At least 60 people were left to die of suffocation in a crammed transport container after June clashes between rebels in northern Ivory Coast, according to witnesses quoted in a draft report by United Nations human rights experts. According to the survivors, the makeshift prison had no air vents and the detainees were left with no food or water. The final version of the UN report is expected to be published soon.

Undercover investigators have arrested an army captain and four soldiers from the SA National Defence Force for allegedly ambushing, stripping and robbing illegal Zimbabwean immigrants. The soldiers are also accused of raping a number of Zimbabwean women before making them swim the crocodile-infested Limpopo River back to Zimbabwe.

The technologies needed to halt global warming for 50 years already exist, according to research published in Science. And the study’s authors, Stephen Pacala and Rob Socolow, say implementing them should begin immediately. The study focuses on the role of carbon dioxide released when fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas are burnt.

Zimbabweans living in South Africa face serious obstacles in accessing political asylum. But as the political crisis continues to grow in Zimbabwe, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) is failing to advocate for Zimbabweans’ right to protection under international standards and South African domestic legislation. UNHCR has not provided sufficient support to the Government of South Africa in defining and implementing its refugee policy towards Zimbabweans. Further, UNHCR staff in South Africa downplay the political crisis in Zimbabwe and show a marked tendency to dismiss the legitimacy of Zimbabweans’ overall case for asylum, making a minimal effort to provide direct protection.

One of the vice-presidents of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on Wednesday appealed to hundreds of Congolese refugees in Cyangugu, southwestern Rwanda, to return home. The refugees fled there when fighting flared at the end May between loyalist and dissident troops of the Congolese army in the town of Bukavu in eastern Congo.

The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) last Thursday embarked on an exercise to register afresh all refugees in Uganda using a computerised database system that officials say would improve monitoring and identification. "We are compiling the first ever refugee computer database in Uganda, where all refugees' details including their photographs will be recorded," Dennis Duncan, UNHCR spokesman in Kampala told IRIN.

More than a year after inter-militia fighting in Ituri district in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo sent thousands of residents fleeing for their lives, many are still holed up in an internally displaced persons' (IDPs) camp near the airport of Bunia, the main town in the district. "I can't return to my home because the militiamen have taken everything I had," said Maki Ayanga, one of the IDPs.

Political ethnicity assumes that ethnicity is a total identity and that ethnic diversity is the ultimate political horizon. From this perspective, space is ethnicized and self-determination means ethnic government. Yet by making membership a voluntary act that in no way infringes on one’s other social identities, civic ethnic associations make ethnicity a partial identity, comfortably articulated with other identities.

A physician working for the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) has returned from Sudan's troubled Darfur region with harrowing tales of women and children battling an outbreak of hepatitis in makeshift refugee camps with little or no clean water, health care and nutritious food. So far, about 625 hepatitis-related cases have been documented in West Darfur alone, where 22 people have died. In one refugee camp, 149 cases have been registered, and eight people have died, six of them pregnant women.

International Rescue Committee

The IRC is seeking an emergency health volunteer for its Sudan Program. You will contribute towards the implementation of IRC's current health projects and help ensure that all stated goals and objectives are met.

"To own Somalia's problems and eventually its solutions, we must take possession of our country, and everyone must return our property to us, and all interferences in our affairs must stop. But if our land remains someone else's playground, and we continue to be victims of everyone else's machinations, then we won't make the necessary link between our post-collapse and America's post-Sept. 11," writes author Nuruddin Farah in an opinion piece for the New York Times.

Speaking about the "genocide" committed by imperial German troops 100 years ago, German Development Minister, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul referred to the "colonial madness" that had led to racism, violence and discrimination. "All what I have said has been an apology by the German government," the Minister concluded her speech, followed by loud applause by listeners.

There has been an upsurge of Sudanese refugees fleeing across the border into Chad following reports of renewed violence in the Darfur region. The United Nations refugee agency says up to 500 people crossed the border close to the Chadian village of Berak.

Foreign or African, mercenaries are back into action in Africa. Having changed their name and their image, today's mercenaries are not any more the rug-tug soldiers of fortune of the past. Since the war against Iraq, “corporate warriors” as the new mercenaries are now called, have come to the fore and offer their services to governments. Gone are the “dogs of war” connotations linked to these “killing machines” of the 1960s and 70s.

