Kenya's war on Aids has suffered a major setback after the World Bank withheld crucial funding. The decision not to release Sh1.7 billion has crippled the National Aids Control Council, the organisation charged with coordinating a national response to the epidemic. The bank says it will not release the money until it gets an audit report for the past financial year that will take months to prepare.

The African Court for Human and Peoples' Rights, one of the main organs designed to deal with human rights abuses on the African continent, is struggling to see the light of day. Commentators are suggesting it could only be formed next year, more than 12 months after its intended establishment. "We may have in place significant principles, but the mechanisms still need to be worked out," says Brian Spilg, the human rights convenor of the General Council of the Bar of South Africa.

Africa could be on the brink of a major poliomyelitis epidemic after a child in Sudan's crisis ridden Dafur region was found to have been paralysed by the disease last month, World Health Organization officials warned. It was the first confirmed case of polio, which mainly affects children under the age of five, in the country for three years. Sudan is the tenth African country in which the disease has reappeared.

At least 6,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) were left homeless after a fire gutted parts of the sprawling Pabbo camp in northern Uganda, destroying hundreds of grass-thatched huts where the IDPs had been living, local leaders and the army said. Another fire in Pabbo earlier this year destroyed several thousand huts and highlighted the problem of congestion in the camps. The congestion in the camp has also resulted in a breakdown of social structures, increased crime, and alcohol and drug abuse, according to local authorities.

Since June 2003, 220 equality courts have been established to eliminate the racism that took root in South Africa during the colonial and apartheid eras - as well as other forms of discrimination that can flourish in a culturally diverse society. "Equal opportunity alone is not enough to address the apartheid-inflicted legacy," said Johnny de Lange, Deputy Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development.

Opposition parties say they will hold talks with President Laurent Gbabgo on Tuesday, in what will be their first face to face meeting since the government of reconciliation fell apart in March. However, rebel leaders have refused to attend. Leaders of the New Forces rebel group, still reeling from an assassination attempt last week on their leader, Guillaume Soro, on Sunday accused Gbabgo of stalling for time while he laid plans to launch a full-fledged war on them.

Under a fierce midday sun, Nicole Ibrehim clutches her semi-automatic rifle, cracked purple fingernail polish glinting in the light and a red beret perched over pierced ears. She waves her gun towards a group of nervous boy soldiers standing nearby and shouts an order in a low, booming voice, sending the boys scuttling. "Don't you have girl soldiers in your country?" the Democratic Republic of Congo rebel asks in French, surprised at the attention she is receiving from a cluster of foreign journalists. "Here there are many." New research shows that girls and women are active combatants in wars across the world. According to Tufts University researcher Dyan Mazurana, over the last decade, girls have fought in conflicts in at least 54 countries, most of them in the developing world.

The first-ever centre to help victims of trafficking opened in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, on Tuesday. It will offer support to the estimated 40,000 women and girls believed to be victims of trafficking, according to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). "This centre is the first of its kind, and covers rehabilitation and reintegration for victims of trafficking," Rakeb Messele of the IOM's anti-trafficking unit told IRIN. "Ethiopia is a source country for women and children trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation and forced and domestic labour," she added.

Since Côte d'Ivoire's faltering peace process all but collapsed with the violent suppression of an opposition demonstration in Abidjan in March 2004, when government security forces and allied militia killed at least 120 civilians, the deteriorating security situation has further endangered thousands of already vulnerable internally displaced people (IDPs) throughout the country.

South Africa is the regional centre of an intricate trafficking network that recruits women and children from Mozambique, Angola, Malawi, Thailand, China, Eastern Europe and even as far afield as the East Asian city of Macau, according to the Geneva-based International Organisation for Migration (IOM). Trafficking in the region is conducted by four broad groups - organised crime, businesswomen, sex tourists and refugees, said IOM's Jonathan Martens in his presentation to a conference in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The conflict in western Sudan's Darfur region could scuttle hopes to cement a peace deal to end 21 years of fighting between the Sudanese government and southern rebels, a senior southern rebel commander told BBC Online. Abdel Aziz Adim of the Sudan People's Liberation Army said he would not join a coalition government with Khartoum given the Darfur situation. "We will not be party to a government that will crush the people of Darfur," he said. "They have a just cause and I personally will not be ready to work with such a government."

