Talks between the Sudanese government and rebels from the country’s Darfur region, broke up early on Tuesday as both sides failed to agree on an agenda for resuming formal peace negotiations. The talks mediated by the African Union (AU) were due to resume on Wednesday. The Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA), one of two rebel movements represented at the talks, said it had asked for more time to respond to political proposals tabled by mediators. The peace talks resumed in the Nigerian capital Abuja on Monday after a first round in late August and early September failed to make progress.

The foreign affairs ministers of Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) agreed on Tuesday to create a tripartite commission to ensure that existing agreements concerning peace and security in the region would be properly implemented and that disagreements between the governments would be ironed out. At a news conference in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, the ministers spoke of a new era in regional relations. They would not be drawn into a discussion on current hostilities in Congo's North and South Kivu provinces.

In the course of the armed conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), tens of thousands of women and girls have been victims of systematic rape and sexual assault committed by combatant forces, says a new report from Amnesty International. "Women and girls have been attacked in their homes, in the fields or as they go about their daily activities. Many have been raped more than once or have suffered gang rapes. In many cases, women and young girls have been taken as sex slaves by combatants," says AI.

The report, 'Mass rape - time for remedies' says rape has often been preceded or followed by the deliberate wounding, torture (including torture of sexual nature) or killing of the victim. Rapes have been committed in public and in front of family members, including children. Some women have been raped next to the corpses of family members. Despite the official end to the war and the inauguration of the transitional government, humanitarian needs in some provinces have been increasing, notes Amnesty. "Throughout large areas of the east people are lacking even the most basic services for health and food security."

Amnesty estimates that fewer than 30 per cent of Congolese have access to even basic health care. The countrywide malnutrition rate is around 16 per cent, rising to up to 30 per cent in areas of the east, with 13 per cent classed as severe malnutrition. It is believed that over one million children aged under five suffer from acute malnutrition, and that one in every five Congolese children do not live to see their fifth birthday.

Although the levels of conflict in eastern DRC have diminished since the signing of the peace agreements, violence has continued. In many areas the violence is now sporadic and localised, but in other cases has been more extensive and threatened to reignite widespread armed conflict in the east.

* Compiled from the report by Pambazuka News. The full report is available at http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engafr620182004

In a plea for the government to protect its citizens against abuse, the chairwoman of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, Salamata Sawadogo, has urged the authorities of the Republic of Congo to set up state institutions to guarantee the protection of its people from abuse. The government, she said, needed to implement conventions to which it was a signatory. She said her visit to Congo was intended to draw the attention of the government to three "important subregional conventions" on the protection of human rights that had not yet been ratified by the country.

People in many areas of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are taking steps to improve their methods for resolving arguments over land. Community structures are being developed to settle disputes without the need to go to higher courts, which is often time-consuming and expensive. An example of a successful new initiative is the ‘peace committees’ developed in Mali to resolve conflicts between herding groups and farmers. This is according to research by the International Institute for Environment and Development in the UK that looks at the issues emerging from changes to land policies in SSA, including the increasing conflicts over land ownership and access.

Refugee warehousing needs to end, argues this commentary. "It is time to rethink warehousing, and refugee groups and the UN high commissioner for refugees have recently begun to explore how to help refugees become more self-reliant. Refugees who learn skills or earn money can be an asset to their war-torn homelands when they return. Moreover, there are ways to open up refugee camps without angering host populations. Zambia, for example, has given Angolan refugees land to farm. The food they grow has turned sleepy villages into trading centers, fueling local commerce."

Water supplies are drying up for tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad, warned the UN refugee agency, saying that at least one refugee camp could run out of water within two weeks. Eastern Chad is one of the driest places on earth with a rainy season of only three months per year. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that this year's rains came late and far between, with total rainfall only about a third of normal amounts.

At least 20,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in northern Uganda were left homeless after a rainstorm wrecked thousands of grass-thatched huts in their camp in the district of Gulu, relief agencies in the area said on Monday. "Three people were injured while about four thousand huts had their roofs blown off when a strong storm swept through Pabbo IDP camp on Sunday evening," Coreen Auma of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), said by phone from Gulu. Pabbo camp, situated about 400 km north of the capital, Kampala, is home to 62,000 people displaced by the 18-year old war between government forces and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).

