Described by a senior UN official as the "world's biggest neglected humanitarian crisis", the conflict in northern Uganda has now dragged on for more than 17 years. The number of internally displaced people (IDPs) has more than doubled from about 650,000 in July 2002 to 1.4 million as of December 2003. The escalation of the conflict since June 2003 meant hundreds of thousands of people have poured into camps after fleeing direct attacks by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and regular fighting between the warring parties. It is widely believed that the government army is unable or – worse – unwilling to protect the IDP camps, which are frequently attacked by the LRA. Because of the insecurity, few humanitarian actors assist the heavily congested camps where conditions are appalling with a widespread breakdown of schools, health care, and water and sanitation facilities.

Violence in western Ethiopia erupted in December when the Anyuak were blamed for an attack on a UN-plated vehicle carrying government officials to Odier, a proposed site for a camp for Dinka and Nuer Sudanese refugees. Since then, it is estimated that about 15,000 members of the Anyuak community have fled to Sudan. If the refugees stay in Pachala, it will result in a 30 to 50 % increase in the county's population, according to World Relief.

The UN refugee agency is co-funding a home-based care project for terminally-ill refugees and asylum seekers in South Africa, where many of them have no access to health care. The caregivers are themselves refugees who want to help their counterparts die in peace and dignity.

An emergency team from the UN refugee agency visiting the Chad-Sudan border has heard reports of killing and looting in western Sudan, and witnessed poor living conditions for thousands of Sudanese refugees in Chad. On 8 January 2004, the UNHCR team concluded a two-day mission to the north-eastern Birak area, where they visited the site of Djoran, 15 km from the Sudanese border. They found thousands of refugees (estimates range from 4,000 to 8,000) living in precarious conditions after fleeing western Sudan's Darfur region.

With most of the attention focused on farm occupations, it could be argued that relations between blacks and whites elsewhere in Zimbabwe have gone relatively unobserved. Ironically, the troubles of whites seem to have empowered sections of the black middle class. David Coltart, a prominent lawyer and opposition member of parliament, contends that race relations are good at grass roots level, with the political and economic difficulties of the past three years having drawn people together. "It's amongst the monied elite that strains begin to show," he says.

After days of drifting on high seas, more than 200 Liberian refugees have been rescued from their stalled boat and repatriated to Liberia. A Dutch ship under the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) picked up the refugees who had been stranded for days off Liberia's Atlantic coast. Their self-chartered boat had developed technical problems near the south-eastern city of Harper after leaving Ghana, where most of them had been living in Buduburam camp.

Ethnic tension is rising once again in the volatile Niger Delta after unidentified gunmen attacked two boats near the oil city of Warri, killing at least 18 of the passengers on board. Delta State government secretary Emmanuel Uduaghan told reporters that all the men, women and children killed in the incident last Friday belonged to the Ijaw ethnic group.

Germany has expressed its "regret" for the killing of thousands of Namibia's ethnic Hereros during the colonial era. Between 35,000 and 105,000 people were killed after the Hereros rebelled against German rule in 1904. But Germany's ambassador to Namibia ruled out paying compensation, as the Hereros have demanded in a law suit.

The website of the Secretariat has been up and running since the 19 December 2003. It includes, amongst other things, links and contact addresses to African National Human Rights Institutions, information and evaluation of conferences and workshops, and important official Human Rights documents. Through the link 'Articles', users of the site are invited to post articles on Human Rights. The French part is also functioning but has not yet been fully translated.

The Burundian military and armed opposition forces have committed serious war crimes, including civilian killings and rapes, Human Rights Watch said in a December report. The recent political agreement between the major parties in Burundi’s ten-year civil war should not have granted immunity from prosecution for such blatant and widespread crimes, Human Rights Watch said. The 63-page report, “Everyday Victims: Civilians in the Burundian War,” documents massacres and rapes of civilians and attacks on civilian property between April and November, when the government and the Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD), the main rebel group signed an peace accord guaranteeing all sides provisional immunity from prosecution for war crimes.

This newsletter is aimed at providing updates and news from UPEACE and its regional programmes with special focus on the Africa and Central Asia programmes, which are coordinated through the Geneva office. In addition it provides information on UPEACE publications and new developments, new documents available on the Africa programme, and Workshops/Seminars / Conferences being offered through the Africa and Central Asia programmes.

