Hundreds of Ethiopian students have arrived in a remote Kenyan border town in recent days, saying they had crossed over from the Ethiopian side of the town after holding a demonstration at their boarding school that was quelled by the army. After the first two dozen Ethiopian ethnic Oromos arrived in the border hamlet of Moyale a week ago, the influx has quickly gathered pace. There are now some 560 young Ethiopians encamped on the grounds of a Kenyan police station, a compound hardly suited to shelter such a large group. The new arrivals are composed of primary and secondary school-age students who were attending classes at a school in neighbouring Moyale, Ethiopia.

The administration of the breakaway Somali republic of Puntland has ordered holders of Kenyan passports to leave within seven days. Government spokesman Ahmed Asharo told the BBC that the orders were issued after Kenya's decision not to respect Somali passports. Correspondents say the order will seriously affect aid agency workers.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) proposed on Monday a regional youth peace forum aimed at strengthening Africa's regional capacities for peace and development. A two day strategy meeting to pave the way for the launching of this regional forum for the four core countries of the Great Lakes Region (Burundi, D.R. Congo, Rwanda and Uganda) is being held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The forum, which is an initiative within UNDP Regional Bureau for Africa's second Regional Co-operation framework is expected to enhance active youth participation in national and regional reconciliation and peace building initiatives in the four core countries of the Great Lakes Region.

The Ugandan cabinet has approved an emergency allocation of 1.2 billion shillings (about US $630,000) to aid civilians displaced by an 18-year rebel war in the north and east, a senior government official has said. The budget was in response to an unexpected surge in the numbers of internally displaced persons (IDPs) at the beginning of 2004, following a spate of attacks by Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels on civilian targets, First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Disaster Preparedness and Refugees Moses Ali told IRIN.

A group of Rwandan refugees in Namibia will embark on a "go and see" mission to their home country to assess conditions for their proposed voluntary repatriation. This visit is being organised to allay the concerns of the nearly 500 Rwandan refugees over their safety once they return. In April a group of Rwandans fled Namibia's Osire refugee camp and told the local Namibian newspaper that they did not want to be repatriated.

Some of the worst human rights violators of the apartheid era, including a man who helped kill 14 civilians while they slept, have been employed as security contractors in Iraq. A South African killed in Iraq two weeks ago once worked for a secret apartheid death squad known as the Civil Co-operation Bureau. The CCB specialised in assassinating civilians who sympathised with black liberation movements. Gray Branfield, 55, was the latest South African casualty with a record of human rights abuse to have obtained lucrative employment with one of the many private security companies operating in Iraq.

At least 20 people died in three days of clashes between rival ethnic militias in central Plateau State, residents and officials said on Tuesday. The clashes between ethnic Tarok fighters and their Fulani rivals at Bakin Chiyawa in the Shendam district of the state began on Saturday, Emmanuel Bakat, a local government official and resident of the area, told IRIN.

In the latest attempt to curb the circulation of small arms in Africa, foreign affairs ministers and other representatives from eleven countries signed a protocol on weapons control recently in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. But, the jury is still out on whether this initiative really has the ingredients for success. The Nairobi Protocol for the Prevention, Control and Reduction of Small Arms and Light Weapons was signed after a two-day meeting that brought together eleven states from the Great Lakes area and the Horn of Africa. These regions have some of the highest rates of weapons proliferation in Africa.

The Anti-War Coalition in partnership with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation invites you to a seminar titled ' The Relevance of Rosa Luxemburg in an Era of Endless Wars'. The seminar will be held from May 20th to the 22nd at the Workers' Library, Newtown, Johannesburg. Invited guests are expected from the following countries: Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, Mauritius, United States and Germany.

The swearing in of head of state Thabo Mbeki coincided with the tenth anniversary of South Africa's first all-race election in 1994, which put an end to over three centuries of colonial and apartheid rule. Not to be outdone, members of the Volksversetaksie, a pressure group which claims to articulate the grievances of Afrikaans-speaking whites, or Afrikaners, organised an alternative event Tuesday under the slogan 'Ten Years - Ten Grievances'. Their complaints focus on South Africa's land reform programme, crime and violence, alleged racism - and what the group describes as an attack on Afrikaans culture.