Contemporary politico-economic discourse in Zimbabwe, Africa and elsewhere around the globe is characterised by the phenomena of racism, classism, tribal/ethnic and inter-group tensions and conflicts of all kinds. These conflicts are epitomised by widespread xenophobia and the politics of difference. It is thus important to conceptualise these phenomena, particularly the race and class questions, within the evolutionary and revolutionary democratic practice of the African people.

Rights group Amnesty International (AI) has written an open letter to South African President Thabo Mbeki, urging him to intensify efforts to end alleged human rights violations in Zimbabwe. The letter, which Amnesty said had been delivered to Mbeki, is to be published in the South African Mail and Guardian newspaper on Friday.

The head of Liberia's transitional government, Gyude Bryant, said a programme to disarm former combatants would extend to eastern Liberia, close to the border with Cote d'Ivoire, before the end of the month. UN officials told IRIN that 49,000 combatants from the three-armed factions have disarmed so far. UNMIL estimated late last year that the factions had a total of 38,000 combatants, but subsequent official estimates have fluctuated up to 60,000.

Two villagers were shot dead and several others injured by soldiers searching for weapons in Nigeria’s volatile Plateau State, witnesses said last Thursday. The soldiers were in the village of Mabudi, in Langtang South district, investigating reports of villagers hoarding illegal weapons, according to one local resident, Justin Kampak.

It was World Refugee Day on 20 June 2004. It was marked with various degrees of enthusiasm in different countries around the world. I have been scurrying the net to no avail to find out how many African countries actually celebrated the day. Perhaps not surprisingly the regions that have produced the largest number of refugees on this continent have been those most up front about the day.

The Great Lakes and Horn of Africa countries are very much aware of the day and have both official and unofficial activities organized around the day. Southern Africa is also another region where, for historical reasons, awareness about refugee day does exist.

However as former refugees become ruling elite in various countries the triumphalism of liberation is waning general enthusiasm around this day. It does not mean that there are no refugees in other regions of Africa. For instance, West Africa has continued to rival the Great Lakes region in recent years in terms of producing refugees due to the unjust wars in Liberia, Sierra-Leone, Guinea, Ivory Coast and other conflicts across the region. In the north of Africa too there are refugees especially from the decades old civil war in Sudan, conflicts in Chad and other neighbouring states.

There is a general tendency to regard refugees as 'the problem' of international humanitarian agencies and the UNHCR. Many governments also see refugees only in terms of security concerns. In spite of these negative attitudes a number of African countries and communities need to be acknowledged for the enormous support, solidarity and protection they have continued to provide to refugees.

The truth is that most of the refugees produced by a combination of dictatorial regimes, bad governance, genocidaire or xenophobic governments and many unjust wars across this continent remain on this continent.
Only very few make it to places outside Africa especially Europe and North America. Yet these rich countries complain about the impact of refugees on their socio-economic and political lives. Different right wing and neo fascist parties exploit issues of refugees and migrants to gain leverage in politics by fanning anti immigrant and anti-asylum seekers sentiments in their countries. In Europe most asylum seekers are no longer from Africa or other third world countries but from Eastern Europe, yet the racism of right wing groups are directed at Africans and Asians.

A poor country like Tanzania has been host to millions of African refugees for more than four decades without seeking compensation from anyone. Until the arrival of genuine refugees under the control of criminal fugitives from the genocide of 1994 in Rwanda the people and government of Tanzania were generally very welcoming to refugees.

My good friend and a leading authority on refugees and forced migration, Dr Khoti Kamanga of University of Dar, has done extensive research in this area. I had the benefit of hearing him again this week in Nairobi at a Meeting on the Great Lakes Region organized jointly by the International Peace Academy (New York) and the Africa Peace Forum (Nairobi).

Kamanga's argument is that the legal framework for refugees in Tanzania in relation to rights and citizenship is as backward as that of other African countries but Nyerere's progressive political leadership was what made the difference in terms of attitude towards refugees. And one can see how the same Tanzania has regressed since the passing of the Mwalimu. A country so welcoming to refugees before has, under the present regime, become so narrow-minded and politically vindictive as to deny citizenship to people because their parents may have come to Tanzania as refugees.

Uganda is another country that prides itself (especially under the current NRM regime) of having a positive and progressive attitude towards refugees. It was not always so because if the Rwandese refugees in the country and across the region had been fully accepted maybe the need to return home by force of arms might not have arisen, as they would have made homes wherever they found themselves.

Africa must redouble her efforts to remove the conditions that continue to manufacture refugees and internally-displaced persons across the continent while all of us must do our best to receive, work with, show solidarity and traditional African hospitality to all those fellow Africans and non Africans who may have sought refuge amongst us. As they say : 'No condition is permanent' especially in Africa where bad governance continues to undermine civil life in many countries. Just look at how many of the current leaders in Kampala, Kigali, Asmara, Addis, Pretoria, Monrovia, Freetown, Kinshasha, etc have been refugees at one point or the other in their lives. This sad truth should impose both moral and political responsibility on us to treat refugees with respect and respect their rights as human beings.

At the Nairobi meeting Zachary Lomo, of the Legal resource centre at Makerere, spoke passionately in defence of refugees. He expressed a great shame which I share as an African at the existence of refugee camps for Africans on the African continent. The most decent thing to do is to work towards the destruction of these humiliating camps by a process of resettlement, voluntary repatriation when condition permits, full citizenship rights for refugees who wish to naturalise, and automatic citizenship rights to children born to refugees.

It is not just narrow-minded xenophobic African politicians and governments who may be alarmed at this suggestion. The multi billion dollar industry of global humanitarianism will be opposed to it because their careers, bank balances, consultancies, budgets, etc depend on our misery.

As we make progress both at expanded sub regional levels and at the AU it may not be necessary to have these camps anymore because the full freedom of movement and settlement of Africans across Africa will become a reality. A refugee is that human being denied a place to call 'home'. If we accept every African as being at home wherever we may be then the need for refugee camps in Africa will be removed permanently.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul Raheem is General Secretary of the Global Pan African Movement, Kampala, Uganda and Co-Director, Justice Africa (London) ([email protected] or [email][email protected])

* Please send comments to [email protected]

This year the newly established Veteran Child Soldiers Association of Liberia is taking part in the celebration of World Refugee Day organised by the Liberian Welfare Council in the Buduburam refugee settlement in Ghana. The celebration will bring together most local NGOs, music groups and dance collectives.

20 June is World Refugee Day, a day to reflect on the state of the world’s 12 million refugees. One of these 12 million is a young Somali student named Abass Hassan Mohamed.

Abass is the second-oldest of six children. His family fled to Kenya, along with hundreds of thousands of other refugees, in the midst of the violent implosion of Somalia in 1992. He says very little about his early days in the refugee camp, apart from the fact that it was dusty, hot, violent, and that people died on a daily basis.

12 years later, he still lives in a refugee camp near Dadaab, in the Northeast Province of Kenya, just 80kms from the border with Somalia, along with almost 135,000 other refugees.

This February, one year late, Abass received the results from his national secondary school exams. Competing against students from across the country, Abass sat in exams in subjects as diverse as English, Chemistry, Commerce and Swahili. His results were extraordinary. He ranked first in the Northeast Province of Kenya, and eighth in the whole of Kenya.

Although he does not brag, Abass overcame incredible odds to achieve this remarkable result. Of the 44 students in his class, only 32 graduated. His days were full not only with the extra-curricular activities like football, the debating club and the school environment club, but also with more demanding tasks, like standing in the blazing sun and 45C heat for hours to receive the family’s fortnightly rations of a few kilograms of maize. He learned to survive in one of the most violent camps in Africa, where rape, murder and armed robbery were almost daily occurrences.

There were only 300 desks in the whole school, so Abass had to share with two other students, with whom he also shared textbooks. He tried to work on his homework in the evenings, when the chores were done, but his family rarely had the fuel for the single kerosene lamp.

Abass now works as a teacher in one of the primary schools in his camp run by the aid agency CARE, earning 3,775 KSh/- a month, about £26. If a scholarship can be found, Abass plans on studying medicine. In a community where there is only one doctor for 135,000 people, Abass feels that training in medicine is the best way that he can help his people, both in exile and when they return to Somalia. Abass believes that day will come.

Abass is but one example of the millions of refugees around the world, young and old, who have skills and abilities they want to contribute, but who are wasting away in isolated and insecure camps, trapped in a protracted refugee situation. The UN recently reported that, in Africa alone, there are over 3 million refugees who have spent over 5 years in the confines of a refugee camp, with no freedom of movement, dwindling donor support, and slim prospects of a solution for their plight.

This year’s World Refugee Day celebrates the 30th Anniversary of the entry into force of the Organisations for African Unity’s (OAU’s) Refugee Convention. This Convention is hailed by many as one of the most liberal refugee regimes in the world, expanding the refugee definition from those fleeing an individual fear of persecution to those also feeling civil conflict. But looking at the current state of refugee protection in Africa, there is little to celebrate.

Host countries across Africa continue to limit the quality and quantity of asylum they offer to refugees, fleeing both persecution and civil war. Refugees are increasingly ‘warehoused’ in remote camps, cut-off from local communities and fully dependent on international assistance. Unlike the ‘golden age’ of asylum in Africa, when refugees were allocated land to pursue self-sufficiency, host countries today often cite security concerns, environmental degradation and lack of support from donor governments as a justification for placing restrictions on the asylum they offer. In cases of mass influx, states are increasingly likely to try to close their borders to new arrivals or, as in the recent case of Darfur, hinder access to humanitarian agencies.

The result is a crisis in asylum in Africa.

This crisis is compounded by a reluctance on the part of Western governments to support the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in fulfilling the Mandate it received from the UN General Assembly in 1950: to provide international protection for refugees and to find a permanent solution to their plight. States have agreed, since 1951, that the granting of asylum places a heavy burden on certain states, and that the solution to the world’s refugee problem cannot be achieved without international co-operation. Yet the West does little to cooperate.

When asylum seekers flee the insecurity of regions of refugee origin, they find increasing barriers to protection in Europe and North America. When the UNHCR appeals to donor countries to fund its programmes in Africa, insufficient contributions are made. UNHCR has appealed for over $50 million to respond to the unfolding humanitarian emergency on the Chad/Sudan border, but has received only $18 million.

This funding crisis directly affects the level of protection that refugees across Africa receive on a daily basis. A lack of funds means that programmes will not be implemented to prevent the rape of refugee women, that protection staff will not be deployed to register new refugees, that education programmes will need to be cut, and that food assistance to refugees, already below internationally recognized standards, will need to be reduced.

A lack of donor engagement also inhibits the prospects of finding durable solutions to the plight of refugees. Three durable solutions have historically been used to resolve refugee situations. First, refugees have been able to integrate into their host community. Through the 1960s and 1970s, refugees fleeing wars of national liberation and civil wars in Africa were welcomed into their newly independent neighbours and encouraged, with the support of the international community and aid agencies, to settle on under-utilized land and rebuild their lives in a new country. Thousands were given citizenship, and many refugees were able to make significant contributions to their adopted countries. Such programmes are no longer possible in Africa.

Second, refugees have been able to voluntarily repatriate to their country of origin when the conflict has been resolved and when the mechanisms have been established to support their return and reintegration. With the end of the prolonged civil war in Mozambique in the early 1990s, almost a million refugees were able to return from Malawi. Sustained programmes ensured the success of their reintegration. In stark contrast, many instances of repatriation are less than voluntary. Many Burundian refugees are returning from Tanzania not because they believe that they will find peace in their homeland, but because they want to escape the unbearable conditions in the refugee camps. Many say that if they are going to die, they would rather die at home.

