A coalition of thirteen associations of non-Tswana speaking ethnic groups in Botswana, including the Wayeyi tribal community, have raised their concerns over 'assimilationist policies' which deny their linguistic and cultural rights and leave them marginalized. Calling for dialogue with the government, the coalition representative stated that non-Tswana speaking groups are not recognized or consulted on decisions affecting their lives through their chiefs, lack rights to land, and do not have their languages used in education, the national radio and other social domains.

Commercial farmers have warned that increased minimum wages for farm workers will result in further job losses in the sector and weaken South Africa's ability to maintain agricultural output to satisfy both domestic and export demands. Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana announced the increases of between 9 and 10 percent in minimum wages for farm workers on Wednesday, effective from 1 March 2004.

Eritrea has reiterated its opposition to the appointment of a UN special envoy tasked to help break the deadlock affecting the peace process with Ethiopia, the United Nations said last Thursday. Eritrean Brig-Gen Abrahaley Kifle rejected international calls for Eritrean officials to meet newly appointed Special Envoy Lloyd Axworthy, according to the UN. Abrahaley's rebuff came just days after the UN Security Council had urged Asmara to meet the former Canadian foreign minister to try and move the stalled peace process forward.

Violence erupted on Saturday afternoon in Liberia’s second city, Buchanan, about 120 kilometres southeast of the capital, Monrovia. According to reports from Buchanan, fighters from the rebel Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) ran amok, looting properties and harassing civilians. One civilian was later confirmed dead. Witnesses who fled the area and later contacted IRIN talked of MODEL fighters letting off weapons at random intervals, causing civilian casualties.

At least 4,500 common law prisoners were pardoned and released in Rwanda on Monday in a bid to decongest the nation's prisons, Prosecutor General Jean de Dieu Mucyo told IRIN. "This group of the released exclude those who have confessed to genocide crimes," he said on Monday.

Amnesty International has welcomed the historic decision by the Special Court for Sierra Leone dated 13 March 2004 to refuse to recognize the applicability of a national amnesty for crimes against humanity and war crimes. The Special Court for Sierra Leone held that, in accordance with international law, the general amnesty granted in the 1999 Lomé peace agreement was "ineffective" in preventing international courts, such as the Special Court, or foreign courts from prosecuting crimes against humanity and war crimes.

The story of Burundi’s heroes is one of humanity against all odds. It is a story of courage in the midst of crisis, of defiance in the face of danger, of compassion in a sea of callousness. When everyone around them told them to accept the status quo of blood and brutality, these Burundian heroes chose to listen to their internal voices. It meant risking their own lives, and those of their family in some cases, to save that of another. For many, it meant ongoing danger and difficulty long after the moment of their act of courage. It was a moment for which they had not prepared or planned. Susan Koscis writes about these heroes in the latest edition of the Peace and Conflict Monitor.

Will Egypt negotiate or face up to conflict in the current dispute over the use of Nile River water? Recently, the Egyptian Water Minister, Mahmoud Abu-Zeid, described Kenya’s intention to withdraw from the agreement as an ‘act of war’. Boutros-Ghali, the former Secretary General of the UN and an Egyptian by birth, has predicted that the next war in the region will be over water. In the latest edition of the Peace and Conflict Monitor, Ferdinand Katendeko examines the historical context and present day realities with regards to the use of the Nile waters.

The Human Rights Day spotlight should be turned on farmworkers, the SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) said. Spokesman Patrick Craven said the brutal murder of Nelson Chisale, who was fed to lions, reminded the country of the blatant disregard of human rights by many employers in rural areas. South Africa celebrated Human Rights Day on Sunday. Craven said some farmworkers were denied a minimum wage, forced to work many hours of unpaid overtime, housed in squalid conditions and were frequently beaten.

The Ethiopian government should launch an immediate investigation leading to the prosecution and dismissal of all federal police involved in the recurring practice of torture of people caught up in mass arrests, Human Rights Watch said in a letter addressed to the Ethiopian ministers of federal affairs and of justice. “Failure by the ministers to investigate and prosecute makes them accomplices in torture under international law,” Peter Takirambudde, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch's Africa Division, said. “It’s time to assign individual blame for allowing repeated brutality.”

