South Africa is a signatory to the United Nations Protocol on Trafficking in Persons, and hopes to have comprehensive domestic legislation in place by 2006, according to the International Organisation on Migration (IOM). Commenting on the unverified need for additional legislation, Ted Leggett - a researcher with the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) - noted that "the bottom line is that virtually everything that is part of trafficking is already illegal, and simply generating more legislation is unlikely to revolutionise the situation".

Diamond sellers in the United States and Britain are not doing enough to ensure that proceeds from the gems they sell are not financing wars and that buyers understand what are "conflict diamonds," says a new report. Nearly two years after the global diamond industry committed itself to prevent the trade in diamonds from areas where they have fuelled civil war and violence, most of the retailers contacted by activists were unable to provide a clear account of the origins of their jewels, according to the survey released by Amnesty International (AI) and Global Witness on Monday.

Peace in Sudan looks precarious. There is still important uncertainty around Naivasha. The Abuja process is all-but-paralyzed. The Cairo initiative threatens to become a spoiler for the other two. Focused efforts are needed to consummate Naivasha and move Abuja on to political issues, or to find a means for merging the post-agreement phase of Naivasha with the search for a political settlement for Darfur and Eastern Sudan. The conflict in Darfur retains an astonishingly high level of public interest, especially in the U.S. The UN Security Council is seized of Darfur and will remain so.

When conflicts are resolved and peace finally takes hold in a country battered by years of strife, the donors who were there to help in the war years tend to melt away – just when their help is really needed to support people who have a proper chance to secure their futures. Look at Liberia, Sierra Leone or Angola, where millions of people are returning home, only to find their farms destroyed, their livestock gone, their land inaccessible because of landmines and no infrastructure or employment opportunities to tide them over. They still depend on our support now, just as they did when they were living in camps as refugees or internally displaced.

The SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) will be hosting open hearings on xenophobia in November and has called for written submissions from individuals, organisations and interested parties. SAHRC chairman Jody Kollapen said in a statement xenophobia was "pretty widespread" but "difficult to quantify" in South Africa, manifesting itself in the workplace, academic communities as well as on the street where it affected informal traders. The problem affected both South Africans and non-South Africans, he said.

Zimbabwe National Students Union president Philani Zamchiya was battling for his life on Oct. 18th at Harare's Avenues Clinic after he was kidnapped and severely attacked last Thursday by suspected members of the government's secret service agents. The secret service agents accused Zamchiya of mobilising students and youths to demonstrate at the High Court against President Robert Mugabe during delivery of judgment in opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai's treason case that was taking place the following day.

Torture by State agents continues unabated in spite of government assurance that there is no institutionalised sanction of its use, the 2003 Uganda Human Rights Commission report has revealed. "Going by the complaints at the Commission, torture seems to be a method of work in some security organs. It is either presented as part of training, or a learned practice that is indispensable in the operations of some security organs," the 6th annual report said.

With the international spotlight on high-profile hotspots such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan's Darfur region, NGOs are increasingly concerned that conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo may be allowed to escalate unchecked, threatening to unravel the country's fragile peace process. Congo is struggling to recover from a five-year war that pitted government forces, supported by Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe, against rebels backed by Uganda and Rwanda. More than three million people were killed either as a direct result of fighting or through hunger and disease.

Amnesty International today welcomes the acquittal of Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, on charges of treason. Amnesty International believes that the trial of Mr. Tsvangirai was a politically-motivated prosecution in keeping with a wider pattern of arrest and trial on spurious charges as a form of harassment of the political opposition in Zimbabwe.

Every genocide is hideous, each in its own grotesque way. Searching for the origins and distinctiveness of the genocidal violence that has convulsed the Sudanese region of Darfur in the last year - leaving tens of thousands dead and perhaps a million people displaced and in danger - we must go to the remotest desert-edge settlements in Northern Darfur near the border with Chad, to the basalt stubs of mountains that march southward until they fuse in the 10,000-foot Jebel Marra massif in the center of Darfur, and to Sudan's capital in Khartoum, far to the east.

Ivory Coast journalist Amadou Dagnogo, who disappeared from the rebel-held town of Bouake nearly two months ago, was flown to the commercial capital, Abidjan, yesterday by French peacekeepers. Dagnogo, the Bouake correspondent for Abidjan-based independent daily L'Inter, said he had been detained, beaten and tortured by supporters of Guillaume Soro, leader of the Forces Nouvelles (FN) rebel movement, but had escaped.

People are confined in the camp, straying is paid for with your life, yet they have to leave the camps to get food for their families. And the rebels come into the camps too. So there is no safe place. In the camps, if the rebels don't kill you, diseases will. Hunger and poor hygiene are the bane of the camps. In the absence of water and soap, fungi has spread through the human population. Scabies cover the children's arms and hands.

Over 3000 refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have fled to northern Zambia due to a flare-up in fighting near the border, an official told AFP. Fighting broke out last week in the mining town of Kilwa, located about 400 kilometres northeast of Lubumbashi near Lake Mweru, about 50 kilometres from the border with Zambia.

The anticipated return of hundreds of thousands of Sudanese refugees, once peace comes back to the south and west, could lead to a further spread of HIV/AIDS which already affects 2.6 percent of the general population, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) warned in a report. Other experts said factors that had contributed to the increasing vulnerability of the population to the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Sudan included war, massive poverty and inadequate health care facilities around the country.

