A Dutch court has sentenced a former colonel from the Democratic Republic of Congo to 30 months in prison for torturing people there in the 1990s. This is the first case of war crimes committed in another country to reach a Dutch national court. Sebastian Nzapali - known as the king of the beasts - was acquitted on charges of rape and received half the sentence recommended by prosecutors. He was tried under a new law based on the 1984 UN Convention Against Torture.

In the 1960s, 70s and 80s, most of Africa was battling with the destabilising and debilitating forces of colonialism, neo-colonialism (imperialism), apartheid, the Cold War and political authoritarianism. With the disappearance of these centrifugal forces, except neo-colonialism and political authoritarianism, several African states have started to recover their souls and move towards normality. But despite the hopes and dreams brought by the end of the Cold War and apartheid in Africa, the new era could as well be described as tumultuous times on the continent. Capturing this development that seems like taking one step forward and two steps back are the enduring dilemma of political, social, and economic crises in many African countries today.

Some 300 fighters of the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), apparently angered by delays to a disarmament programme that carries incentives for them, robbed people in the centre of the country at the weekend, a radio correspondent said Wednesday. The correspondent in central Liberia for Roman Catholic Radio Veritas cited victims as saying the LURD fighters beat up traders and commuters and fired indiscriminately in the air to scare them into handing over their money and personal effects.

A former Edgemead High School pupil, her mother and her boyfriend, who were involved in a racist attack on a black pupil last year, on Wednesday apologised for their "hurtful" behaviour and agreed to an Equality Court settlement order that they pay R10 000 to a Khayelitsha charity as a gesture of goodwill. The respondents, who may not be named, made an "unconditional apology" as part of the settlement to a black pupil at the school and her parents for the incident at the school on November 6 last year, which prompted political demonstrations and widespread public outrage.

The events of ten years ago found me in Paris, in the office of the African National Congress (ANC), trying to continue to hope after the assassination of Chris Hani, and in Rwanda Felicien Gatabazi. But the news of Habyarimana’s death while the Arusha Peace Accords needed to become a reality was a sign that peace was not for that time.

Today exactly 10 years day after day, the tensions and the questions are still there, and their locations are multiplied. Let me share with you some of the questions that have been my companions since 1995, when I started to look more systematically into the responses to violence in post-genocide Rwanda. Let me say how I learnt about the universality of differences when it comes to expect justice and reconciliation. Why justice and reconciliation?

I have asked similar questions to thousands of people across Rwanda. As I kept on asking questions, I become aware that I can say less about the universality of their expectations, instead I must pay particular attention to their particular experience. I have learned that the answers to the many questions I have raised are far from being straightforward, including within the boundaries of the same “identity group”.

For some, justice was the ability to move on with their lives with amnesia; for others justice was testifying at a trial against the ones who raped, murdered or tortured them or their families. For some, justice is fulfilled with reparation; and for others justice is the possibility to burry their beloved ones in dignity.

Reconciliation too was so fluid a word though for most it equates to living side by side in the same community; for many it is forgiving without conditions in the name of God; some seemed convinced that given a chance they could rebuild tomorrow together while some think it can no longer be the same.

For others it is the prospect to live and raise their children in a country guaranteeing genuine security for all. The ideal of reconciliation is inextricably bound up with yesterday and the promises of tomorrow. Finally, the framing of justice and reconciliation without asking for whom, by whom, with whom and for what purpose leaves little room for other conceptions of what will allow Rwanda to acknowledge all voices and find a common pathway.

I have tried to understand what actually the legal apparatus would achieve in this context. I spent years listening to the stories of women that have experienced sexual violence during the conflict, by meeting them in their gatherings or their homes. My intention was then to look at the ways to voice their particular experiences and needs at the UN international tribunal, based in Arusha, and to monitor the considerations given to them by the tribunal.

