Apartheid, it seems, works. Nearly 10 years since racial segregation was abolished in South Africa, identity is still rooted in race. Or so it would appear from the case of Happy Sindane, the blond Ndebele-speaking boy who walked into a police station last month saying he had been abducted from his white family by their black cleaner at the age of six and brought up among blacks.

On the southern side of Madagascar lies a wilderness paradise. The Indian Ocean washes over white sands. There is a primeval rainforest which is home to thousands of plant and animal species found nowhere else. It is here that the world's largest mining company, Rio Tinto, intends to dredge hundreds of millions of tonnes of soil over 6 000 hectares to extract ilmenite, a mineral used to make paint and toothpaste.

The need to protect and promote children is the shared agenda of the Swaziland government and the UN children's Fund (UNICEF) that has led to a community-based programme whose success is rooted in Swazi culture.

Angolan refugees departed from camps in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) last Friday, in the first phase of a voluntary repatriation programme spanning three countries in the region. On day one of the operation more than 500 Angolan refugees are returning to M'Banza Congo in northwestern Angola and Luau in the eastern reaches of the country, the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR) said.

You guys are doing exceptional work. I am a teacher, and I run a number of projects with international collaborations. Part of this is that we have contact with, and host teachers and students from around the world. Your newsletters are great at telling the real story of Africa, and helping me to clue people into the real issues of the day.

Good editorial (Pambazuka News Editorial 115). Why couldn't individual parties run on a Jobs/Growth Ticket, detail corruption for what it is (it isn't rent), promote jobs growth and capital investment in manufacturing and services, and shake up government fat cat employment at all levels. Also a lot of the time corporate interests don't do right either for African countries or their stockholders. A lot more money can be made in Africa when the big emerging market begins to form here. That will happen when African incomes begin to rise to the point that Africans can buy the stuff that they want.

During his inaugural address on January 7, 2001, President Kufuor declared that his government would pursue a policy of "Zero Tolerance for Corruption". It was an effective sound byte which was immediately latched on to by the nation. But as the months roll by, we can begin to ask, says this commentary in the Accra Mail, whether it is feasible, or even desirable to predicate human development on just the total elimination of corruption.

Mass migration in Africa will threaten the region’s stability if it continues unchecked or unabated, a conference in Addis Ababa heard on Monday. Millions who flee conflict or economic crises pose enormous burdens on their new host nations, the four-day meeting on migration and trafficking was told.

The cheetah's deep, resonant purr always captivates visitors to a South African wildlife centre devoted to the world's fastest mammal. But some South Africans are less enthusiastic about the animals, which can beat a Ferrari in a 60-yard sprint. The De Wildt Trust says the rise of private game farming has intensified a long conflict between farmers and the endangered carnivore that has seen at least 200 wild cheetahs — from a wild population that may now be as low as 250 — killed or removed from their wild habitat in South Africa over the last two years.

The world's leading pharmaceutical companies are set to unveil proposals to ease the supply of essential medicines to poor countries, in an attempt to break a World Trade Organisation deadlock that is jeopardising the Doha global trade round.

Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, which have different education systems, will eventually have one aimed at spurring industrial development. A national conference will be held later in the year to discuss the future of education in Kenya in preparation for the harmonisation, Education minister George Satoti says.

The Internet is Eden for those who like to get news from anywhere from Albania to Zambia at any time. But paradise risks pollution by a gold rush of media companies seeking to control the digital information landscape, some media experts say. Media companies can now own more newspapers and TV and radio stations than ever, under a recent, controversial ruling by the Federal Communications Commission.

The Community Media Policy Research Unit has lobbied the communications regulator, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa), to allow low power radio broadcasting to broaden access to the airwaves. The Policy Research Unit is a joint initiative of the National Community Radio Forum and the Freedom of Expression Institute, and represented the views of both organisations at an Icasa public hearing on the matter.

The European Union (EU) has set aside R500 000 for building sports facilities for seven different towns in the Eastern Cape, reports the Daily Dispatch.

