Guineans who have returned home following instability or persecution in neighbouring countries, are placing a critical strain on the already weak social services of the Region Forestiere, said aid workers and government officials. Between 75,000 to over 100,000 Guineans fled Cote d’Ivoire following a rise in anti-foreigner sentiment after a period of civil war between September 2002 and December 2003, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) 2003 survey carried out with the authorities’ help.

Ethiopia has appointed a human rights commissioner to investigate alleged abuses, parliamentary officials told IRIN last Thursday. Dr Kasa Gebre Hiwot was announced in parliament as head of the Human Rights Commission (HRC), along with Abay Tekle Beyene, as ombudsman. The government first announced its plan to effect these appointments in 2000. Earlier this year, Hilary Benn, the British secretary of state for international development, said he wanted to see progress towards implementation of the plan as he announced a tripling of aid to US $100 million over three years.

The United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has urged Eritrea and Ethiopia to resolve their border dispute, saying international peacekeepers could not remain in the region indefinitely. Speaking on Saturday in the Eritrean capital, Asmara, Annan said he was "optimistic" despite the deadlock over the dispute, but added that many crises around the world were stretching the UN's limited resources.

Briefing the U.N. Security Council on a council mission to eight West African nations, U.K. Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry said that a regional approach was needed for the area, which included several states emerging from conflicts that have spread over borders and brought instability to the region. "The regional approach is absolutely essential," Jones Parry said. "The countries, the different issues are so intertwined that regional success is a prerequisite for stability in one country."

Like a multicolour fireworks display illuminating the skies and sending ecstatic crowds cheering for a few moments, the Naivasha Peace Agreement has faded away. The short-lived jubilation is over and with a serious hang over, the international community is waking up to the new Sudanese reality in Darfur, asking how and why it allowed it to happen?

Neither the UN nor the US has learned anything from past mistakes - Rwanda, Liberia, Sierra Leone and RD-Congo. Less than a month ago, brushing aside the sound of machine guns coming over from Darfur, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan described the signing of the agreement a “major step forward”. Now, on a mission to Sudan he described the situation in Darfur as “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis”.

Before going to Darfur (as a matter of fact like Evita Peron “I have never left it”) I would like to stop a few moments in Naivasha and see who are the real beneficiaries of the Protocols signed between the Khartoum government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army. Is it a genuine “key deal” that would benefit the Southern Sudanese people?

The sad reality is that only three individuals will benefit from Naivasha. These three so-called Men of Peace have succeeded in cheating the international community, the United Nations and the 35 million Sudanese.

Beleaguered, embattled and an outcast for the past 15 years, President Omar el Beshir who since staging his coup in 1989 escalated the war in South Sudan, sent thousands of young Sudanese zealots to their death, can now claim high and loud that he is the Sudanese leader who took Sudan out of its international isolation and brought peace to the country.

One Nobel Prize to go to el Beshir! Hip Hip Hurray!!!

Fraught with dissent among his own people and justifiably tired after 21 years of fighting, Dr John Garang of the SPLA is taking control of Southern Sudan. Crowned with the blessings brought by the Naivasha deal, Dr Garang is ready to believe anyone who tells him that he is the paramount chief of the South.
Was it a mere slip of the tongue when he declared “We have reached the crest of the last hill in our tortuous ascent to the heights of peace" or did he mean “the heights of power?”

One Nobel Prize to go to Dr Garang! Hip Hip Hurray!!!

Last but not least, comes the Texan cowboy who occupies the Oval Room in the White House. Having waved carrots and sticks, sanctions and promises of aid to the Sudanese for almost two years, now George W. Bush can happily wave the Naivasha deal to his hysteria driven supporters as he campaigns for a second term. Naivasha is meant to counter Bush’s disastrous policy in Iraq.

One Nobel Prize to go to Bush! Hip Hip Hurray!!!

I do not know what are the criteria set up by the famous Swedish Academy for prize sharing but I dread to believe that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and US Secretary of State Colin Powell would join in to form the most famous peace Quintet of this millennium.

