Les Autres Sources d'Informations

GUINEA: Political crisis only sharpens daily hardship
DAKAR Friday, November 06, 2009 (IRIN) - Even when Guinea is not facing political crisis and reeling from a massacre, daily life is gruelling for many and instability is never far away. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in a September 2009 report says Guinea is “volatile” due to a combination of sharp economic decline; widespread and chronic poverty; limited access to basic services like health, water and sanitation; and persistent political instability.

GUINEA: Timeline since independence
DAKAR Wednesday, November 04, 2009 (IRIN) - International pressure is mounting on the junta in Guinea following the deadly 28 September military crackdown on demonstrators, with West African leaders imposing an arms embargo and the UN and the International Criminal Court launching probes into the attack that witnesses call "indescribably brutal". The latest violence stunned even a nation with a long history of military repression of civilians – an era Guineans had hoped would pass with the death of 24-year leader Lansana Conté and arrival of Moussa Dadis Camara in December 2008. Here is a timeline of some events since independence from France in 1958.

AFRICA: Turning to traditional medicines in fight against malaria
NAIROBI Wednesday, November 04, 2009 (IRIN) - Encouraging the use of traditional African herbal medicines could prevent some of the one million malarial deaths on the continent, according to specialists attending a conference www.mimalaria.org/pamc in Nairobi. Many poor communities, especially in rural settings, cannot afford modern malarial drugs and many people die due to inaccessibility of treatment.

GUINEA: Caravans and kola nuts - keeping a lid on communal tensions
DAKAR Friday, October 30, 2009 (IRIN) - Local civil society activists say Guinea's latest political crisis has taken on an ethnic dimension in N’zérékoré - junta leader Moussa Dadis Camara’s home region - which has an ethnically mixed population and has experienced communal clashes before.

AFRICA: AU pushes the envelope on "climate migrants"
JOHANNESBURG Thursday, October 29, 2009 (IRIN) - An African international agreement has opened the door to a debate on the rights and protection of people displaced by natural disasters, with a nod to migration as a result of climate change.

GUINEA: Youths on hunger strike for "dialogue", "justice"
DAKAR Wednesday, October 28, 2009 (IRIN) - Youths in the Guinea capital Conakry went on hunger strike on 28 October - one month after the deadly military attack on civilians - to call for political dialogue, an end to violence and the arrest of those who attacked demonstrators.

Analysis: African IDP convention fills a void in humanitarian law
KAMPALA Tuesday, October 27, 2009 (IRIN) - The African Union Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa is a comprehensive document that will, if ratified, fill a void in international humanitarian law, say experts.

AFRICA: Electronic records can streamline health care
NAIROBI Tuesday, October 27, 2009 (IRIN) - Replacing manual data with electronic health records would significantly improve the quality of care and enable African HIV treatment programmes to be scaled up more efficiently, say the authors of a new article on the subject.

AFRICA: Digesting a "mouthful" of climate change
MIDRAND Tuesday, October 27, 2009 (IRIN) - Disaster risk reduction as a tool for climate change adaptation is a "technical mouthful" said Rachel Shebesh, chair of the African Parliamentarian Initiative for Climate Risk Reduction.

GUINEA: Food prices climb amid unrest
CONAKRY Tuesday, October 27, 2009 (IRIN) - Prices of rice, sugar, oil and other basic foods have risen sharply in the Guinea capital Conakry in the tense weeks following a deadly military crackdown on civilians.

AFRICA: IDP convention - now the hard work begins
KAMPALA Monday, October 26, 2009 (IRIN) - Seventeen countries signed the African Union convention on internally displaced persons (IDPs) after years of preparation culminated in a week of meetings in the Ugandan capital but a lot more hard work remains before it becomes effective, according to observers.

AFRICA: Climate change could worsen displacement - UN
KAMPALA Friday, October 23, 2009 (IRIN) - With increasing natural disasters, including floods, storms and droughts, hitting the continent, more people in Africa are likely to be displaced, creating a challenge for governments, the UN warns.