Social Development Minister Zola Skweyiya together with the National Development Agency (NDA) has donated R500 000 to the Msinga Peace and Development Committee (MPDC) to be used for poverty alleviation and job creation programmes.

The unregulated supply of AIDS drugs in the developing world could accelerate the development of drug-resistant HIV strains, according to an expert at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom. Better regulation of private-sector providers of drugs in poor nations is needed to ensure that patients use antiretroviral drugs correctly, thereby reducing the risk that a strain of drug-resistant HIV will develop.

This petition urges President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe to resign with immediate effect.

On the eve of a visit by the United Nations Security Council delegation to West Africa, and as fighting intensifies around Liberia's capital, Monrovia, Amnesty International urged the countries of the sub-region and the international community to do everything possible to protect Liberian refugees and all others caught in the middle of these two conflicts.

Seismic data suggest billions of barrels of oil could lie off Sao Tome's coast near oil-rich Nigeria, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea in an increasingly important oil-producing region far from the risks of the Middle East. And that is driving an intense local struggle for power, complicated by the involvement of big outside players drawn to islands that had been getting by in quiet poverty, exporting a little cocoa and some bananas.

Let me express my feeling on your organisation, of which I have had the opportunity to visit your website (www.fahamu.org). I really found many aspects of your activities interesting, especially the services for other organisations in Africa. Not only these, but also other electronic services that you are providing for others. It is a wonderful thing that an African organisation has the capacity to provide these kind of services.

I represent a Somali organisation called SOCDA (Somali Organisation for Community Development Activities) and I am living in Denmark, although the organisation is a very active in the country of Somalia, giving services to the community in the area of training, consultancy, lobbying and human rights activities.

I will keep in touch with you from now on and I hope we will exchange ideas, or perhaps other important things. Thanks for the opportunity to contact you.

A website on women, children and HIV has been launched by The Francois-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Centre at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, and the University of California San Francisco's Centre for HIV Information. "Women, Children, and HIV" contains a comprehensive, Internet-based library of practically applicable materials on mother and child HIV infection including preventing mother-to-child HIV transmission (PMTCT), infant feeding, clinical care of women and children living with HIV infection, and the support of orphans. With the launch of this site, crucial information about these rapidly changing and complex fields is now available in one site.

Civil Society could act as a watchdog by monitoring and evaluating the process of NEPAD implementation, noted a recent meeting intended to popularise Nepad amongst civil society. The meeting noted that although some progress was being made on civil society's participation in the implementation of the NEPAD process, challenges still remain, particularly on building trust and confidence between civil society and governments.

This report from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) gives an analysis of poverty in developing countries from the perspective of the lack of opportunities for decent work and social inclusion. It highlights the barriers people living and working in poverty face in finding and keeping income generating activities that would allow them to earn a decent living and sets out a strategy for ensuring that employment is accorded higher priority in national and international efforts to realise the Millennium Development Goals.

Akina Mama wa Afrika will be holding the Eastern Africa sub regional African Women's Leadership Institute (AWLI) from September 22nd to 2nd October 2003, in Uganda. The AWLI aims to strengthen the personal and organisational capacities of young African women to influence policy and decision-making through training and networking. It serves as a networking, training and information dissemination forum for young women aged between 25-40 working on gender issues.

This workshop will help NGOs recognize the power of the Internet and use it more effectively as an easy and speedy communication tool. The main purpose of the workshop is to harness the power of technology to better serve the objectives of those NGOs, among which are networking and effective information sharing. The workshop will include extensive discussion, case studies presented by both participants and instructor, as well as recommended readings from Internet resources.

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. It will be recalled that the Council was established in 1973 out of the collective will of African social researchers to create a viable forum in Africa through which they could strive to transcend all barriers to knowledge production and, in so doing, play a critical role in the democratic development of the continent. As part of the series of events planned to mark the anniversary, five sub-regional conferences are being organised in Central, East, North, Southern and West Africa. These sub-regional conferences will be followed by a grand finale conference to be held at the Council’s headquarters in Dakar, Senegal, in December 2003. The Southern Africa sub-regional conference is scheduled for Gaborone, Botswana, on 18 and 19 October, 2003. Its theme will be: 'Southern Africa: From National Liberation to Democratic Renaissance'.

Journalists are facing a reign of terror in Liberia following recent rebel incursions into the capital Monrovia, says the International Federation of Journalists. Following the retreat by rebel forces of the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy group terror has descended on the city, with attacks involving government forces. The IFJ says more than 25 journalists have been displaced by the fighting.

The Internet is one of the most powerful agents of freedom. It exposes truth to those who wish to see and hear it. It is no wonder that some governments and organisations fear the Internet and its ability to make the truth known. The phrase "freedom of speech" is often used to characterize a key element of democratic societies: open communication and especially open government. But freedom of speech is less than half of the equation. It is also vital that citizens have the freedom to hear and see. It is the latter area in which many governments have intervened in an attempt to prevent citizens from gaining access to information that their governments wish to withhold from them. This report, available from Reporters without Borders, is about attitudes to the Internet by the powerful in 60 countries, between spring 2001 and spring 2003.

"We are desirous that the African Union Constitution would firmly stand for the respect and exercise of press freedom; embrace the accountability and responsibilities of all concerned parties, protect press freedom from attacks; strongly protest against undemocratic practices of dictators, and strongly require professionals to be governed by a code of ethics...In several AU member states, journalists are arrested, harassed, and intimidated solely for their reporting, and many countries resort to harsh, outdated laws to prosecute journalists for their work." - Extract from a letter to President Thabo Mbeki, President of Republic of South Africa and Chair of the African Union from the Ethiopian Free Press Journalists' Association (EFJA).

Third World Network Africa, a non-profit advocacy organisation is looking for a lead programme officer for its Gender Unit. TWN-Af´s work involves research, communications and campaigns around economic, social justice and development policy issues. It seeks a greater articulation of the needs and rights of people of the third world, especially marginalised groups, a fair distribution of the world's resources and forms of development that are ecologically sustainable and fulfil human needs.

ALIN Eastern Africa, an International NGO involved in information exchange activities among grassroots development workers in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Ethiopia wishes to engage a long-term consultant. The position, based in Nairobi with regular travels in the countries of operation will report to the Regional Coordinator. S/he will join a team of knowledge workers and information specialists to achieve set objectives.

CREDO for Freedom of Expression and Associated Rights and Fahamu have launched a petition calling on African Union Heads of State to release all incarcerated journalists and repeal all anti freedom of expression legislation. The petition is to be presented at the African Union meeting of Heads of State in Maputo in July and is addressed to President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, the current Chair of the AU. Click on the link below to read the full letter and join the petition.

Kenya is a country that is greatly differentiated from most of the other countries in Africa and the rest of the world. Over the years, the socio-political uniqueness of the country has made the lack of understanding of local cultures and arts even more engrained, especially to foreigners, and the rest of the world. Within Africa, Kenya has produced a large number of professionals, who have been absorbed in almost every industry in the world. Not relatively so with the Arts, and other creative disciplines, says this article on the website www.africancolours.com

On 4 June 2003, former Pentagon lawyer and Prosecutor of the United Nations-sanctioned Special Court for Sierra Leone (SC-SL), David Crane, unsealed and made public the indictment of Charles Ghankay Taylor, President of Liberia. The indictment accused Mr. Taylor of personal responsibility for multiple and egregious violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and crimes against humanity in relation to the recently abated war in Sierra Leone. In the view of the Prosecutor, Mr. Taylor falls within the category of “persons who bear the greatest responsibility” for serious violations of international law in Sierra Leone. Soon after Mr. Taylor, who was in Accra to attend a peace conference on Liberia convened under the joint auspices of both the African Union (AU) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), was compelled to flee from Ghana.

As a suspect in potential criminal proceedings, and in accordance with Article 17(3) of the Statute of the SC-SL, Mr. Taylor is to be presumed innocent until his guilt is proved. The responsibility for proving this guilt belongs to Prosecutor Crane and his team. Yet, few citizens of West Africa can find it in themselves to voluntarily stand up in defence of Mr. Taylor. To Liberians, Africans, persons of goodwill everywhere and, in particular, the millions of West African nationals murdered, maimed or displaced by Mr. Taylor and his war networks, due process could seem like a luxurious nuisance.

Since Mr. Taylor's rebellion against the rightly un-mourned late President Samuel Doe began in Liberia in December 1989, he has been implicated directly or indirectly in civil wars in Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau and Côte d'Ivoire; in the overthrow of otherwise elected regimes in Gambia and Guinea Bissau; and in the subversion of Guinea (Conakry). In the process, Mr. Taylor stands accused of having the blood of hundreds of thousands of West Africa's children, men, and women on his hands. He stands accused of being responsible for the displacement and exile of millions more. And he stands accused (with his cohorts) of deliberate targeting of civilian populations, of recruiting tens of thousands of children into arms, and of institutionalising egregious outrage on civilian populations as instruments of armed conflict. He has reduced a once proud people with their rich culture to beneath beggarliness, destroying the lives of much of the posterity of the region in the lifetime of the parents that they will never know.

This is not the first time that Mr. Taylor will be threatened with prosecution for war crimes. To force him to the negotiating table in 1996, the Council of Ministers of the then Organisation of African Unity (OAU), by resolution CM/Res 1650 of July 1996, was compelled to threaten Mr. Taylor with “setting up a war crimes tribunal” to try him and the leadership of the then warring factions in Liberia. ECOWAS Heads of State reinforced that threat in August of the same year as a way of giving teeth to the Abuja Agreement embodying the Liberian Peace Plan. All this was while Mr. Taylor was a rebel fighting presumably for power. The following year, a frightened Liberian population surrendered power to Mr Taylor in severely flawed elections in July 1997, in the vain hope that the responsibilities of high office would slake his thirst for blood. Rising from their Summit attended by senior representatives of major multilaterals and countries - including the Unites Nations, the USA, and major European Union countries - in Abuja, Nigeria, on 26 July 1997, and immediately following Mr. Taylor's election in the same month to the Presidency of Liberia, the leadership of ECOWAS, “congratulated His Excellency, President Charles Ghankay Taylor on his election and encouraged him to continue his policy of reconciliation and national unity.” In the event, the man took the bush with him to the Presidency and continued his war. Only this time it was aimed at suppressing basic rights of Liberia's citizens.

Given this background then, is there much more that can be said about the Taylor indictment besides applauding the belated arrival of supposedly just desserts? Indeed, there is. To begin with, the people of Liberia must wonder why the destruction of themselves and their country matters less than the destruction of their Mano River neighbour. It is difficult to explain to Liberians why the man whose trail of destruction began and continues in their country has ended up being charged for crimes allegedly committed against neighbouring Sierra Leone and its people who have their own home grown villains to worry about.

The Legal Situation

In reality, for much of the months of April and May 2003, the existence of the Taylor indictment and the probable occasion for its unveiling and attempted execution was an ill-concealed secret in Freetown. The indictment itself was confirmed and the arrest of Taylor authorised by the Bench of the SC-SL on 7 March 2003. The moment three months later on which it was unsealed was therefore significant. The Prosecutor had decided to take advantage of Mr. Taylor's travel to Ghana. In his press statement announcing the indictment of Mr. Taylor, Prosecutor Crane acknowledged that he decided to serve a warrant for Mr. Taylor's arrest on the authorities in Ghana “upon learning that Taylor was travelling to Ghana. This is the first time his presence outside of Liberia has been publicly confirmed.” In explaining his timing, Prosecutor Crane claimed in the same statement that he was concerned to ensure the legitimacy of the Accra negotiations, arguing that “it is imperative that the attendees know that they are dealing with an indicted war criminal.” The Prosecutor felt the need “to make it clear that in reaching my decision to make the indictment public, I have not consulted with any state. I am acting as an independent prosecutor and this decision is based solely on the law.”

But law, especially international law, is often pregnant with mutually contradictory plausibility. It is possible that in justifying himself as he did above, Prosecutor Crane was preserving sovereign confidences. If not, then his position was a tad optimistic at best. At worst it was naive or arrogant (or both) to believe that he could unveil the warrant when he did without prior extensive consultation with and co-operation from the leaders who were attending the Accra negotiations. As a matter of comity, the leadership of ECOWAS, the AU and the host State had invested considerable energy, resources and political capital in bringing the parties to the negotiating table in Accra. In doing so, they gave minimal guarantees in good faith to the invitees. Whatever one may think of the parties at the table, to fail to consult the joint hosts before releasing this kind of bombshell showed scant respect to the combined goodwill of these leaders and the peoples they represent. Not having factored the Taylor arrest warrant into their plans, they could hardly be expected to embrace it spontaneously having heard of it through the media.

As a practical matter, Ghana's authorities, if they had been consulted, may well have sought assurances or made arrangements as to how to safeguard against any security implications of Mr. Taylor being arrested on their territory. They would naturally have sought to safeguard against Mr. Taylor's associates exporting their cannibalistic brand of instability to Ghana. This is not an altogether unreasonable concern given Mr. Taylor's record.

Consultation with the region's leadership was all the more imperative because the law to which the Prosecutor's press release refers is at best opaque or, even worse, unhelpful. The SC-SL is set up under an Agreement reached between the United Nations and the Government of Sierra Leone in January 2002, itself concluded under the authority of Security Council Resolution 1315(2000). Unlike the International Criminal Tribunals for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and Rwanda (ICTR), the SC-SL is not set up by the Security Council as such in exercise of its enforcement powers under Chapter VII of the UN Charter to safeguard international peace and security. In accordance with Sierra Leone's 1991 Constitution, Sierra Leone's Parliament enacted the Special Court Agreement (Ratification) Act in 2002, which permits the Court to function in the country. This would not have been necessary if the Court had been set up in exercise of the enforcement powers of the Security Council. As a matter of law, the SC-SL is not a Sierra Leonean court as such; it is more plausibly viewed as a foreign court authorised to function in Sierra Leone, exercise jurisdiction in and over Sierra Leone and, in part at least, to apply Sierra Leonean law, in addition to international law.

This point has significant legal consequences. It means that unlike the situation with Chapter VII tribunals like the (Yugoslavian) ICTR and (Rwandan) ICTY, there is not necessarily an obligation of compulsory co-operation with the Court. Strictly speaking, co-operation would be governed by bilateral, mutual assistance treaties. Such treaties, arguably, do not envisage such hybrid courts as the SC-SL within their scope. Customary international law is equally unhelpful here. The much-cited and much misunderstood Pinochet (No.3) decision of the (British) House of Lords [1999] 2 All E.R. 97, looked to domestic statutory (rather than international law) basis to justify much narrower grounds for Mr Pinochet's arrest than the panel in the Pinochet (No. 1) case [1998] 4 All E.R. 897 had been prepared to allow. In its most relevant decision in the Case Concerning the Arrest Warrant of 11 April 2000 (Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Belgium), the World Court in Den Haag controversially decided in February 2002, that the procedural immunity enjoyed by serving foreign sovereigns effectively trumped the prohibitions of international criminal law (from which even Heads of State are not immune), including those against war crimes and crimes against humanity that were directly in issue in the case.

The relevant practice concerning the procurement for trial of suspected war criminals largely remains as summed up by Geoff Gilbert in Aspects of Extradition Law, page 209 (1992), to the effect that “a uniform approach is still lacking.” Barring an abduction of the kind in the (case of the German Nazi leader) Eichmann Case, 36 International Law Reports 5 (1961), international (or in this case, regional) co-operation remains the only lawful means of procuring the rendition of Mr. Taylor for trial. In the provisions of Article 4(h) of the Constitutive Act of the African Union authorising intervention in situations of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, African countries have now equipped themselves to provide such co-operation when it is sought collaboratively.

