The Zimbabwe government is planning to set up a transit centre in the busy southern border town of Beitbridge to assist vulnerable youths deported as illegal aliens from South Africa. The centre, to be established with the help of Save the Children Fund (Norway), will help youths under 18 who have been expelled for crossing the border illegally, but have no money to return to their homes. Further, there have been reports that some deportees, especially girls, had been victims of abuse and sexual harassment in Beitbridge.

Death row prisoners in Tanzania have entered the fifth day of a hunger strike saying their human rights are being violated. More than 15 inmates at Ukonga maximum security prison in Dar es Salaam complain of a poor diet and severe beatings in overcrowded cells. Ukonga prisons, on the outskirts of Tanzania's main commercial city, is home to more than 3,000 inmates. Of these, 90 have been waiting for more than 20 years to be hanged, after the courts found them guilty of murder.

Several human rights defenders, community and environmental activists, traditional leaders as well as political leaders in the Owambo district in northwestern Namibia have severally but unanimously expressed concern at what they described as 'unilateral and exclusive privatization of a community natural resource'.  They are referring to a salt exploration and processing scheme soon to be constructed near the town of Oshakati. There are also fears in human rights circles that the profit-driven privatization of the communal salt resources might have serious environmental, cultural and political consequences. Warned Namibian Society for Human Rights executive director Phil ya Nangoloh: "We are not opposed to employment creation efforts per se. However, as human rights defenders our concerns about the scheme are obvious: income-generating business ventures of this nature result from neoliberal processes, such as privatization of natural resources and promotion of exports at the expense of local communities. Also, experience has shown that these neoliberal processes have locally led to uncontrolled and disruptive industrialization, proliferation of technologies aimed at maximizing profit with scant regard for resource sustainability as well as to rapid urbanization and environmental degradation."

The UN Security Council meeting about Sudan in Nairobi in November was a major success in that it succeeded in bringing the Naivasha process to successful conclusion by January, says the January 'Prospects for Peace' briefing from Justice Africa. In the post-Naivasha period, the biggest challenge for peace in Sudan will be in incorporating the legitimate grievances of the people of Darfur, Kordofan and the East within a political framework and schedule determined at Naivasha on a North-South basis, says the briefing. "The African Union mediators failed to get the Darfur parties to sign a Declaration of Principles. This means that there has been no political progress in Darfur, a shortcoming reflected in the Darfur rebel's rejection of Naivasha."
Related Link:
Peace at last in Sudan
* http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/interna.asp?idnews=26967

United Nations peacekeepers in Congo sexually exploited women and girls, some as young as 13, a U.N. watchdog office said Friday in a new confirmation that efforts to curb abuses by U.N. troops are not working. Charges of sex abuse and other crimes have been lodged against U.N. peacekeeping missions around the world for decades. Officials have found it difficult to crack down because the United Nations doesn't want to offend the relatively small number of countries that are willing to provide peacekeepers.

The government of the Central African Republic has given the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court jurisdiction to investigate possible war crimes within its borders, the court has said. Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, who received the letter from the government of the African nation, will look into possible war crimes in the region, a statement said.

The security situation in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo poses serious challenges for planned June elections, a UN report warns. The report from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan says rebel groups from Rwanda are still operating in the area. The UN's humanitarian chief Jan Egeland said on Thursday that about 1,000 people are dying every day in DR Congo.

Despite fears of a major new influx of refugees fleeing civil war in Sudan's Darfur region, only a trickle of people entered the string of refugee camps located in the arid wastes of eastern Chad in the last weeks of December. Despite early warnings by UN officials that Chad's refugee population of 200,000 could rise by as much as a third, with 100,000 new entrants seeking shelter in the coming weeks, aid officials said that to date there were relatively few newcomers to the 11 camps. The situation in terms of housing, food and water therefore remained stable.

The first of thousands of displaced people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)’s Equateur province returned home as part of a pilot project being undertaken jointly by the government and the UN. On Friday, 375 internally displaced persons (IDPs) left Equateur’s provincial capital, Mbandaka for their homes in and around the town of Basankusu, 240 km northeast, Social Affairs Minister Ingele Ifoto told IRIN on Monday. Almost three million people displaced by five years of war have still not returned to their homes in various parts of the DRC, despite a December 2002 peace agreement between the government and all rebel groups and the creation, in June 2003, of a government of national unity.