Refugees from neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) who fled to Kilwa Island in northern Zambia earlier this month have refused to relocate to refugee camps, according to local authorities. Provincial Minister Kennedy Sakeni said the estimated 3,000 Congolese who had fled insecurity in Katanga province preferred to stay on Kilwa Island in Lake Mweru, hoping the situation would return to normal, but were in dire need of food.

The incidence of cholera and malaria in South Africa is likely to increase dramatically during the next 50 years because of the effects of global warming. This is a warning from Professor Roland Schulze, of the University of KwaZulu-Natal's School of Bioresources, Engineering in Pietermaritzburg. People should begin preparing now to deal with global warming, Schulze warned, because there were already indications that climate change was affecting the country.

The mining sector in the DRC is seen as a potentially large revenue earner capable of funding rehabilitation and economic revival, but hopes that mining can act as an engine for growth will not be realised unless immediate action is taken to control the illicit trade in minerals from the south-eastern province of Katanga.

"Stringent and transparent management of natural resource exploitation is crucial to the future peace, stability and economic development of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)," says a report from Global Witness released in September. The report says there is currently a “cobalt rush” occurring in Katanga caused by record-high international cobalt prices. But it notes that there is “little indication” that this dramatic rise in trade has had any benefit to the DRC economy or the Katangan province.

The real losers in the “cobalt rush”, notes the report, are artisanal miners working under "appalling" conditions in mines throughout southern Katanga. "Deprived of any alternative sources of employment, young men and boys work for as little as US$1 per day gathering mineral soil by hand. They have no protective equipment, and their activities are left completely unregulated by local authorities."

The report makes recommendations to the international donor community, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, transitional government and United Nations. The DRC is emerging from a devastating conflict that cost the lives of an estimated three million people. A transitional government is charged with taking the country through to elections in 2005.

* Written from the report by Pambazuka News. For the full report, click on http://www.eldis.org/cf/rdr/rdr.cfm?doc=DOC16091

Diego Garcia, an island between Africa and Asia, was once a paradise for its 2000 inhabitants. But all that changed in the 1960s when the United States took over the island for use as a military base and forced the inhabitants into exile. Commentator John Pilger writes in a recent article that often it is one crime that exposes how a whole system works. “To understand the catastrophe of Iraq, and all the other Iraqs along imperial history's trail of blood and tears, one need look no further than Diego Garcia,” he writes.

Money spent on weaponry is being diverted from the fight against poverty, warns an Oxfam report, with the estimated total annual expenditure on arms of $900bn coming in much higher than the $60bn allocated to aid. The Oxfam report notes that military expenditure in sub-Saharan Africa rose by 47% during the late 1990s. This expenditure comes at a direct cost to the population of Africa. In the case of Tanzania, a radar system bought by the country could have provided health care for 3.5 million Tanzanians. The six billion dollars which South Africa spent on new weapons in 2003 could have purchased treatment drugs for all the country's five million AIDS sufferers for two years, says the Oxfam report.

This post will head an emergency response team, based in South Kivu's provincial capital, that will respond to emergencies within the province within 48-96 hours, conducting rapid needs assessments, delivering essential assistance and mobilizing additional resources within the wider humanitarian community.

Asari and his foes have pulled back from the brink in the Niger Delta but the threat remains. After Mujahid Dokubo Asari's 'Operation Locust Feast' effectively declared war against Olusegun Obasanjo's government and oil companies working in Nigeria on 1 October, world oil prices soared above US $50 a barrel and Obasanjo feared the threat of more violence. The crisis was unfolding on three levels: local clashes over oil shipments and political rights; national political competition between state governors and presidency; and the effects of these conflicts on an already volatile world oil market. Asari stated that while his group had put down their weapons for the moment, they were willing to pick them up again if his demands were not met or if the government threatened him.

Beyond the three-sided conflict in Rivers State – between Asari, Ateke Tom (Asari's former rival for political control and theft operations) and the government task force, Operation Flush Out 3 – there are the crime and political syndicates which sponsor their own gangs which carry out hijacking, kidnapping of oil workers, protection and other criminal rackets which supplement the gangs’ income from bunkering.

