E/CN.4/2006/73/Add.2 page 14 4. Food, health, housing, education 61. In the course of her meetings with civil society, the Special Rapporteur gathered many testimonies of the precarious situation of returnees. Women and children, for instance, are those most affected by malnutrition. “The children go to school without food”, the representatives of civil society in Ouahigouya told the Special Rapporteur. 62. A student repatriated with his younger sisters comments: “We are reduced to extreme hunger since we have to make do with only one plateful a day, which is kindly provided by a neighbour. When she is not there, we rely on luck. We often go without food for two days.” 63. Many returnees have arrived back in Burkina Faso in a very poor state of health, the most vulnerable groups being women and children (with several cases of measles and meningitis). There are more people affected by AIDS in Côte d’Ivoire than in Burkina Faso, which increases the risk of spreading the virus, owing to ignorance and inadequate prevention. 64. The poverty of returnees also affects their ability to find housing, especially migrants who have no family left in Burkina Faso. 65. Readmission in schools is also a problem, especially for children who have no papers, since in order to be admitted they require a birth certificate. Repatriated children often do not have such a document, however, besides which school fees often constitute an insurmountable obstacle. Further dangers arise from overcrowding in classrooms and a lack of infrastructures. “The children are practically sitting on the floor”, the local authorities of the province of Banfora told the Special Rapporteur. 5. The situation of repatriated women 66. Repatriated women are the most affected by the crisis, since their husbands are often the first to go back to Côte d’Ivoire, leaving their wives and children in Burkina Faso with no source of income. This means that these women are most affected by the problems described above regarding employment, food, housing and health. 67. Groups of repatriated women have clubbed together in an attempt to deal with these problems. The Special Rapporteur visited a plot of land offered to an association of repatriated women by local authorities in the neighbourhood of Banfora. This is a group of 11 women set up within the Faso Ka Fisa Market Garden Association, presided over by Ms. Sita Soulama. The women launched a project for the growing and marketing of market garden produce. They have been trying to cultivate a field in the locality of Nafona; they have managed to grow vegetables but lack the most basic equipment which might make the activity really profitable. For instance, the water pump does not work; they have no fencing to put round their field, nor any cultivator, nor any way of transporting their produce. 68. In Ouahigouya, the Special Rapporteur met the Teg-Taaba Association of repatriated women for the survival of women repatriated from Côte d’Ivoire (A.TE.TA.S.R.), to which some 400 women belong. In Côte d’Ivoire these women were engaged in farming activities,