Members of Sudan's National Assembly from Darfur have appealed for international intervention to stop killings and displacement in the region. "There has to be a quick international intervention to protect civilians because they are dying - nearly 50 to 100 a week," one MP told IRIN. Fighting in Darfur between Arab militias and rebel groups, which escalated in March this year, has driven an estimated 670,000 people from their homes.

With the signing on 25 September 2003 of a framework agreement on security arrangements, the Sudanese government and the insurgent Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLA) are closer to peace than at any time in the past twenty years. However, considerable hurdles remain before any final deal is signed, and a separate, intensifying war in the west already threatens to undermine it. As the parties press forward with the last phases of negotiation, the international community’s engagement should intensify in support of the final deal, in preparation for helping with implementation if successful, and in ensuring coordination between the main peace process and the conflict in the west. This is according to a briefing from the International Crisis Group.

A voluntary repatriation agreement for Angolan refugees in South Africa was due to be signed in Pretoria on Sunday, allowing the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, to prepare for the 13,000-strong community to return home. South Africa becomes the sixth and last country in the region to sign a tripartite agreement with the Angolan government and UNHCR. It joins Africa's largest repatriation programme, which will return 450,000 Angolans who had fled the country's civil war over the next two years.

The government of Chad signed a fresh peace agreement on Sunday with the rebel Movement for Democracy and Justice in Chad (MDJT), which has been fighting a low-level guerrilla war against President Idriss Deby in the desert north of the country since 1998. The deal was signed in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, by Chad's Minister for Security and Immigration, Aduramane Moussa, and General Adoum Togoi Abbo, the chairman of the MDJT.

A summit of the 54-nation Commonwealth of nations - representing nearly one-third of the world's six billion people - ended in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, with western nations blaming Zimbabwe for its own growing international isolation. But President Robert Mugabe divided the Commonwealth as much from the outside as from within, as members bickered over Mr Mugabe's quitting the gentlemen's club. Zimbabwe was suspended from the Commonwealth last year after an election widely seen as flawed. Mr Mugabe had earlier threatened to leave the organisation if the country was not "treated as an equal".

Recent security incidents in Liberia have led humanitarian agencies, including UNHCR, to temporarily reassess some operations in the country, including the relocation of displaced people near the capital, Monrovia. Over the last two days, there have been reports of random shooting, banditry and looting of humanitarian supplies in various areas of Liberia, caused by former combatants dissatisfied with the terms of an ongoing disarmament programme.

Mention asylum seekers, and many people in Europe imagine waves of illegal immigrants sweeping onto the continent in search of a better life. But amid the crowds are many individuals with genuine grounds for asylum. Congolese refugee Chantal is one such example. The 36-year-old's journey lasted almost four years, a flight of despair that led her across four countries before finding safety in southern Italy, where she currently lives.

A refugee for nearly 15 of his 40 years, Daniel J. Kinapoe’s life is filled with horrific memories. Witnessing the brutal murder of four of his brothers and his sister - who was weeks away from giving birth to twins - remains the worst. That indelible memory and life-altering event convinced Daniel that even if he wanted to live in his homeland, Liberia was no longer safe. During the next 12 years, Daniel lived a relatively quiet and peaceful life in the southwestern Ivorian town of Tabou, where he taught school and raised his five children.

The governments of Rwanda and Zimbabwe and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) signed a tripartite agreement on Tuesday on the voluntary repatriation of an estimated 350 Rwandan refugees in Zimbabwe. Signing the agreement in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, the parties pledged to support the repatriation that is scheduled to begin in mid-2004. They assigned each other roles and responsibilities to ensure the success of the process.

On this 55th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, threats of new terrorist attacks and the dangers of weapons of mass destruction dominate the headlines. But the real weapons of mass destruction go largely unnoticed by those of us who live far from conflict and war. Those weapons are the 639 million small arms in circulation, and at least 16 billion units of military ammunition produced every year -- enough to shoot every man, woman and child on the planet twice, said Mary Robinson, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the 55th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Robinson called for the creation of a new treaty to control the global trade in small arms.

Guinean authorities continued a three-week swoop on perceived opponents of President Lansana Conte's government arresting a former top army officer, Commandant Kadr Doubuya, last Thursday as he was about to board a plane to neighbouring Mali, military sources said. A former head of Guinea’s paratroopers, Doubuya left the army in 1997 following a conviction by a military tribunal for involvement in a plan to overthrow Conte. Sentenced to five years in jail, he was released after serving two years.