DARFUR

At the end of his visit to war-ravaged Darfur and having seen the devastation caused by the violent campaign backed by Khartoum against its African citizens of the region, Secretary of State Colin Powell said “Let's not put a label on things”. The crack of the matter is that we have to call the atrocities in Darfur by “their rightful name" as Donald Payne, Democrat member of the Congress for New Jersey and of the Congressional Black Caucus said recently. According to Payne, the atrocities committed in Darfur “meet the requirements of the 1948 UN Convention on the prevention and the punishment of the crime of genocide and therefore we have a legal obligation under international law to act". So why is everybody stalling? Why is no real decision taken? Time is running out for the people of Darfur and the atrocious memories of Rwanda are being revised while the US refuses to say the word.

But let’s not play on words, meanings and legalities. Genocide has taken place in Darfur and ethnic cleansing is still perpetrated because one million people could die before the end of this year if the international community, the UN and the US fail to intervene immediately to stop the killing and the displacement.

Secretary Powell claims that he knows what the situation is like and that the US knows what it has to do and is going to do it. In order words, take real action.
Instead the US has circulated a resolution to member nations of the U.N. Security Council calling for sanctions against the Janjaweed militias, blaming them for what has been described as a "humanitarian catastrophe" in Sudan and taking no action against the government of Omar el Bashir, the instigator of the ethnic cleansing in Darfur.

The sanctions are ridiculously irrational. They call for an arms embargo and travel restrictions on the Janjaweed militias. Is the United States serious when it circulates these sanctions to member nations of the U.N. Security Council? Does the Security Council really believe that the Janjaweed need travel documents to move from village to village to kill, rape, burn and destroy? As for an arms embargo, do the members of the UN Security Council really believe that the Janjaweed buy their weapons on the open market, with proper contracts and stamped and approved shipping documents, and that they, the supremos of the Security Council could stop these contracts? Are we to believe once again that these good people are being misled by erroneous “intelligence” reports?

The western Sudanese region of Darfur is bordered by Chad, Libya and the Central African Republic, three states where gun running is a child play and where the Janjaweed face no arms embargo and need no license to buy their lethal weapons. In addition, as they have been provided with official Sudanese armed forces uniforms one would presume they would have also free access to weapons and ammunition from the arsenals of the Sudanese army.

There is indeed a “humanitarian catastrophe and a security crisis” in Darfur as Secretary Colin Powell finally decided to acknowledge this week. But the humanitarian crisis is man made and its origins are political. The people of Darfur, like their compatriots of the peripheries (South, Nuba Mountains and Eastern Sudan) have been marginalized by all the Sudanese regimes, which took power since independence in 1956. Democratic rule, as universally understood, was never on the agenda of these regimes. Dominated by the Northern elites, the centralised governments ruled from Khartoum, seldom interested in the plight of the regional people. Ironically as it may sound, but the regional people of Sudan are in their large majority Africans – Nuba, Beja, Fur, Massaleit, Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk, Zaghawa and many others.

Because of the emergency of the humanitarian catastrophe, the political aspects of the Darfur crisis are being brushed aside. But, as many leading Darfur politicians have asked, the humanitarian intervention has to go hand in hand with a political solution so the 1.5million internally displaced people and refugees scattered on the Chadian borders can return safely to their farms and live in peace and security guaranteed by their constitutional rights as citizens of Sudan. While the ancestral lands of the African people of Darfur have to be restored to their rightful owners, there is no doubt that the Arab nomadic groups and the African settlers of Darfur have to live together, like they did for centuries and share the same resources – water and land – in an equitable way. This can be achieved if the political will is there. If Kofi Annan wants progress in 48 hours, this is what he should ask from the government and the Darfur factions who took up arms against Khartoum.

* Please send comments to

* 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?

* NOTE FOR EDITORS: Please note that this editorial was commissioned from the author for Pambazuka News. While we are pleased that several print publications have used our editorials, we ask editors to note that if they use this article, they do so on the understanding that they are expected to provide the following credit: "This article first appeared in Pambazuka News, an electronic newsletter for social justice in Africa, Editors are also encouraged to make a donation.

