The human rights group Amnesty International has issued a report alleging serious human rights violations in Togo during the West African country's recent elections. The document, entitled 'Togo: Will History Repeat Itself?', was released Wednesday. It accuses the Togolese security forces and pro-government militants of targeting suspected opponents and other citizens in a campaign of extrajudicial executions, torture, rape, kidnappings and arbitrary arrests.

The Moroccan government continues to clamp down on dissent in Western Sahara, the country it occupies, following a pro-independence upsurge in protest in May-June. On July 21, five Saharawi human rights workers were arrested. All of the men have been imprisoned before.

Nearly four years after 9/11, hardly a day passes without the "war on terrorism" making headlines, with Iraq, Afghanistan, Indonesia and now London holding centre stage. But away from the spotlight, a quiet, dirty conflict is being waged in Somalia, reports the International Crisis Group (ICG). "In the rubble-strewn streets of the ruined capital of this state without a government, Mogadishu, al-Qaeda operatives, jihadi extremists, Ethiopian security services and Western-backed counter-terrorism networks are engaged in a shadowy and complex contest waged by intimidation, abduction and assassination. The US has had some success but now risks evoking a backlash. Ultimately a successful counter-terrorism strategy requires more attention to helping Somalia with the twin tasks of reconciliation and state building."

With a BBC film crew in Niger broadcasting images of starving children to the world, food aid shipments to the country are starting to pick up. But UN under secretary-general for humanitarian affairs Jan Egeland, who has repeatedly warned of neglected emergencies in African countries, told reporters that if donors had responded to earlier appeals, a child's life could have been saved for little more than a dollar a day. Now the estimated cost has risen to 80 times that, and for many it is too late. The latest edition of the AfricaFocus Bulletin reports on the crisis in Niger and contains the most recent update on Niger from the Food and Agriculture Organization, and excerpts from the May 19 consolidated UN appeal with additional background.

'The Khartoum-SPLM Agreement: Sudan's Uncertain Peace', the latest report from the International Crisis Group, examines the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which formally ended war between the Khartoum government and the insurgent Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), Africa's longest civil conflict. Even though SPLM/A Chairman John Garang was sworn in as First Vice-President on 9 July 2005, implementation of the CPA lags dangerously. "If the international community doesn't confront the hard issues, the entire agreement could unravel, with consequences as deadly as the war that just ended," says John Prendergast, Special Adviser to Crisis Group's President. "Ruling party support for the southern militias must be challenged, corruption must not be tolerated, and democratic processes must be prioritised".

In the last few months, residents of the dusty town of El Wak have had to accommodate 17,000 refugees who escaped fighting between the Marehan and Garre clans over the control of the trading town of Buro-ache, also known as El-Waaq, on the Somali side of the border.

On Thursday, June 23, 2005, Pambazuka News 212 covered World Refugee Day (WRD) 2005 featuring several well-thought out perspectives including an interview with Professor Barbara Harrell-Bond, whom many of us would agree is the founder of the first program on global refugee studies at Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford. Each year on June 20 the world commemorates WRD, a tradition “thankfully” began by leaders of African countries. I use thankfully in quotes because I am not sure if we should continue commemorating a day that could potentially cease to exist if actions of leaders guided us better and provided us with more human and national security. Instead, for various reasons including preoccupation with demarcating territorial borders created during colonial rule, our political leaders continue causing insecurity and refugee flows throughout Africa. Those who have already fled are either unable or unwilling to return to their home countries for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particularly social group and/or political opinion. In most cases where refugees have fled, many countries of asylum often deny them membership in their present or new social group. Therefore on this day I join other prominent African scholars such as Professor Mutua wa Makau, Professor of Law and Director of the Human Rights Center at The State University of New York at Buffalo in suggesting that we should “redraw the map of Africa” to recreate pre-colonial territorial integrity of African communities. This is also in respect of the Pan-African struggle against colonial rule and foreign domination throughout Africa and the African Diaspora.

The struggle to control Africa’s peoples and their territories by European slave traders, missionaries or colonialists created four major phases of massive human displacement and refugee flows in Africa. The first human displacement associated with European arrival in Africa came with slave trade where people fled from slave raiders while those captured were taken as slaves across the Atlantic. Next, was the partition of Africa which divided many former neighbours and kith and kin into different territories and created socio-cultural displacement among many Africans. When colonialism finally established its base, Africans resisting colonial rule and struggling for independence were forced to flee into neighbouring countries as refugees. Finally, African countries that succeeded in gaining their independence had as their first commitment to resist external aggression, avoid interference in the domestic affairs of a neighbouring African state and maintain the borders created during colonial rule. As a result, those who sought to exclude themselves from a territory where they had been forcefully included by colonial rule and wished to return to their former community were sabotaged and contained by post-independent African leaders. Others who struggled to reclaim their former territory were forced to flee into neighbouring countries.

