Follow @{0}Razed IDP camp in Côte d’Ivoire’s west. Activist worry that politics is overshadowing justice ABIDJAN, 29 January 2014 (IRIN) – With just a single trial concluded out of the 86 cases arising from Côte d’Ivoire’s 2010-2011 post-poll violence, concerns are emerging that justice is being undermined by political compromises. This week, 24 suspects were temporarily released after being detained for more than two years. President Alassane Ouattara had instructed the justice minister to grant freedom to some of the suspects in a bid to shore up reconciliation efforts. About a dozen other detainees were freed provisionally between November 2011…
Author: ARIN News
Follow @{0}Liberian authorities are cracking down on the sale of fake drugsMONROVIA, 29 January 2014 (IRIN) – Liberia’s Ministry of Health is launching a major crackdown on counterfeit drug sellers throughout the country, but Liberians say they have no choice but to buy such drugs, given their low cost and availability even in rural areas.In late 2013, the health ministry and the Pharmaceutical Board of Liberia intensified a campaign that began in July that year cracking down on peddlers of fake drugs. The campaign involved teams of monitors touring the country to ensure counterfeit drugs are not being sold, and…
Your views are important to us. IRIN is currently reviewing its work and we need to understand your views and priorities. Follow @{0}More than 1.6 million Guinean children to be vaccinated against measles following an outbreakDAKAR, 27 January 2014 (IRIN) – Health authorities in Guinea are scrambling to contain a measles outbreak that has killed one child, infected 37 others and spread to half of the country’s 33 districts.More than 400 suspected cases, nearly all of them in children under 10 years old, have been registered. A vaccination campaign targeting over 1.6 million children is to be launched in the…
Follow @{0}Discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS in Cameroon is widespread YAOUNDE, 23 January 2014 (IRIN) – People living with HIV/AIDS in Cameroon, which has the highest prevalence of the disease in West and Central Africa, endure widespread stigma, with some facing difficulties obtaining bank loans or suffering mistreatment at hospitals, patients and observers say.“Many HIV/AIDS carriers in Cameroon are victims of a common practice of discrimination in professional circles and in service institutions such as banks, insurance companies and in hospitals,” said Isaac Bissala, the head of Cameroon Workers’ Union.“HIV is still considered a terminal disease despite the fact…
Follow @{0}Cameroon has embarked on a four-month crackdown of illegal clinicsYAOUNDE, 21 January 2014 (IRIN) – Cameroon is cracking down on more than a thousand illegal clinics and medical training institutions that have sprung up mainly in the capital, Yaoundé, and the coastal city of Douala.Some clinics simply operate without a licence; others are run illegally from private homes. Some owners clandestinely use licences obtained under a so-called Common Initiative Group (CIG) – a government scheme to ease the establishment of not-for-profit self-help groups, which are exempt from taxation and need no proof of initial capital – to run clinics.More…
MEZEIN TERCHITT/NOUAKCHOTT, 16 January 2014 (IRIN) – For decades in the Sahel, working-age men have left their rural villages to find work in regional towns or capital cities, returning to plant or harvest crops when possible. Mauritania is no exception, but the phenomenon is particularly pronounced here, say several aid agencies, with village after village devoid of working-age men, a dynamic that is starting to have other social implications. NGOs Caritas and Action Against Hunger (ACF) estimate over 75 percent of working-age men in villages across Guidimakha and Gorgol regions have left for towns in the region or for Nouakchott,…
NOMBORI, 16 January 2014 (IRIN) – The region around Bandiagara, in central Mali’s Mopti Region, is struggling to cope with the dual crises of successive poor harvests and the near-total collapse of its once-thriving tourist industry. Nestled among giant boulders at the base of the Bandiagara Escarpment is the mud-built village of Nombori, home to around 1,200 ethnic Dogon people. There, Pilif Guindo’s small clinic is struggling to cope with a steady increase in child malnutrition. The clinic sees 15 new cases of malnutrition per week, a threefold increase in as many years, explains Guindo, a doctor who practices both…
Follow @{0}Bissau-Guineans will go to the polls in March to end yet another post-coup regimeDAKAR, 16 January 2014 (IRIN) – Guinea-Bissau will hold elections on 16 March to end yet another post-coup regime, with many hoping the polls will help calm an internecine and drawn-out instability. Observers believe that a political coalition and deeper commitment by the international community after the polls can shore up the country’s recovery. Multiple coups and assassinations have marred the West African country’s political history since the first free polls in 1994. Corruption and misrule have bogged down governance and public services, and over the…
Critics say Côte d’Ivoire’s truth panel has failed to reconcile the country after past conflicts ABIDJAN, 13 January 2014 (IRIN) – Côte d’Ivoire’s Dialogue, Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CDVR) recently concluded its two-year mandate with a report detailing rights violations and the causes of past conflicts, but observers lambasted the panel for failing to help heal divisions and said that some of its findings were already well known. Established in September 2011, the CDVR was tasked with investigating past human rights violations. However, the scope was not clearly defined. In November last year, it handed President Alassane Ouattara its report…
Follow @{0}About a century after she says she was born in CAR, Rame Higa is heading for Chad after her home was torched and two sons killed.BANGUI, 9 January 2014 (IRIN) – Almost 20,000 people of Chadian origin have left violence in the Central African Republic (CAR) in recent weeks, and many more are expected to join the exodus, which is straining humanitarian capacity in Chad, a country many of those fleeing have never lived in.“Those of us who were born here are Central Africans, but we are treated like foreigners. We have never seen Chad but have to go…