In the early 1980s, the British writer V.S. Naipaul visited Ivory Coast. The country was then one of the most stable and prosperous in Africa. As everyone knows, Naipaul is a deeply cynical and unabashed Afro-pessimist. But in the piece that he subsequently wrote about Ivory Coast, enchantingly entitled 'The Crocodiles of Yamoussoukro,' Naipaul was genuinely admiring. Almost as though to fulfil the grim prophesies of Africa's doomsayers, the country today appears to be unravelling. And it all started in September 2002, when a group of about 750 retrenched soldiers - they had been hastily recruited by a former military leader - attempted to take over the government in a violent coup. As a result, Ivory Coast, has been effectively split into two. Lansana Gberie, a senior research fellow at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre in Accra, Ghana, analyses the crisis in this article on the Znet website.

Just outside the capital Bujumbura, civilians in Burundi have been killed, raped and injured in ongoing combat between government troops allied with former rebel combatants and the forces of a rebel group that remains outside the country's peace process, Human Rights Watch said in a new briefing paper. The 15-page report, "Suffering in Silence: Civilians in Continuing Combat in Bujumbura Rural," documents how these war crimes have been committed by all three parties in the conflict: government troops, allied combatants from the former rebel Forces for the Defense of Democracy (Forces pour la défense de la démocratie, or FDD), and forces from the rebel National Liberation Forces (Forces nationales pour la liberation, or FNL). In November the FDD, whose forces are still led by former rebel leader Pierre Nkurunziza, reached an accord with the government. But the FNL, led by Agathon Rwasa, has not yet joined the peace process.

A Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) field team, recently back from the Chad/Sudan border where they took eyewitness accounts of systematic killings, rapes and destroyed villages, calls for an international intervention necessary to save lives and reverse injustices labelled by PHR as indicators of genocide. In his endorsement of PHR's report, Justice Richard Goldstone, former Chief Prosecutor of the Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia said, "After all we know and have learned from the last decade's genocides and mass atrocities, we owe it to the victims of Darfur and potential victims to do everything we can to prevent and account for what PHR's report establishes is genocide and reverse the intolerable acts of forcing entire populations from their land, destroying their livelihood and making it virtually impossible to return."

Backed by the Sudanese government, Janjaweed militias are launching assaults across the border into Chad, attacking and looting Chadian villagers as well as refugees from Darfur, Human Rights Watch said recently. Despite a ceasefire agreement in Darfur, government troops and Janjaweed militias continue to commit atrocities in the western Sudanese region. Human Rights Watch documented at least seven cross-border incursions into Chad conducted by the Janjaweed militias since early June. The Janjaweed attack villages in Chad and refugees from Darfur, and also steal cattle. The same Arab and African ethnic groups live on both sides of border in Chad and Darfur.

A range of U.S.-based advocacy groups, such as Africa Action and Human Rights Watch, as well as the United Nations, are calling for international intervention to stop “ethnic cleansing” in western Sudan. U.S. groups are calling for the Bush administration to demonstrate leadership on the issue. “The failure of the U.S. and the international community to act in Rwanda a decade ago cost 800,000 lives,” said Africa Action Director Salih Booker. "Now, up to one million people face a similar fate in Darfur. Unless there is an immediate military intervention to stop the killing and facilitate a massive humanitarian operation, the loss of life in Darfur may even dwarf the horrific toll we saw in Rwanda.” Booker said Washington could easily mobilize a multinational force to secure the region and facilitate the flow of humanitarian assistance to needy people until UN peacekeepers can be assembled or the government-backed militias known as Janjaweed are disarmed. He noted that almost 2,000 U.S. troops are stationed in nearby Djibouti.

Emergency aid has arrived for Congolese refugees in northwestern Burundi, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) announced on Friday. In a statement, the agency said some 34,000 Congolese refugees living in three Burundian border camps had received non-food and food items, including 15-day food rations, jerry cans, blankets, soap and other hygiene materials.

The Special Court for Sierra Leone recently ruled that the recruitment or use of children under age 15 in hostilities is a war crime under customary international law. This landmark ruling may result in the first ever conviction for the recruitment of child soldiers. UNICEF welcomes the Court's decision as a bold effort to hold perpetrators accountable for serious crimes against children. The decision by the Appeals Chamber came in response to an assertion by one of the accused that he was immune from prosecution because the recruitment or use of children under 15 in hostilities was not established as a war crime during the period of the Special Court's authority, dating back to 1996.

