Senegal

How can community organizations successfully exploit the new information and communication technologies (ICTs)? That is the issue confronting Rabia Abdelkrim Chikh, an anthropologist and researcher with Enda Ecopole in Senegal. As leader of a project that aims to demystify computers for young people in some of the most crowded neighbourhoods of Dakar and its outskirts, and make them a commonplace work tool, she has had some success.

Facilitating access to, and exploitation of, information and communication technologies (ICTs) for marginalized communities, especially women and youth: this is the main objective of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC)'s Acacia Initiative, which has launched a project to ensure massive representation of women in all aspects of the program, and to incorporate gender sensitivity into the design, implementation and evaluation of projects that are part of the Initiative.

Tension in Casamance, southern Senegal, continues to drive people into neighbouring Gambia, UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond reported on Friday in Geneva. He said more than 200 refugees arrived this week in villages along Gambia's southern border. This brought to more than 2,500 the number of people who have fled to The Gambia since fighting flared up in mid-May between Senegalese government forces and the Mouvement des forces democratiques de Casamance (MFDC).

More than 2,200 people have fled to Gambia in the past few days following an upsurge of fighting in the neighbouring Senegalese province of Casamance, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said in a statement issued today in Geneva. The first group of refugees reportedly crossed into southern Gambia on 18 May.

The Senegalese President, Abdoulaye Wade, has said the former President of Chad, Hissene Habre, must leave the country. "We have given him 30 days to leave Senegal," President Wade told Sud FM radio in Dakar, the Senegalese capital. But he said Senegal had not been given sufficient evidence by the Chadian Government for the courts to prosecute Mr Habre for alleged crimes against humanity.

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