The more I listened to their stories, the more I tried to make sense of what, beyond the “violation of their human right” in them was affected, and how far a judicial process could actually address it. I thought that knowledge could be a balm and foundation for a future Rwanda and went to the university to share my questions with the men and women of varied experiences.
Attending the public testimonies of prisoners who plead guilty helped make sense of the process and mechanisms that allowed popular violence to happen, but brought me another infinite set of questions. The sessions I had with prisoners helped me understand their experiences, their hopes and also their worries. What could justice and reconciliation possibly mean in this context?

After 10 years of being a careful student what have I learnt?

I am still at pain to tell in which ways to respond to the consequences of violence that has had such a high level of active participation in Rwanda and how individuals and groups forming Rwanda today look at these strategies aimed at assisting them rebuilding their lives and community.

It is probably not fruitful to view processes of justice and reconciliation as isolated a-historic phenomenon existing outside the realm of politics and every day life. But what have been the contribution of mechanisms such as fictionalized reconstructions of history; reinforcement of an in-group and out-group identity, legitimization and institutionalization of violence? Responding to the consequences of violence include an understanding of the interactions that occur on a daily basis among people whose sense of trust has been destroyed and those fearing reprisal for their deeds.

Another critical component of responses to violence is the recognition that these interactions occur on multiple levels of society but also are affected by time.

Dear sisters, dear brothers, dear friends. I know I have already taken so much of your time and patience, however I will ask for a last favour: have a second tomorrow to think about the women and men of Rwanda. In the name of peace, and love always.

Four U.N. human rights experts have begun an emergency 10-day mission in Sudan to investigate claims by a senior U.N. official of "ethnic cleansing" in the western Darfur region, Reuters reports. The team, led by Bacre Waly Ndiaye, director of the U.N. human rights office in New York, will interview refugees from Darfur in Chad before going to Sudan to investigate what the United Nations has called one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters. According to relief agencies, tens of thousands of refugees - mainly black Muslims from Darfur - have fled to eastern Chad over the past few months to escape attacks from Arab militias and Sudanese government troops.

"The conflict in northern Uganda is unique in the sense that children are not just the main victims, but they are the main targets," says Mads Oyen of the United Nation Children's Fund. Children make up 90 percent of the rebels' forces. On average they spend over two years with the LRA, a movement claiming that it wants to establish a government based on the Ten Commandments. The children are forced to fight on the frontlines, but they also serve as porters and sex slaves.

Ten years after the genocide in Rwanda that took the lives of 800,000 people, the country’s children continue to struggle with the lingering impact of the atrocities, UNICEF has said. “Ten years later, the children of Rwanda are still suffering the consequences of a conflict caused entirely by adults,” UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said. “For them, the genocide is not just a historical event, but an inescapable part of daily life today and tomorrow.”

Aid programs designed to rehabilitate war-affected populations fail to address the needs of children, particularly girls, who often receive no support at all, experts said at a conference on children and war. Women may be abducted by warring parties and forced to serve as fighters, scouts, cooks, porters, spies and sexual slaves. Like boys, they may also volunteer, whether because of poverty, concern for their safety or ideological reasons.

In a further blow to the independence of the judiciary, the Zimbabwean Government ignored two judicial rulings and used State-controlled media to attack magistrates, stated the Centre for the Independence of Judges and Lawyers of the ICJ (ICJ/CIJL). On 17 March, Magistrate Judith Tsamba, following a precedent of the High Court in a similar case, ordered the release of prominent businessman James Makamba due to irregularities in his arrest. Despite the Magistrate's order, the police decided to ignore the ruling and immediately rearrested the accused. In a similar case, the Government ignored Judge Bhunu's ruling ordering the immediate release of Phillip Chiyangwa. Mr. Chiyangwa, Chinhoyi legislator and ZANU-PF chairman for Mashonaland West, is facing criminal charges involving the obstruction of justice, contempt of court and perjury.

