The Refugee Law Project (RLP) has released a report on child protection issues among refugees and nationals in western Uganda. RLP Working Paper 13: Child Protection in the Context of Displacement, funded by Save the Children in Uganda (SCiU), details education, health and child abuse concerns in Ntoroko County, Bundibugyo District.

Building on past research presented in RLP Working Paper 10: Displacement in Bundibugyo District: A Situation Analysis, the new report shows how conflict, displacement and poverty in western Uganda and neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have contributed to very difficult living conditions for children in Ntoroko County. While all children face child protection issues in this context, refugee children encounter additional challenges because of language barriers, lack of social support structures and discrimination.

Research findings reveal major barriers to accessing quality education for children in Ntoroko County, particularly for girls and Congolese children. Malaria, cough, worms and cholera are the main health issues facing children, due primarily to poor sanitation and lack of access to clean water. Child abuse, neglect, rape and defilement are widespread in the county, but response from local authorities has been inadequate, contributing to a culture of impunity.

Amnesty International has welcomed the adoption by the Senegalese Parliament of the bill abolishing the death penalty. Senegal becomes the fourth member state of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to outlaw recourse to capital punishment (after Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau and Ivory Coast). Under the lead of President Wade, the bill had been adopted unanimously by the government in July 2004. It was passed with an overwhelming majority. Senegal has not carried out executions since 1967 but has continued to hand down death sentences, most recently in July 2004.

Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, has linked US reform of its agricultural subsidies regime to the human rights of African farmers at a press conference in Bamako last week. Mali is one of four West African countries leading the fight for cotton subsidy reform at the World Trade Organization. "The human rights of West African farmers are threatened by the continuous dumping of US cotton causing world prices to fall," said Robinson, who is the Honorary President of Oxfam International. World cotton prices reached an all time low in 2001 and are currently plummeting again after a brief recovery, putting huge pressure on government revenues and farmer incomes.

Ms. Delphine Djiraibe of Chad has been selected for the 2004 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award. Ms. Djiraibe was chosen by an international panel of distinguished judges for her tireless efforts in promoting the human rights of the Chadian people, often at great personal risk to herself and her family. Ms. Djiraibe is being recognized for her work on the Chad/Cameroon Oil and Pipeline Project. Her multifaceted campaign encompasses fighting governmental corruption, ensuring that the Chadian people benefit from the pipeline and its resulting profits, and preventing environmental devastation resulting from its construction.

More than one billion children, half of the world's population of children, suffer from poverty, violent conflict and the scourge of AIDS, the United Nations Children's Fund said in its annual report. The rights of children to a healthy and protected upbringing, as laid out in the widely-adopted 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, were regularly imperiled, due in part to the failure of governments to carry out human rights and economic reforms, UNICEF said.

A few years ago it was an unknown blot on the map wedged between Cameroon and Gabon and home to roughly 525 000 people. But within a few years it has quietly rocketed up the rankings to become Africa's third largest oil producer. In 2004 it has firmly grabbed international attention with a coup plot that just keeps on unravelling.

The latest revelations on the Equatorial Guinea coup plot confirm earlier speculation that it was an 'open secret' within the global intelligence community. Last weekend the Observer UK reported that the British government knew about the coup several months before it was launched. The Observer said two reports on the coup were handed to British Intelligence and to a senior colleague of US defence secretary Donald Rumsfield. This news steps up the pressure on Tony Blair's government to explain why they failed to act according to international norms and warn the government of Equatorial Guinea.

Sharper questions for the UK government to reveal how much it knew come at an embarrassing time for Tony Blair. Blair has previously described Africa as a "scar on the conscience of the world". More recently he created the Commission for Africa to probe Africa's development challenges. Last week the Commission began a series of meetings throughout the continent aimed at gathering input on Africa's challenges. Blair will be keen to avoid any implication that his government tacitly supported the plot.

South African President Thabo Mbeki concluded four-day talks with all parties in the Ivory Coast conflict on Monday, announcing that agreement on a four-point plan had been reached. He told waiting reporters that the government of Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo, opposition parties and the country's main rebel group had accepted that "specific programmes must be carried out". The agreement, aimed at reviving the faltering peace process in Ivory Coast, provides for the government to implement legislative changes, with the rebels required to start making progress with their own disarmament.

Human Rights Watch has written a letter to Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, the current AU chairman, urging the AU to speed its deployment of troops to Darfur and seek to expand their mandate to protect civilians. Any accord between the Sudanese government and Darfur rebel groups, set to resume peace talks on Friday in the Nigerian capital Abuja, needs to incorporate human rights provisions. Civilians in the rural areas of Darfur far from the African Union's existing bases continue to come under attack, as Sudanese government forces and their Janjaweed militias pursue a campaign designed to consolidate ethnic cleansing and prevent farmers from returning to self-sufficiency.

The UN Peacekeeping Mission to DRC (Monuc) should increase its presence in rebel controlled areas to ensure a greater proportion of children are demobilised with minimum risk, says a Save the Children report that looks at the Disarmament, Demobilisation, Repatriation, Rehabilitation and Reintegration process (DDRRR) of Rwandan boys and girls formerly associated with armed groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The report recommends that community members and leaders should be trained on child protection issues.

