Several people were reported killed in southern Nigeria on Tuesday in revenge attacks following deadly riots last weekend in the north in which Muslims targeted Christians over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in European newspapers. On Tuesday, bands of youths armed with clubs, machetes and petrol cans rampaged through the streets of Onitsha in Nigeria’s predominantly Christian south, attacking Muslims and their properties, killing several people, according to several residents.

Human rights activists are appealing to judicial authorities for a retrial of former opposition MP Ayman Nour due to “irregularities” in the initial investigation and trial. “A retrial should be carried out as quickly as possible,” said Bahieddine Hassan, head of the Cairo Institute of Human Rights Studies, “in order to address the serious legal breaches made in his first trial”. Nour, a leading opposition figure and head of the nascent Al-Ghad Party, was tried along with six others and convicted in December of having forged signatures on party documents. He was sentenced to five years in prison.

This study of xenophobia and how it both exploits and excludes is an incisive commentary on a globalizing world and its consequences for ordinary people's lives. Using the examples of Sub-Saharan Africa's two most economically successful nations, it meticulously documents the fate of immigrants and the new politics of insiders and outsiders. As globalization becomes a palpable reality in the bodies of people in transit, citizenship, sociality and belonging are subjected to stresses to which few societies have devised a civil response beyond yet more controls. The latter in turn are subverted and nullified, so that, as in Botswana and South Africa, a world is developing where conflict and flux underlie a superficial global progress.

The Anti-Trafficking in Persons Advisor will have primary responsibilities in developing work relationships between Government Entities, NGOs and the Donor Community.

Responsibilities include:

- Developing work plans;
- Assisting in the design and implementation of training and oversight of technical specialists;
- Facilitating the development of communication strategies;
- Developing training materials;
- Providing financial oversight of program; and
- Engaging program partners and the donor community.

"Transforming Civil Conflicts", an online course developed by The Network University in cooperation with Bradford University, is offered from March 6 – 31, 2006. This award-winning four-week course familiarises participants with contemporary theories of conflict and conflict resolution, provides them with a range of relevant information on conflict on the Internet, and practical issues and debates from within the field. There is a limited amount of partial scholarships available for participants from the 'global south'. For more information, please visit our website: www.netuni.nl, the course demosite: www.netuni.nl/demos/tcc, or send an email to Bart Overbeek: [email protected].

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi will allow international observers to attend the trial of detained opposition leaders set to begin in Addis Ababa on Thursday (February 23), a senior European Commission official said. Louis Michel, commissioner for development and humanitarian aid, told reporters on Friday (February 17) after meeting Meles during a two-day visit to Ethiopia, that the decision to allow him access to jailed members of the opposition and journalists was a "significant step in the direction of constructive political dialogue".

As gays and lesbians become more visible in South African townships, they are increasingly becoming targets of homophobia, according to rights activists. The organisations were reacting to reports at the weekend of the murder of a young lesbian in a township in Cape Town. "I have recorded 50 rape cases, dating back 10 years, involving black lesbians in townships," said Zanele Muholi, a community relations officer with the NGO, Forum for the Empowerment of Women (FEW). Muholi, a lesbian, who was also abused growing up in a township, co-founded FEW in 2002, to provide a support network for black gay women.

Professor John Makumbe was almost killed at birth by a shocked mid-wife in a mission hospital in rural eastern Zimbabwe. "Looking at how white I was, she assumed that my mother had been misbehaving with one of the white missionaries at the school where she taught," said an amused Makumbe, 57, who for the past 20 years has been a lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe. It was only after his mother explained to the mid-wife that the child had inherited a genetic disorder that the mid-wife relented. Makumbe went on to form the Zimbabwe Albino Association (ZIMAS) in 1996. Tens of thousand southern Africans living with albinism have faced discrimination and abuse all their lives. They are often regarded as "unnatural" and even "cursed".

The ongoing registration of refugees in Nairobi's Eastleigh area by the Government of Kenya is a milestone in the quest for increased protection of refugees and asylum seekers in Kenya. This also marks a departure in state practice from what scholars have described as what the 'eye refuses to see', in reference to refugees who choose to live in urban centres as opposed to settlements and camps in remote areas. The Refugee Consortium of Kenya (RCK) supports this move and urges the Government to uphold the promise not to victimize those who present themselves for registration. Even without the necessary legal framework on refugees, RCK has constantly called upon the Government to respect the rights of refugees and asylum seekers and especially in regard to the rights to movement, to identification and to earn livelihoods. In our view the benefit of screening and registering asylum seekers far outweighs ignoring the situation all together.

Liberia's president inaugurated a truth commission Monday (February 19) to investigate crimes and human rights abuses committed in the war-battered country over the last quarter century. The seven-member Truth and Reconciliation Commission has a mandate to investigate crimes committed from 1979 until 2003, when years of civil war came to an end. President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who took over last month from a postwar transitional government, said Liberians must be courageous enough "to face up to the past and revile as an affront to all civilized people the despicable acts our people endured during the past 14 years of our civil conflict."

Local leaders, including traditional elders and the city mayor, met on Tuesday to discuss ceasefire plans. More than 20 people died in the recent clashes, which were the most violent seen in the capital in several years. Violence broke out when some militia leaders formed an alliance to fight supporters of unofficial Islamic Sharia courts that have emerged in Mogadishu.

Thousands of people have fled the northern and northeastern suburbs of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, since clashes between militia groups started over the weekend, a top city official said. An estimated 1,500 families had been displaced by the continuing clashes, Mogadishu Mayor, Ibrahim Omar Shaaweye, told IRIN early this week. Some 25 people had been killed and 150 wounded, he added.

Members of the Inter-governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) have expressed concern over the high number of refugees in the region. A conference heard that the seven member states host 11 million refugees, internally displaced persons, returnees and other war victims, which is equal to eight per cent of the region's total population. Of these, more than 50 per cent are in Kenya. The figure, it was noted, represents 66 per cent of Africa's internally displaced population and 30 per cent of the world's displaced people.

The ongoing legal effort to assign blame and punishment for atrocities committed during the 1994 Rwanda genocide is being hamstrung by a rash of suicides among the suspects. Sixty-nine suspects killed themselves and 44 others attempted suicide during the last nine months of last year. While family members mourn the suicides, others say the accused should testify about all they know about the genocide and be made to suffer for any crimes they might have committed, according to the Washington Post.

Why has the UN managed to carry out successful elections in Liberia but failed in neighboring Ivory Coast? A diplomat based in Abidjan explains that unlike Liberia - whose state structures had collapsed when the peacekeeping forces stepped in - the rebels and the government in Ivory Coast, who "make money" from the civil war, show little desire to resolve the conflict. The head of the UN mission in Liberia also points out that the UN presence in Ivory Coast is relatively small compared to Liberia and the disarmament program, much weaker.

The trade union movement in Guinea-Bissau is having a tough time. The unions are apparently being subjected to systematic harassment. The ICFTU was concerned to learn of the repressive measures by the management of the national Water and Electricity Company (Electricidades e Águas, EAGB) against the leaders of the local trade union at the company. According to the União Nacional dos Trabalhadores da Guiné (UNTG), the ICFTU's affiliated organisation of which the EAGB is a member, the company's management suspended all the leaders of the local union following a legal strike called by the UNTG from 7 to 9 February. A statement by the UNTG to the Attorney-General, Dr. Octavio Alves, stresses the illegal and arbitrary nature of that decision.

ABA/Africa is looking for a Country Director to handle a Four Year Anti-Trafficking Program in Nigeria. The ideal candidate for the Anti-Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Advisor is a senior legal professional with demonstrated success in the area of criminal prosecution, including sex crimes and domestic violence, as well as rule of law programming and management in Africa.

In accordance with one of the aims of UPEACE to develop and increase capacity in the teaching of conflict and peace studies in Africa, we would like to invite your university/department/centre to nominate one or two staff members to participate in a short course on Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution. The course is due to be held in Pretoria from 3 to 7 April 2006 and will be presented by the Africa Programme of the United Nations-affiliated University for Peace. Only proposals submitted by people who have been nominated by their institutions or organizations will be considered.

The racist abuse of African and South American players featuring in Croatia's league has been condemned by the country's prime Minister. “We are living in a century in which tolerance should be cultivated. We have to stop racist acts," Ivo Sanader told the Sportske Novosti newspaper. Cameroonian Mathias Chago and Brazilians Eduardo da Silva and Oeliton Araujo dos Santos Etto, who play for Dinamo Zagreb, were taunted with monkey chants during Sunday's match against arch-rivals Hadjuk Split. Sportske Novosti condemned the "shameful eruption of racism" during the match, which was also interrupted on several occasions when flares were thrown onto the pitch.

"The Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation (CHRR) wishes to express its alarm and extreme concern over the action taken by President Bingu wa Mutharika in dismissing Dr. Cassim Chilumpha from the position of Vice President of the Republic. We consider the action to be not only unfortunate but also ill-timed and ill-advised. CHRR considers the action by government to be ill-timed because, after many months of acrimonious exchanges between the two senior-most members of government, they had appeared to have finally begun to heed the widespread appeals for the President and his deputy to try sorting out their differences through amicable means."