COTE D'IVOIRE-GUINEA: UN expands aid to Ivoirian refugees
DAKAR Friday, October 23, 2009 (IRIN) - UN aid agencies are expanding assistance to Ivoirian refugees in Guinea, for whom aid plans have been thrown off repeatedly by gridlock over elections and general uncertainty in Côte d’Ivoire.

AFRICA: Talking about forced displacement
KAMPALA Thursday, October 22, 2009 (IRIN) - Civil society and government officials are gathered in the Ugandan capital of Kampala to discuss the Convention on the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Africa and a declaration on refugees, returnees and IDPs.

WEST AFRICA: Humanitarian stockpile takes shape - on paper
BAMAKO Wednesday, October 21, 2009 (IRIN) - When a storm hits in Togo, disaster relief items must be flown in from Brindisi, Italy, but that is just too far, according to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which is formalizing the region’s first government-operated humanitarian stockpile in Mali’s capital Bamako.

GUINEA: Aid groups mobilize to help wounded
DAKAR Wednesday, October 21, 2009 (IRIN) - Aid agencies are mobilizing funds and relief supplies to help more than 1,000 Guineans injured in 28 September violence, as well as to brace for further unrest as the country remains “very volatile”, according to the UN.

AFRICA: Shining the spotlight on the displaced
NAIROBI Thursday, October 15, 2009 (IRIN) - Forty years after the rights of Africa’s refugees were enshrined in a landmark convention, the continent’s leaders are due to make legal history again by adopting a new instrument to assist people displaced within the borders of their own country.

AFRICA: Africa's IDP situation at a glance
NAIROBI Thursday, October 15, 2009 (IRIN) - Africa hosts at least 11 million of the world's 25 million conflict-affected IDPs. Millions more are displaced annually by natural disasters.

AFRICA: Africa's IDPs in numbers
NAIROBI Thursday, October 15, 2009 (IRIN) - Most IDPs in Africa have been forced out of their homes by conflict, either between government forces and armed opponents or between communities.

AFRICA: The objectives of the IDP Convention
NAIROBI Thursday, October 15, 2009 (IRIN) - The objectives of the Convention

GUINEA - GUINEA-BISSAU: Driving home the cholera message
BISSAU Thursday, October 15, 2009 (IRIN) - In Bafata, Guinea-Bissau, children go door-to-door counting mosquito nets, monitoring hand-washing and checking distance between kitchens and latrines. The activities are among efforts by health NGOs and authorities to fill the gap between cholera-prevention messages and behaviour, after a 2008 epidemic killed some 220 people and infected at least 13,000.

WEST AFRICA: Stopping cholera emergencies
DAKAR Thursday, October 15, 2009 (IRIN) - Cholera outbreaks in West Africa generally trigger extra hand-washings in households and panic-buying of bleach for treating water. But beating the deadly – but easily preventable – illness requires that such hygiene practices become routine, health experts say.

In Brief: When health facilities become casualties
DAKAR Wednesday, October 14, 2009 (IRIN) - Designed to be safe havens in times of disaster, health facilities are vulnerable to upheaval when catastrophe strikes, according to the UN, which is focusing on hospital safety for International Day for Disaster Reduction.

GUINEA: In the aftermath of rape
DAKAR Friday, October 09, 2009 (IRIN) - At an 8 October gathering of Guinean women beaten or raped during the recent military attack on demonstrators, all wept as one young woman presented torn clothes soldiers had ripped off of her. “We all collapsed in tears. It is unspeakably painful what happened here in Guinea,” Aïssata Daffe of the Union des Forces Républicaines political party told IRIN.

AFRICA: Fighting the "double whammy" of obesity and hunger
BANGKOK Thursday, October 08, 2009 (IRIN) - Africa faces a double burden of obesity and hunger as millions take up increasingly sedentary lives in cities and the global financial crisis hits rural populations’ food security, nutritionists warn.