COTE D'IVOIRE: November poll officially canceled, new date to be announced
OUAGADOUGOU, 11 November 2008 (IRIN) - A high-level group overseeing Côte d’Ivoire’s peace process has called on the electoral commission to meet with political leaders and civil society to decide a new date for presidential elections.
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WEST AFRICA: Remittances set to fall in 2009
DAKAR, 11 November 2008 (IRIN) - For the first time in over a decade remittances to sub-Saharan Africa are set to fall in 2009, increasing people’s vulnerability to poverty, officials at the World Bank say. Remittance income in developing countries is expected to decline by about 1 percent from 2008 to 2009.
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COTE D'IVOIRE: Appeal for help to stop violence against women
DAKAR, 10 November 2008 (IRIN) - As Côte d’Ivoire focuses on restoring stability and holding presidential elections, women’s organisations say stopping violence against women and girls must be an urgent priority. They are appealing to the international community for help in the fight.
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COTE D'IVOIRE: Rights groups warn against "elections at all costs”
DAKAR, 31 October 2008 (IRIN) - As Ivorians wonder how much longer they will have to wait for a long-overdue presidential election, human rights groups warn that failing to ensure a fair election would plunge the country into chaos.
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COTE D'IVOIRE: “Alarming” malnutrition in north
DAKAR, 24 October 2008 (IRIN) - In Côte d’Ivoire government health officials and aid agencies are launching emergency feeding and special nutritional training in the north to respond to what nutrition experts call “alarming” malnutrition levels.
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COTE D'IVOIRE: Election board suspends voter registration
ABIDJAN, 24 October 2008 (IRIN) - Côte d’Ivoire’s electoral commission on 23 October suspended for two days the long-delayed voter registration operation, throwing into deeper uncertainty the timing of a presidential poll seen as indispensable to restoring stability.
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WEST AFRICA: Taking on climate change as a region
COTONOU, 23 October 2008 (IRIN) - Climate experts and ministers in West Africa have committed to coordinating national efforts to fight climate change, at the conclusion of an Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) meeting in Benin’s economic capital, Cotonou, on 22 October.
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COTE D'IVOIRE: “Rapes are encouraged”
DAKAR, 21 October 2008 (IRIN) - Rapes of women and girls are common in western Côte d’Ivoire and generally go unpunished, said residents of the region. “These days nearly every time we hear of armed robberies in homes, on the roads or on plantations, we hear of rape,” said a resident of the western town of Duékoué some 500km from the commercial capital Abidjan, who wanted to remain anonymous.
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WEST AFRICA: Tiny fonio cereal may hold big answers in food crisis
DAKAR, 17 October 2008 (IRIN) - Despite growing for centuries in some of the driest, toughest agricultural zones of West Africa, the fonio cereal has been neglected by most agricultural development programmes, according to the World Bank. But skyrocketing rice price increases that have slammed rice-dependent West Africa and declining profits in other cash crops like cotton have some local producers turning back to the ancient cereal.
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WEST AFRICA: Train the soldiers, protect the children
DAKAR, 17 October 2008 (IRIN) - An international NGO is using cartoons to spell out to African soldiers the rights and wrongs of how to treat a child.
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