With considerable experience of criminal trials in the USA where prosecutorial deal making is an art form, Prosecutor Crane cannot have been unaware of this reality. Ultimately, he bears responsibility for success or failure in securing rendition of his indictees - big and small. With the exception of the now late Sam “Maskita” Bockarie, allegedly deceased former military ruler, Johnny Paul Koromah, and Mr. Taylor, the SC-SL has so far succeeded in securing the arrest of all of its indictees. However, none of those so far arrested, including ex-defence minister, Chief Hinga Norman, confronts the Court with the weight of logistical, security, doctrinal or legal problems that accompany the indictment of Mr Taylor. In favour of Prosecutor Crane, it should be acknowledged that his public indictments appear so far to have been largely well received both within and outside Sierra Leone.

The Political Questions

Two political questions stand out among many. First, how does the indictment affect the peace process in Liberia, including, in particular, the critical issues of disarmament and demobilization of combatants? Mr Taylor, whose current Presidential term expires in January 2004, staked out his position on these issues at a news conference in Monrovia 12 June, declaring that “[I]f the President of Liberia is treated in an unfriendly fashion or manner with the thousands of combatants that support me in Liberia, where is the incentive for any supporter of Charles Taylor to disarm if they know their own security is not guaranteed?” Neither the SC-SL nor its Prosecutor can directly answer this question. It remains open whether the Accra negotiations on the back of the 17 June ceasefire agreement between Taylor's regime and rebels opposed to him will be able to address it.

Next, as unpalatable and unfortunate as it is, Mr. Taylor is recognized as the elected President of Liberia. Now that he has been indicted, this throws up the political question of how other African Leaders and civil society alike will relate to him. For example, will they continue business as usual, adopt a wait-and- see attitude, or will they enforce his isolation? The individual and collective positions of Africa's leaders could well be determined by how each leader perceives himself vis a vis the potential to face similar charges and the response of the world beyond Africa. Does it matter that the Prosecutor has not shown more lateral vision in his handling of the unsealing of the indictment?

Conclusion

This is the first time that a serving President will be openly indicted for war crimes by an international court. By contrast, the indictment of ex-President Milosevic by the ICTY became known after he had been ousted from office. It will not be the last. Over the past few years, similar attempts in the courts of different European countries, most especially Belgium, have run into a headwind of insuperable legal, procedural and political obstacles. With the swearing in of the ICC Prosecutor in June 2003 in Den Haag, the need for such desperate efforts or ad-hoc arrangements (as in the SC-SL) will now be minimized if not yet entirely eliminated. The irony will not be lost on African leaders that the SC-SL Prosecutor comes from a country – the USA – whose government has undermined the International Criminal Court (ICC) Process and is exerting its utmost weight to secure impunity for similar crimes in international law for its own nationals. At the beginning of June, 39 countries had concluded with the US government impunity agreements under pressure.

Nevertheless, the indictment of Mr. Taylor at least ensures that he is under some pressure. This could not have come too soon. But if Mr. Taylor is not to elude and outlast the SC-SL, Prosecutor Crane should reckon more with the goodwill of Africa's leaders and peoples than the management of the Taylor indictment so far has shown. There is little sympathy for Mr. Taylor in the region. Bringing him to overdue accountability should not be an opportunity to rub regional leaders up the wrong way. Meanwhile, Liberians and Africans await the day Mr. Taylor will also answer for his misdeeds against Liberia and its citizens.

* A lawyer and activist from Nigeria, Chidi Anselm Odinkalu is associated with several African and international non-governmental organisations and academic institutions. He was formerly Human Rights Advisor to the UN Observer Mission in Sierra Leone (UNOMSIL). Mr Odinkalu is widely published on a variety of subjects on human rights and international law in Africa. The views expressed here are his personal opinions.

* Please send comments on this editorial to Read comments on previous editorials in the Letters and Comments section of Pambazuka News.

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Do you support Press Freedom and Freedom of Expression? Would you be happy to sign a petition aimed at the African Union & its member states calling for the release of all incarcerated African Journalists & for the repeal of Anti-media and Anti-free expression legislation? If Yes, click on the link to sign the petition. If you would like to do more, please make this message part of your signature and/or forward it to like-minded people.

The Ethiopian government has blasted the "pathetic" attitude towards women's rights in the country which it says is fuelling the AIDS epidemic. It warned that social and cultural factors such as polygamy and sexual violence were exacerbating the vulnerability of the nation's women.

