Ethiopia’s human rights group on Wednesday condemned the mass arrests and physical abuse in January of hundreds of university students in the capital, Addis Ababa. The Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO) said federal officers had rounded up 349 students belonging to the Oromo ethnic group before transporting them to a detention centre. The students – members of the country’s largest ethnic group – had then been forced to march barefoot or on their knees along a gravel path for several hours, EHRCO stated.

One million people are "at imminent risk of life and livelihood" in Sudan's western region of Darfur, due to a lack of civil order and the "refusal of local and national authorities to permit unrestricted access for humanitarian workers", according to the US government. A statement released on Tuesday said the US viewed the deepening humanitarian crisis in Darfur with grave concern. Particularly threatening were the actions of the "government-supported militias, known as the Janjawid, who continue to attack and burn undefended villages, murdering and raping the inhabitants and forcing survivors into desperate flight to garrison towns" or neighbouring Chad, it said.

Cotton farmer Faustin Bagaza, 55, wears the cloak of poverty around him even tighter these days. Despite harvesting his crop for two successive years, he has made no sales. The reason? A rebellion in northwestern Central African Republic (CAR) that has devastated the country's agriculture, health, education and other services.

Human rights advocates are calling on the Kenyan government to stop demolishing shantytowns in the capital until it has worked out a plan to relocate the inhabitants. This was the week the Kenyan government was to bulldoze homes and businesses in the poorest sections of Nairobi. But President Mwai Kibaki intervened in the last minute and stopped the demolition until the government finds a way to relocate the residents.

A passionate plea for tolerance and trust is being made by the landlord and tenants of a Sea Point block of flats reputed to be a den of drug dealers and prostitutes. Landlord Shlomo Bitton says pressure from a group of Sea Point homeowners "targeting" the building has brought him close to evicting all his tenants. The tenants, many of whom are refugees from the Congo, say racism and xenophobia are behind a protest last week by homeowners accusing them of selling sex and drugs. "We are surrounded by hostility and hatred. Black people kill us when we try to live with them in townships, and white people do not want us to live with them either," said Roxi Badibanja, a Congolese refugee studying electrical engineering at Cape College in the day and working as a security guard at night.

Rwandan officials have asked countries around the world to hold a minute's silence at noon on April 7 to mark the 10th anniversary of the 1994 genocide. "We would like the whole world to hold 10 minutes of silence - one minute for each year since 1994 - but some say that's too long," said Ildephonse Karengera, Rwanda's director of the genocide memorial.

Plans are underway in Rwanda to hold the biggest genocide commemoration event in the country since the 1994 genocide. April 7th, 2004 will be exactly ten years since the start of 100 days of genocide in which an estimated one million ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed.

The U.N. tribunal for Rwanda convicted a former senior military officer of genocide Wednesday and acquitted two other suspects, including a former transport minister. Former Lt. Samuel Imanishimwe was sentenced to 27 years in prison for genocide and crimes against humanity, said tribunal spokesman Roland Amoussouga.

Ten years after the genocide that saw Hutus kill nearly one million Tutsis in just 100 days, Rwanda is still trying to come to terms with its bloody past. Theophile Ntaganda is one of thousands of killers now being released from prison. He killed his mother-in-law and two of his wife's sisters during the genocide. He wants his wife back but she has moved on, forging her documents and marrying again. Filmed over a year, this BBC production is set in a country struggling to come to terms with one of the worst genocides in the twentieth century.

A Rwandan court sentenced five people to death on Friday over the killing of a genocide survivor who was due to testify in the Gacaca justice system, Rwanda News Agency (RNA) reported. The five were found guilty of killing Charles Rutinduka on 26 November 2003 in Kaduha, in the southern province of Gikongoro.

This year is the 10th Anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda. An international campaign is underway to mobilise to mark this anniversary - "REMEMBERING RWANDA". As our contribution to this campaign, we will be featuring this special section called Remembering Rwanda. We also plan to publish a special issue on Rwanda in April 2004. Get involved! Organise an event in your institution, town, village or city. Send us information ([email protected]) about what you are doing to commemorate the anniversary and to provide solidarity to the rebuilding of Rwanda.

Hundreds of Somali refugees are returning home from Djibouti with the start of UNHCR repatriation convoys to north-western Somalia. This comes as aid agencies appeal for $111 million to help the war-torn country. Some 220 Somali refugees returned from Djibouti to the self-declared republic of Somaliland in the north-west last Friday with assistance from the UN refugee agency, bringing to more than 430 the number of refugees who have gone back since the middle of February.

A 21-year civil war in Sudan has displaced more than four million people within the largest country in Africa. About half of the four million internally displaced people (IDPs) have moved from the war-torn south to the capital of Khartoum in the north. Most of them have moved in with family members or set up squatter communities in neighbourhoods or fields around Khartoum. About 270,000 people live in four large camps. This visual mission by Refugees International provides an insight into life in the camps.

Immigration is an issue that elicits heated views from all sides of the political and economic spectrum. In the 21st century, how might we expect our lives and societies to be affected by changes in immigration? In Part One of a two-part series, economist Lant Pritchett argues that there are five irresistible forces setting the world up for a new wave of mass migration. Topping the list are the huge cross-national inequalities in wages and standards of living. Differences in labour demand across countries comprise another pressure promoting migration.

When rebels advanced on Haiti's capital city this weekend, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled the country. His first stop was the Central African Republic, with reports suggesting that his final destination will be South Africa. He is not the only ousted president to take refuge in Africa. Should African countries offer safe havens to such people, many of whom have headed regimes with shocking human rights records? What should be done with ousted heads of state who cannot live safely in their own countries?
Links to articles on Haiti:
* Haiti Inspiration
http://www.nu.ac.za/ccs/default.asp?2,40,5,373
* Regime change in Haiti
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=54&ItemID=5079

Refugees fleeing fighting in Sudan say government forces are attacking them to get information on rebels. Some of the 25,000 refugees who fled the conflict two weeks ago told the BBC that militiamen and government forces drove them from their homes. The BBC's Grant Ferrett in Chad's capital Ndjamena says the testimonies flatly contradict the Sudanese government announcement earlier this month that peace and security had been restored after a year of fighting.

Commissioner for refugees Jacob Mphepo has expressed concern at the Rwandan refugees’ resistance to being repatriated under the voluntary exercise. Speaking at the official opening of a workshop for refugees protection staff and partners in Lusaka, Mr Mphepo said the refugees’ defiance was a source of concern.

The international community is facing new repatriation operations to many countries in Africa, and to prepare for this purpose a meeting is scheduled for March 8 to 9 in Geneva. The meeting aims at raising the profile of repatriation and the reintegration of refugees in Africa, thus enhancing the commitment of countries and donor and partner agencies to meet the challenges posed by the exercise.

Hutu rebel group FNL continued sporadic attacks on the Burundian capital Bujumbura and surrounding areas, despite January peace talks and in Uganda fighting continued, with Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels massacring as many as 200 civilians in a northern refugee camp 21 February. These are two updates from the African continent in CrisisWatch, a publication of the International Crisis Group, that summarises briefly developments during the previous month in some 70 situations of current or potential conflict.

Top U.S. generals are touching down across Africa in unusual back-to-back trips, U.S. European Command confirmed Tuesday, part of a change in military planning as U.S. interest grows in African terror links and African oil. Trips by two top European Command generals follow last week's similarly low-profile Africa visit by the U.S. commander in Europe, Marine Gen. James L. Jones.