A fresh strategy towards peacekeeping is needed in Liberia and Sierra Leone if both are not to remain shadow states, vulnerable to new fighting and state failure, argues the International Crisis Group (ICG) in a new report. "The international community needs to make genuinely long-term commitments - not two to five years, as at present, but on the order of fifteen to 25 years - to enable new political forces to develop," said the report.

Civil society organisations, Zimbabweans in the Diaspora, and other citizens in the SADC region are gathering in front of the Zimbabwean Embassies or High Commissions in their respective countries on International Human Rights Day to protest against the wave of repression which limits civic space and undermines civil liberties in Zimbabwe.

"The matter of who's "more" black has a certain personal resonance. Like many foreign blacks, I'm often treated by my black peers as a usurper. Furthermore, my children have the same pedigree as Barack Obama: Kenyan father and American mother. After three decades in America, I still anguish about the sad state of the relationship between American and African blacks. Each group, safe within its own prejudices and preconceptions, rejects the other."

Cameroon's Patrice Abanda has criticised the failure of a Czech football anti-racism campaign after becoming victim of another racist incident. He said the campaign had little effect. "The only change which I see is the appearance of plaques in stadiums saying 'Football yes, racism no'. That's all that I have noticed," he said. "Otherwise, it is the same chants, cries of monkey, banana skins, all that," he added. "It's not only with me, but also with other black players who have come to play here."

Since the end of apartheid a decade ago, growing numbers of refugees from across Africa have been heading towards the continent's richest and most industrialised country. No one knows how many African immigrants have settled illegally in South Africa. Estimates vary from 2 to 10 million people, or between 5 and 25 % of South Africa's population.

Vital food rations for 118,000 refugees in Ethiopia may be cut by 30 percent unless international donors supply 4.2 million dollars to buy cereal, the United Nations' food agency warned. Ethiopia's refugee population is almost entirely dependent upon food aid as people are unable to farm for themselves without angering the locals, who also rely heavily on international support to feed themselves.

A grave containing "numerous" bodies allegedly killed by rebels has been found in north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, UN peacekeepers say. An underground jail had also been found in a "torture camp" run by the FAPC rebels, said a UN spokesman. The rebel-run Ndrele camp was on Sunday the scene of clashes between the rebels and the UN after peacekeepers tried to investigate reports of abuses.

A Ugandan opposition MP has alleged that one of his staff was tortured by state security services. Driver Sam Ongiya, 26, claims he was picked up by armed men and forcefully interrogated about opposition activities. Opposition politicians fear increased harassment as Uganda prepares for democratic elections in 2006. Human rights groups report that torture by state security agencies is common in Uganda but the government maintains it is working to eliminate it.

South Africa's national blood service is to meet to discuss whether to stop treating blood donated by black people as high risk. The health minister has already said this should stop, after it emerged that President Thabo Mbeki's blood was destroyed because he was black. He did not fill in a questionnaire and because he was considered high risk, his blood was burnt.

On 29th November, representatives of child rights organisations in 18 African countries met in Dakar, Senegal for a four-day workshop on the procedures of the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. The meeting was convened by the West African office of Save the Children (Sweden) and the Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa (IHRDA – based in the Gambia), and supported by Save the Children (Sweden) and the Ford Foundation. Its primary purpose was to inform African child rights networks about the role and functioning of the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC), and to build capacity to engage with this important body. I was fortunate enough to attend in my capacity as Chairperson of the ChildrenNOW Network (www.nscn.org.za).

The Workshop was a combination of expert inputs and work in small groups. Inputs from various experts included:

· the history of international child rights conventions and the UN system;
· a comparison of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC);
· the role and work of the Committee of Experts to date;
· communication procedures;
· reporting procedures;
· strategies for the ratification of the ACRWC, and implementation at national level;
· the actions that African NGOs can take to support ratification and implementation.

The Workshop came to the conclusion that a network of African NGOs to support the implementation of the ACRWC should be established. It was further agreed that we need to ensure visibility for the network, that networks at country level are very important and should be the basis of a regional network, and that some conceptualisation work needs to be done, such as a feasibility study. The IHRDA was asked to undertake preliminary activities towards setting up such a network.

Concrete activities that the Institute was asked to perform in the next 6 to 12 months, in conjunction with the Save the Children (Sweden) network, include a review of existing networks and to plan to meet again within the next twelve months. It is hoped that this meeting will take place in Addis Ababa in May 2005.

For further information, and a full report on the Workshop, contact Carol Bower ([email protected]) or consult the web site of the African Union (www.africa-union.org/child/home.htn)

** Carol Bower is Executive Director of Resources Aimed at the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (RAPCAN) and National Chair of the South African Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect.

The plane lands at Ndjili airport, Kinshasa, in the dead of night - the better to avoid monitoring by journalists and human rights activists. Then the returning asylum seekers are led out onto the tarmac by their European escorts to be handed over to the Congolese authorities. Some will have suffered violence in the process of being deported or in the detention centre where they were held prior to the flight. Others will have been tied to the seats with scotch tape for the duration of the seven-hour journey. Most would have been prevented from using the toilet or eating. They are handed over to the offices of the Director-General of Migration (DGM), ostensibly the Congolese immigration service but, in reality, an arm of the government's security services. A file containing details of their claim for political asylum in Europe is also passed to the DGM. According to René Kabala Mushiya, an activist who works in Kinshasa with the National Human Rights Observatory, this is the moment when European governments abandon those who have claimed asylum in their countries to a state which violates human rights with impunity.