Guinea fell five spots in the 2008 ranking of perceptions of corruption released by the watchdog non-profit Transparency International (TI). Officials say Guinea’s deteriorating reputation for corruption can threaten city services, choke economic growth and increase drug trafficking. Guinea’s TI representative, Mamadou Taran Diallo, told IRIN Guinea is paralysed in its efforts to wipe out corruption. “Guinea’s rank at 173, tied with Chad and Sudan, out of 180 countries is a clear and persistent sign our country is stuck at the bottom.” Guinea ranked last year 168 out of 179 countries, which was a slight improvement over 2006 when Guinea was perceived to be the fourth most corrupt country in the world. “We need to move past talking about fighting to corruption to actually doing something.” said Diallo.
|
|||||
 IRIN  26/09/2008Thousands of young girls annually prepare for their initiation into a women’s secret association, Sande Society, which operates mostly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. As part of their initiation, young women take a vow of secrecy after weeks of training in the forest, promising not to not tell uninitiated girls or men what happens to them, to assume new names, and to have their clitorises cut off – known as female genital mutilation (FGM) – according to women in the secret society. About half of Liberia’s some 16 ethnic groups, including the Bassa, Mende, Gola and Kissi, observe the rules of this historically-secret, centuries-old society. One Mende member from Tubmanburg, Western Liberia, who asked not to be named, told IRIN removing a girl’s clitoris helps her become a “prolific child bearer.” Another member, 42-year-old Jebbeh Sonneh, explained to IRIN, “Those who perform such [FGM] acts are typically elderly women in the community designated for the task, or traditional birth attendants.” http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=80571
IRIN 26/09/2008For 17 years, the Sweden-based non-profit Eden Foundation has been working with hundreds of farmers in one of Niger’s most arid zones to disprove the reigning logic that the desert is a tough place to nurture plant- and human- life through its research and free seed distribution. Coordinator Josef Garvi told IRIN nature has abundant answers to Niger’s perennial food insecurity problems, but “people are not looking close enough. They look for quick answers, handouts from international aid agencies, big expensive hard-to-maintain irrigation projects, or programmes that help politicians look good, but do little to help farmers.” On a budget of about US$100,000 a year, the 13-person Zinder-based team in eastern Niger, about 900 km east of the capital Niamey, travels a few times a week to its testing station more than 100 kilometres away to check on plots of plants, divided by varieties, and years planted. They have been monitoring these trees in a two-decade-long desert planting experiment. IRIN 26/09/2008Poor rains and rising rice prices have contributed to increasing malnutrition to alarming levels in at least three regions of Senegal. Following a rapid assessment in July 2008 by the UN and the Ministry of Health, the government has confirmed a malnutrition crisis in three of the five surveyed regions, with the most critical being Matam, where 17 percent of the children surveyed under five years old are malnourished. Researchers surveyed Matam, Gossas, Guinguineo, Sedhiou and Goudomp, and concluded Matam, Guinguineo and Goudomp require immediate food assistance, while the other two regions require continued monitoring. Youssouf Gaye, the head of the Food, Nutrition and Children division at the Ministry of Health, told IRIN Matam’s numbers are the most alarming of the five regions. Of the 670 children surveyed, 117 are malnourished. IRIN 26/09/2008The Nigerian government has announced it is unprepared for the tens of thousands of returnees who have fled the southern Bakassi province over the past month, and is calling on the UN to help it handle the unexpected return. Up to 76,000 returnees have registered at 12 sites in Akwa Ibom and Cross River states, according to Victor Antai, council chairman of Mbo, one of the sites in Akwa Ibom. “We never envisaged such a flow of returnees,” Florence Ita-Giwa, head of the presidential task force on the resettlement and rehabilitation of Nigerian returnees, told IRIN. “It is because the situation in Bakassi [now under Cameroonian control] after the [14 August] handover has not been conducive, so they had to flee back to Nigeria. We had thought many of them would have stayed for at least a few more years.” IRIN 26/09/2008Unless the Chad government includes rebels in reconciliation talks, the country will continue to face security threats and political crises, says the International Crisis Group (ICG) in its 25 September report. A permanent ceasefire has eluded the violence-wracked country even after numerous rounds of government-rebel peace negotiations since conflict surged again in December 2005. The report calls for better distribution of oil money, radical government reform and revived talks between Chad and Sudan to end their support of each other’s rebel groups. ICG describes the August 2007 EU-brokered peace deal as flawed, in that it tried to build democracy through elections without helping to create the necessary conditions for successful elections. “The Chadian crisis goes way beyond what [the] August 13 [agreement] can achieve,” the ICG’s deputy director for Africa, Daniela Kroslak told IRIN. “We have to look at.decentralising the state authority, and security sector and judicial reforms – all of which are components without which democracy cannot thrive.” http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=80616
IRIN 26/09/2008The riparian livelihoods of more than 40,000 people in southeast Kenya are under threat because of the sudden change of course of the Tana River, the longest in the country. “They lost access to the food supplements they had from fishing; the farmers now have no water for irrigation and many people now have no milk as pastoralists have driven their livestock out of the area in search of water,” Tana Delta District Officer, Benson Karani, told IRIN. [ Full report: http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=80520 ] IRIN 26/09/2008The government of the Republic of Congo has ordered the demolition of all unauthorized makeshift petrol stations located in residential areas in a move to prevent risks posed by the unsafe storage of fuel. “We have decided to close these informal fuel stations to preserve life,” Charles Alain Obanga, the Secretary General of l’Agence de Regulation de l’Aval Petrolier (ARAP), the national fuel body, told IRIN in the capital Brazzaville. “These products are dangerous, their sale and usage needs to be done with respect to hygiene, security and the environment,” he said adding that those selling fuel illegally would pay fines and face imprisonment. [Full report: http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=80570] IRIN 26/09/2008Years ago, Mammert Buregeya, a 54-year-old displaced Burundian Tutsi, would probably have refused to live in Muriza “peace village” because that would bring him close to Hutu returnees. “Suspicion between Tutsi IDPs [internally displaced persons] and Hutu returnees is something of the past,” he said after accepting the offer of a house in Muriza in August. [Full report: http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=80604] IRIN 26/09/2008An international NGO has suspended its activities following attacks on its workers in Ituri District, Orientale Province, in north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a senior official said. “One of our workers was killed and two others injured,” Arnaud Havet, the project manager with the German NGO Agro Action Allemande told IRIN. The personnel were attacked by an armed group while repairing a road along the Bunia-Iga-Nioka highway, in the territory of Djugu on 15 September. [Full report: http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=80588] |
|||||
|
Copyright © 2010 AfricaVision Online - All Rights Reserved - Powered by DIRECTINPUTOUTPUT EUVAT:IT07815010017 |
|||||
English
Français 
Italiano