The EU is coming under increasing pressure to revise its current approach to asylum and migration after sub-Saharan African immigrants died trying to cross over into Spanish territory. Over the past two weeks, some 2,000 people have tried to cross the border at Ceuta and Melilla into Spanish territory by storming the fences that surround these two cities located on the North African coast adjacent to Morocco. African Union (AU) leader Alpha Konaré who was in Brussels for the launch of a new EU policy on Africa told the EU executive that the bloc must not build prison fences around Africa.

The issue of racism and xenophobia is a sensitive one, however, there seems to be have been increasing reports of such acts in 2005. Is racism and xenophobia on the increase and if so what will be done to prevent it? The Belgium 2005 Amnesty International Report reports many incidents of racism and xenophobia. This is not just a problem for Belgium but is a worldwide phenomenon.

A pioneering group of nearly 300 refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has gone home from Tanzania in the first convoy organised by the UN refugee agency. This is expected to chart the way for thousands of Congolese going back to their war-battered country.The refugees went through training in landmine and HIV/AIDS awareness, at Baraka centre before setting out for their villages, where they were to receive a repatriation package, including mattresses, kitchen sets and farming and building tools, UNHCR said.

Carole Chehade explores genocide - “the crime that has no name" - in the DRC and what it means for our common global humanity. The reason why the suffering in the DRC has been ignored, she writes, is because it “takes more African genocides to equal one atrocity visited on a non-African nation”. Genocide in the DRC then is a result of the world’s corruption, greed and bigotry, which unless dealt with will destroy humanity.

If numbers really drove the genocide ratings, then one would think 3.4 million dead and 2.25 million displaced would be numbers that shouldn’t be ignored. Instead, the conflict in the DRC is viewed as another “tribal” clash in Africa, rather than what it really is: an international battle with many governments and multi-national companies contributing heavily to genocide, without ever getting their own fingerprints on the crime scene.

The area that is experiencing the most conflict is in the Kivu province, located on the Eastern side of the country. Like many African nations, the DRC is an ethnically rich and diverse melting pot. This ethnic diversity is not the primary reason for the war, simply because ethnic and racial conflict has never been powerful enough alone to drive genocide. The genocide in the DRC has roots in corrupt domestic and international leaders, greedy business interests, the DRC’s rich natural resources, conflict in neighboring countries and the artificial nip and tuck of colonialism.

The DRC’s history is largely shaped by genocidal forces. The precursor to the current genocide in the DRC is trumped by an even bigger one spread by Belgium’s King Leopold II. Leopold’s murderous reign wiped out over half the population of what was ironically known as the Congo Free State. Like most oppressors, Leopold fabricated the positive reputation of being dubbed the King Builder because he constructed so many buildings in Belgium. The bigger the genocide, the wealthier the nation becomes that perpetuated the transgression from the shadows. The Belgians eventually left, relinquishing their political rights to the people whose bones were sucked to the marrow by the vacuumed mouth of colonialism.

When the DRC gained independence in 1960, the west competed against the Soviets to shape the DRC into western political ideals. The US helped overthrow Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in 1960 because they feared he’d align himself with the Soviets. Instead, they backed Mobuto Sese Seko who helped CIA operatives dispose of Lumumba. When the Cold War ended, the west left many African nations, whose loyalties they bought for their own ends, with leaders who sold out their countries in exchange for perceived rewards.

During Mobutu’s era, anti-government alliances spread through the Kivu province. With growing anti-government rebellion, an influx of Rwandan refugees came into the DRC whom, in turn, were followed by hunters who were fresh from the Rwandan genocide. These hunters were known as the Hutus, who quickly created their own militia, known as the Interahamwe.

The DRC also had animosity against another Tutsi population, known as the Banyamulenge, who immigrated into the DRC hundreds of years ago. The Banyamulenge have a reputation as being successful citizens of the DRC who supported Mobutu. Because the Banyamulenge were a wealthy enclave, Mobutu returned the support but later relinquished the citizenship of all of the Banyamulenge, leaving them without protection. Mobutu’s shifting loyalties also drove him to openly support the Rwandan Hutus during the height of their extermination of Tutsis.

The brutal Mobuto regime outgrew the control of its American sponsors and, as a result, Mobuto was overthrown and replaced by Laurent Kabila in 1997. The honeymoon between Kabila and the US was short lived as the DRC fell deeper into the brewing conflict that exploded into a civil war that has cost millions of lives. Kabila quickly learned the limits of playing too many sides when he was assassinated in 2001. After the assassination, he was replaced by his son Joseph Kabila.

The unnatural deaths of the Congolese are inadvertently made possible by natural resources such as coltan. It is not oil that makes the DRC wealthy, but its diverse reserves which include a resource we use everyday in our technology-based society. Upon processing, coltan becomes a material which stores electrical charge. This hard to find commodity is found in the eastern region, which is coincidentally the heart of the conflict. Ironically we use coltan to help drive our information age, yet are clueless as to what human sacrifices help us get that information. This means the computers and cell phones we use are powered by the blood of genocide.

