On International Peace Day, Wednesday September 21, the feisty protest group, Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA), staged a peaceful demonstration in Harare, demanding "Peace not Poverty". Until the riot police intervened with batons it was an entirely peaceful, orderly and good-natured protest. A short distance from Town House the protesters were intercepted by baton-wielding riot police who lashed out at them without mercy. Most of them managed to escape arrest on this occasion, though not to avoid bruises and cuts from the police batons. It is believed however than three of their number were detained by the police. Human rights lawyers are seeking to establish the whereabouts of the three and the nature of any charges brought against them, but at the time of filing this report the lawyers had not been able to make contact with them.

Fighting in northern Uganda has displaced just over 41,000 people in one district alone in the past year, according to an IOM-Danish survey just finished. Attacks by the rebel Lords Resistance Army (LRA) on refugee settlements and villages in Adjumani district which adjoins the more conflict affected region in Northern Uganda, have become more frequent over the past 18 months and has led to a permanent insecure living environment. However, the exact number of internally displaced people (IDPs) in Adjumani district has been unclear as has a true picture of the humanitarian situation there.

The fourth and last phase of repatriation of Angolan refugees in Congo Brazzaville, that was to start on the 26th of September, has been postponed, due to technical reasons, a source with the Social Welfare Ministry (MINARS), announced. A MINARS press note delivered to Angop says that 112 Angolan citizens coming from that African country were expected today at Cabinda's Massaby border station. The organised repatriation of about 3.000 Angolan refugees living in Congo Brazzaville started in the middle of this year, in an operation that has already repatriated 286 national citizens, most of whom born in northern Cabinda province.

The UN refugee agency has been conducting training sessions for state officials hired as part of the South African government's drive to improve its capacity to tackle the huge backlog of asylum seekers. Although the Department of Home Affairs (DHA), which determines who is a refugee using criteria agreed by UNHCR, has been processing more asylum cases in recent months, this increase has been outstripped by the number of new applications, which totalled 32,558 in 2004. By the start of this year, the number of pending cases had climbed to some 115,000. The record number of pending asylum applications - far in excess of what the DHA staff could handle - prompted the government to launch a strategy that included dramatically improving its ability to tackle the backlog. UNHCR is providing training, advice and materials to support this effort to raise the capacity both of staff and their equipment.

Some 100 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa made it Tuesday over the high fences separating Morocco from the Spanish enclave of Melilla on the southern coast of the Mediterranean sea, while another 400 were kept out by the Civil Guard. The storming of the border occurred just a few hours before the media in Spain aired a video filmed by the children's rights organisation PRODEIN, which shows Civil Guard agents in riot gear violently repelling a similar concerted attempt by migrants on September 20.

As African leaders gear up for two successive summits to salvage peace efforts in Cote d'Ivoire, the country’s president Laurent Gbagbo has ruled out any mediation role for his fellow West African leaders. The 15-nation Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has invited heads of state from across the region to the Nigerian capital, Abuja, on Friday for “talks on the situation in Ivory Coast.”

Human rights watchdog Amnesty International has expressed concern over mounting political and ethnic tensions in the North-Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) - warning that this might spark renewed conflict in the country. In a report issued Wednesday, the group says additional fighting could undermine the DRC's uncertain peace process, and lead to human rights abuses in a region that has already become a byword for violations.

On 16 September 2005, armed militias in military uniform, allegedly the Janjaweed, attacked and raped one girl and a woman, 2 km West of Kalma Internally Displaced (IDP) Camp in Nyala. During the attack, the women were flogged before being raped, says the The Sudan Organisation Against Torture (SOAT). SOAT has strongly condemned the continual attacks and sexual violence against women and girls in Darfur. "In light of evidence that attacks on civilians have subsided in the areas where African Union (AU) observers have been deployed, SOAT is particularly concerned that women and girls continue to venture outside IDP camps to undertake their regular tasks including fetching firewood and water without protection by AU observers stationed inside these camps."

The world must address once and for all the grave security threats posed by the Forces Démocratiques de la Libération du Rwanda (FDLR) in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, says the International Crisis Group. In letters to regional and international leaders Crisis Group President Gareth Evans urged them to agree on a dual track approach to the FDLR, offering members - apart from those clearly guilty of the most serious crimes - real incentives for repatriation to Rwanda while simultaneously threatening military action against those that refuse.

Following two separate violent demonstrations, youths of the county have resolved to pursue peaceful co-existence by committing themselves to ensuring that the county remains peaceful. According to a release, the Bong County Youths made the promise at the end of a six- month Community Training Program in Gbarnga. The training program was implemented by the Development Education Network of Liberia, DEN-L, and funded by United States Aid for International Development (USAID) and the Liberia Transition Initiative, (LTI).