There are also hundreds of disputes in the Delta. As Asari and Tom were talking peace with Obasanjo, Operation Flush Out 3, which was formed to take out Asari and other ‘cultists’ whom Rivers Governor Peter Odili blames for the crisis, was drawn into a dispute in Bille and Ke, two small communities in Degema Local Government Area. Shooting their way to negotiations Nigerian activists are drawing harsh lessons from the Delta crisis: taking up guns gets a place at the negotiating table, particularly if a group threatens economic assets. A leading human rights activist, Ayo Obe, said that the Delta events showed that while peaceful protesters were chased off the streets, armed opponents would be flown to to Abuja for high-level talks. She was sceptical that renewed talk of a national conference based on demands by ‘warlords’ would make progress.

Before peace talks, Odili called Asari a ‘joker’ and said that he couldn’t wage war on the government and oil companies. In fact, Asari is waging war through the international media, relying on the nervous oil market and the oil-hungry United States to push for deals to keep the oil flowing.

For the full article: http://www.africa-confidential.com/

Issued by the Palestine Solidarity Committee
19 October 2004

Palestine solidarity activists around the country and around the world, as well as millions of Palestinians, have been again disappointed this morning when the Palestine Solidarity Committee was informed that the visit to South Africa of Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will go ahead. This after a meeting yesterday between solidarity activists and foreign ministry officials (including Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad) when representatives of a number of solidarity groups sought to convince the government that it was not in the best interests of South Africa to allow the trip to go ahead.

At the meeting, there was a general sense that, at the very least, this was not an appropriate time for Olmert to be in South Africa. The massacres in Gaza, the murders of children there and the conversion of refugee camps into wastelands through the destruction of homes and property make this, indeed, the time for South Africa to issue the strongest condemnation it ever has against the Israeli apartheid government. Instead, our government will be hosting a man who is well-known as a racist who supports the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.

Of course, the South African Palestine solidarity movement believes that no time can be appropriate for Olmert or any other Likudnik to come to this country. We impressed on government at yesterday's meeting the embarrassment that would be caused to South Africa internationally because of this visit and our view that, in fact, South Africa should be leading a sanctions campaign against Israel.

However, after a meeting that Pahad had with President Thabo Mbeki last night, the decision (which was conveyed to us this morning) was that the trip would go ahead. This will mean a tremendous amount of embarrassment (even shame) for South Africa internationally. Over 100 Palestinian and solidarity organisations around the world had endorsed a statement calling on our government to cancel the trip - especially in the light of the events in Gaza. For them it will be as if the Protection of Investment Treaty that Olmert is due to sign with South Africa will be a treaty written in the blood of the Gaza martyrs.

For our part, we cannot find strong enough words to express our condemnation of and disgust at our government's shameful decision. The Palestine solidarity movement nationally is currently in consultation about possible action to mark Olmert's arrival here.

For more information or interviews, call:
Na'eem - 084 574 2674 James - 072 514 9935 Mercia - 082 368 3429 Ismail - 084 582 3710

Angola's post-conflict peace process, hailed by the United Nations as an example in the making to the rest of the world, will fail to bring stability and development unless smouldering social and economic grievances are addressed, according to a new publication compiled by Conciliation Resources (CR). For the full report, From Military Peace to Social Justice? Angola's Peace Process: http://www.c-r.org/accord/ang/accord15/index.shtml

After having perused the Criminal Procedure Bill, NSHR has found the draft legislation to be soaked with serious and inadmissible omissions and ambiguous definitions as well as lacking incorporation of UN and other international instruments on the administration of justice and the protection of persons subject to detention or imprisonment.

"The Nigerian government cannot protect all the oil pipelines in the Niger delta. If somebody says that they can protect all the pipelines that criss-cross the Niger delta, the person is a liar or maybe he does not know...the area," says Alhaji Mujahid Dokubu-Asari, leader of the rebel Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force. At the beginning of October, Dokubu-Asari reached a tentative agreement with government to disarm. However, the situation in the delta remains volatile, and could easily descend into renewed violence.

Motivated by the success in resolving Somalia's conflict, African leaders have stepped up efforts to end the civil war in the tiny central African nation of Burundi where more than 300,000 people have been killed since 1993. Attending the 23rd Summit of the Great Lakes Regional Peace Initiative on Burundi in Kenya’s capital Nairobi Oct. 15, the leaders of Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and South Africa pushed Burundi's elections forward to give more time to the country's independent electoral commission, appointed at the end of Aug. 2004, to prepare and put in place modalities of running free and fair elections.