Cyber cafés catering mainly to students and young people are proliferating around Bamako, Mali's capital, showing the growing importance of information and communications technology (ICT) in the landlocked West African country. However, most Malians have yet to join the digital age. To make the Internet and other digital tools available to all sectors of society, the Government is formulating and implementing a national ICT strategy.

The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers has stated that the recent abduction of girls from a boarding school in Lwara, Kabermaido district, Northern Uganda, signals a sharp jump in child abduction and recruitment by all parties to the conflict. “This incident is part of a generalized problem of escalating conflict fuelling unprecedented levels of child abductions and recruitment in Northern Uganda, and now spreading to Eastern Uganda,” said Geoffrey Oyat, Coordinator of the Ugandan chapter of the Coalition.

For the first time in almost a year, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has repatriated hundreds of Eritreans from Sudan after restarting a voluntary relocating operation that had been suspended because of the rainy season and prolonged by heightened border tensions between the two countries.

“I was sleeping at my home when at approximately 3am today, Wednesday 4th June, 2003, between 10 and 20 soldiers banged on my front door. I opened it and they wanted to know what party I belonged to. My brother J. and I were asked so many questions and were then told to lie on our stomachs and they beat us with batons." This is one story contained in a report from the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights that documents case summaries, with histories, and examination findings of incidents of violence inflicted during the week of the National Mass Action that took place between June 2-9.

It is little surprise the transatlantic battle over genetically modified food came to be fought on the scorched fields of Africa's peasant farmers. Here the ability of a field of maize to resist pests and drought is a matter of life and death. The continent's leaders have become pawns in a wider mesh of conflicting trade and economic interests, bombarded by a confusing array of information blurring into propaganda.

Several people were unable to get treatment at hospitals around the country Wednesday as a doctors' strike that began in Bulawayo on Monday spread to other parts of Zimbabwe.

Uganda's well-documented fight against HIV and Aids will take a strange turn if a recommendation, by the Education Service Commission, to ask teachers living with the disease to resign is implemented. The Commissioner for Secondary Education and HIV/Aids co-ordinator in the Ministry of Education, Mr Yusuf Nsubuga, said on Wednesday that the recommendation would affect teachers who have been on sick leave for six or more months.

The Somali peace talks, currently underway in Kenya, are in danger of collapse if a compromise solution is not found to the selection and number of future parliamentarians, a faction leader warned on Wednesday.

Delegates from 28 countries across the Middle East and Africa called Monday for governments worldwide to ban female circumcision, the practice considered barbaric to women. "Governments, in consultation with civil society, should adopt specific legislation addressing female genital mutilation in order to affirm their commitment to stopping the practice and to ensure women's and girls' human rights," the delegates said at the close of their three-day conference in Cairo.

An unknown number of rebels have been killed in fighting against government troops in northern Burundi, forcing up to 65,000 civilians to flee their homes, army and local authority officials told IRIN on Tuesday.

The Federal Government has signed a grant agreement with the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria for a grant of USD 150 million or 15 billion naira to fight HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis in the country. The country will have immediate access to funding for expansion of its anti-retroviral drug programme and prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV/AIDS.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) stands accused of subjecting refugees within its African camps to illegal collective punishment by withdrawing food rations for weeks at a time. The organisation is also accused of allowing refugee elites to administer their own forms of 'traditional' justice, which typically see women locked up for adultery and 'criminals' flogged. These allegations and others were made by a distinguished refugee scholar who claims she has witnessed such human rights abuses during her research at several UNHCR refugee camps in Africa.

The Anti-War Coalition (Jhb) is ratcheting-up its activities prior to U.S president George W. Bush's visit to Africa. "Bush comes to Africa to assist US imperialism. He wants to increase US multinational companies control of the resources of Africa," said the organisation in a statement.

What are the real economic, environmental and social costs of dams? Do the benefits of irrigation, electricity, flood control and water supply outweigh the damage they do to livelihoods, ecosystems and fisheries? How can the diverse groups of stakeholders affected by dams work together to identify risks and assess alternatives to dams?