Six of Burundi's pro-Tutsi parties have walked out of a meeting with chief peace mediator, South Africa's Deputy President Jacob Zuma. Mr Zuma was in Burundi to brief parties about a draft power-sharing agreement reached last week in South Africa. The proposal suggests the national assembly and government be composed of 60% ethnic Hutus and 40% Tutsis.

The Security Council has renewed for a second year an arms embargo on all the parties to the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and also extended the term of a panel of experts monitoring compliance with the embargo. Resolution 1552, adopted unanimously, says the parties to the Congolese conflict have failed to comply with the embargo, and therefore the sanctions, originally imposed in Resolution 1493 last July, would be extended until July next year.

In the presence of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and other African leaders, Cote d'Ivoire's president, opposition and rebels will sit down today in the Ghanaian capital Accra to try to break a political deadlock and end what Ivorians call "no war, no peace". But ahead of the talks, billed by President Laurent Gbagbo as "the last meeting", the rival factions are maintaining their respective positions. Gbagbo's ruling party says the starting point is for rebels to disarm and the rebels are calling for parliament to first pass political reforms.

In Zimbabwe economic disruption and political intimidation and harassment have caused 150,000 former farm workers to become internally displaced. As conditions for the former farm workers deteriorate, the Government of Zimbabwe is imposing restrictions and preventing humanitarian agencies from providing them assistance, resulting in a hidden crisis of internal displacement in the country.

While much attention has been given to the impact of greed for resources as a motivation for civil wars, a more important cause of conflicts has been the failure of African governments to implement effective policies in favour of a secure and sufficient food supply for their people, according to a recent paper. The implication of this finding is that Africa continues to face the risk of civil wars which are in part triggered by poor food supply.

This month the Ghanaian government launched a US$1.5 million war on the 270 tonnes of plastic waste generated each day by the capital's three million inhabitants. Officials estimate that plastic water sachets account for about 85 percent of that refuse.

U.N. reports say rising temperatures linked to human burning of fossil fuels are likely to widen malaria's range in the tropics because mosquitoes and the parasite they pass on when sucking human blood thrive best in hot, wet climates. But some insect experts swat those reports as simplistic.

Amid continuing reports of attacks by Arab militias against black Africans in the western province of Darfur in Sudan, the United States and its main allies in Europe are urgently pressing the UN Security Council to impose sanctions against militia leaders and their government supporters. On Monday, the 25 foreign ministers of the European Union indicated they were ready to sign on to a draft resolution submitted by the United States last week that would impose diplomatic and financial sanctions against the targets unless Khartoum acted immediately to stop the militias whose raiding has killed as many as 50,000 people over the past 18 months and forced more than one million more to flee for their lives.
* US congress declares Sudan genocide
http://www.unwire.org/News/328_426_26141.asp

Amnesty International has expressed grave concerns at reports that the Zimbabwe government plans to ban international human rights groups as well as the foreign funding of local organisations promoting rights in the country. "These reports indicate that as with other legislation introduced in the past two years, the government will use this new bill to silence critical voices and further restrict the right to freedom of expression. It is a clear attempt by the government to suppress dissenting views as parliamentary elections scheduled for March 2005 draw closer," Amnesty International said.

“Human Rights Watch has learned that your government may be in the process of forcibly returning Eritrean refugees and asylum seekers in Libya to Eritrea, where they face unlawful detention and probable torture. We have received reports that Eritreans are currently being held in Kufra, Misurath, and Tripoli in anticipation of mass deportation to Eritrea.”

The UN refugee agency has criticised the handling of the Cap Anamur boat incident that has led to the expulsion of a group of asylum seekers from Italy and underlined the need for better burden-sharing in the European Union. The controversy surrounds a group of 37 people who were rescued from the southern Mediterranean by the German non-governmental organisation vessel, Cap Anamur, in late June.

Guineans who have returned home from neighbouring Côte d’Ivoire because of instability there are facing further hardship in the border regions of Guinea Forestière and Haute Guinea. They are one of several "forgotten vulnerable groups" in this area, along with other displaced people and host communities, according to the UN’s mid-year review of the 2004 consolidated appeals process (CAP) for Guinea. The returnees face similar problems to refugees in Guinea, but enjoy much less support, says UN OCHA. Humanitarian assistance has been sporadic and very limited.

Forty-five of Africa's 54 countries are involved in human trafficking and South Africa is a major receiving and transit destination, says Merab Kambamu Kiremire, a recent associate at the African Gender Institute. The trend has been researched in a report she is compiling on gender-based violence, prostitution and trafficking in Zambia, one she hopes will reveal the plight of the continent's most vulnerable people: young women and children. Alarmingly, children are being trafficked not only for prostitution and labour, but also for their organs and skin, the latter used in witchcraft and for making magic charms.

Senior officials from South Africa and Rwanda were due for diplomatic talks in Pretoria this week, centering around co-operation on immigration, refugee and nationality issues. The talks, to be led by South African Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma and her Rwandan counterpart Charles Murigande, are expected to also touch on human trafficking, establishment and the use of movement control systems and management of data.

Nearly 20,000 people are in a "critical humanitarian state" in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) after fleeing renewed fighting between central government forces and dissident troops around Lake Kivu, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Some 15,000 people have taken refuge along the banks of Lake Kivu, after fleeing the fighting between the DRC's armed forces (FARDC) and dissident leader Gen. Laurent Nkunda. Nearly 5,000 others fled to the High Plateaux region south-west of Minova following abuses by soldiers and armed groups in the Kalehe area.

Tens of thousands of Liberians who have registered as refugees in neighbouring Guinea are crossing the border to trade their food rations and prepare their eventual return before returning to their camps for the next handout, aid workers said. Aid workers admit that this unofficial flow of food across the border is probably helping to keep thousands of needy people fed in outlying districts of war-ravaged Liberia, where rebel gunmen still control the border. Recent attempts to clamp down on wandering Liberian refugees by counting the population that is actually resident in four official refugee camps in Guinea's southeastern Forest Region have sparked violence.

Headlines like 'Three hundred Zambians displaced, over 10 families left homeless and 40 families seeking shelter' are a regular feature in the Zambian media. Countless people have over the years been left out in the cold without a place to call their home -- sometimes due to natural disasters while at other times by authorities that exercise their rights, especially in cases where there have been malpractices in the allocation of land. Such type of people end up relocating to other places in search of a "resting place". And they are commonly referred to as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).

Mali has signed its third agreement with a neighboring country to fight child trafficking, which UNICEF says occurs in 89 percent of African countries. Senegal joined Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso as signatories to the agreement, which mandates an annual survey of child trafficking to make sure children sent over their borders are kept safe.

Two Sudanese refugees were killed in Farchana Camp, eastern Chad, after Chadian government forces entered the camp to search for weapons following a riot on the 13 July, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) announced in a statement. The statement confirmed that the body of a man and a woman had been taken from the camp, though it was not clear whether the two were killed during the intervention by the Chadian forces.

CARE International

Responsibilities of the post holder will include working with CARE staff to manage commodities being received and distributed and to co-ordinate activities with other agencies, NGOs and government bodies engaged in emergency relief activities. The successful applicant will have 3-5 years humanitarian aid experience and at least 5 years of commodity management experience at all levels.