Hotels in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, have given members of Somalia’s transitional government up to Wednesday to vacate the rooms they have occupied for almost three years, a Somalian MP said on Wednesday. Another member of the Nairobi-based transitional federal Parliament said the notice was not a surprise.
The United Nations is looking into how best to resolve the problem of internally displaced persons worldwide, a senior UN official has said, describing internal displacement as a neglected humanitarian issue. More attention will be paid to eight countries with acute IDP problems, which include Nepal, Somalia and Sudan.
Ethiopian and Sudanese tribal fighters attacked and killed nine people in separate cattle raids in Kenya, officials said on Tuesday. Toposa fighters from southern Sudan gunned down five members of one family, including two schoolchildren, during a raid on Monday in the Turkana district of north-western Kenya.
Somalia’s government will not abandon plans to return from exile and establish itself in the country, a presidential spokesperson said on Tuesday, a day after militias loyal to rival Somali lawmakers fought for control of the town of Baidoa.
The Kenyan government is drafting a Bill that will outlaw smoking or holding lit tobacco products in public places, the country’s top physician said on Monday, a day ahead of World No Tobacco day. Among the provisions of the law are an increase tax on tobacco by 15% and penalties for those found smoking in public.
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki has fired a senior prosecutor involved in dropping murder charges against a prominent British aristocrat accused of killing a Maasai game warden, officials said on Thursday. He ”had to go because he acted unprofessionally when handling the case”, a senior government official said.
World media chiefs meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, demanded action on Tuesday from the Gambian government on the as-yet unsolved December murder of a journalist, and pilloried the country for repressing the independent press. Deyda Hydara, the co-founder and editor of the independent newspaper The Point, was killed last year.
World press chiefs are gathering in Nairobi, Kenya, for a conference next week amid growing criticism of Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki’s government for alleged deterioriation in media freedom. The Vienna-based International Press Institute kicks off its annual three-day general assembly in Nairobi on Sunday.
A United States-funded famine-monitoring group on Thursday warned of continued food shortage in Somalia unless it rains in the country’s breadbasket southern region. Famine Early Warning System Network said about a million people are in need of humanitarian support in the Horn of Africa country.
Kenyan Immigration Minister Linah Chebii Kilimo personally led police to the rescue of five Indian women immigrants who were being forced to sing in a plush nightclub and locked up during the day, officials said on Thursday. Kilimo stormed into the nightclub in upmarket Parklands estate late on Tuesday.
The Merowe/Hamadab dam being built on the Nile River in northern Sudan could cause serious environmental problems, two environmental advocacy groups have warned. The dam is currently the largest hydropower project being developed in Africa and is expected to be completed between 2007 and 2009.
A magistrate dropped assault charges against Kenyan First Lady Lucy Kibaki after the attorney general said neither police nor prosecutors have had time to investigate whether she had slapped a television news cameraman on World Press Freedom Day. ”I’m so disappointed,” the cameraman said after hearing the ruling.
A recent statement by Kenyan Minister of Justice Kiraitu Murungi that it is ”no longer necessary” for the country to establish a commission to investigate atrocities committed under previous governments has been greeted with both outrage and delight. The promise to set up such a body, was one of the key pledges made during the current head of state’s campaign for office.
Kenya on Tuesday dropped murder charges against a prominent white rancher over the killing of a game warden for lack of sufficient evidence, the country’s top prosecutor said, as officials blamed police for rushing a flimsy case to court. The high-profile charge has rekindled deep colonial-era resentment.
Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Gedi has sacked his information minister, seen as too close to powerful Somali warlords, amid a deepening split in the fledging transitional government still exiled in Kenya, officials said on Tuesday. Gedi fired Mohamoud Abdullahi Jama over the weekend.
As Ethiopia prepares for weekend elections, its human rights record has come under increasing criticism from watchdogs who believe the poll has already been marred by myriad abuses. Human Rights Watch accused Addis Ababa of taking advantage of a fight against the outlawed Oromo Liberation Front to justify the torture, imprisonment and sustained harassment of its critics.