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) on Tuesday voiced its concern over the Commonwealth's decision to maintain Zimbabwe's suspension, the South African news agency SAPA reported.
Related Link:
* Mugabe on the war path
http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/interna.asp?idnews=21464

The Zimbabwe government's human rights record is worsening and lawyers are struggling to cope with a growing caseload of rights abuses, a local lawyers' group said at a protest march by about 70 lawyers and law students to mark International Human Rights Day. Nokuthula Moyo, the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights chairperson, said dozens of her colleagues had over the past year defended people arrested during political protests against President Robert Mugabe's government. Moyo said some lawyers had been harassed or assaulted by police while performing their duties. "In the worsening human rights climate, tremendous demands have been made on human rights lawyers," she said. Meanwhile, in a week during which Zimbabwe pulled out of the Commonwealth following its continued suspension from the organisation, Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai, in his end of year message to the people of Zimbabwe, warned of rolling mass action in 2004. Read the full message and further MDC statements on the economic and food situation in the country by clicking on URL below.

Beatrice Mtetwa, a fearless Zimbabwean lawyer who has defended those arrested by President Robert Mugabe's government was named Human Rights Lawyer of the Year this week. Judges at the Human Rights Awards in London paid tribute to her courage in fighting for human rights and press freedom in a dangerous country.

On December 10, 1948, the international community, shocked into action after the atrocities committed in the Second World War, unanimously passed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) as one of the pillars for relationships both within and between states. Fifty-five years on, much more than what the founding fathers and mothers could have expected from the UDHR has been achieved. On the other hand, a lot of atrocities have also occurred in the period since the UDHR became the norm. In Kenya too, the impact of the UDHR has been slow in coming. The urgent task before the government, and before the entire citizenry of Kenya, is to consolidate the gains made, and by institutionalising them, gain the entire gamut of rights promised by the UDHR, argues Maina Kiai, Chairman of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights.

Fears are mounting of renewed fighting between rival ethnic militias in Nigeria’s southern oil town of Warri following reports that one of the groups had broken a two-month-old truce, residents said on Tuesday. Residents of the town, which serves as a base for oil transnationals operating in the oil-rich Niger Delta, said a militia of the Itsekiri ethnic group had attacked six rival ethnic Ijaw riverside settlements last week, killing at least 10 people.

Bodies of ex-government militiamen lay sprawled in the streets of Liberia's capital Wednesday as U.N. peacekeepers confronted gunmen on a rampage of burning, shooting and looting in Monrovia's bloodiest day since an August peace deal. The violence, launched by militiamen loyal to ousted President Charles Taylor demanding cash to give up their guns, was the first serious threat to a U.N.-backed disarmament project.

Ivorian rebel leaders who met the Prime Minister Seydou Diarra in the commercial capital, Abidjan, on Wednesday discussed the return of the rebels who control the northern half of the country into the government of national unity, diplomatic sources said. The rebel delegation, led by a senior official of the "New Forces" Louis-Andre Dakoury-Tabley, flew into Abidjan in the morning as their colleagues in Bouake, the rebel capital, met a delegation of the Ivorian army.

A new Johannesburg statue in memory of Mahatma Gandhi, the young human rights lawyer from India largely recognised for his struggle against white minority rule in South Africa at the turn of the last century, sparked a furore earlier this year. Critics slammed Gandhi for his alleged contemptuous attitude to black people. So was Gandhi a racist? Not so, says Anil Nauriya, a Pambazuka News reader from New Delhi in India.

Djibouti is one of the key players in the ongoing Somali peace talks and they led the Arta Peace Conference in 2002 that resulted in the formation of the Transitional National Government (TNG) – one of the groups who have withdrawn from the current peace talks. Djibouti was a member of the IGAD Technical Committee as a Frontline State but they differed with management of the conference and withdrew from the Technical Committee and any structure within the Frontline States on 18 October 2003. The IGAD Heads of States Summit held in Kampala in October of this year then expanded the management of the conference. They agreed to bring on board the rest of the IGAD member states and renamed the IGAD Facilitation Committee. The Kampala Summit also recommended that a retreat be held for the Somali leaders to provide them with an opportunity to mend their differences. Djibouti's Foreign Minister, Ali Abdi Farah, took part in the IGAD Ministerial Committee meeting. The link below will take readers to the transcript of an interview with Farah conducted by Novib Somalia.