While fighting in Sudan’s western region of Darfur continues, the government of Sudan and opposition groups in the south are edging toward the end of a long civil war. Refugees International recently visited the Nuba Mountains of central Sudan where the Joint Monitoring Mission/Joint Military Commission (JMM/JMC), have successfully monitored the ceasefire for almost three years. The Nuba region covers an area of 80,000 square kilometers, about the same as South Carolina, and has a population of about 1.3 million. The population is increasing rapidly as more than 100,000 refugees and displaced persons have returned home in the last two years. The Nuba Mountains ceasefire has been a success. The Joint Military Commission might serve as a model for monitoring and peacekeeping missions in other parts of Sudan and in permissive areas and regions around the globe.

ACT member, Lutheran World Federation Uganda is proposing for support to expand the emergency response program for Northern Uganda for internally displaced persons in Adjumani, Katakwi and Kitgum districts. If there is reduced conflict, this project will also support resettlement and reintegration of IDPs to their respective communities. The Direct Beneficiaries of this project are approximately 290,000 internally displaced persons (of whom approximately 60% are female) and the project will give special consideration to women and children. In 2005, there is hope for peace and if this were to happen, the LWF Uganda would work with the IDPs to assist them in returning to their respective homes, albeit on a gradual basis, with close monitoring of the security situation.

Humanitarian workers have ventured into jungles in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) since Thursday to deliver food and non-food relief aid to thousands of war-displaced people in North Kivu Province, a UN official told IRIN on Tuesday. These towns bore the brunt of the latest violence between troops loyal to the Kinshasa government and dissident soldiers of the Congolese army. At least 100,000 people fled their homes for the forests during the fighting.

Thousands of civilians have been displaced following fierce fighting on Saturday in Burundi's western province of Bujumbura Rural. The internally displaced persons (IDPs) have not received aid, the governor of the province, Ignace Ntawembarira, said.

The Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI) has welcomed the media statement released by the police watchdog body, the Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD), announcing that investigations into the fatal shooting of Harrismith student Tebogo Mkhonza on 30 August 2004 have been completed and that three police officers should be prosecuted for his murder, alternatively culpable homicide and attempted murder. The killing followed public protests in the town against lack of service delivery.

The declaration, in Kenya, of a Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in October 2004 was heralded as a breakthrough in Somalia's protracted crisis of statelessness and civil strife. But the peace process has gone largely downhill since then. The Transitional Federal Parliament's choice for interim president, Colonel Abdillahi Yusuf Ahmed, is divisive and controversial. To many Somalis, his election represents not a step toward peace but continuation of the war by other means. Yusuf and his partners need to use their political advantage to form a genuine government of national unity and the international community needs to make clear that only if this happens will the TFG get the recognition and support it desperately seeks, said the International Crisis Group in a report released late in 2004.

Continuing atrocities in the western region of Darfur and impunity for war crimes in the south jeopardize prospects for peace in Sudan, Human Rights Watch has warned ahead of the January 9 signing of a peace agreement to end the 21-year conflict in the south. The final peace accords-known as the Naivasha Protocols for the Kenyan city where negotiations took place since June 2002-are scheduled to be signed in Nairobi by the Sudanese government and the main southern rebel group, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM). The peace agreement lacks any provision for a truth commission, prosecutions or other forms of accountability for past abuses in the southern conflict.

During aerial bombardments on Marla village by the air forces, the armed forces arrested twenty-four men and three children from Marla, Domma, Labado and Belail villages in Nyala province, southern Darfur state, according to the Sudan Organisation Against Torture. "The men and the children were initially taken into military custody in Nyala where they were detained for 2 days. During the arrest and along the way from Douma and Marla to Nyala, the twenty-four men and three children were allegedly tortured by the armed forces. They were beaten with sticks all over their bodies, flogged on their backs and chests and kicked with military boots on both their faces and sides."

Sudan ended 2004 on a high note, with government and rebel representatives signing a permanent ceasefire and an accord that maps out the implementation of several peace protocols already concluded. This paves the way for a final agreement to end 21 years of civil war in southern Sudan – Africa’s longest-running conflict. The ceremony took place in the north-western Kenyan town of Naivasha, which has served as the venue for peace talks between Khartoum and the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A).

Is the National Rainbow Coalition (Narc) administration walking the talk or simply talking the talk? To its credit, the government has done a great deal in its attempt to lay the foundation for a successful war against graft.But the indicators on the ground are such that there is no blood flowing as a result of old corruption and new corruption seems to be bustling and sizzling within the very heart of the Narc administration, notes this opinion piece from the East African Standard.

The American University in Cairo, Forced Migration & Refugee Studies Program Community Interpreters Project (CCIP) is offering a three month training course for refugee interpreters speaking any of the following languages (native-speaker level): Dinka, Amharic, Tigrinya, Somali, Kiswahili, Arabic, Juba Arabic, Fur.