A screening of a documentary about Nigerian drug syndicates in Durban has sparked a new wave of allegations on South Africans' seemingly deep-rooted xenophobia about Nigerians, who maintain that the lowest 10% of their country's lower social class sets the perception for all their nationals. This has damaging implications for the majority, including issues such as credibility in business, ease of getting visas and even access to credit. Drug syndicates have been operating in SA since the 1980s. By the time Nigerian professionals began arriving in numbers mostly in the mid1990s the tone for Nigerians had been set and has proved difficult to counter.

The white rugby player who refused to share a room with a black team-mate has been cleared of racism by the South African Rugby Football Union. The president of the union, Brian van Rooyen, said he was sorry for what had happened to Geo Cronjé at the Springbok training camp last August. He said the union would officially announce that no racism was involved in Cronjé's refusal to share a room with Quinton Davids, an incident which led to punishment drills for both players and expulsion of the two from the training camp.

The plight of what could be more than a million people uprooted by violence in Algeria's conflict between the government and groups of armed Islamist extremists is largely ignored by the international community, according to a new report published by the Norwegian Refugee Council's Global IDP Project. “Our analysis suggests that the scope of the displacement crisis in Algeria is much more significant than previously thought,” said Raymond Johansen, the organisation's Secretary General.

Angolan Social Welfare minister, Joao Baptista Kussumua, this week analysed with representatives of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva the situation facing Angolan refugees, within the framework of the programme of repatriation of nationals living in foreign countries. "The fact that a high number of fellow countrymen have returned and that about a million are still abroad, presses the Government into convincing the United Nations on the best format to reintegrate the Angolans returning home, now that the war is over," he said.

Britain’s Home office has denied allegations that it is trying to dump failed Somali asylum seekers on Tanzania, with a spokesman dismissing as speculation media reports that thousands of Somalis who had failed to be given political asylum in the UK could be sent instead to Tanzania. In Dar, the Home Affairs minister confirmed that consultations with the British government over a request to set up a camp in Tanzania for screening Somali asylum seekers were going on, also adding that there were some alleged Tanzanian nationals in the UK who pose and continue to live in the UK as Somali refugees. Somalis made up the largest number of refugee applicants to Britain last year but the numbers are still tiny (around 6,000 in 2003) compared with the numbers that Tanzania has to host, over 600,000.

Three years ago in the former white mining village, West Village, Krugersdorp, Pastor Robert Bruun started a centre, with a church, a school for children who live in a nearby squatter camp, accommodation for the needy, and counselling. Last year, he was threatened that his church would be destroyed if he continued to accommodate and help "kaffirs". About 1am on Sunday, the pastor was awakened by a passer-by who noticed that his centre was on fire. Bruun is sure that the cause of the fire was arson.

Over a dozen faction leaders participating in the Somali peace talks in Kenya have warned the organisers that the launching of an interim charter next week could lead to the failure of the talks, claiming that unresolved issues remain. "We feel that the formal launch of the Transitional Federal Charter of Somalia... is uncalled for as the contentious article 30 (1) of the charter still stands unresolved," said a statement signed by the leaders. The "contentious article" deals with the selection of members of parliament.

The UN-backed Special Court set up to try those considered most responsible for war crimes in Sierra Leone has begun carrying out investigations in Liberia: a team of investigators began searching residences of ex-president Charles Taylor on Friday. The team, headed by Chief Investigator Allen White, met strong resistance on Friday, when they tried to enter a house in Congo Town, the south-eastern suburb of the capital, Monrovia, where Taylor lived until he was forced into exile in August last year, clearing the way for the signing of a peace deal.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees has announced that come June this year all their support for Sierra Leonean refugees reluctantly refusing to come will stop. This was disclosed by the new UNHCR Public Information Officer, Rachel Goldstein-Rodriguez during a question and answer session at the UNAMSIL press briefing last week. She said although UNHCR is not forcing the refugees to return home, they have nevertheless on several occasions been encouraging them, as according to her, "the Agency will soon stop all relief supplies to Sierra Leonean refugees in Guinea and Liberia that do not want to return home."