Sadly, today many Africans countries continue struggling over territorial demarcation, separating relatives and creating insecurity and refugee flows among border communities. A recent joint-task force involving the governments of Malawi and Zambia has set aside close to US $1,130,000 in aid to demarcate a border allegedly for security purposes amidst protest of border communities with similar socio-cultural belonging. Similar territorial disputes continue between Nigeria and Cameroon, territorial disputes continue in the mineral-rich Bakassi peninsula, between Morocco and the Saharawi Democratic Republic, and between Angola and the Cabindese over the oil-rich Cabinda enclave. Previously in 1989, territorial disputes between Mauritania and Senegal involving dam construction in the Seno-Mauritania River led to the expulsion of Black Mauritanians to Senegal by Mauritanian President Maaouya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya. In 1998 following the international judgment on the border dispute between Eritrea and Ethiopia, armed struggles between the two countries claimed many human lives including expulsion of Ethiopians of Eritrean origin from Ethiopia. There are many more cases one can point to where territorial disputes have increased and maintained refugee movements. What is indisputable in many cases is how the actions of most of our political leaders have prolonged such insecurity and time spent in refuge throughout Africa.

Therefore, this article suggests that in order to minimize refugee flows, any efforts to “redraw the map of Africa” should seek to restore pre-colonial boundaries and recognize traditional communities with full property rights. African leaders should understand that Africa’s peoples have the ability to determine their communal boundaries and no amount of aid can replace the preferred social living among those of similar socio-cultural origin. Where people have already been thrown across borders as refugees and have lived in the country of asylum for a long-time, African host governments should consider incorporating them in the spirit of “African Unity” either permanently or until such a time when they can return safely to their countries of origin. Otherwise, suppressing internal self-determination and privileging the stability of colonial-created borders within post-colonial African states undermines the spirit and achievements of the Pan-Africanist struggle and the new spirit of African Unity.

African leaders should restore respect and togetherness rather than antagonize border communities. They should also seek to rid themselves of colonially crafted legal manipulations such as birth, race and descent as grounds for citizenship that continue to deny refugees belonging in communities where they have lived for a long-time. In fact many refugees have become prominent social, economic, cultural and political resources in countries of asylum, greatly contributing to national development and political stability. For instance, Rwandese refugees in Uganda fought with the National Resistance Army of Yoweri Kaguta Museveni to liberate Uganda from Obote’s regime. However, once they demanded citizenship many Ugandans quickly reminded them that they were foreigners and parliament enacted citizenship laws requiring that either a parent or grandparent were born in Uganda. In other countries, constitutional and citizenship laws required in addition to birth, an established residence (Zambia) or membership to an “indigenous” community (Nigeria).

Nevertheless, there are several countries in Africa whose approach to territorial dispute settlement and refugee protection could be emulated throughout the continent. In 1991, Senegal provided for the naturalization of Mauritania refugees reportedly to avoid regional insecurity, diplomatic fall-out with its neighbour Mauritania and to incorporate Mauritanian refugees who share historical and socio-cultural similarities with the Peulh and Wolof of Senegal. In 2003, the Zambian government announced a “Zambian Initiative” to provide citizenship to Angolan refugees unwilling to move to Angola on humanitarian grounds.

On this year’s WRD, Tanzania began the process of granting citizenship to 182 out of an expected total of 1,320 Somali Bantu. Other countries such as DRC, Ghana and Rwanda have recently enacted laws that either grant citizenship to all or recognized dual nationality to address political discrimination against migrants, encourage the repatriation of Diaspora communities and attract economic contributions from Diaspora populations and rich resident immigrants. Through sub-regional bodies such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), “transnational citizenship” is available to persons from any of the sixteen member states including refugees. Furthermore, the African Union (hereinafter AU) has also prioritized two other forms of citizenship alongside national citizenship - regional and continental citizenship.

In conclusion, whether some people within our national borders were former slaves vis-à-vis free people or strangers vis-à-vis indigenes, there is no reason why refugee host countries in Africa should deny such people the economic, political, and social rights by using politically opportunistic policies and practices of defining membership and demarcating territorial borders. Where refugees have resided in the area for decades, African countries should accord them membership through existing forms of citizenship, embrace new forms and patiently and creatively deliberate on other possible forms of resolving territorial disputes.

Radio for Peacebuilding is a project that aims to help develop knowledge about the use of peacebuilding techniques among radio professionals across sub-Saharan Africa. The project's main audience is sub-Saharan African radio broadcasters. The project is run jointly from Brussels, Belgium and from Bujumbura, Burundi. The Radio for Peacebuilding website is intended to be an interactive tool for radio professionals (journalists, radio presenters and editors). It includes radio programmes, manuals and other documents and other useful information.

