There are neither hens nor goats in sight, the cooking fires have long been extinguished, houses are padlocked from outside and the village is deserted. Boho 2, a tiny village in the west of Côte d’Ivoire, is now a ghost town. A little farther on, residents have also emptied out of Dierouzon after the once bustling market town was targetted in several bloody attacks by unidentified armed men.
The impoverished West African nation of Benin was counting votes on Monday after the first round of its presidential election dragged on late into the night under the shadow of fraud claims. Polling, which had been due to end at 4pm on Sunday, was prolonged until past midnight in some areas because of logistical problems.
No image available
/ 11 January 2006
Defeated in the field by a bloody military crackdown, Nigeria’s home-grown Islamic insurgency has dispersed amid the dusty back streets of the country’s teeming northern cities and is plotting its comeback. Small numbers of militants await the moment to re-launch their campaign for a Muslim revolution in Africa’s most populous state.
No image available
/ 8 December 2005
It is time to rethink the strategies used so far in the fight against HIV/Aids as they have shown their limitations, particularly in Africa, according to Michel Sidibe, the Malian who is deputy head of UNAids, the body coordinating the fight against the
pandemic.
No image available
/ 15 September 2004
One of two rebel movements engaged in peace talks with Sudan’s government, mediated by the African Union, said on Wednesday the negotiations over the Darfur region have collapsed and could be suspended for weeks. The AU-mediated talks in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, are a bid to end the conflict that erupted in west Sudan in 2003.
Health workers in the northern Nigerian state of Kano will on Saturday launch a drive to immunise more than four million infants against polio, despite ongoing opposition from Islamic radicals. Since August last year, Kano has become the epicentre of the world’s fastest-growing outbreak of the crippling virus.
No image available
/ 15 December 2003
Wedged tightly together, about 2 000 young Liberian fighters wait in front of a crumbling building, their every move watched closely by a wary band of Bangladeshi and Jordanian peacekeepers.
No image available
/ 15 October 2003
A day after being sworn in as Liberia’s interim leader, Gyude Bryant embarked on the uphill task of rebuilding a country battered by more than a decade of war. His first job is to disarm former fighters in the two wars the country has suffered since 1989, leaving it with a generation of youths whose dominant culture is that of the gun.
No image available
/ 13 October 2003
Liberia was poised on Monday for the inauguration of a transitional government after 14 years of almost uninterrupted civil war, but ordinary people had little to cheer about as hardships persisted. ”Nothing has changed, the situation is even worse for us here,” said 51-year-old Edward Konuwa.
The UN children’s agency has set its sights on efforts to take thousands of child soldiers off the streets where they have been used as frontline gunmen by both government and rebel forces in Liberia’s devastating wars.