Incidents of rape in the DRC are amongst the most grotesque in the world. One of the most disturbing cases, which I have ever heard of, was the forcing of young men to rape their own mothers. The psychological chain of events that follows something this horrendous damages the sanctity of family, which in turn destroys a nation. I can enumerate even more brutalities, but are we so numb that the only way we feel for the victims of genocide is if they stand naked on the auction blocks of the world desperately trying to convince us of which atrocity is gory enough for us to finally act? The sophisticated wealthy class of internationals would be horrified if their wives, mothers and daughters were visited by armies of men waiting to rip apart the womb of one of their women.

The DRC’s genocide is a prime example of how many players it takes for a crime against humanity to occur. Wealthy businessmen from all corners of the world have all taken their turn in raping the voluptuous natural resources of the DRC until genocide screams out that there is nothing more left to ravage.

Although some of the world’s worst events are visiting the African continent with a vengeance, let us not conceit ourselves into allowing our subconscious racism to equate barbaric acts of genocide with African nations. My concern is not to argue whether Africans are more or less incorruptible; my argument is more concerned with where we, as a world community, place our concern.

Exterminating Africans has been the status quo for centuries. All African countries combined still are not enough to compete for world attention as one nation is in the Gulf. The US Constitution once called African Americans 3/5 of a person. Evidentially, that belief was never removed from our human constitution because it takes more African genocides to equal one atrocity visited on a non-African nation.

If we are to judge the worldwide exploitation by the powerful, then sadly the DRC is a logical result of our world’s corruption, greed, and bigotry, which blatantly takes without replacing. As a result, the most discriminated people on earth are reminding us that cause and effect is paid by those who have nothing to give but their lives.

Before the term genocide was coined in 1944 by scholar Raphael Lemkin, the Holocaust was recognized as "a crime that has no name." Part of the challenge of being able to do battle against any enemy is to call it forth by name. After the Holocaust, the world community rallied around the phrase, “Never again.” Yet “never again” has happened again and again.

Because genocide’s aim is to kill humanity, even the perpetuator will die. The seamless border of genocide means that this African World War will touch us across oceans and continents. Our interconnectedness means that since Africa was the cradle of humanity, then it will also become the death of humanity if we do not rise in its defense, which really means in our defense.

* Carol Chehade is a writer and filmmaker who runs a non-profit organization. She can be reached at www.onenewearth.com

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Ghana has made a request to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees(UNHCR)to assist it to repatriate Darfur refugees in the country to their country. The Minister of the Interior,Papa Owusu-Ankomah,made the appeal to the Director of the UNHCR at the 56th session of the UNHCR. According to the minister,other issues discussed by the assembly included the rate at which people were becoming xenophobic about the presence of refugees in their countries by calling for their repatriation and the attention to be paid to the abuse of the rights of refugees and asylum seekers.

This study examines the causes of Zimbabwe's brain drain focusing on college and university students. 77% of students said that they were being encouraged or strongly encouraged to leave the country by their families, so that they could send remit funds, just for survival. The paper concludes that a coercive approach to the brain drain would only intensify the level of discontent and for most of the students would make absolutely no difference to their emigration intentions. It suggests that the best way to curb the high rates of skilled labour migration lies in addressing the economic fundamentals of the country in a way that will ultimately improve living standards.

Alarmed by reports regarding the administration of the death penalty in Uganda, and aware that a petition filed in September 2003 against the death penalty, signed by 417 death row inmates, was pending before the Constitutional Court of Uganda, Networking Human Rights Defenders (FIDH), decided to send an international fact-finding mission to the country. The mandate of the mission was to inquire into the administration of the capital punishment in Uganda, including the conditions of detention on death row. The objective was also to assess the possibility of Uganda abolishing the death penalty, or adopting a moratorium on capital punishment, as a first step towards its abolition, and to issue recommendations in that regard. For the full report, follow the link.

The Libyan Supreme Court's reported a decision on October 9 to retry 86 political prisoners is a hopeful sign of reform, Human Rights Watch has announced. These Muslim Brotherhood members have served seven years in prison for nonviolent activities after being convicted by a now-closed tribunal that violated fair-trial standards under Libyan and international law. "While the Libyan government had promised us that the political prisoners would be released unconditionally, their retrial is still a welcome step," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa director. "The Libyan authorities should now provide a prompt and fair trial with international observers."

Energy access should be recognised as a fundamental human right, a parliamentary forum has recommended at a three-day international forum on energy legislation and sustainable development. The right to water, housing and food supplies are already recognised by the UN as a human right. "As these rights cannot be satisfied without access to modern energy services, we call for such access to be recognised as a human right and for the contents of such a right to be elaborated by the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights," delegates resolved.

Liberia is far from having the diamond controls required to prevent diamonds from fuelling conflict and instability, says a Global Witness paper, which demonstrates how insufficient reform of Liberia's diamond and timber industries and failure to adequately control areas rich in natural resources have resulted in their continued exploitation and threat to regional peace and security. "Despite the terms of his exile arrangements with Nigeria that forbade Charles Taylor from engaging in active communication with anyone engaged in political, illegal or governmental activities in Liberia, he continues to do so," said Global Witness.