The aim of the workshop is to provide a forum of discussion on Francophone African business in the West (Europe and North America) and South Africa, in order to assess the extent and vitality of its development and to attempt to identify how it can play a major part in regenerating the economy as a whole, in particular through poverty alleviation strategies.

This report seeks to engage in the current debate on issues of post-conflict reconstruction and appropriate mechanisms of justice within northern Uganda. It begins by outlining both the goals of any reconstruction phase, as well as defining the two words, peace and justice. It considers the current and potential role of traditional, or localised, mechanisms of justice within the conflict zone and in any future period of transition.

International Rescue Committee (IRC) has said that it and nine other international NGOs had requested international monitoring of 8,000 Rwandans who they say were taken from Burundi illegally and by force on 13 June. In a letter on 1 July to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the NGOs asked her to "insist that the Rwandan government provide guarantees that the safety and dignity of those returned from Burundi will be ensured, and that these guarantees be subject to effective international monitoring."

In 1998 and 1999 the Rwandan government and the UN recognised around 650,000 people in makeshift camps as internally displaced (IDPs) in the north-western prefectures of Ruhengeri and Gisenyi. More than four years after the issue of internal displacement was taken off the agenda in Rwanda, conditions in the villages inhabited by the resettled IDPs call for renewed attention to the question of whether internal displacement has ended with the implementation of durable solutions, as required by the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement.

A thematic annotated workshop was organized by the UNCHR in Addis to discuss the comprehensive plan for Somali refugees' gap analysis in Ethiopia.
One of the gaps identified was the absence of reliable data on the composition and profile of the Somali refugees in Ethiopia. There were also no specific mechanisms in place for the identification of refugees with special protection needs, including victims of sexual and gender-based violence, partly due to the absence of a reporting system and multi-sectoral referral mechanism.

With rainy season floods just days away, UNHCR is scrambling to relocate some 10,000 refugees from the troubled Central African Republic (CAR) who recently arrived in several villages in remote southern Chad. The refugees, many of whom fled fighting in the CAR in early June with nothing but the clothes on their backs, are currently scattered among 17 villages near the Chadian town of Gore.

Togo’s slide into political chaos following the disputed presidential elections in April 2005 has forced several thousand people to flee their homes, killed scores and wounded many more. While some 34,000 people have fled to neighbouring Benin and Ghana, UN agencies working with international and local NGO partners estimate that 12,000 people have been displaced within Togo's borders, especially in the Plateaux and Central regions.

Around 890 people displaced from their homes almost seven years ago in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) arrived in Kisangani, capital of Orientale Province, on Sunday after 43 gruelling days on a boat on the Congo River that came from Equateur Province. "We are now in the process of finding the means to take them to [the villages] they came from as soon as possible," Hubert Molisho Nendolo, Kisangani’s deputy governor, said.

Two weeks ago Tebogo Malete was publicly flogged at a traditional court in Old Naledi, a village southeast of the Botswana's capital, Gaborone; a photograph of his punishment was published in the weekly newspaper, The Midweek Sun. Malete, 27, a petty thief, had been sentenced to five lashes for housebreaking at the customary court presided over by the village headman. The humiliating newspaper photo showed him with his pants down and a police officer using a lash on his bare buttocks, sparking outrage in human rights circles.

The Congolese army must prevent further violence among its rival factions that has caused unnecessary civilian casualties, Human Rights Watch said after security forces in the eastern city of Goma fired mortars against soldiers based in a crowded neighborhood, killing two children and injuring 10 other civilians. The violence among army factions comes at a time when security forces across the country have been on high alert for weeks. Opposition parties had called for mass protests to force the Congolese transitional government to step down on June 30, the deadline originally set by the 2003 Sun City Accord.

Peace may yet be possible in Northern Uganda in 2005, says the International Crisis Group. "Many elements seem to be in place, but they need to be pursued by President Museveni's government in a more comprehensive framework, given stronger international support and - most urgently - be committed to by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in the context of a specific process with a clearly definable endgame."

The United Nations Security Council should strongly declare its full support for the International Criminal Court's investigation into the serious crimes committed in Darfur, Human Rights Watch said before the first-ever briefing of the Council by an ICC prosecutor. When the Security Council referred the situation in Darfur to the ICC on March 31, it invited the court's prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, to report on the progress of his investigation within three months.  The International Criminal Court lacks the ability to execute its own requests. Instead, the court must rely on state cooperation to further its investigations. The Security Council should encourage and facilitate this cooperation, which is crucial to the effective pursuit of justice, Human Rights Watch said.