Trouble is brewing at newly established tobacco company, Alliance One Tobacco [Malawi] Limited where employees have petitioned their management to fire a consultant, accusing management of racism. The employees, in the petition, say the consultant, Simon Wray should leave the company within 24 hours and asked management to stop favouring whites at the company. But the Human Resources Director Paulette Kamkwende said that the incident that gave rise to the accusations has since been resolved. The accusations come barely a month after Dimon and Stancom Tobacco companies, two major tobacco companies merged to become Alliance One Tobacco [Malawi] Ltd.

An MP has asked the Government to suspend trials on Genetically Modified (GM) crops, pending development of strong biosafety policies and legal framework. Mr David Nakitare (Saboti) also said further field trials on genetically engineered crops should be stopped until the technology was proved safe to the environment. He said many people in Africa would be affected if the technology was found dangerous to man and the environment. "At least 85 per cent of people in the continent practice small-scale agriculture. This is why it is important to tread cautiously on GMO crops," he said.

Please find below details of a new publication:
Title: Genocide in the African Great Lakes States. Challenges for the International Criminal Court in the Case of the Democratic Republic of Congo
Author: Kalere, Jean Migabo
Source: International Criminal Law Review, Volume 5, Number 3, September 2005, pp. 463-484(22)
Publisher: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers

The armed conflict in Darfur has entered a new phase. Violence, insecurity, banditry activities and the commission of serious crimes are increasing. The conflict progressively transforms into low-intensity war and evolves into a situation of perpetual instability and lawlessness. All parties to the conflict bear responsibility for the current situation.

Burundi's last remaining rebel group, the National Liberation Forces (FNL), has rejected an offer of peace talks with the new government. The government took office last month under a UN-backed peace process aimed at ending a war between Hutu rebels and an army led by the Tutsi minority. The FNL was the only rebel group to remain outside the peace process. A five-year interim constitution guarantees a balance of power between Burundi's Hutu and Tutsi people.

On 6 September, whilst his plane was in transit at Kigali airport, the Catholic missionary Guy Theunis who worked in Rwanda from 1970 to 1994, was arrested and taken into custody by the Rwandan authorities. The Rwandan prosecutor Emmanuel Rukangira told AFP that the 60-year-old priest was accused of "incitement to genocide and of genocide denial", particularly in the Christian publication Dialogue. However, in an interview with Flemish television, the Rwandan specialist Filip Reyntjens said: "From a legal point of view, I don't think the charges stand up. I fear that father Theunis may be the victim of his notorious opposition to the current regime."

Nigeria's Federal High Court will on Tuesday, 13 September 2005, announce a ruling in a petition by two Nigerian businessmen amputated by Charles Taylor-backed militias in Sierra Leone in 1999 challenging President Olusegun Obasanjo's decision to grant asylum to fugitive former Liberian President, Mr. Charles Taylor. In their petition initiated on 13 May 2004, the two businessmen, David Anyaele and Emmanuel Egbuna, claim that President Obasanjo's decision to grant asylum to Mr. Taylor was contrary to the United Nations Refugee Convention of 1951 and the African Union's Refugee Convention of 1969 and unlawfully usurped the powers of Nigeria's National Refugee Commission.

Anti-riot police arrested 45 protestors in the southeast Nigerian town of Onitsha during region-wide demonstrations called by a banned secessionist group, police officials and witnesses said last Thursday. The Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) said it called protests held in several southeastern cities on Wednesday to protest alleged harassment of its members by the security forces and to intensify its demand for secession.

International and Tunisian non-governmental organisations have expressed their outrage at the rapid deterioration of the human rights situation in Tunisia just two months prior to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), to be held in Tunis, November 15-18, 2005. After prohibiting the founding congress of the Tunisian Journalists' Union (SJT) on September 7, authorities prevented the Tunisian League for Human Rights (LTDH) from holding its 6th Congress.

In its policy of forced evictions and mass displacement, the Zimbabwean government has violated the human rights of hundreds of thousands of its citizens, Human Rights Watch said in a report released this week. Over the past two weeks, the Zimbabwean authorities have compounded the suffering by refusing to fully cooperate with United Nations agencies and humanitarian groups working to assist the evicted population. On August 26, President Robert Mugabe’s government rejected the terms of a draft U.N. emergency appeal that would have helped hundreds of thousands of those hardest hit by the evictions.