This document considers the categories and questions for consideration when planning education within post-conflict Liberia. The authors argue that little work has been done to determine how to successfully create or recreate education systems in situations of transition from conflict to post-conflict. The authors consider how education needs to be developed from square one in Liberia. The destruction of infrastructure, including school buildings, teacher training colleges, latrines and roads poses a significant hurdle for the future of education in the country.

One hundred peasant and indigenous rights activists greeted delegates at the United Nations biodiversity conference in Brazil last week with chants of ‘Terminate the Terminator’. The activists were demanding tough laws against the field testing and sale of so-called ‘Terminator’ technology, which refers to plants that have had their genes altered so that they render sterile seeds at harvest. Because of this trait, some activists call Terminator products ‘suicide seeds’.

Egypt plans to lift 25-year-old emergency laws granting security forces sweeping powers of arrest and detention that critics have long claimed are used against opponents of the regime. Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif announced the move in a speech to parliament, saying the laws would be replaced by new anti-terror legislation in Egypt, which has witnessed a string of deadly attacks in recent years. Nazif said he had ordered the formation of a committee of experts to draft the new law, without saying when he expected it to come into force.

Raymond Majongwe, the Secretary General of the Progressive Teachers Union (PTUZ) was arrested last week Friday on allegations of ‘driving’ a group of Dutch trade unionists and teachers visiting the country. The police say Majongwe and his four visitors failed to stop at a roadblock near the Mabvuku roundabout in the capital. Security on the day was tight as the main opposition was beginning its three-day congress at the City Sports Centre.
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* New rights body should be independent, say activists

At least 269 asylum seekers currently residing at Osire Camp have been denied refugee status by the Namibian government. The majority are from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, Liberia and Uganda. According to the Chairman of the Association for the Defence of Refugee Rights (ADR) at Osire MacGoddins Lushimba, refugees received responses from the Ministry of Home Affairs and Immigration indicating that their requests for refugee status had been rejected.

Refugees from Casamance living in Guinea-Bissau villages along the border with Senegal have suffered a great loss after soldiers of the Guinea-Bissau completely burnt their dwellings, reliable sources told PANA. The Guinea-Bissau soldiers had suspected the refugees to be conniving with rebels of the Movement of Casamance Democratic Forces (MFDC), loyal to Salif Sadio against whom the Bissau soldiers have been fighting during the past two weeks, according to the sources, some of which were contacted in Sao-Domingos.

Reacting to reports that former Liberian president Charles Taylor has "escaped" from his home in Calabar, Nigeria, Amnesty International said "any country in which he is found has a responsibility to arrest and surrender Charles Taylor immediately to the Special Court in Sierra Leone." The organization said that the warrant for Charles Taylor's arrest issued by the Special Court, an international court, remains in effect, and that if he has left Nigeria he should now be considered an "international fugitive".

A blast on a minibus killed one person and injured three in Addis Ababa on Monday, the first fatality in a string of mysterious explosions in the Ethiopian capital. A second blast occurred outside the gate of an abattoir in the city but no one was hurt, police said.

For the last 10 years Anna Ngabayena has been haunted by her past. The memories of the violence she encountered as a foot soldier in the African National Congress (ANC) struggle against apartheid have plagued both her dreams and waking life. In recent weeks things had begun to change, said Ngabayena, now 42 years old. She had just taken part in a unique rehabilitation programme run by the National Peace Accord Trust (NPAT), which uses the natural environment as a means of coming to terms with a turbulent past.

Israel is rapidly constructing a parallel network of West Bank roads for Palestinians, who are barred from using the many existing (and superior) routes reserved for Jews only. B'Tselem, the Israeli human rights group, describes this system as bearing clear similarities to Apartheid's exclusionary and isolating alternate road system that existed in racist South Africa.

Hargeisa, the capital of the self-declared (but internationally unrecognised) state of Somaliland is bursting at the seams these days with former refugees who have come back to their country, but have nowhere to live but squalid settlements, often set up without permission on state or private land. At the same time, the city is booming thanks to other returnees who are bringing home their skills learned in exile, and quite often their money as well.

Tanzania is likely to take over the responsibility of prosecuting Rwandan genocide suspects whose trials under the current International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) will not be completed by the year 2008. "The Tribunal's leadership has asked the Tanzanian government to complete prosecuting genocide suspects after its mandate," said Dr. Mary Nagu, Tanzanian minister of Justice in a telephone interview with Hirondelle News. The United Nations Security Council had directed the Tribunal to complete trials in the coming two years and appeal cases by 2010.

According to an IRIN report, the Somali capital of Mogadishu was calm on Monday as a ceasefire that came into effect after four days of heavy militia fighting continued to hold, but hundreds of families who fled their homes were yet to return, local sources said. Most of the displaced families had been living in the city's northern outskirts where the fighting was concentrated. "For the second day, the guns are silent in Mogadishu. How long that will last is a different matter," a local resident who requested anonymity said on Monday.

More than 900 refugees have fled to Kenya following the recent militia attacks in Somalia's capital Mogadishu. Security personnel deployed at the Kenya-Somalia border continued patrolling the area in a bid to control the influx.
North Eastern Province CID boss, Henry Ondiek, said 1,000 refugees had surrendered themselves at the Dadaab United Nations refugee camp in Garissa District.

A new report by the Refugee Law Project has urged the Ugandan government to demonstrate a strong commitment to ending the 20-year conflict in northern Uganda. The report has urged the rebels of the Lords Resistance Army, the perpetrators of the war "to stop their cowardly acts of attacking and killing innocent civilians and demonstrate a sincere commitment to a peace process." The insurgency by the rebels has left several people dead and abducted while 1.6 million are internally displaced.

During the 2006-2007 academic year, the University for Peace will be providing Master's programmes in the following areas:
- Environmental Security and Peace (scholarships available)
- Gender and Peace Building
- International Law and Human Rights
- International Law and the Settlement of Disputes
- International Peace Studies
- Media, Conflict and Peace Studies (New)
- Natural Resources and Sustainable Development
- Peace Education (scholarships available)
Admission requirements, online application and detailed information about each programme are available through the link provided.

This Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) brief assesses directions for novel and nuanced peace initiatives. It points out that in order for any peace initiative to progress, the various actors at the national, regional and international levels need to demonstrate the political will and capacity to transform the continent from conflicts and social instability to peace and prosperity.

More Congolese are still crossing into the western Uganda border districts following the fighting in DR Congo. Congolese have since last year fled to Kisoro, Kanungu, Kasese, Bundibugyo and Hoima districts. The latest spill over has been in Hoima through Lake Albert, which is shared between Uganda and DR Congo.

A recent agreement by the seven countries of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) to establish a regional emergency fund involving the private sector to fight famine in the Horn of Africa is historic. The decision is significant in that it represents the first time the countries are involving the private sector on a regional scale to fight famine. It also signifies a turning point for Igad: a realisation that Africa cannot attain food security without tackling the root causes of famine - political turmoil, civil strife and war that have made a continent that was an exporter of food 50 years ago unable to feed itself.
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2.5 million people affected by drought

The international strategy for dealing with the Darfur crisis primarily through the small (7,000 troops) African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) is at a dead end, says the International Crisis Group. "If the tragedy of the past three years is not to be compounded, the AU and its partners must address the growing regional crisis by getting more troops with greater mobility and firepower on the ground at once and rapidly transforming AMIS into a larger, stronger UN peacekeeping mission with a robust mandate focused on civilian protection," says the think tank.