Since the Chagos Islanders won the right to return to their homeland, following 30 years of exile, by historic Judgment of the High Court in November 2000, the Government has been claiming to know what to do about it. The same day as the Judgment, Robin Cook passed a new immigration law permitting those born on the islands and their children to return to all islands of the Archipelago except to Diego Garica where the US airbase is. But in June the Islanders' solicitor, Richard Gifford, was told, in a shock announcement without prior consultation, that the Government had now passed a new law totally banning all Chagossians from even stepping foot on their beloved homeland. Moreover the ban applied to all 65 islands.

While co-ordination is essentially a method of getting institutions to work together, it is clearly not synonymous with togetherness. Undercurrents of suspicion and distrust between individuals and institutional actors can affect important relationships and give rise to enduring misunderstandings and perplexing challenges. This book examines the co-ordination, or lack of co-ordination of education during both emergencies and the early reconstruction period.

Amid recent killings and rapes by government and rebel soldiers in the eastern Congo, the decision by the International Criminal Court's (ICC) prosecutor to systematically investigate war crimes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo could not be more timely, Human Rights Watch says. Luis Moreno Ocampo, the ICC prosecutor, on June 23, announced the beginning of this first-ever investigation by the prosecutor's office of this newly established court. Earlier this year, the Democratic Republic of the Congo's (DRC) transitional government triggered the action by requesting the ICC prosecutor to investigate crimes in the Congo

Over the last 10 years, at least eighteen countries in Africa have been consumed by war, usually internal. At present there are several active conflicts in Africa-they are Cote d’Ivoire, the Darfur region of Sudan, Northern Uganda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. There appears to be an inverse relationship between the body of treaties, laws, and conventions aimed at protecting civilians during a time of war, and the degree to which they are deliberately targeted by both state and non-state actors. To combat war crimes in Africa, two key and indeed related components are urgently necessary – the first is ensuring accountability for serious human rights crimes, and the second is implementing preventive strategies to detect, stop and/or mitigate situations with the potential to develop into systematic war crimes. This is according to Corinne Dufka, a senior researcher and the West Africa Team Leader for the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch, speaking in a statement to the U.S.House Committee on International Relations, Subcommittee on Africa.

Uganda and the DRC, both full members of the International Criminal Court (ICC), have recently requested that the ICC investigate atrocities being committed on their territory. If applied carefully and with the full use of its provisions for victims and witnesses, the ICC could play a positive role in furthering the resolution of these conflicts while laying the groundwork for long term reconciliation and stability, says a report from Citizens for Global Solutions, a grassroots membership organization that envisions a future in which nations work together to abolish war, protect rights and freedoms, and solve the problems facing humanity that no nation can solve alone.

Clashes between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria’s eastern Adamawa state at the beginning of June displaced at least 2,000 people when their homes were burned to the ground, and killed more than 40, the Nigerian Red Cross told the BBC. The fighting in the predominantly Christian town of Numan was prompted by a long-standing dispute over the reconstruction of a mosque which had been destroyed in earlier communal violence.

Liberia has been in a nearly constant state of civil war for 14 years. This has taken an enormous toll on the lives of Liberian children, adolescents and all civilians. Throughout the years of civil war and especially during the 2003 War, thousands of Liberian children have been victims of killings, rape and sexual assault, abduction, torture, forced labour, forced recruitment into fighting forces and displacement and other violations by warring factions, including the government of Liberia under Charles Taylor, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) and the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL).

In most civil wars there is little or no respect for the sanctity of childhood. The opposite is true - young people are used in the most callous ways possible and their rights are routinely ignored. They function inside worlds where connections are broken and doors are shut against them. Many thoughtful reports have been written on the impact of war on children’s lives. This resource manual hopes to contribute to these studies through an approach that is largely reflected through young people’s views. This does not mean that our views lack analysis, rather that the prism for collecting and analyzing information is distinct. This material includes artwork, group discussions, individual interviews and writing.