IRIN – As Burundi approaches elections designed to cap the country’s democratic transition after years of civil conflict, there is growing concern about worsening security and limits to political freedom.

“The situation is explosive,” Pierre Claver Mbonimpa, chairman of the Association for the Promotion of Human and Prisoner Rights (APRODH), told IRIN.

“Demobilised people [former members of now defunct armed groups] have become uncontrollable,” he said. (Read an IRIN story on the prevalence of weapons and political youth wings)

“Youths from the [ruling] CNDD-FDD party cause many problems in the country. But in reaction, the [opposition] FRODEBU youth has become very active. Judging by their name, Intakangwa, which means ‘those who cannot be frightened’, they are prepared to respond to any provocation,” said Mbonimpa.

Elections for councillors in Burundi’s 117 communes take place on 21 May. There is a presidential election on 28 June, a legislative poll on 23 July, and senators will be elected on 28 July. In September, Burundians will vote for heads of 2,639 “collines”, the country’s smallest administrative units.

“People are killed in their houses for unknown reasons,” according to François Bizimana, spokesman for the CNDD opposition party.

“When we organize meetings, the Imbonerakure break them up and beat our supporters,” he said, referring to the ruling party’s youth arm, whose name means “those with foresight

Read more – http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88313

 IRIN – For the many thousands of people displaced by conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s Kivu regions who have returned to their villages, home has its many hardships.

“Return has not always been durable, as the reduction of food rations in camps [for displaced people - IDPs] and the arrival of the new planting season rather than any improvement in security have led people to go back,” the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) stated in a 24 February report. 

“Many people returned home to find their land occupied, while renewed clashes in return areas also forced people to flee again soon after their arrival home,” it said.

Across eastern DRC, “access to basic necessities … has deteriorated over the last year in the context of military operations and reprisals and continuing abuses against the population. The vast majority of IDPs and returnees have no access to health centres and schools, or to clean water, food, seeds, tools or building materials,” according to the report.

During 2009, according to IDMC, about a million people returned to their villages in North and South Kivu – about the same number who fled because of clashes, mainly between government forces and Rwandan Hutu rebels.

In North and South Kivu, there are 1.36 million IDPs, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Read more – http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88269

IRIN – Failed rains in northern Burundi have left tens of thousands of people needing food aid and prompted many to seek work in neighbouring Rwanda to earn enough to feed their families.

Some 35,710 households (about 180,000 people) in Kirundo province require food and seeds, according to government officials and UN agencies*, who last week visited the province.

“It is clear that the population of the communes of Busoni, Bugabira and part of Kirundo face a food shortage that can even worsen if nothing is done,” said Floribert Kubwayezu of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Charles Dei, the humanitarian coordinator in Burundi, who also serves as country director of the World Food Programme (WFP), told IRIN that the lack of rain had adversely affected the January bean and maize harvest. This season accounts for 35 percent of Burundi’s total food production.

Read more – http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88209

The Guardian – The reconstruction of southern Sudan is being held back by World Bank bureaucracy and rich countries’ failure to deliver the money they promised, say government officials and development groups.

The region the size of France, which expects to become the world’s newest nation next year if a referendum leads to the expected secession of the south, was promised up to $2bn (£1.3bn) in aid by the international community when hostilities between it and the Arab north of the country ended in 2005.

But five years after the peace deal was struck, donors have provided only $524m and the region left shattered by 22 years of war and neglect is believed to be the poorest in the world – for the most part without schools, roads, a health service or safe drinking water.

“We are very frustrated. We feel we are trying to build a country from scratch, but we are being kept at square one. Less than 25% of the money that was pledged has come through. It has just trickled in. The infrastructural problems are vast,” said Lewis Gore George, director general of the southern Sudan planning ministry in Juba.

Read more – http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/18/southern-sudan-development-world-bank

PlusNews – Southern Sudan’s poor infrastructure, largely illiterate population and dearth of health facilities and workers mean that despite five years of peace, HIV programmes are still in their infancy.

There are no national-level statistics on HIV prevalence or incidence, further hampering the fight against the pandemic, but a 2007 site-specific antenatal surveillance by the US Centres for Disease control found prevalence levels ranging from as low as 0.8 percent in Leer, Unity State, to as high as 11.5 percent in Tambura, Western Equatoria State.

“We use an estimate of 3.1 percent for the south, and we know that the epidemic is more concentrated in big towns and areas near the border with our neighbours who have higher prevalence, such as Kenya and Uganda, but so far we have not conducted a survey of HIV indicators,” Bellario Ahoy Ngong, chairman of the South Sudan AIDS Commission (SSAC) told IRIN/PlusNews.

Read more – http://www.plusnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=87979

IRIN – Rival ethnic communities in northwestern Democratic Republic of Congo have clashed many times over the years, but most recently over fish, observers say.

More than 200 people have died and another 150,000 have fled to the neighbouring Republic of Congo (ROC) since October 2009, when fighting erupted between the Lobala and Boba clans in Dongo, Equateur Province.

The clash was triggered by two attacks against Boba villages, including one in July 2009, in which 200 homes were burnt down.

“The clashes could have been prevented – or at least curbed – had there been more oversight of the distribution of resources at the Iwandi pool,” said local analyst Polycarpe Nyalua.

Iwandi is one of the most prolific fishing spots along the River Ubangi which runs along the border between the two countries.

Read more – http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=87961

IRIN – Several states in Southern Sudan are facing food shortages due to widespread drought and conflict, officials said.

“The yield of the [sorghum] crop was generally poorer in some locations in 2009 than in 2008,” John Chuol, a member of a government team that conducted an assessment of the food situation in five states, said.

Read more – http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=87695

IPS – The hundreds of savings and loan cooperatives operating in South Kivu should be providing an opportunity to develop agriculture and fight food insecurity in the province, but few farmers have been able to take advantage.

Félicien Zozo Rukeratabaro, a human rights advocate for Social and Rural Action, an NGO based in the province’s main town of Bukavu, says “not one small-scale farmer is able to access financial support or credit from any of these cooperatives, which are primarily concerned with speculative transactions and activities only of immediate benefit to themselves.”

Read more – http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=49784

AfDB – The Board of Directors of the African Development Fund (ADF), the concessional window of the AfDB Group approved in Tunis on Tuesday, 17 November 2009, combined loans and grants worth USD 8.15 million to finance a multinational Railway Project Study in Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi.

The second phase of the Dar es Salaam-Isaka-Kigali/Keza-Musongati Railway project study will cover the existing 970-km Dar es Salaam-Isaka railway link and its extensions

Read more – http://www.afdb.org/en/news-events/article/afdb-approves-funding-for-burundi-rwanda-tanzania-railway-project-study-5399/

AFP – Southern Sudan faces potential famine and the risk of further ethnic conflict, with over one million people already hit by serious food insecurity, the UN Children?s Fund deputy head warned Sunday.

A second year of poor or badly timed rains, coupled with months of insecurity between rival ethnic groups, threatens to have a “serious impact” on children?s lives if swift action is not taken, said Hilde Johnson, deputy executive director of UNICEF, on a visit to Sudan.

Read more – http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091108/wl_africa_afp/sudansouthconflictfoodun_20091108152953