The end of the 2nd world war brought on the end of the era of European colonialism, ushering in a fresh breeze of freedom to billions. There were high hopes that the people who had chafed under the yoke of racism would not let racism or other prejudices stand in the way of emancipation of toiling and suffering fellow humans. Throughout human history racial and color prejudice has proven to be a more potent evil than any other prejudice.

Chilling testimony has been heard over the past two weeks from victims of Sierra Leone's brutal decade-long civil war that ended in 2002, and for the first time on Tuesday, the U.N.-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone heard from the rebels who killed and mutilated thousands of their countrymen. One former rebel said he was age 12 and fetching water when rebels abducted him in 1998, then trained him to shoot an AK-47 and smoke marijuana and forced him to rape a 15-year-old girl. He was reluctant, but his commander threatened to kill him unless he raped her, so he did. "My heart was so mixed up, doing this evil act that he introduced me to," the boy, now 17, told the court.

Burundi's President Domitien Ndayizeye has announced details of a draft power-sharing agreement after years of civil war. The proposal suggests the national assembly and government be composed of 60% ethnic Hutu and 40% Tutsi. The deal is due to be signed next week and will form the new constitution ahead of elections due in October. But the Tutsi Uprona party has rejected this, it wants seats to be given to parties as well as ethnic groups.

Numerous reports have described the “hand-in-glove” manner in which the Government of Sudan and the nomadic ethnic militias known as the Janjaweed have operated together to combat a rebel insurgency in Darfur. Human Rights Watch says it has obtained copies of government documents whose contents sharply contrast with the Sudanese government's repeated denials of support to the Janjaweed; on the contrary, the documents indicate a government policy of militia recruitment, support and impunity that has been implemented from high levels of the civilian administration.

The Sudanese government has said it is making plans to move about 200,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Northern Darfur back to their towns and villages, prompting agencies to reiterate that relocation must be voluntary. Sudanese officials in Al-Fashir, Northern Darfur, said the government wanted to return the IDPs to between six and eight urban centres in the region, but did not specify when, the UN reported on Tuesday.

Tension is high at Thompson Falls Prison in Nyahururu following the death of a 35-year old inmate in allegedly mysterious circumstances. Inmates are demanding the arrest of three warders suspected to have beaten Francis Maina Kiberenge to death on Friday night. Prison authorities have denied the allegations, saying that Kiberenge died after a short illness.

Zimbabwean President, Robert Mugabe, warned his country this week to expect expanded state security powers affecting the internet and telephones. In his opening of parliament address he announced that his government would introduce a Security of Communications Bill to control the Internet and telephones, claiming that it would 'bolster the security of our nation.'

After 18 months, in which it has listened to more than 2,000 accounts of human rights violations, Ghana's National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) has concluded its public hearings. The NRC has the investigative powers of a high court but cannot bring charges against individuals. Instead it aims to establish an accurate, complete and historical record of human rights violations inflicted by people linked to the state and then make recommendations for redress to prevent abuses happening again. Former President, Jerry Rawlings, was amongst the witnesses called to the NPC.

An estimated 300 imprisoned soldiers went on strike on Monday, at Mpimba Prison, the main prison in the Burundian capital, Bujumbura, paralysing the admission and transfer of new prisoners and preventing court hearings. The army prisoners are requesting temporary immunity, which had previously been granted to some 500 members of the main former rebel group, the CNDD-FDD. Some of the soldiers have been in jail since the beginning of Burundi's 10-year civil war and claim they had been forced to commit crimes by political leaders who are now free.

As public figures representing millions of evangelical Christians, Richard Cizik and Gary Edmonds generally see eye-to-eye on moral issues - except perhaps when it comes to mass killings in 2004. Staggering reports from the Darfur region of Sudan - where as many as 1 million Africans could die this year - have increased pressure on people of conscience to respond. Mr. Cizik is so troubled, he says, he is considering trespassing on the Sudanese Embassy steps this month to call for military intervention. Meanwhile Mr. Edmonds, secretary general of the World Evangelical Alliance, says he too is concerned about rape, murder and starvation in Darfur, but politics limit what he can say - to the point that he dare not use the label "genocide." Mixed responses even among like-minded groups provide a glimpse of a nation wrestling with a faraway crisis more easily deplored than fixed.

