Participants at a recent small arms conference in Malawi noted that the country has not been as affected by the spread of small arms and light weapons as its neighbours. However, Malawi has been experiencing an increase in firearms-related crime including armed robbery and poaching, and there are growing concerns about the influx of weapons from neighbouring countries and the local production and use of muzzle-loading guns. Participants agreed therefore that the time is right to develop a new initiative to tackle the spread of small arms before the situation gets out of control. As a first step in the process it was seen to be important that more research into the problem of small arms is carried out. The Malawi National Focal Point Stakeholders Meeting was held between 9-10 December 2003 at the Lilongwe Hotel, Malawi.

Kacoke Madit (KM) – an organisation set up by Acholi people living in the diaspora in response to the escalation of the northern Uganda conflict – has repeated its call on the government of Uganda to extend a blanket amnesty as an important means of confidence-building with the Lord’s Resistance Army and other groups. However, KM has stressed that amnesty is only one element among many required for supporting a broader peace settlement. KM publishes a regular newsletter focusing on issues relating to the conflict.

Amnesty International has called on all states who participated at a recent donor conference for Burundi to make sure that there are sufficient funds for human rights promotion and protection. In two documents, 'Burundi: Commitment to Human Rights is Essential, An appeal to participants of the international donor conference', and its background briefing, 'Burundi: A Critical Time', published to coincide with the donor conference (13-14 January), Amnesty International outlined a human rights agenda for international donors and the Government of Burundi involved in the country's peace and reconstruction efforts as well as providing up-to-date information on the critical human rights issues which must be addressed.

The international community will work with the Angolan government for the elaboration of a national action plan for human rights in Angola. For this purpose, UN consultant for human rights, Vera Duarte, was in the country last Tuesday, to work with the Ministry of Justice and representatives of the UNHCR.

Amnesty International has welcomed the entry into force of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights establishing an African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights (the Protocol) after the Union of Comoros became the 15th state to ratify the Protocol on 26th December 2003. Once it has been established, the Court will consider cases of human rights violations referred to it by the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (African Commission) established pursuant to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights (African Charter) and states parties to the Protocol and, where a state party accepts such a jurisdiction, by individuals and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Unlike the African Commission, the African Court possesses the authority to issue a binding and enforceable decision on cases brought before it. By clicking on the link below, you can read the full Amnesty International statement, a statement from The National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) in Namibia welcoming the statement, and a press release from the African Union.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has handed down two life sentences to former Education and Culture Minister Jean de Dieu Kamuhanda for the crimes of genocide and extermination, committed during Rwanda's 1994 genocide, which claimed 800,000 lives. On eight other counts of complicity in genocide, crimes against humanity for murder, rape, and other inhuman acts and serious violations of the Geneva Conventions, Kamuhanda was found either not guilty or the charges were dropped.

Refugees repatriating to Angola are returning to a skeleton of a country. Nearly 30 years of brutal civil war reduced most of Angola's homes, schools, hospitals, places of worship, markets, roads, bridges, and commercial and government buildings to rubble. The war also rendered useless hundreds of thousands of acres of fertile agricultural land and countless miles of fish-abundant rivers with millions of landmines and unexploded ordnance, nearly all of which remain in place today. The U.S. Committee for Refugees (USCR) conducted an extensive three-week site visit to Zambia and Angola during November 2003 to examine the repatriation and reintegration of Angolan refugees. As the UN High Commissioner for Refugees pauses for the onset of seasonal rains after phase one of the repatriation program - the agency plans to resume facilitating refugee return in April 2004 - USCR offers timely findings and recommendations on the challenges Angolan refugee returnees face as they attempt to restart their lives in their currently peaceful, but war-devastated homeland.

There is an old African folktale of the hare and the baboon. The story goes that Hare and his family held a huge feast and invited his uncle Baboon and family. On the morning of the day Hare and family burned the whole surroundings of his homestead. When Baboon and family arrived for the feast Hare advised them to go to the river to wash their hands first for no one with dirty hands could enjoy the feast. Baboon and family returned and upon inspection Hare maintained that their hands were still dirty. Because Baboon could not avoid touching the burnt surroundings, his hands were always dirty each time he returned from the river. Thus he never joined the feast on account of his dirty hands. He got frustrated and left. But the story goes further as, later that year, Baboon and family held an even bigger feast. He invited his nephew Hare and family. But the venue was up in the trees. Hare and family arrived but could not climb trees and so they salivated on the ground as Baboon and company enjoyed their feast. Sadly many of us seem to have forgotten the wisdom in these folk tales. This article is a follow up to a critique of the Supreme Court judgement in the ANZ case that was delivered on the 11/09/2003. In that judgement, the Court refused to hear the application brought by ANZ (Publishers of the Daily News and The Daily News on Sunday) challenging certain sections of the notorious Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA). That unprecedented refusal to hear a constitutional application was based on the ground that ANZ had "unclean hands" because they had failed to comply with a law whose validity they were challenging. In that critique, the author argued, with all due respect, the Supreme Court had erred in applying the doctrine of Clean Hands, a doctrine of equity, in a matter involving the determination of fundamental constitutional rights. Such an application of the doctrine of Clean Hands poses a great hazard to the protection and uninterrupted enjoyment of human rights, says the author.