Leaders of the United Methodist Church accused Washington of "racism" on Tuesday after dozens of African and Asian church members were barred from attending a special conference of the third-largest Christian denomination in the United States. At least eight delegates from the Philippines and at least 17 from various African countries were unable to attend the church's general conference, a rule-making session held once every four years, after the U.S. government rejected their visa applications.

The World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) has again highlighted the ongoing crimes against humanity and acts of genocide being perpetrated by the Ethiopian Armed Forces and "highlander" militias against the Anuak (or Anywaa) indigenous ethnic group in rural areas of Gambella, Ethiopia. "It has been estimated that during the period spanning December 13th, 2003 to March 31st, 2004, the total number of persons killed had reached 1137, and the killings have reportedly continued since then. The massive targeting of a specific ethnic group, with the clear intent of destroying a part or the entirety of the group, bears all the hallmarks of acts of genocide and crimes against humanity," said the organisation in a press release.

The International Thesaurus of Refugee Terminology (ITRT) is designed to facilitate information retrieval and exchange. The Thesaurus is now available as an interactive and searchable tool online, in English, French and Spanish. We hope this new version will serve as a more efficient medium for identifying relevant indexing terminology and as a value-added mechanism for managing refugee and forced migration-related information.

The Home Office confirmed last night it had abandoned controversial plans to create "transit processing centres" in East Africa for asylum seekers in the face of opposition in Tanzania and criticism from the EU. Instead it is seeking to repackage plans to process asylum seekers in their own region of origin in a scheme possibly linked to extra aid.

Police in Harare on the 22 April arrested and inhumanely assaulted, social justice activist Tinashe Lukas Chimedza. Tinashe had been billed to speak at an Education Rights Forum at Mt Pleasant Hall, in his capacity as the Zimbabwe nominee to the International Youth Parliament, whose topic was ‘Defending the Right to education, and Celebrating a legacy of Students Resistance’. Mr Tinashe was arrested on arrival at the venue, after being identified as one of the speakers.

UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and Liberian soccer legend George Weah has suggested that heads of warring factions in the country should face justice for arming innocent Liberian children during the country's recent bloody conflict. Weah said it was a violation of local and international laws, conventions and treaties for warlords to have given weapons to children to fight. He observed that most of the children who joined the various armed groups, were either raped or conscripted against their will. The UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador pointed out that it was important for warlords to face justice in order to explain why they armed innocent Liberian children.

The food aid pipeline for 14,000 refugees in Namibia will face a complete break from June onwards, the World Food Programme (WFP) has warned. WFP Namibia programme head Abdirahman Meygag told IRIN on Monday the agency "only has small quantities of food, enough only for May distributions" in the main refugee camp at Osire and the Kassava transit centre.

United Nations agencies have begun an assessment mission in northwestern Uganda following the mass displacement of Sudanese refugees by Ugandan rebels, an official of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) told IRIN on Monday. The UNHCR spokesman for Uganda, Dennis Duncan, said an assessment team comprising UNHCR, World Food Programme and UN Development Programme officials had been sent to the affected districts of Moyo and Adjumani "to figure out where it is safe and where it is not".

Rapidly changing trends in international peacekeeping are likely to pose a serious challenge to regional authorities intending to establish an emergency force for dealing with conflict in Southern Africa, recent research has noted. In a paper entitled, "Towards a Common Southern African Peacekeeping System", South African-based political analyst, Cedric de Coning, argued that the fast pace of developments in the peacekeeping field over the last decade had "complicated" efforts by policy-makers and researchers to arrive at a common understanding of peacekeeping.

Malawi President Bakili Muluzi has threatened to expel European Union observers ahead of next month's poll. He said he had received intelligence that some observers were campaigning against his United Democratic Front. "If they come here to decampaign my government... I will ask them to leave the country... and I am not joking," he said in a campaign speech.