About 5 000 Rwandan refugees in Zambia have refused to go home under a United Nations repatriation scheme saying their lives were still in danger, a United Nations official said. A senior Zambian government official said that Lusaka was planning to revoke the refugee status of Rwandans who refused to go home.

An official from the Rwandan League for Promotion and Defence of Human Rights has called upon the Rwandan Government to "look to the future and stop being a hostage of Rwanda's tragic past". The official, one of seven who fled to Uganda almost two weeks ago after a parliamentary commission accused them of promoting ethnic division, added: "We need to face our history in order to map out a positive future. The government of Rwanda should try to draw lessons from the country's history...but this will not be possible if they continue to suppress the civil society and the independent press."

The United Nations World Food Programme has warned that it would run out of food by the end of this month for 27,000 refugees from the Central African Republic (CAR) trapped in Chad, unless substantial contributions were made. “These refugees represent the region’s forgotten emergency,” said WFP Chad Representative and Country Director Philippe Guyon Le Bouffy. “The food stocks are exhausted. If we do not receive more funding for this operation, WFP will be forced to stop assisting these people who are reliant on food aid.”

Split for nearly two years between the rebel-held north and government-controlled south, Ivory Coast is not only divided along political lines but cultural lines too. In the mid 1990s the Ivory Coast Democratic Party (PDCI), which held power from independence in 1960 to 1999, popularised the concept of Ivoirite or Ivorianness. It was an ideology seen by many as xenophobic and those with northern names or origins were frequently accused of not being Ivorian.

Peace talks aimed at ending 17-months of conflict between the Sudanese government and two rebel groups in the Darfur region broke down on Sunday before negotiations had even begun. The talks, which were aimed at finding a political solution to the conflict, had opened two days earlier, on 15 July. The African Union mediators held separate consultations with the Sudanese government representatives and the rebels, after an initial meeting ended in what was reported as a mutual "shouting match".

The overall purpose of the seminar is to enhance a policy related discourse combined with a training workshop on conflict resolution/transformation aiming at the elaboration of relevant peace-building activities in the Greater Great Lakes Region. The seminar is offered to a wide range of professionals: diplomats and diplomatic advisors, NGO and private sector chief executives, military and police officers, community representatives and other individuals from various sectors to reflect on current trends and needs for peace building in their various fields. The seminar participants should be engaged (or interested) in peace building activities for the institutions they represent. 45 participants across Africa, mainly from countries in the Great Lakes region, with different cultural, professional and organisational background will be accepted on a competitive basis.

This book is the first comprehensive study on the international judicial implications of prosecution of international peacekeepers and members of military crisis operations under the principles of international criminal law and especially those of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The ever important topic of international peacekeeping is poised to enter a new dimension, namely the subjection to ICC prosecution in particular since the discontinuation of Security Council Resolutions 1422-1487 in June 2004.

Girls as young as eight are being raped in Darfur, Sudan, and used as sex slaves. The mass rapes ongoing in Darfur are war crimes and crimes against humanity but the international community is doing very little to stop it, Amnesty International said, launching the report Rape as a weapon of war.
Despite the regional and international focus on Darfur and promises by the Sudanese government to disarm the Janjawid militia there is still no protection for women and girls. The report, based on hundreds of testimonies, reveals how women and girls are being raped, abducted and forced into sexual slavery by the Janjawid. In almost all attacks on villages recorded by Amnesty International, the government's army were either directly involved or direct witnesses.

A key Rwanda genocide suspect has been handed over to U.N. prosecutors, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) said late on Monday. Gaspard Kanyarukiga, 59, accused of a horrifying attack on a church in which 2,000 people died, was arrested in South Africa on Saturday. Charges against him include genocide, complicity in genocide, and conspiracy to commit genocide.

President Yoweri Museveni has directed the Army Commander to appoint a special commander to monitor the security of internally displaced persons (IDPs) camps in northern Uganda. The Army Commander, Lt. Gen. Aronda Nyakairima, told journalists at his residence at Gulu Barracks on Thursday that the commander would ensure security in the camps. He said adequate permanent forces had been deployed in the IDP camps to ensure that the LRA rebels do not loot food and abduct civilians from the camps.