Why do some crises attract global attention while so many others do not? asks this article from Yale Global Online. "The reality is that resources devoted to international issues are simply too small to meet the needs of the world's poor, diseased and conflicted. Even the largest NGOs complain of too few funds and constantly campaign for more. This creates a lop-sided power relationship strongly favoring NGOs. While many have good intentions, NGOs must choose carefully where they devote their scarce money, personnel and time. They also have internal needs - pleasing funders while sustaining and expanding their organizations."

Officials from the United Nations and the Burundian government have agreed to terms for setting up two postconflict institutions - one for reconciliation and the other for justice - but opposition leaders have questioned the proposed bodies’ objectivity. A UN delegation from New York met government officials from 26-31 March, after which they issued a joint communiqué announcing the framework for both a truth and reconciliation commission and a special court for prosecuting crimes against humanity committed in Burundi since it gained independence from Belgium in 1962.

Rebel and army chiefs completed a first full round of working talks on Tuesday in Cote d'Ivoire's rebel stronghold of Bouake in what was described by the government as a sign of progress in efforts to reach an agreement over disarmament. "The talks were fruitful and focused on the concerns of both forces and the establishment of a structural framework," said a joint statement issued by Ivorian chief of staff Philippe Mangou and rebel military leader Soumaila Bakayoko.

The United Nations and international human rights organisations have long campaigned against recruiters of child soldiers, urging their prosecution as "war criminals". But the first break came only last week when the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague decided to arrest Thomas Lubanga, a founder and leader of the Union des Patriotes Congolais (UPC), on charges of conscripting children in the current insurgency against the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). UNICEF has estimated that up to 300,000 children globally are being used by armed rebel groups and military forces in a variety of roles, including as combatants, cooks, porters, messengers, spies and for sexual purposes.

Tens of thousands of children living on the streets of Kinshasa and other cities of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) suffer extreme hardship and exposure to daily violence, says a new report from Human Rights Watch. "Turned out of their homes and without family care and support, they are victims of physical, sexual and emotional abuse. With no secure access to food, shelter, or other basic needs, they are exploited by adults, including law enforcement personnel, who use them for illegal activities to the detriment of their health and welfare and in violation of their basic human rights."

As Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo prepared to visit the United States, he was urged to reaffirm his commitment to the human rights of all Nigerians and withdraw proposed legislation to introduce criminal penalties for same-sex relationships and marriage ceremonies, as well as for public advocacy or associations supporting the rights of lesbian and gay people. In a letter to President Obasanjo, a coalition of 16 human rights organizations urged him to disavow the bill, which contravenes international law and the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights that ensure rights to freedom of expression, association, and assembly.

While the human rights situation in Darfur is more and more alarming, FIDH and its affiliated organisation SOAT (Sudan Organisation against Torture) condemn the opposition of Sudanese authorities to the takeover of the mandate of the AU by UN forces and call for the active cooperation of Sudan with the International Criminal Court (ICC), one year after the Security Council referral of the situation in Darfur to the ICC.

Hundreds of Liberian refugees living in Freetown and parts adjacent say they are living in fear since the arrest and detention of former Liberian President Charles Taylor in Freetown, Sierra Leone. According to them, there are rumors in Freetown that when Taylor was arrested at the Robert International Airport (RIA) by the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), some Liberian youths loyal to Taylor attacked Sierra Leoneans living in Monrovia.

In Ghana, UNHCR along with its government partners plans is to start a six-week verification exercise to confirm the presence of some 12,500 Togolese refugees in the Volta region of Ghana and facilitate the determination of refugee status by the authorities. The Togolese started fleeing to Ghana and Benin in late April last year during a violent political crisis. In Ghana, most found refuge with host families spread over a wide area.

The proposal to establish a Human Rights Commission in Zimbabwe, a body whose mandate will be to investigate and promote human rights issues is an important one. Since the colonial era to the present, Zimbabwe has known no culture of human rights and yet evidence is abound in international law on the universality and the special regime status that the human rights discourse has attained. The question that we ought to ask ourselves as Zimbabweans is whether the ruling ZANU PF elite, that have been the biggest human rights violator since the attainment of independence in 1980 should be the one to spearhead the debate on the establishment of a Human Rights Commission. Phillip Pasirayi from the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition assesses the proposal.