The UN refugee agency has been tasked with setting up a working group to support the return and reintegration of millions of refugees in at least nine African countries, a move that could bring the continent a step closer to ending some of its most protracted refugee situations. The decision was taken at the end of Monday, the first of the two-day Dialogue on Voluntary Repatriation and Sustainable Reintegration in Africa. Sponsored by UNHCR, the Geneva meeting gathered delegates from some 60 countries, including senior government officials from throughout Africa, donor states and representatives of international organisations.

Human rights monitors are travelling around Liberia documenting crimes of sexual violence during the country's 14-year civil war in a project backed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Over three months, 22 monitors will interview a random sample of 4,000 Liberians and give the results from those interviews to the country's soon-to-be established Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the agency announced on Tuesday.

Swiss Re, the world's second-biggest reinsurer, has warned that the costs of global warming threaten to spiral out of control, forcing the human race into a catastrophe of its own making. In a report revealing how climate change is rising on the corporate agenda, Swiss Re said the economic costs of global warming threatened to double to $150 billion (R1 trillion) a year in 10 years, hitting insurers with $30 billion to $40 billion in claims.

Hundreds of thousands of people in Lesotho will require international assistance for a third consecutive year due to the combined impact of another devastating drought and the worsening HIV/AIDS epidemic, warned James T. Morris, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Humanitarian Needs in Southern Africa. “Any hopes that Lesotho’s humanitarian crisis would begin to ease this year have been dashed by yet another drought and by the increasingly devastating impact of HIV/AIDS,” Morris said.

As peace talks continue in Kenya between the Sudanese government and its principal opponent, the SPLM/A, the prospects of securing a sustainable peace are increasingly threatened by other issues not on the table in this process. These include intense fighting in Darfur in western Sudan and unresolved questions of democratic participation throughout the country. The humanitarian crisis of as many as one million people displaced in Darfur and across the border in Chad, is currently rated among the worst in the world. The latest edition of the Africa Focus Bulletin contains a variety of news articles and links on the crisis.

Employers that take on refugees who have been granted permission to stay in the UK are often impressed with the calibre of their work – but frightened to publicise the fact that they employ them, for fear of negative publicity.

A delegation comprised of members of the transitional government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the ambassadors of France, Norway and Spain, and William Swing, the UN secretary-general's special representative to the country, is currently on mission in the nation's troubled northeastern Ituri District to urge armed groups to disarm, demobilise and reintegrate (DDR), the UN Mission in the DRC, MONUC, reported on Wednesday.

The government of Benin has set up a national child protection committee to oversee the fight against child trafficking and the work of child protection organisations. The 15-member committee includes the representatives of several child welfare organisations, the government and the police. It was set up last Friday for an initial period of 12 months.

A deadly fire in a satellite town of the Angolan capital has shown the woefully inadequate state of hospitals in a country still struggling to get back on its feet two years after the end of a brutal civil war. The accident in late February happened when a truck carrying barrels of petrol caught fire in the town of Viana, killing 15 people immediately and injuring more than 80. The wounded were admitted to nearby Neves Bendinha Hospital, where staff did their best to treat them for third-degree burns in under-equipped facilities. As patients lay screaming in corridors and overcrowded wards, many on plastic mattresses on the floor, and as the stench of burnt flesh filled the building, hospital director Dr. Valdemiro Diogo said resources were desperately over-stretched.

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. Read more by clicking on the link below.

Amnesty International has expressed concern over the prospect of renewed judicial executions in Burundi, following a speedy trial of four Rwandan men over a bank robbery that took place on 29 January in the capital, Bujumbura. In a statement, Amnesty said on Monday that the Rwandans were at imminent risk of execution. The men were tried on 23 February over the bank robbery during which one person died and a large amount of money stolen.