As the peace process enters its final stage, the challenge on the Sudanese parties and external mediators is to prepare for a successful interim period. The final peace agreement should contain a clause committing the parties Governement of Sudan and SPLM to peaceful resolution of the conflict in Darfur. Human rights guarantees and accountability for past human rights violations must be addressed in the peace agreement. The Sudanese must rally behind the peace process. The peace agreement will have its short-comings but signing should be regarded as just the beginning of political and civic mobilisation in Sudan. This is according to a December briefing from Justice Africa.

The leader of the Central African Republic has appointed former prime minister Henri Maidou to the newly created post of presidential aide in charge of human rights and good governance, national radio has reported.

Large areas of southern Africa, suffering from drought after several years of dry conditions, will likely see farm output slide this year, a regional body said on Tuesday. Regional breadbasket South Africa, which usually exports maize to its neighbours, is due to produce only enough of the staple food for its own population in 2004, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) said. This raises the prospects for extra imports from outside the region. The United Nation's World Food Programme has been providing rations to 6,5 million people in southern Africa, mostly in Zimbabwe where economic decline has exacerbated patchy drought.

Hutu militants opposed to the voluntary repatriation of their countrymen are holding at least 3,000 Rwandan civilians and former combatants hostage in a forest in North Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, the spokesman for the UN Mission in the DRC, Hamadoun Toure, said on Tuesday. "Some hardliners do not want to return to Rwanda and have obstructed former fighters intent on returning home from leaving the forest," he said.

The former Rwandan army provided weapons and training to militiamen in the months leading up to the 1994 genocide, Gen. Romeo Dallaire, the former commander of UN troops in the country, told the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) on Tuesday. In his second day of testimony in the "Military Trial I" - for four former Rwandan military officers - Dallaire said an informant told him that weapons in the hands of Interahamwe militiamen were from the army's reserve stocks.

Fighters who took part in Liberia's armed conflict have been raping and looting civilians in areas that lack international peacekeepers, despite a ceasefire and peace agreement in the country, Human Rights Watch said in a briefing paper released ahead of a major international donors' conference on Liberia in early February. "Despite the peace accords, civilians in rural Liberia are still being raped, looted and forced to work for fighters from all the warring factions," said Peter Takirambudde, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Africa division. "More peacekeepers are needed to stem the violence and ensure that the disarmament program is successful."

The US Government (USG) Mission in South Africa invites applications from prospective partners in response to President Bush’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). The announcement, issued in an Annual Program Statement (APS), appears at the following website: http://www.fedgrants.gov/Applicants/AID/OM/SOU/674-04-008/listing.html
Interested applicants are encouraged to sign up for e-mail notification at this website to receive any updates.

Authorities in Nyala, southern Darfur, closed two camps housing 10,000 displaced people on Thursday, following a failed attempt to relocate them to new camps without their consent, according to Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). The new camps were located about 20 km outside of Nyala "in an area considered unsafe" due to ongoing fighting, difficult to access for humanitarian workers, and where there was neither shelter, food, nor sufficient access to water and latrines, said MSF.

Since a spate of killings in mid-December, about 5,000 Sudanese and Ethiopian Anyuaks, including about 100 unaccompanied children, have fled from western Ethiopia to Pachala in southern Sudan, according to the UN and aid agencies. "Residents say some 100 to 200 people are arriving daily," Ron Redmond, a spokesman for the Office of the United High Commissioner for Refugees, told IRIN. "They report walking for a week or more to reach the border and appear to be in reasonably good health. However, they are arriving with no possessions, not even to carry water [in]," he said, noting that most of them were young men aged between 14 and 25. "Local residents are providing some help to the new arrivals, who are also foraging in the countryside for food," he added.

UNHCR started its voluntary repatriation operation from Uganda to Rwanda this week, kicking off what is expected to be one of the last major movements of Rwandan returnees in the region. The first 242 of some 25,000 Rwandan refugees living in Uganda returned home on Monday, under an agreement signed by the governments of the two countries and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), an official told IRIN.

Hundreds of Sudanese refugees fleeing fighting in the Darfur region have been relocated away from the volatile Chad-Sudan border to a safer site in eastern Chad. On Monday, a second convoy of some 240 people left Ouendalou border site for the new camp at Farchana, 55 km away. They joined the first group of 148 people who had left on Saturday.

The need to protect children from war and to rehabilitate those who become victims of armed conflict will be the central themes of the international conference 'Children and War: Impact', part of a major research project. The conference will be held April 1-3 at the University of Alberta, Edmonton. Anyone interested in attending should contact: Andy Knight at [email protected].