Dozens of suspected masterminds of Rwanda's 1994 genocide are boycotting their trials at a U.N. tribunal to protest plans to move future proceedings to Kigali, defense lawyers said on September 21st. Forty-three of the 67 detainees at the court in the Tanzanian town of Arusha began the protest on September 20th, fearing they could face the death penalty if cases are transferred to Rwanda's legal system. Observers say the U.N. is unwilling to use force to comply the defendants to attend their trials.

Zimbabwe's main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said it may launch mass protests to press President Robert Mugabe to enact voting reforms ensuring free and fair parliamentary elections next year. Mugabe, in power since independence in 1980, is accused by critics of a harsh political crackdown as Zimbabwe spins into economic crisis, partly due to the government's seizure of white-owned farms to give to landless blacks.

When Sharia criminal law was first introduced in Nigeria, it was very popular with many Muslims hoping it would deliver an improved justice system. However, an 111-page report by Human Rights Watch outlines how the law has contributed to many human rights abuses and how it has been used by many northern Nigerian governors to gain political advantage. To read the full report, go to: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2004/nigeria0904/

They call the US military base at Diego Garcia the "footprint of freedom." The base is strategically located in the Indian Ocean, where its naval fleet and B-52, B-2, and B-1 bombers have recently been used to attack Iraq and Afghanistan. The US Government and the UK Government that controls Diego Garcia and the rest of the surrounding Chagos Archipelago have called the base crucial to the war on terrorism and to fighting for the human rights of Iraqis.

But for almost 40 years these nations who are supposed to be the champions of human rights have been violating human rights in their own backyard-and they have been doing it against the UK's own people. Between 1965 and 1973, the U.K. and U.S. governments forcibly removed the people of Diego Garcia and the rest of the Chagos Archipelago from our native lands, dumping us in poverty with no resettlement planning almost 2,000 km away in Mauritius and Seychelles.

We are called Chagossians and for more than five generations we had been living in Diego Garcia and the rest of Chagos, working and enjoying lives of peace and happiness. We are the citizens of what the UK calls the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), but unlike other peoples, we have no right to live in our homelands.

Our nightmare began when the UK Government decided to lease our motherland to the US to build a base on Diego Garcia. The US paid the U.K. $14 million to create the BIOT in Chagos (in violation of two UN resolutions) and to remove us from our homelands. With dirty tricks, deportations, and the extermination of all our pet dogs in front of our eyes, we were exiled to foreign lands.

In Mauritius and Seychelles we have found lives of poverty and misery. We live in the poorest regions and face many difficulties including unemployment, poor health and education, dangerous housing conditions, drug and alcohol abuse, and prostitution. Meanwhile the US has spent billions of dollars to build the base on Diego. They even employ Mauritians, Filipinos, Sri Lankans, and others on the base, but never any Chagossians. While foreigners live and work and enjoy our beautiful islands, we are trapped in exile, prevented even from visiting our islands to pay respects to our ancestors' graves. (Now we learn with sadness that the US Government may be secretly and illegally detaining prisoners on our island as well.)

The UK Government collects millions of pounds sterling each year in fishing rights for the bountiful waters that we once fished. With its other overseas territories, like the Falklands, St. Helena, and the Isle of Man, the UK provides abundant financial and educational opportunities and other social benefits. We as the descendants of slaves from Africa are forgotten and ignored, left to live with no assistance as Britain's forgotten people.

For decades we have struggled to regain our rights through demonstrations, hunger strikes, arrests, and jailings. In 1998, we initiated legal proceedings against the UK Government to challenge the legislation that denied us access to Chagos. On 3 November 2000, the High Court in London delivered a landmark ruling in our favour, giving us the right to return to our islands. On the strength of this ruling, in 2001, we lodged claims against the UK and US governments for compensation as a result of their wrongdoings and to rebuild our society in Chagos to allow our return.

In 2003, the British High Court said that we have been "treated shamefully by successive UK governments," but ruled against us. In June 2004, the British Government made matters worse by shockingly announcing the Queen's enactment of two royal orders in council overturning our 2000 victory and our right to return to Chagos. With the help of lawyers and supporters in Europe, Mauritius, and the United States, we are now contesting the orders in UK court and launching new suits against the UK in European courts.

All that we ask for is to be treated as human beings, to be given our fundamental human right to live in our native lands, to put an end to our discrimination. Unfortunately the great protectors of human rights have not yet been able to see that to be uprooted from one's homeland and one's way of life and to be left in impoverished exile is a denial of a people's fundamental rights.

Maybe the UK and US governments will pay more attention to the definition of "Crimes against Humanity," found in Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court: "'Crime against humanity' means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread of systematic attack directed against any civilian population…a) Murder, b) Extermination, c) Enslavement, d) Deportation or forcible transfer of population."

We hope that international courts in Europe will soon consider this question, to judge once and for all if the treatment the Chagossians have received has been lawful, and whether we deserve the right to return to our native lands and reparations for the wrongs we have suffered.