Mercenaries of the new millennium are Armani-clad gentlemen who rub shoulders with the greats of this world while running their businesses from glass and chrome offices where Bond girl receptionists welcome business clients. These respected businessmen are highly sophisticated, well read, knowledgeable in world politics and especially very well connected. Combining engineering skills and military know how with business acumen, these former military officers who served in the armies of Britain, Canada, the US, former Soviet republics or South Africa, cultivate good relations with either powerful friends in governments or are themselves political heavies in their respective countries.

Their transformation has been swift and easy. From the ideologically motivated early days, mercenaries were paid to support particular governments or regimes in, for example, Namibia, Angola, Ghana, Zaire and Congo-Brazzaville. These warriors metamorphosed into “security” groups protecting the interests of the multinational mining and oil companies. In the early 1980s, Chevron paid and armed local militias to defend its oil fields in Southern Sudan, but other companies have made use of the services of "security" firms like Executive Outcomes (South Africa) and Sandline International (UK). Their services were already highly paid, but additional revenue was generated when they succeeded in exchanging their services against stakes in the mining concessions they were contracted to protect.

In the 1990s, the mining arm of one of the most active of these “security” companies was Branch Energy Ltd. Established to carry out mining operations in Angola, Sierra Leone and Uganda, Branch Energy was a subsidiary of Diamondworks Ltd., which had a variety of gold and diamond concessions in Sierra Leone and in Angola. Branch Energy was registered as a wholly owned subsidiary of Diamondworks, and the two may not have had corporate links with each other, but directors, partners, owners and/or executives of one entity were also directors, partners, owners and/or executives of the other entities. These arrangements were made in such a way that for each mining venture, be it in Uganda, Sierra Leone or Angola, a company was set up with some government and local businessman/men participation.

For example, in Sierra Leone, Branch Energy had a 60% stake in Branch Energy Sierra Leone, the government had 30% while a local businessman/investor held a small stake of 10%. The same pattern was repeated in Angola and in Uganda. Branch Energy's African assets were mainly concentrated in countries where civil wars and rebellions were raging, so was it just pure luck or coincidence that these countries were selected? In fact the selection appears to have been guided by very defined criteria: the potentials in minerals (diamonds, gold and oil), a bankrupt national economy and armed rebellion threatening the ruling strongman.

With their associates, this Third Generation of mercenaries specialises in security matters, engineering, arms, transportation, finance, recruitment, consultancy, and other businesses related to security and defence. Their network is like a giant octopus that spreads all over the world but more specifically in Africa and the Middle East where the pickings are easy and very lucrative. At the height of the fighting in Sierra Leone, the now disbanded Sandline International was accused of helping the British government to exporting weapons illegally to that country.

Providing high technology military capabilities, their services cover not only like in the past combat operations, but also strategic planning, intelligence gathering and troop training. Specialised magazines such as Soldiers of Fortune or Cover Action advertise the many career opportunities available “both domestically and world-wide” in “international police monitoring in Kosovo, Bosnia and East Timor” to “Qatar Security Guard Forces”. An article published in International Security in 2002 spells out the range of services these businesses can provide. Just like the armed forces of most western powers, they can deploy capabilities ranging “from a team of commandos to a wing of fighter jets”.

Strange as it may sound, these mercenaries do not work any more under cover. They have come out of the closet and operate in the open because governments have come to recognise the role these "private military companies” can have in peacekeeping and peace enforcement. In the corridors of power in Washington or London, the supporters of this new global policing and peacekeeping vision believe that emergency response to conflicts around the world must be “privately provided” as a public service. Though some UN members are still reticent to make use of these private “peacekeepers”, the organisation has also been considering the use of these groups for peacekeeping in conflict areas.

Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, is reported to have said that during the 1994 Rwanda crisis when he was the UN Undersecretary General for peacekeeping he “considered hiring a private firm”. Not long ago, in 2002, Britain's Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said that a strong and a “reputable private military sector might have a role in enabling the UN to respond more rapidly and effectively to crises”. Opportunities in Africa for these “corporate fighters” are made available by the very fact that national armies in many African states have been transformed into “operetta” armies, good enough only for welcoming state visitors and staging military events.

