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SOMALIA: Committee to investigate financial practices
The Transitional National Government (TNG) has set up a cabinet committee to look into reported differences between the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank, a senior TNG official told IRIN. The differences are over whether the ministry or the bank should have overall control of government funds, local sources told IRIN.
The TNG director of information, Abdirahman Dinari, said the seven-member committee, headed by Minister of Reconstruction and Resettlement Abdullah Ga'al Abdi, was set up on 28 June, to look into the "division of labour" between the bank and the ministry. It has three cabinet officers and four financial experts, Dinari said, and was expected to make recommendations on how the two government departments should work together.
Local sources told IRIN that the problem began when Finance Minister Sayyid Ahmad Shaykh Dahir, insisted that all government cheques would be issued by the ministry as opposed to the bank, as under the last Somali government. The differences surfaced last week after members of the National Transitional Assembly (TNA) accused the TNG of corruption in connection with money reportedly missing. The finance minister is said to have told the TNA that US $3.5 million had been misappropriated, implicating himself, the prime minister and the governor of the Central Bank. The accusations have subsequently been denied.
A member of the Mogadishu business community told IRIN that there was "hope that the committee will recommend that either the governor or the minister should go, if not both." The TNG could not afford to retain top officers who were unable to agree on what their responsibilities were, he said.
SOMALIA: Minister denies corruption charges
The finance minister of the Transitional National Government (TNG), Sayyid Ahmad Shaykh Dahir, denied making accusations of corruption to the Transitional National Assembly (TNA) last week. He said the controversy centred around a cheque for US $1 million dollars given to Prime Minister Ali Khalif Galaydh. Dahir told IRIN he had not accused Galaydh of taking the cheque for personal use, but that he had told the TNA that it had been issued for "the settling of government bills, including the hotel bills accumulated since October last year, and other items of government expenditure approved by the TNA and the cabinet".
Sayyid Ahmad said his address to the TNA had been "misinterpreted" by local and international media. It was reported that he had said Galaydh had obtained a cheque for US $1 million from the treasury, which was unaccounted for, while the governor of the Central Bank, Mahmud Muhammad Ulusow, had received US $750,000. Sayyid Ahmad said the governor of the Central Bank had received the US $730,000 to cover the requirements of the auction of dollars to bring down inflation. Another US $300,000 had been spent on repaying a loan to the TNG by the Barakat Bank. He told IRIN the finance ministry was prepared to open its books to anyone wishing to examine them, and that he intended to issue a list of all the finance ministry's items of expenditure in conformity with the relevant vouchers.
Meanwhile, the prime minister's office also denied the accusations of corruption. Umar Qadi, the head of policy planning in the prime minister's office, told IRIN on Tuesday that the prime minister had physically showed the cheque in question to the TNA on 28 June, and explained what it was for.
ETHIOPIA: Ethiopian Airlines controversy over students
University and college students studying in the northern Ethiopian towns of Bahir Dar and Mekele have been banned from flying Ethiopian Airlines, the BBC said on 2 July. Students seeking to travel home for the summer holidays were told to find other means of transport, and complained of discrimination. Ethiopian airlines has denied the charge.
The ban follows student riots in Addis Ababa, and the hijacking of an Ethiopian military aircraft by student pilots in April. It had been flying from Bahir Dar to Khartoum, in Sudan. The order for the ban was reportedly issued by Ethiopia's security and immigration authority in an attempt to tighten security, the BBC said.
Ethiopian Airlines denied it had received any orders to bar students from boarding flights. The BBC quoted the Ethiopian Airlines chief of public affairs, Aba Milki, as saying the airline would "board anyone who has a ticket, and we have not been ordered by the government to prevent students from travelling. We do not discriminate against any of our passengers." The airline explained that full-paying customers were given priority over students who travel on discount tickets.
ERITREA-SUDAN: More than 20,000 refugees repatriated
Another 1,500 Eritreans left in a convoy of trucks from refugee camps in eastern Sudan, in a UNHCR operation that has seen more than 20,000 people repatriated to Eritrea since 12 May. A UNHCR statement said on Tuesday that a target figure had been reached for repatriation before the onset of the rainy seasons, which will slow down the operation and possibly suspend it from hard-to-reach sites. "To beat the weather and get more returnees home in time for the planting season, UNHCR will operate several additional convoys before heavy rains expected to start in mid-July make many roads in the area impassable." Such conditions are likely to last until the beginning of October.
The statement said those repatriated on Tuesday were from Wad Sherife, Gulsa and Lafa camps in Sudan. The majority of the 569 returning families were from Wad Sherife camp and had been living in exile for decades, UNHCR said. Refugees in Gulsa and Lafa fled to Sudan last year during the Ethiopia-Eritrea border conflict. UNHCR said it would begin on Wednesday an information campaign and start registration for repatriation for Eritrean refugees living in Port Sudan. A ship would be used to repatriate Eritreans by sea from Port Sudan to the Eritrean town of Masawa while rains slow overland operations, UNHCR said. There are around 4,000 Eritrean refugees living in camps in Port Sudan, with several times that number in the town itself, according to government figures.
SUDAN: Human rights "worse than one year ago"
Human rights violations are on the rise in Sudan, marked by abductions, arbitrary arrests and the forced displacement of people, according to UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Sudan, Gerhart Baum. "The situation now is worse than one year ago," the Associated Press agency (AP) quoted Baum as saying at a press conference in Britain on 27 June.
"It is a fact that oil is fuelling the war," the agency quoted Baum as saying. "It is not a religious war. Religion is misused... It is a power struggle." Baum said many of the human rights violations in Sudan were happening under the cover of war, AP reported. The US and Europe had a responsibility to "help the country come to peace," he said, criticising the approach of those who believed that Sudan should be isolated until the human rights situation improved.
The UN system in Khartoum, while not involved in monitoring the human rights situation in Sudan, is engaged with the government in a technical assistance programme with a view to establishing and improving institutions for the protection and promotion of human rights. That programme will focus broadly on human rights education, national capacity building in the formal and informal sectors, the administration of justice, and legislative reform, UNHCHR rights adviser Dr Homayoun told IRIN on Friday. "The technical assistance programme is a unique opportunity for both the system and the government of Sudan to establish sustainable human rights infrastructures throughout the country for the promotion and protection of rights," he added.
UNICEF, among others, is also very active in engaging the various rebel movements in the south on a range of issues in support of women and children, according to the agency's human rights focal point, Martin Dawes. "We are engaged with the community and the military on the protection and promotion of rights - particularly on child soldiers, and especially to prevent their re-recruitment when they have been demobilised," he told IRIN on Tuesday. "On this issue, we are especially keen to get across the principle that the army is no place for children," he added. [For further details, see separate "IRIN Focus on Human Rights" of 3 July]
Nairobi, 3 July, 2001
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