Some 12,000 Burundians who fled a food crisis caused by a prevailing drought in their country have returned home from neighbouring Tanzania, the governor of Burundi's eastern province of Ruyigi has said. Governor Moise Bucumi denied allegations that they had been forced or threatened to return home. "I received reports that they came voluntarily, and I have no reason to doubt them," he said, adding that Tanzania had no reason to force them out, either. "What interest did it have?" he asked.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has handed over to Sudanese authorities the first group of 150 refugees returning from Ethiopia. The Bonga refugee camp, from which the initial returns are taking place, was established in January 1993. After the first group has left for home, the population of the camp now stands at 18,154 refugees. Some 79,000 southern Sudanese refugees live in five camps in west Ethiopia. Most of the refugees arrived in Ethiopia in 1983 and in the 1990s as a result of the civil war in southern Sudan.

Insecurity and drought have driven some 1,780 Somali refugees into Kenya since the beginning of January, a spokesman from the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) has said. There are more than 100,000 Somali refugees living in three camps in the Dadaab area of Kenya's Northeastern Province, which borders on Somalia. Most of the refugees in Dadaab arrived in the 1990s, to flee the fighting and famine caused by Somalia's civil war.

United Nations under secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, Jan Egeland declared the 20-year conflict in northern Uganda "the world's worst form of terrorism" during a visit to a camp for internally displaced persons in Pader District. "Conditions here are totally unacceptable. It has to change, because we believe people have to live a better life and have a better future," he said during a visit to Patongo camp, some 400 km north of the capital, Kampala. Egeland, who is on a four-nation, nine-day tour of conflict- and drought-ravaged East Africa, said there was a need to provide security to the almost two million people living at camps across northern Uganda.

The worst violation of workers' rights occurs in Africa's export processing zones, trade unions have said. "The practice is also rampant in enterprises operating under the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), according to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, African region. "Due to their thirst for unbridled competition, often at the expense of severe social and labour rights, owners and sometimes with the tacit support of public authorities, have remained resolute in their opposition to unionisation," said the organisation's secretary-general, Mr Andrew Kailembo.

The Africa Programme of the University for Peace is launching during this year a new academic journal dealing with conflict and peace issues from a multi-disciplinary, and distinctly African perspective. The African Conflict and Peace Review will provide a vehicle for African scholars, and those focussing on Africa, to publish their views on issues of conflict and peace affecting the continent.

A nine-year-old African-Russian girl was hospitalized with stab wounds following an attack by a group of suspected teenagers in downtown St. Petersburg on Saturday, two days after the controversial acquittal of the defendants in the trial for the murder of a nine-year-old Tajik girl two years ago. "Public inaction and a general silence, indicating indifference to the rising extreme nationalism, is tantamount to its justification," said Aliou Tunkara, head of the St. Petersburg African Union.

"Nothing has changed," says Patterson Ogon, founding director of the Ijaw Council for Human Rights in the Niger Delta. "Since 1995 when Ken Saro-Wiwa was hung, [Shell's] public relations and glossy reports seem to indicate that they're doing so much in the Niger Delta. But we are still waiting to see any practical change." Over a decade has passed since the Nigerian government killed Ken Saro-Wiwa. The Niger Delta is once again making international headlines. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) is a well-armed, well-organized group of youth who aim to localize control of the Niger Delta's oil wealth.

Former Liberian president Charles Taylor, who disappeared from his residence in southeastern Nigeria one day ago, was on Wednesday detained in a state bordering Cameroon and could be expelled soon to his homeland. A top government official who asked not to be named said Taylor, wanted for war crimes by a UN-backed special court in Sierra Leone, was arrested in the northeastern Nigerian state of Borno, bordering Cameroon, Niger and Lake Chad.
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* Taylor, stubborn since his childhood

UN arms embargoes are systematically violated and must be urgently strengthened if they are to stop weapons fueling human rights abuses, according to a report presented to the UN Security Council last week. According to the Control Arms Campaign every one of the 13 UN arms embargoes imposed in the last decade has been repeatedly violated. And despite hundreds of embargo breakers being named in UN reports, only a handful have been successfully prosecuted. This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains a press release and excerpts from the new report released by the Control Arms Campaign, a joint campaign of Amnesty International, the International Action Network on Small Arms, and Oxfam International.