At least 75 people have been reported killed and thousands more displaced in southern Sudan’s Lakes State since interclan violence, sparked by cattle rustling and disputes over pasture and water, erupted on April 24, aid workers said on Wednesday.
A Kenyan judge on Friday ordered a prominent white rancher to await trial on a capital murder charge in a maximum-security prison, rejecting a defence request for the British aristocrat to be held in less austere confines. The rancher is accused of murdering an undercover Kenya Wildlife Service officer at his vast ranch on April 19.
Calls for debt relief to be awarded to African countries have become de rigueur in non-governmental circles and a good many news publications. But does the matter crop up during dinner conversations across the continent? Is it sufficiently important to crowd out sports talk among people riding minibus taxis on their way to work?
Few would dispute that community radio stations play a valuable role in informing people about events in their neighbourhood — and give a voice to those who might be denied a platform by larger media organisations. It’s a shame, then, that governments often hamper the development of community radio.
The United States has issued a drought alert for Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia, warning that conditions in parts of the Horn of Africa countries threaten starvation, water shortages and diseases. The alert was issued on Wednesday in Washington by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
British Airways (BA) has severed ties with ailing Kenyan carrier Regional Air which this month was forced to suspend all flights for six days over a cash-flow crisis. Under the 2001 franchise agreement, Regional Air had been using BA’s flag and flight numbers to its destinations in East and Southern Africa which include Khartoum, Asmara, Djibouti, Johannesburg, Lilongwe, Lusaka and Harare.
A Kenyan lawmaker known for linguistic improvisation was briefly detained by authorities this week for allegedly composing a song that mocks President Mwai Kibaki and his wife, police said on Thursday. MP Reuben Ndolo was arrested and questioned on Wednesday in Kenya’s Eastern Province.
Last week’s call by the United Nations Population Fund to governments to increase spending on reproductive health may prove to be hard for Kenya to implement. Kenya has no budgetary allocation for reproductive health. Concerns are mounting that without state commitment to provide family planning in Kenya, maternal mortality may continue to rise.
Ethnic clashes, blamed on competition for increasingly scarce water and grazing, are sweeping northern Kenya, as drought and famine intensify in the neglected region. Since the beginning of the year, more than 100 people have been killed in renewed violence perpetrated under the cover of long-simmering ethnic animosities, and fueled by the myriad conflicts which surround northern Kenya.
The mandate of the peacekeepers patrolling a buffer zone between the warring parties in Côte d’Ivoire has been extended for one month by the United Nations Security Council. The short extension, approved late on Monday, will allow the UN and France to monitor progress at peace talks between the government and the rebels.
Amnesty International (AI), the British-based human rights watchdog, has accused Kenyan authorities of violating the rights of terror suspects in the East African country — and called for an immediate end to these alleged abuses. "We do not support terrorism. However, measures to prevent terrorism can only be effective if they also guarantee and protect human rights," said a researcher on Kenyan issues for AI.
The crisis over the relocation from exile of Somalia’s transitional government deepened on Wednesday as powerful warlords said they will move to impeach President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed. Warlords controlling the capital of Mogadishu said they will introduce a no-confidence motion against Yusuf in Parliament and seek his removal.
Somalia’s transitional government-in-exile met in Nairobi, Kenya, on Tuesday in a bid to bridge deep divisions over plans to relocate to the war-shattered nation that are now in chaos, officials said. But with inter-clan tensions still running high, there was no indication that Tuesday’s meeting would yield any immediate consensus, the officials said.
Somalia’s transitional leaders met in Nairobi on Friday in a bid to restore order to a heated parliamentary debate over a controversial peacekeeping mission to their anarchic country that degenerated into a bloody brawl. A spokesperson said President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed had called for political dialogue and harmony.
The United Nations believes that more than 180 000 people may have died in the troubled Darfur region in western Sudan. According to the UN’s top emergency coordination official, Jan Egeland, the number refers to people who have died of malnutrition and disease, and does not cover those who have been killed in the conflict.
The United Nations Security Council on Monday extended the mandate of the United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (Unmee) until 15 September 2005, and called on both countries to refrain from any threat of use of force against each other.