Even when the UN does believe that conditions in the country of origin could support large-scale repatriation and reintegration, the necessary funds are not forthcoming. In March 2004, the UNHCR appealed for donor support to lay the foundations for the repatriation of refugees to seven African countries. Two of these countries were Liberia and Sudan. While repatriation is not immediately possible to these countries, investment is essential in the coming months to ensure that the infrastructure is in place to support repatriation in the coming years. UNHCR appealed for $8.8 million for preparatory activities in Sudan. It has received $3 million. Likewise, it has appealed for $39.2 million to support operations in Liberia for return and reintegration of both refugees and internally displaced persons. It has received only $3 million.

If a refugee cannot return to their country of origin, and if they cannot remain in their country of asylum, the only remaining solution for them is to be resettled to a third country. Resettlement is a long and demanding process, but it is the only possible durable solution for many refugees, especially refugees with special needs. Given the protracted nature of many of today’s refugee situations and given the severity of many of the protection environments in which they survive, this durable solution is increasingly essential, but alarmingly scarce. While most of Africa’s 3 million camp-bound refugees would qualify for resettlement, only 100,000 resettlement opportunities are made available by Western countries for resettlement programmes around the world. At the same time, UNHCR lacks the capacity and the institutional will to fill even this meager quota.

But more money to UNHCR is not the answer to the plight of Africa’s refugees. UNHCR is only part of the solution, and greater financial contributions without the backing of political will is wasted. Full funding for UNHCR’s programmes is an important first step, but it is not enough.

A solution to the plight of the world’s refugees must begin with the recognition that the problem of displacement is a global problem, and requires a global solution. The answer on the part of the international community should not be to pull-up the draw-bridges and sharpen the swords. The answer must be found in understanding how various aspects of foreign engagement – trade, aid, military, and foreign policy – can both cause refugee movements and affect the quality of asylum they receive.

Second, the leaders of the West must understand that it is in everybody’s interest to resolve the world’s protracted refugee situations. It is not only immoral to keep refugees warehoused in camps across Africa; it is uneconomical, can foster insecurity, and contributes to the growing resentment on the part of ‘host’ governments. Just as the plight of chronic refugee groups in Europe was resolved in the 1960s, there is urgent need for the political will and creative thinking to formulate comprehensive solutions for today’s protracted refugee situations in Africa.

Finally, refugees themselves should be involved in the process of determining their future. 30 years ago, refugees mattered. They were fleeing wars of national liberation in Africa or communism in Eastern Europe. In the context of the Cold War, they had political utility. Today, they are seen as hopeless and helpless, anonymous victims and huddled masses on our television screens.

But hopeless and helpless they are not. Like Abass, refugees have hopes and dreams for the future, and the ability, desire and skills to contribute to resolving the world’s refugee problem. But contained in camps, they can do little. With the financial and political support of the international community, they could do great things.

The coming into force of the African Refugee Convention 30 years ago was a great step forward for refugees. Since then, we have taken many great leaps backwards. It’s time to reverse the trend.

* James Milner is a Trudeau Scholar and doctoral student at the Refugee Studies Centre, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford. He has formerly worked as a consultant for UNHCR in India, Cameroon, Guinea and Geneva, and the European Council on Refugees and Exiles.

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The Rwandan government has officially requested the presences of a third party verification mechanism, consisting of UN and African Union (AU) officials, to help resolve tensions with the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Rwandan Foreign Minister Charles Muligande made the announcement following talks between President Paul Kagame and an AU delegation led by the chairman of the AU Peace and Security Council, Ambassador Mame Balla Sy.

Minority racist white commercial farmers trying to distort the facts on Namibia's land reform programme to the outside world, will face far reaching consequences, President Sam Nujoma warned last night. Addressing the nation on national television, Nujoma said the land question was sensitive and, if not handled carefully and maturely, will have far reaching economic and political consequences. Reacting to a recent meeting of a group of white farmers who vowed to fight the unlawful expropriation of farms, Nujoma said expropriation will go ahead "in the public interest" and in line with relevant laws and procedures.