The legal system in Sierra Leone is still very weak and that further impacts human rights and protection issues, says Refugees International. "It is extremely difficult for the poor to access the system. There are prolonged cases of pre-trial detention for suspects. Many have no legal representation in court, and most cases brought to the court are not properly documented or investigated. Hearings are repeatedly adjourned and postponed, leaving suspects to languish in prison," said the organisation.

President Robert Mugabe’s atrocious human rights record will come under the microscopic gaze of the UN Human Rights Commission which is meeting in Geneva for the next six weeks. It will be the second time that the UNHRC considered the crisis in Zimbabwe after South Africa in 2002 blocked an attempt by the British to pass a resolution calling on President Mugabe to reform.

As the African Union's (AU) Pan African Parliament (Parliament) is inaugurated, it is essential for African parliamentarians and leaders to recognize the centrality of human rights and the need to incorporate them in all parliamentary activities, Amnesty International said at the beginning of the historic first session of the Parliament, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. "The inauguration of the Parliament is another chance for African governments to demonstrate their expressed commitment to the full realization of human rights in the continent. The Parliament must seek to safeguard the fundamental human rights of African peoples and the principles on which the AU is founded," Amnesty said.

Rwanda Youth Information Community Organization (rYico) has organised a programme of events in Brighton to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda. Click on the link below for more details.

The planned trial of suspected mercenaries in Zimbabwe could raise embarrassing questions for the government over their alleged bid to buy weapons illegally from the state, defence analysts say. The key question will centre on what role President Robert Mugabe's senior aides played in any plans to procure weapons from state-owned Zimbabwe Defence Industries (ZDI), a cash-strapped agency under the firm grip of the government. Experts said it was difficult to imagine the ZDI would agree a deal to sell arms without the approval of senior government or party officials or without an end-user certificate specifying the final destination of the weapons.

As the blazing sun mercilessly beats down on her, Halima Abdi Adam squints and tries to find some shade under a shrivelled tree. She is one of over 3,200 Somali refugees who have ended up in the Emkulu refugee camp on the outskirts of the Eritrean port city of Massawa. Emkulu, administered by the Eritrean Office of Refugee Affairs (ORA), which in turn is funded by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), was originally intended as a transit centre for Eritrean returnees from Sudan. Hundreds of thousands of Eritreans have been applying for voluntary repatriation from camps in eastern Sudan which, for many of them, have been their homes for 30 years since they fled the fighting of Eritrea’s liberation war.

A bitter war of words has erupted between Rwanda and France just weeks before the central African nation marks the 10th anniversary of the genocide of 800,000 people. Western heads of state are due in the capital, Kigali, next month to commemorate the 100-day slaughter, which was sparked by the assassination of Rwandan president, Juvenal Habyarimana, on 6 April 1994. What should be a moment of sombre reflection is, however, being marred by a furious exchange of accusations, centred on a murder mystery that is as central to Rwanda's history as the Kennedy assassination is to that of the United States.

The One World Trust's lecture by Linda Melvern on 'Conspiracy to Murder: The Rwandan Genocide' will take place on May 18th at 6.00pm in Committee Room 6, Houses of Parliament, London.

Next month's observance of the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide should be an occasion not only for remorse but also resolve, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in March. In a message delivered on his behalf to a symposium on the Media and the Rwanda Genocide at the Carlton University School of Journalism and Communication in Ottawa, Mr. Annan stressed the need to remember the victims "abandoned to systematic slaughter while the world, which had the capacity to save most of them, failed to save more than a handful, forever sullying the collective conscience." He also urged attention to helping the survivors.

April 7, 2004 marks ten years since the beginning of the Rwandan genocide, when nearly a million people were killed in ninety days while the international community largely stood by. In response, the Centre for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at American University Washington College of Law has launched the Rwanda Commemoration Project: Genocide in Our Time, an international initiative that seeks to raise awareness of this anniversary and the important lessons of the tragic events in Rwanda.