Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo have pledged to work together to curb militia groups threatening Rwanda's stability. The two countries have also agreed to reopen embassies in each other's countries for the first time since they went to war five years ago.

Burundi on Tuesday entered its 11th year of civil war that has claimed more than 300 000 mostly civilian lives and ravaged this tiny French-speaking central African country that nevertheless clings today to hopes for peace. The civil war was sparked 10 years ago by the assassination of Burundi's first Hutu president Melchior Ndadaye in an attempted military coup. A decade of inter-ethnic violence has followed.

Some 100 activists were arrested in Zimbabwe on Wednesday after protesting near the parliament in Harare. The National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) organised the protest in support of political reforms.

The government of Burkina Faso has arrested Norbert Tiendrebeogo, leader of the opposition Social Forces Front (FFS) party, in connection with an alleged coup plot. FFS deputy leader Brice Yogo told IRIN that Tiendrebeogo was summoned to the police headquarters for questioning on Monday and was subsequently detained.

Every four years the Polisario Front holds a congress, to discuss how to proceed with their 27-year battle against Morocco for self-determination of the disputed Western Sahara. Hundreds of Polisario representatives based as far a field as Australia make their way back for the event. This year, for the first time since a ceasefire was signed with Morocco in 1991, the Polisario held their congress in the heart of what they proudly call "liberated territory".

Even with Charles Taylor gone, the country’s problems run deep and the peace there is still extremely fragile, says a new paper from the South African based Institute of Security Studies. "Throughout the recent conflict, both rebel groups maintained their primary goal was the removal of Charles Taylor, but ethnic based dissatisfaction and disempowerment lie at the root of their grievances. Neither group is likely to accept any long-term political scenario that does not give them a substantial share of power."

Ex-farm workers make up the bulk of Zimbabwe's estimated 100,000 displaced persons and are in need of assistance, the NGO, Refugees International (RI), has warned.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Wednesday that Sudan's foes had pledged to sign a final peace accord by the end of the year, but officials on both sides of the 20-year-old war retorted that this was a loose objective and accused the United States of politicking.

The election of a former rebel leader as parliamentary speaker in Liberia has paved the way for the formation of an interim power-sharing peace government. There are concerns that many of the officials in the interim phase have tainted pasts.

Sitting behind his desk, partly hidden behind a pile of papers he is marking, Barnabus Bugera, a bespectacled Burundian refugee, is everything you would imagine of a schoolteacher. Bugera's passion is educating children. And, having set up and run the first secondary school for Burundian refugees in western Tanzania in 1996, he exudes confidence of a bright future for thousands of refugees who previously had few opportunities after completing primary school.

A number of refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are fleeing their camps and settlements along the shores of Lake Albert in western Uganda, because they fear being attacked by other refugees whom they believe to be perpetrators of the recent violence in the troubled northeastern DRC district of Ituri.

The repatriation of about 20,000 Rwandans living illegally in Tanzania will be a gradual and voluntary process, Maj Tumainiel Kiwelo, the commissioner for Kagera Region, where the Rwandans are living, told IRIN on Monday. Roughly 600 Rwandans had applied to remain in Tanzania as residents, while the rest had not done so, because they wanted to go back, he said.

The orthodox definition of international security puts human displacement and refugees at the periphery. In contrast, the book Refugees and Forced Displacement demonstrates that human displacement can be both a cause and a consequence of conflict within and among societies. As such, the management of refugee movements and the protection of displaced people should be an integral part of security policy and conflict management.

A week after the inauguration of a new government in Liberia, a United Nations inter-agency mission has found that displaced persons "continue to stream" into refugee camps, which need to be expanded, according to a report from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Burundian human rights organisation, Ligue Sonera, has denounced as inhumane the conditions under which opposition politician Charles Mukasi is being held, and has demanded that his relatives be allowed access to him or he could die from hunger. "Mukasi is living in harsh conditions under the presidential police and we have information that his relatives are not allowed to take food to him," Therence Mushano, spokesman of Ligue Sonera, told IRIN on Sunday.

The multinational companies currently being sued in the United States by the non-profit Khulumani Support Group were not merely doing business in apartheid South Africa, they were knowingly aiding, abetting and in effect sustaining the racist regime. So says US attorney Michael Hausfeld, who lodged the so-called apartheid lawsuit in New York on behalf of some 82 members of the Khulumani group.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) commended SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) chairperson Jody Kollapen on Sunday for lodging an equality case against a Pretoria barbershop that refused him a hair-cut on account of its "whites-only" policy. Kollapen, whose commission received a complaint from a black man who was refused service at the Mans Hair Salon in June, went to the Centurion shop on September 24 and was himself refused a haircut on account of his race.

Peace negotiations between the Sudanese government and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) taking place in Naivasha Kenya have "hit a rock", according to Malik Agar Eyre, SPLM commander and Governor of Southern Blue Nile region. He said the atmosphere remained "cordial and friendly" but there was a deadlock in all three committees discussing the pending issues of power sharing, wealth sharing and the contested areas of Southern Blue Nile, Abyei and the Nuba mountains.

At least 13 people were killed last Wednesday in Mindouli, in the southwest of the Pool region of the Republic of Congo, when a gunfight erupted between the army and "Ninja" militiamen, government spokesman Alain Akouala Atipault said at a news conference.

Non-government organisations seeking to have their issues better understood by potential lawmakers instructed candidates in the just-conducted parliamentary elections about social welfare and health matters the members of parliament (MPs) would have to know about once in office. "The time for an education campaign is now, before the MP enters office,” said Doo Aphane, national director for the Swaziland chapter of Women in Law in Southern Africa.