The objective of the Training Courses is to increase the readiness and professionalism of African civilian personnel participating in peacekeeping and other peace support missions, and to enhance their capacity to respond adequately to the complex challenges of post-conflict reconstruction. The Foundation Course aims at training 30 participants for the tasks performed by the civilian personnel of international field missions. Applicants must be nationals of an African country and have a University degree or five years working experience in a relevant field. Fluency in English is essential.

The stalled Somali peace talks, which were being held in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, have been given a new lease of life after Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni saved them from collapse. After arriving in Nairobi on 8 January, Museveni, the current chairman of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), immediately held talks with the Somali leaders who were due to take part the next day in a retreat designed to revive the peace talks. He then went on to launch the retreat itself on Friday, an IGAD official told IRIN.

“I really hated this man at first, but there was no way I could escape from him. With time, I started developing some love for him because he was always with me. He was kind so I accepted him into my life. I even decided not to return home if I ever got the chance. I conceived and gave birth to a baby girl. Then one day, the Ugandan Army (UPDF) invaded our camps forcing us to flee. I was separated from my husband. It was so hard fending for my child alone in Sudan that I decided to escape across the border back into Uganda." Betty was abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebel group when she was 16 years old and taken along with other children to an LRA base in south Sudan and given a ‘husband’ – an LRA fighter - on arrival. The LRA regularly abduct children for use as fighters, porters and ‘wives’ in their combat against the Ugandan government. The Italian aid agency AVSI is helping to re-integrate former child soldiers in northern Uganda into family and society. Betty is now one of about 1400 children benefiting from this project.

Sudanese government and rebel leaders meeting in Naivasha, Kenya, signed a breakthrough agreement January 7 on oil-wealth revenue sharing, as well as clarifying provisions for banking structures in the country. Only two outstanding issues remain in the way of a comprehensive peace agreement: administration of three disputed provinces in central Sudan and power-sharing arrangements. This includes rebel access to jobs in the civil service. As part of the agreement, measures are under way to prepare the south of Sudan for autonomy, including administrative training and the provision of a supplemental budget until oil-revenue wealth kicks in.

More than 4,000 women, children and men marched though Gulu town on December 31 2003. The Peace March has become a yearly event for the people of northern Uganda. However, what one notices first is not the bare-feet of children and women treading the roads of Gulu, but the grim faces etched perhaps with 18 years of war and suffering. This year’s theme, “Among all, Peace for all,” was chosen to stress the fact that peace is a work of everybody and also seek the involvement of the international community in ending the 18-year war.

"On my second trip up country, a group of armed militia pulled a hitchhiker out of my car and shot him on the spot. They said he was a deserter. On my third trip I saw the beginning of a gang rape; 20 armed men ripping a woman's clothes off and dragging her into a shed." Although it appears the 14-year civil war is now over, the rebel groups that fought Taylor are engaged in their own power struggle; and as Radio Netherlands Vincent ‘t Sas found out when he travelled to Liberia, savagery and fear still rule parts of the West African nation.

Under Kenya’s current constitution, drafted during the colonial era, the president enjoys extensive powers. To reduce these powers - which have sometimes been abused - some Kenyans have called for the current process of constitutional review to allow for the post of Prime Minister. But, others disagree. "There are those around the president who are enjoying power because of their close ties with him. They are opposed to the completion of the constitution review process," says Njeru Gathangu, chairperson of Citizens for Justice, a Nairobi-based pressure group which has been lobbying for a new constitution.

The vote is still new to most of South Africa’s blacks, but after just a decade of democracy many of the poorest among them are already unconvinced of its power to deliver better standards of living. Veronica Rasi, a domestic worker in Cape Town says she has refused to register for next year’s elections because the government has not delivered on its promises. “What’s the use of voting – it hasn’t brought me any benefits. The ANC and the other political parties only know us when they need our votes – otherwise we don’t see them.”

Automatic weapons-fire and rocket explosions echoed across Republic of Congo's capital in an outbreak of fighting late Wednesday, officials said. It was not immediately clear who was involved in the clash, which appeared to be centred in the southern Bacongo neighbourhood of Brazzaville, government spokesman Alain Akoulat told The Associated Press. There were no reports of casualties. Two rebel factions in Brazzaville - a rebel group supporting former Prime Minister Bernard Kolelas and another rebel group supporting renegade pastor Frederic Bitsangou - battled briefly in the same neighbourhood on Saturday.