Next to being pampered, cajoled and looked after, these “Republican Guards” or “Presidential Guards” are hand picked “loyal” fighters from the ethnic group of the elite in power. The relationship that exists between them and their employer is like a vicious circle: as long as their employer remains in power, they will continue enjoying extra privileges and vice-versa. So loyalty depends on how much and how long will the privileges last. When the situation changes and the state disintegrates - Mobuto's Zaire comes to mind - loyalty ceases and these special units disappear in the wilderness, taking with them the last few dollars left in the coffers. In many parts of Africa these “special units” are still active. Often they become “uncontrollable monsters” and continue to operate for their own benefit, even when their employers try to disband them. In Sudan, despite the promised efforts of the regime to disarm the Janjaweed, militias loyal to the regime and accused of genocide in Darfur are still killing people, destroying villages and terrorising refugees in the camps. In Chad, the Guarde Republicaine of President Idriss Deby composed of the Zaghawa tribesmen who helped him into power, have today their own agenda.

According to many observers, some 10,000 trained and highly qualified soldiers of fortune roam the African continent. They have been joined by colleagues from Eastern Europe and former Soviet republics and offer their services - either in the old fashion or in new style operations - to the highest bidder. The 70 suspected mercenaries held in Harare and accused of plotting to overthrow the regime of the Equatorial Guinean President Teodoro Obiang Nguema are a sad indication that mercenaries in Africa are here to stay.

* Eva Dadrian is an independent broadcaster and Political and Country Risk Analyst for print and broadcast media, who currently works as a consultant for Arab African Affairs (London) and writes on a regular basis for AFRICA ANALYSIS (London), for Al Ahram HEBDO Echos Economiques and Al Ahram WEEKLY (Cairo) and contributes to Africa Service BBC WS (London). Published reports include: Religion and Politics in North Africa; The Horn of Africa: Country Risk Analysis; The Nile Waters: Risk Analysis; State and Church in Ethiopia; Policing the Horn of Africa; Religion and Politics in Sudan; Can South Sudan survive as an independent state?

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Human Rights Watch has written to police in Nigeria to express concern about an incident which occurred on July 10, 2004, in K-Dere, Ogoniland, Rivers State, when two British activists, Tim Concannon and Tim Nunn, were taken into custody, questioned and held for more than ten hours, first by the police, then by the State Security Services (SSS). “Our concern relates not only to this particular incident, which happens to involve two British nationals, but to a broader pattern of harassment and intimidation of Nigerian activists by the security forces, particularly by the police and the SSS,” the letter said.

Stronger action is needed to end the 'ongoing human suffering' in Zimbabwe and Sudan, the Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference (SACBC) said this week. “The Catholic bishops decry the ongoing human suffering of their brothers and sisters in Zimbabwe and Sudan, and calls on Southern African Development Community governments, the African Union (AU) and the United Nations to take stronger action, including the consideration of targeted sanctions,” a statement said.

It is estimated that 2,000 youth leaders from around the world will gather to discuss such issues as poverty, health, HIV/AIDS, violence, development, environmental degradation, and peace-building.

More than 1,000 former fighters of the LURD rebel movement are holed up in Liberia's second largest rubber plantation and are refusing to turn in their guns to UN peacekeepers, a member of Liberia's transitional parliament said on Tuesday. Residents living on and near the Guthrie plantation, about 30 km northwest of the capital Monrovia, have complained of harassment by the fighters and have reported that they are illegally tapping rubber from the plantation, he told IRIN, speaking on behalf of village chiefs in the region.

Armed militias have continued to commit atrocities against civilians in Sudan's troubled western region of Darfur despite claims by Khartoum that the situation had improved, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Tuesday. In a new report titled: "Empty Promises: Continuing Abuses in Darfur, Sudan", HRW said that instead of disarming the Janjawid militias, Khartoum had begun incorporating them into police and other security forces that could be used to secure proposed "safe areas" for displaced civilians.

As a follow-up to the recommendations made from research on the root causes of conflict in Africa, ABANTU for Development, Kenya, hosted training for peace workers. The training enabled peace workers to: develop an understanding of the participative learner centred approach, establish an understanding of policies and policy making process for peace building; develop skills of training needs analysis; and enhance effective participation in conflict resolution and peace building. The training was held in the last week of July 2003, in Ethiopia, with participants from Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda.