan are too scared to turn up to school, she said.

Alfred Kobenan, an Abidjan-based government tax collector, witnessed the violence in Kumasi, a district in southeast Abidjan. “The demonstrators burned everything in their path and many I saw looted anything they could find. We can no longer go to work because we are too scared.”

Context

The demonstrations followed President Laurent Gbagbo's dissolution of the government and electoral commission on 12 February, delaying long-awaited presidential elections that had been set for March 2010 after six delays since 2005.

In mid-January Gbagbo accused electoral commission head and opposition party member Robert Mambe of adding more than 400,000 names to the voter register. The president said their Ivoirian identity had not been cross-checked.

Because of the draw of cocoa production, much of the population has roots in neighbouring states and the question of national identity, or “ivoirité”. Around 2,000 politicians cynically fomented xenophobia for their own ends. The issue helped bring on the civil war that broke out in 2002 and continues to fuel inter-communal tensions over land rights.

Prime Minister Guillaume Soro will announce the make-up of the new Ivoirian government on 22 February, according to a statement. A group representing Côte d’Ivoire’s leading opposition parties, Rally of Houphouétistes for Democracy and Peace (RHDP), are insisting they be included in the new government.

“We have asked the militants to confront the dictatorship that has been established in our country. Gbagbo’s decision to dissolve the independent electoral commission and the government is unacceptable, and we have already said we will no longer recognize him as head of state,” RHDP spokesperson Alphonse Djedje Mady said in a 20 February communiqué.

Protests have taken place amid deteriorating living conditions country-wide, with unemployment rates at 70 percent; chronic malnutrition at 40 percent in the north; and a series of power cuts across the country.

The number of people living on less than US$1.25 a day has risen from 10 percent in 1985 to 49 percent in 2008, according to the World Bank.

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88191DAKAR Friday, February 19, 2010 (IRIN) - Opposition parties, Niger’s largest union and members of civil society announced their support on 19 February for a military ruling council that abducted President Mamadou Tandja the day before and suspended a contested constitution.DAKAR Friday, February 19, 2010 (IRIN) - Opposition parties, Niger’s largest union and members of civil society announced their support on 19 February for a military ruling council that abducted President Mamadou Tandja the day before and suspended a contested constitution, while others in the country are suspicious of coup leader intentions.

While the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has condemned the coup as an unconstitutional “ascension to power”, Chris Fomunyoh, the regional director of West and Central Africa for the US-based NGO, National Democratic Institute, said President Tandja had been hanging on to power illegally.

“I would never say a coup is a good thing, but Tandja had so wronged the people of Niger that if his wrongs can be righted then democracy may have a chance to regain its cause in Niger.”

In the past year, President Tandja dissolved the parliament and constitutional court, organized a contested and boycotted referendum last August that removed presidential term limits – and would have allowed him to stay in power until at least 2013 – and proceeded with legislative elections in October that led to the country’s suspension from the regional trade bloc, ECOWAS.

Aid

The European Union then suspended more than US$600 million in annual budgetary support and development aid. The US frozen an estimated $50 million of non-humanitarian support.

“Niger was saved today [18 February],” animal trader Habibou El Hadj Manzo told IRIN in the northern desert town Agadez. “Even if there were some deaths, it [the coup] is forgivable because if nothing is done, it is the entire population that will die of hunger and thirst.”

More than half of the 11-million person population has only two months of food stock to last until the 2010 harvest – nine months away, according to United Nations.

The coup potentially saved the country from violence, Oumarou Keïta with the national human rights commission told IRIN. “The coup happened in the context of political tension; faltering negotiations exposed Niger to a potential conflict. The choice of Tandja and those close to him to isolate the country from the international community weighed heavily on its citizens.”

A Finance Ministry worker who preferred to remain anonymous told IRIN he was relieved by the takeover. “The president kept repeating the country has resources, but things were heating up with the famine that no one dares mention. Donors were leaving us. We were worried that things would get to the point where we would no longer receive salaries.”

“Rob the robber”

The coup may not be justified, but it was inevitable, Nigerien sociologist Issouf Bayard told IRIN from the capital, Niamey. “We tried to use our political institutions to get him to respect the constitution. Tandja dissolved them. We tried dialogue, which reached a stalemate. The likely outcomes were therefore a popular uprising, strikes that would have paralyzed the country or a military coup.”

Bayard said the 4 August 2009 constitution-changing vote was an act of theft. “Tandja was taking what did not rightfully belong to him by stealing that vote. We were then faced with a situation in which we had to rob the robber – even if in principle theft is wrong.”

Military rule

The country’s largest union has called for a quick return to civilian democratic rule.

Coup leader Djibrilla Hima Hamidou – who took part in the 1999 coup that killed President Ibrahim Maïnassara Baré – told IRIN the military council wants to stabilize the country, find a way out of the constitutional crisis and to protect Nigeriens from any further harm.

The government finance worker told IRIN he trusted the military was acting in good faith. “We do not want a [Guinean coup leader] Dadis on our hands who refuses to leave power, but it is too early to have those fears. We have been in a political crisis for the last six months. This may be our road out.”

Calls for Guinea’s 2008 coup leader Moussa Dadis Camara to step down from power steadily increased, culminating in an assassination attempt on his life last December.

When asked whether there was a risk that military rulers would move the country further from constitutionality, democracy analyst Fomunyoh replied: “There is little incentive for them. The Niger military has learned its lessons from the [1999] assassination of autocrat Ibrahim Maïnassara Baré and from the overthrow of Tanjda who could not dismantle democracy with impunity.”

pt/al/ci http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88174NIAMEY Thursday, February 18, 2010 (IRIN) - Small vendors abandoned their stalls as the typical lunch hour break opened with gunfire at the presidential palace shortly after 1pm local time in Niger’s capital, Niamey. Firing continued intermittently with the military blocking all roads leading to the palace. Government helicopters were circling the city and fired in the afternoon, according to residents.NIAMEY Thursday, February 18, 2010 (IRIN) - Small vendors abandoned their stalls as the typical lunch hour break opened with gunfire at the presidential palace shortly after 1pm local time in Niger’s capital, Niamey. Firing continued intermittently with the military blocking all roads leading to the palace. Government helicopters were circling the city and fired in the afternoon, according to residents.

“I left my bookstore rather than risk getting hit by stray fire,” Ismaël Issaka told IRIN from his home in Niamey. He told IRIN he heard gunfire near the hospital after 3pm, which is across from a military base.

A private clinic doctor in the capital, Amadou Boureima, told IRIN he had treated five patients with light gunshot wounds.

Elsewhere in the country, traffic and markets continued uninterrupted.

Military music

Former government information minister, Mariama Gamatié, told IRIN that state television and radio were still active as of 3pm. “We hear gunshots still, but if there has been a coup attempt and someone has taken over, the first thing that happens in Africa is that news goes off the air.” Shortly before 6pm local time, military music replaced news broadcasts on national radio.

Gamatié was the information minister at the time of the assassination of President Ibrahim Baré Mainassara in 1999 and is now a civil society member contesting President Tandja’s rule.

“We are paying the price for President Tandja’s power grab…We cannot afford his ego. We are in the middle of a famine. No one wants to use that word here because of the controversy in 2005. It is not a hunger crisis as government operators may call it. It is a famine.”

Admissions of malnourished children to feeding centres were 60 percent higher in January than at the same time last year, according to the US early warning network, FEWSNET.

The European Union, the largest bilateral donor supporting Niger government spending, has frozen its non-humanitarian aid until there is a return to “constitutional order” in Niger; the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has suspended Niger’s membership.

Vice president of the opposition Democratic and Social Convention party (CDS) and government minister until he exceeded the term limit for holding ministerial positions in 2007, Abdou Labo, told IRIN he would not comment on presidential palace violence. “These are just rumours now and nothing has been confirmed. There is no use speculating.”

IRIN could not reach members of government or the ruling party.

Negotiations?

A contested 4 August 2009 referendum changed the constitution to extend presidential terms indefinitely, allowing President Tandja to stay in power after his allotted step-down date of 22 December last year.

The president assumed emergency powers after he dissolved parliament last May, followed by the constitutional court in June, which had twice ruled the referendum to be unconstitutional.

A twice-postponed ECOWAS meeting to consider the constitutional impasse in Niger – among other regional crises – took place in Abuja, Nigeria on 16 February.

In that meeting, ECOWAS appointed Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade as mediator, who was to join former Nigerian President Abdusalami Abubakar and an African Union representative in negotiating the stand-off between President Tandja and the opposition.

When asked how he felt about the recently revived negotiations with the government, opposition leader Labo told IRIN the opposition has made concessions and remains hopeful Niger can find a peaceful way out of crisis. “We welcome the mediators’ help and await the government’s counterproposals.”

Civil society member Gamatié was less optimistic President Tandja will cede any power.

“I am opposed to using military force to unseat President Tandja and will continue fighting democratically no matter what happened at the palace today. But this coup attempt was inevitable. If you tighten a noose long enough, the choked will cut it loose.”

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88160N'DJAMENA Wednesday, February 17, 2010 (IRIN) - Teachers demanding more pay to face higher food prices entered the third day of a nationwide strike. The government has called their demands "illegal" and "unjustified", because the "high cost of living is a general problem that does not concern only [the teachers' union]", said Employment Minister Fatimé Tchombi. N'DJAMENA Wednesday, February 17, 2010 (IRIN) - Teachers demanding more pay to face higher food prices entered the third day of a nationwide strike. The government has called their demands "illegal" and "unjustified", because the "high cost of living is a general problem that does not concern only [the teachers' union]", said Employment Minister Fatimé Tchombi.

Primary school teacher Aubin Golmbaye told IRIN his US$200 monthly salary was not enough to feed his family. "In addition to food I need to pay for the house, medical care, school fees - even if I spend $4 a day on food, what would I have left for our other needs, and transport to get to work?"

Government has estimated that poor rainfall in 2009 reduced cereal production by 31 percent reduction compared to previous years. The shortage could keep cereal prices, which are higher than they have been for five years, at current levels through March, according to the US-funded early warning group, FEWS NET.

Poor families, who often barter livestock for other foodstuffs, find that their animals are buying them less. High prices and below-normal pastoral income due to disease and animal malnutrition are depleting what little food stock families saved from the last growing season, and "steep" food price hikes, starting in April, were predicted in FEWS NET's most recent report on food security in Chad.

Final exams are scheduled to begin in late May but secondary school student Clarisse Koularambaye feared the academic year could be lost. "We are not in class. Teachers plan to strike until a solution is found - I just hope the government will do something for us," she told IRIN.

Education Minister Khadidja Hassaballah said the government would not negotiate salaries with the teacher union when all public sector employees faced the same cost of living.

Among primary school-age children, 30 percent of girls are enrolled and 40 percent of boys; by the time they reach secondary school, only five percent of girls and 13 percent of boys in that age group still attend school.

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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88144KANO Friday, February 12, 2010 (IRIN) - Some 15,400 people who fled violence in the central Nigerian city of Jos remain displaced three weeks later and despite dire living conditions, many do not plan to return and rebuild their destroyed homes. KANO Friday, February 12, 2010 (IRIN) - Some 15,400 people who fled violence in the central Nigerian city of Jos remain displaced three weeks later and despite dire living conditions, many do not plan to return and rebuild their destroyed homes.[http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=87842]
 
NGOs estimate that 6,900 displaced people (IDPs) are sheltering in makeshift camps in and around Jos, capital of Plateau state, while another 8,500 have fled to neighbouring Bauchi state, where the authorities are providing them with water and food.
 
"We don't have anywhere to go because our homes and what we possessed have been burnt. I don't think many of us want to go back and rebuild our homes because we think they will just be destroyed again,” Sada Bilyaminu, who is displaced at Gangare secondary school in the Jos North neighbourhood, told IRIN.
 
“Even if we intend to go back to our homes we don't have the money to rebuild them,” said Bilyaminu.
 
"We are in a dilemma. We can't go back to our homes and at the same time we can't stay here for the rest of our lives. We have to find places to stay.”
 
IDPs are calling on the Plateau authorities to compensate them for their lost property so they can rebuild elsewhere.
 
Poor conditions
 
Most of the Jos displaced are sheltering in mosques, schools, churches and military barracks. None of these facilities has adequate toilets or running water, making sanitation the biggest worry, said Awwalu Mohammed, head of Nigeria Red Cross in Jos. Water is delivered in tanks every few days, he said, but it is not sufficient.
 
“IDPs are left with no option but to defecate in the open which poses serious health risks to them, especially to children,” Mohammed told IRIN.
 
The Nigerian Red Cross, Médecins Sans Frontières, the National Emergency Management Agency and National Refugee Commission are providing relief materials to the displaced, alongside local NGOs the Stefanus Foundation and Jama'atu Nasril Islam. But the Red Cross’s Mohammed said despite this help, conditions are “miserable” and there is not enough food, water or medicine to meet people’s needs. [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=87896]
 
Mark Lipdo, programme coordinator of the Stefanus Foundation, told IRIN: “People are left to use whatever they can find around them for shelter and lavatories. There are no tents in the camps and some IDPs sleep in the open despite the cold weather.”
 
School-share
 
Some 600 IDPs are sleeping in Farin Gada primary school in Jos North, vacating the premises in the morning so children can attend class, said Lipdo.
 
“Many of us sleep in the open with no mattresses, beddings or blankets despite the cold, due to the shortage of classrooms,” said Halliru Musa.
 
The displaced children sleeping in the school cannot attend classes as their parents cannot afford to enrol them, said Lipdo.
 
School can be a normalizing environment after a trauma, said Mohammed of the Red Cross, but some children will need counselling in addition to help them move on after witnessing so much bloodshed. "We will try to intervene in this area in coming weeks," he told IRIN.
 
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