* Louis Olivier Bancoult is Chairman of the Chagos Refugees Group

* Please send comments to

The Lord's Resistance Army has declared an immediate and unconditional cease-fire with the UPDF. According to the LRA's Political Commissar and spokesman, Brigadier Sam Kolo, the LRA decision is in respect to Uganda's "political changes" towards a multiparty democracy. The UPDF however, is still in doubt as to whether a ceasefire is both believable and appropriate.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan rang the Peace Bell at United Nations Headquarters in New York on 21 September 2004, marking the annual International Day of Peace with a call to the world to do a better job to strengthen collective security, tackle grave humanitarian emergencies, promote true global development and foster greater tolerance. Mr. Annan declared, "Today, let the sound of this bell inspire us in our work towards those goals. Let the call of the bell ring loud, clear and true around the world."

Arab militiamen responsible for atrocities in Sudan's Darfur region are now guarding camps for the displaced, a UN official has been told by refugees. According to United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour, refugees in different camps in North Darfur have told her that the militiamen have been recycled into Sudan's police force.

This year's locust invasion is threatening to devastate crops throughout the Sahel and spark a food crisis in West Africa's worst locust plague in 15 years. Keith Cressman explains how the FAO's eLocust sytem – a palmtop computer, GPS device and HF radio equipment that run on a car battery - is helping to minimize the consequences for the region's farmers.

Fighting between the Sudanese army and rebels in Darfur does not allow aid agencies to access the region in order to assess the needs of the displaced people, the United Nations says. A UN report stated that "Due to clashes ... an interagency team was not able to commence assessment of villages in Tawilla rural areas." It added that clashes were in North Darfur, about 70 km (45 miles) west of the capital El-Fasher. The UN estimates that 1.5 million people have been displaced as a result of the fighting in Darfur, which it calls the "world’s worst humanitarian crisis."

Some 500 people fleeing factional fighting near the southern Somali port city of Kismayo crossed the border into Kenya at the end of last week and are now living with local communities on the Kenyan side of the frontier, a spokesman for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said. Most of the Somalis came from the village of Dhobley, not far from the border, and entered Kenya through the border town of Liboi.

Two years after the outbreak of civil war, Cote d'Ivoire remains partitioned and unstable. Although there has been no relapse into full-scale fighting, none of the underlying causes of the conflict have been resolved. Diplomats and political analysts worry that the fragile tribal and political divisions could be easily threatened in a presidential election environment. Time after time peace accord deadlines are extended and broken, making the country's prospects for peace very limited.

The U.N. Security Council's new resolution on Sudan fails to provide protection for endangered civilians in the country's western Darfur region, Human Rights Watch said this week. Human Rights Watch criticized the resolution for failing to impose sanctions on the Sudanese government and for insufficiently expanding the international presence in Darfur to ensure the population's security.

This organisation is recruiting people with experience in Community
Services, Education and Protection (specifically issues around sexual and Gender Based Violence). Candidates should have experience in relief & development, preferably working with UNHCR in a refugee camp context, and must be fluent French and/or Arabic.

The Twa from the northeastern district of Ituri, in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Orientale Province, retracted on Monday statements they made in 2003 of having witnessed acts of cannibalism against their people by a former rebel group, the MLC. "That was a lie because we were pushed into saying things," Amzati Ndjeto, said in Kinshasa, the Congolese capital.

Several people have been killed in fighting between rival militias in southern Somalia. Militiamen loyal to the Jubba Valley Alliance, which controls the port of Kismayo, clashed with fighters loyal to warlord General Morgan, the only major warlord outside a peace process which has chosen a new Somali parliament. The area has been tense in recent weeks, as Morgan's forces have advanced on Kismayo.

The number of slum dwellers will double to nearly two billion by 2030. Cities overall will grow at a similarly explosive rate, reaching nearly five billion people by 2030 from 2.9 billion in 2001, according to UN-Habitat Executive Director Anna Tibaijuka as she launched "The State of the World's Cities" report. As well as highlighting a widening rich-poor gap, the report attacked the argument that unfettered trade is a sure route to wider developing-world prosperity and warned of a "race to the bottom" as companies seeking cheaper labour shift capital and jobs across borders.

Godeberthe Ugirumufata strides into her office at the ICRC headquarters in Nairobi exuding the confidence of a woman who has finally found her peace and place in the society. 10 years ago, Ugirumufata thought she had lost everything in the Rwanda genocide: her son, her parents and siblings. She narrowly escaped death and fled to Kenya penniless, confused and scared. Ugirumufata, however, found happiness in Nairobi, got re-united with her family and got a job working with refugees that has given her life a new purpose.

The UN Security Council has approved the extension of the United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) for another six months, but outlined the need for the mission to be scaled down. The Security Council is concerned about the lack of progress between the two countries to resolve the dispute on the demarcation of the Ethiopean/Eritrean border. Despite the signing of a comprehensive peace agreement in 12 December 2000, the two countries continue to dispute over the border demarcation.

A Zambian pilot project aimed at reducing poverty as well as friction between refugees and their local host communities has begun to show dividends.The Zambia Initiative, launched two years ago, covers agriculture, health, education and infrastructure projects identified by the government and local communities. The cooperative venture, which is monitored and run at provincial, district and village levels, also involves the refugee population in its decision-making processes.

In more ways than one, the post-military Nigeria of today is a fractured national society. From all accounts, never in the history of the country since the end of the fratricidal civil war of 1967 - 1970 has it been terribly divided in peacetime across the cleavages and fault lines of ethnicity, religion, state, region, politics and class as in this uncertain era. Inevitably, these divisions have generated distrust, suspicion, bitterness, antagonism, tension and identity-driven conflicts among the various social groups in the country.