The Development Research Centre on Migration, Globalisation and Poverty aims to promote new policy approaches that will help to maximize the potential benefits of migration for poor people, whilst minimizing its risks and costs. It will undertake a programme of research, capacity-building, training and promotion of dialogue to provide the strong evidential and conceptual base needed for such new policy approaches. This knowledge base will also be shared directly with poor migrants, contributing both directly and indirectly to the elimination of poverty.

The Global Commission on International Migration (GCIM) will hold a ‘Regional Hearing for Asia and the Pacific’ in Manila on 17 and 18 May 2004, followed by a ‘Commission-only’ meeting on 19 May. The hearing will involve some 20 selected governments from Asia and the Pacific, a number of non-governmental bodies, global and regional organisations, migration experts, private sector representatives, trade unions and the media. The next regional Commission hearing will be organised in the Mediterranean region, in Rabat, Morocco, in September 2004. Meanwhile, the GCIM invites contributions to a new series of research papers titled ‘Global Migration Perspectives’, edited by Dr Jeff Crisp and Dr Colleen Thouez. The purpose of the series is to contribute to the current discourse on global migration issues, and to assist the Commission in formulating policy options and proposals for its final report, which will be submitted to the UN Secretary-General in mid-2005. Preference will be given to papers that provide new, creative and policy-relevant perspectives on global migration issues (see http://www.gcim.org/ir_gmp.htm).

In April 1994, Rwanda suffered one hundred days of violence, targeted at the Tutsi and moderate Hutu population. Ten years later, the consequences of the violence have not been dealt with adequately, neither by the international community nor by the Rwandan government. Survivors of violence still cry out for medical care; survivors and families of victims clamour for justice that is slow in coming. Women continue to die from diseases related to HIV/AIDS, which some of them contracted as a result of rape during the 1994 genocide and armed conflict.

Ongoing trials of two potential vaginal microbicides against HIV/AIDS at a hospital in Kampala have so far produced promising results, local newspaper Sunday Monitor reported. Vaginal microbicides are substances that a woman can insert before sex in order to inactivate HIV and other sexually transmitted microbes. The microbicides can work in one of three ways - by killing the virus before it enters the body, by preventing it from taking hold once inside the body, or by creating a barrier to stop it from entering the body in the first place, the report said.

To many of you I may sound cynical or sadistic but let me grab this opportunity and ask my question: Why should we remember the Rwanda Genocide? Is it because there are some people who are more dead than others? I ask this question in the same context that I ask: Why should we remember 11 September?

To me, there seems to be a justifiable move towards remembering the dead within the human rights movement but unfortunately hijacked by misguided "guilt cleansing". Arguments that exist to date is that the Rwanda genocide happened because of prejudice, racism, failure of the international community, ineffectiveness of the UN, ethnic or tribal clashes, etc.

While many or all of these arguments maybe true, I do not see any difference in the way the world that I know has operated and continues to operate each day. For example, genocide is neither new in Africa nor unique to Rwanda. The mass massacres of protestors, secessionists, demonstrators in colonial Africa have never received the kind of attention that Rwanda receives today. The slave raids and trade of Africa's human resource into Europe and North America has never received historical global attention.

Sadly, hardly do any school curricular or national programs in Africa recognize it. In fact we are told in some corners that we should forget and move on. Why then do we have to remember 1994 Rwanda? The argument about racism (of the West) towards Black Africa is not convincing to me because this is the global structure in all corners of the world each day except with varying end results. In any case, assuming that the west is racist against Black Africa is a misguided assumption that each person in the West is "White" thus denying the diversity of colours.

We are also not told if indeed everyone in the West stood by in silence before and after the genocide. Instead we are told that the international community (which has become an oxymoron of USA and Europe) did nothing. Any keen observer would know that the Organization of African Unity (now AU) was engaged in the Rwanda peace process for many years; countries like Tanzania supported and hosted the Arusha Peace Process while Uganda supported the Rwanda Patriotic Front in their struggle to return home. Sadly, these and many other achievements (in my judgement) are shadowed in a misguided naming of the International Community.