Economic growth will not materialise if people are hungry and the international community needs to emphasise the importance of agriculture in Africa and adopt strategies to build this capability rather than solely emphasising industrial growth. This is according to a paper from the All Party Parliamentary Group for Debt, Aid and Trade, which discusses some of the reasons for continued famine in Africa, with a focus on Niger. The paper says IMF policies of slashing subsidies for agricultural inputs will hinder development. Subsidy reform is another key criteria - abolishing rich-country agricultural subsidies would result in a 13 per cent rise in GDP per person in Africa, says the report. "The developed world should seriously question the impact that its own economic protectionism has on Africa's poor and recognise that they are a significant contributor to poverty and food insecurity. Developed countries must implement their own economic reform for the sake of Africa's long- term food security."

Uganda's army commander says his troops have been given unlimited access to fight Ugandan rebels based in Sudan. The move follows last week's indictment of five Lord's Resistance Army rebels by the International Criminal Court. Until now the army could not go beyond a so-called "red line", about 100km (62 miles) into Sudanese territory. The Khartoum government backed the LRA until the end of Sudan's civil war, but the rebels remain active - their latest attack was reportedly on Friday.

The security situation in Sudan's war-affected western region of Darfur is getting worse and more must be done to protect civilians, the UN Secretary-General's special adviser on the prevention of genocide, Juan Mendez, said on Monday. More also needed to be done to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance and bring those responsible for atrocities before the International Criminal Court (ICC), he added.

Thousands of civilians began arriving in the town of Walungu in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Monday following attacks on four nearby villages, in which at least 24 civilians were hacked to death. "Most of the displaced are small children and old women," Donatien Nakalonge, a local community leader in the town of Walungu in South Kivu Province, told IRIN on Tuesday. They walked 15 km from their villages of Tchindudi, Mungombe, Kanyola and Rudundu, in a valley 60 km south of the provincial capital, Bukavu.

"Ceuta and Melilla have however communicated the unequivocal message that in addition to Kananaskis, Gleneagles and Washington, Europe and the developed world rely for their welfare and the defence of their self-interest on yet another response to the appeals of the poor of Africa and the world. That response is made up of the fortress walls in Ceuta and Melilla that are being further strengthened to repel and exclude the poor of the South, the majority of humanity, from the Northern world of the European nations, which are part of the global prosperous minority. These are the countries of the North which have the wherewithal, but lack sufficient will, to end the poverty that drives thousands of Africans to walk from as far south as the Democratic Republic of Congo, across many African countries and the Sahara Desert, to reach Fortress Europe, symbolised by Ceuta and Melilla. Because the prosperous of Europe refuse, still, properly to listen to the poor of Africa, the wretched of the earth died and were injured as they battled to breach the walls of Fortress Europe at Ceuta and Melilla." - Thabo Mbeki, South African president, writing in his weekly column ANC Today.

Refugees and civil society groups have reacted cautiously to statements by a high-ranking South African official condemning the treatment of refugees by police. In a meeting with refugee representatives held in the commercial hub of Johannesburg, Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula acknowledged that police were harassing and soliciting bribes from refugees.
However, groups which deal with refugees are waiting so see whether Mapisa-Nqakula's comments will result in real improvement of South African attitudes towards refugees, who are often the targets of abuse and exploitation.

European Union countries are increasingly abandoning their responsibilities to protect refugees in an effort to combat "illegal immigration", as the recent tragic events near the Spanish enclaves in North Africa show, Amnesty International has said. "Shamefully, EU Member States are shifting the burden of refugee protection to other countries which may be ill-equipped to deal with the ever increasing numbers of displaced people. In the process, international commitments to humane treatment and the principle of 'non-refoulement' are being violated. The overall effect is not only to strain the EU's own credibility, but to threaten the very integrity of the international refugee protection system, " said Dick Oosting, Director of Amnesty International's EU Office.

About 90,000 refugees live in Kalam camp, in Sudan`s western Darfur region, reeling under armed conflict between two rebel groups and Sudan government forces, according to a recent census released by World Vision International. It promised to continue a census of refugees in camps located in southern Darfur in order to ensure the effectiveness of its action. "The enumeration of occupants of camps is central to the evaluation of their needs for the improvement of humanitarian assistance, mainly in food and basic needs," noted a press release.

In Argentina Greenpeace is providing indiginous people with mobile phones so that they can text for help when their lands are under attack from developers. As well as sending help, Greenpeace also used SMS to call up protesters for an instant demonstration in Buenos Aires to urge the president to spare forests.

Combining reportage and analysis, Justin Pearce shows the human face of Angola at a critical juncture in its history. Working as the BBC correspondent based in Luanda, Justin Pearce was the only English–speaking journalist based in Angola in 2001 and 2002. He travelled extensively in Angola, hearing the testimonies of those whose lives were shaped by political divisions and war.