The argument about the ethnic or tribal warfare between the Hutus and Tutsi fails to recognize the historical stimulants of such divisions. Why we cannot deny that surely the Tutsi exerted hierarchical power over the Hutus before Belgian colonialism, these differences and divisions became more sharp and antagonist during colonial rule when the Tutsi were granted racial accession close to Europeans. Thus, we cannot excuse the effects of such propaganda on the Rwanda of 1959 and 1994 by ignoring the ethnicitizing of the Banyarwanda.

Lastly, while the United Nations indeed shares the blame given its avowed promise in 1948 to prevent human suffering, save lives and save the world of another holocaust, one wonders whether it should indeed take all the blame and the accolades? In my opinion, it is high time that we recognized that the UN is a group of Member States, each with their own interests and their conduct will always reflect their priorities. For example, the US's decision to block UN efforts to stop the Rwanda Genocide reflected its memories of the Somali engagement. As one of my colleagues mentioned, the US withdrew from Somalia after 11 US soldiers died but is still in Iraq after more than 500 deaths. France did not want to see another French culture disappear into oblivion to the Anglophone RPF. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and UK were still making money selling arms and military hardware to the Habyarimana government while The World Bank was still lending and hoping to collect its debt from Rwanda.

Therefore, it is not that I do not want to mourn the dead; it is in realizing that there are too many dead and always let to die by the same people who come to mourn. What is the impact of parading skulls of the other people’s dead in national memorials on the customary closure of life and transition into after-life? What is the impact of the victim mentality on the future of Rwandese Tutsi-Hutu and the creation of Rwanda of national unity? Shouldn't we really ask what is the impact of selective memories on state responsibility towards its own people and reconciliation (in Rwanda) if there is ever going to be?

(Uganda)

The guns in Angola may have fallen silent, but the broad consensus on the streets of this battered country is that two years of peace have done little to better the lives of ordinary citizens. Sunday marked the second anniversary of the signing of the peace accord between the ruling MPLA and its arch-foe, UNITA, which brought to an end one of Africa's longest and bloodiest civil conflicts.

The Ethiopian government said on Monday that the situation in the volatile southwestern region of Gambela, where scores of people have been killed in ethnic clashes, mainly between the Anyuak and Nuer, has improved. In a statement sent to IRIN by the Ministry of Federal Affairs, Ethiopia said that "the situation on the ground has come down to normality". It said security in the region had been beefed up, the perpetrators of the violence arrested, destroyed homes rebuilt and the provision of relief was ongoing.

The Forced Migration Online (FMO) team, of the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford has prepared an online resource page highlighting key relevant news sources on the web. References are available for specific news services that focus on refugees/IDPs, emergencies, migration, conflict, as well as more comprehensive news search engines and directories. The Internet provides a wealth of opportunities for sharing news and information; examples of mailing lists, discussion boards, blogs and wikis are also featured. Finally, several free newsfeeds are also noted.

For the period February 1-29, The Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum recorded 100 cases of political discrimination, 97 cases of freedom of expression violations, 74 cases of torture and 32 cases of assault. Detailing the abuses in its political violence report for February, the forum called upon the responsible authorities to take action regarding the human rights violations cited in this report in terms of bringing the perpetrators to justice. "Failure to do so will create a climate of impunity in which politically motivated violence may thrive. It is imperative that checks be put in place to prevent this prior to the upcoming Parliamentary Elections in early 2005."

Ugandan security forces are torturing supporters of the political opposition and holding them in secret detention amid the government's pursuit of rebels involved in the country's armed conflict, Human Rights Watch said. The 76-page report, "State of Pain: Torture in Uganda," documents cases of torture committed by military, intelligence and security agents in the government's pursuit of armed rebels. However, politicians challenging the de facto single-party state and the 18-year rule of Uganda's president, Yoweri Museveni, are often detained, severely beaten and threatened with death by the uncontrolled security apparatus.