The International Cricket Council on Sunday said a probe had found no evidence of racism in Zimbabwe's cricket. Cricket in Zimbabwe is in turmoil following a strike by 15 white players led by former captain Heath Streak who alleged racism in Zimbabwe cricket in April. The Zimbabwe Cricket Union refuted the allegations, sacked the rebel players and has subsequently been forced to field a weak and inexperienced side under young captain Tatenda Taibu.

While the international community procrastinated last week about whether events in Darfur constitute genocide, I visited the Ardamata refugee camp in Geneina and found that nothing much has changed. I have sent a full report to Tony Blair and will ask a question about Darfur in the House of Lords today [Monday]. My report is a catalogue of systematic violence driven by ethnic hatred and aided by the Sudanese regime. The report is on the website of the human rights group the Jubilee Campaign, which arranged the visit (www.jubileecampaign.co.uk).

The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Kenyan Environmentalist, Mama Wangari Mathai of Kenya has been greeted with justifiable chorus of cheers from around the world and in Africa and the African Diaspora even more ululation, praise songs and loud talking drums. If anyone is deserving of such global acclaim he or she does not come more unprepossessing than this people's Professor who had dedicated her life to a very simple task: planting trees in order to safe her environment from destruction and degradation as a result of excessive exploitation. Who would have thought that such a an ordinary act could be so threatening to the state, local companies and the multinational corporations to make this African woman victim of state violence, intimidation, arrest, detention and other kinds of harassment?

Her impact on Kenya on the Moi regime and its land grabbing elite was similar (even if on a smaller scale) to another simple demand of a different historical epoch. Mahatma Ghandi demanded of the British colonial overlords in India to allow Indians to wear Indian dresses that they had made themselves and also get Salt from their own waters as their ancestors had done from time immemorial. This of course struck at the core of the colonial economy in a way that was very profound. If Indians only bought Indian made things and produced what they consumed then both the British colonial trading houses and their local agents will be out of business. From wanting to determine what they produced and consumed these Indians will (as indeed it came to pass) eventually demand to be their own rulers.

In the early years she suffered all kinds of derision. She was ridiculed as 'the tree woman' by those blinded by their financial interest in turning all lands into money regardless of the impact on the people, environment and the future of our cities and countries as a whole. Africa's governing elite from Independence up to now are dominated by ideas of 'modernisation' which ideologically they mean not just industrialisation, agricultural mechanisation and building of cities but also cultural westernisation: the aping of everything western especially western habits of crass materialism. Even when conscious groups in the West have woken up to the dangers that such a life style posed to their long-term existence and that of humanity our development planners are still stuck at classical modernisation at all cost. Thus people like Wangari who dared to raise environmental concerns were seen as enemies of progress and development. The state murder of Writer and environmental activist, Ken Saro Wiwa and his 8 other colleagues by Abacha in Nigeria is a demonstration of how dangerous being an environmentalist is in Africa. Wangari's tree planting forced her on collision course against powerful vested interests of private land lords, land grabbers in government and their business friends, big local companies (often owned by powerful politicians or controlled by their cronies) and multinational corporations all united around profiting and profiteering from Land regardless of the impact on people and environment. But she became a champion of the urban poor in their ghettoes and slums and rural masses and their insecure and constantly threatened tenure of smallholdings.

From Tree planting she moved on to Land reform, town and country planning issues, rights of users, demands for open green spaces for the public, preservation of historic and heritage sites, etc. In all these fronts Wangari and her growing supporters found bureaucratic obstacles and official hostility. It became clear that the freedom to plant trees and the right of poor people to decent housing and farmers' right to grow crops they like on lands handed down from generation to generation are directly related to the quality of governance, its legitimacy and its respect for its peoples. Tree planting like the right to clean drinking water or education and health services were intricately linked to democratic rights of the whole country. Environment like all issues that concern human beings are about power and politics. She and her constituencies became part of the political activism against the corruption and autocracy of the Moi/KANU power structure. But even in the opposition alliance, which finally defeated KANU Wangari Mathai, remains a difficult partner because she was not willing to sacrifice her environmental concerns to the powers that be. Even though she is now a minister in government that position has not hindered her and she remains one of few Ministers in the NARC government that is still regarded as being true to their convictions. For many it did not take them long to abandon their principles in favour of their new comforts and privileges of office.

By this honour Wangari has shown that you do not have to sell your soul in order to be successful in politics. As many had rightly pointed out her Nobel Laureate is also a positive celebration of the African Woman, Salt of the earth, the solid foundation of our communities and societies whose labour remains largely unpaid for and often unrecognised. But above all else it is an inspiration to all those who still value principles and selfless commitment to public good.

Congratulations, Mama Wangari.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

President Yoweri Museveni has admitted that he blindly supported the United States-led invasion of Iraq. "I supported the Americans in Iraq, but I didn't even know what they were fighting for," he said. "What I knew is that Saddam [Hussein] was a friend of Bashir, and Bashir was my enemy." When referring to weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Museveni said "I don’t know whether it was true or not." He said he figured that if Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, they could have easily ended up with the Sudanese President Omar Bashir and that was why he supported the American invasion of Iraq.

Zimbabwean NGOs have adopted a code of ethics ahead of a controversial new law threatening them with closure for maladministration and political activism. The code, which deals with accountability, transparency and good governance, was adopted at a three-day exhibition last week in the capital, Harare, which showcased the work of the NGO sector in health and social service delivery.

The African Union has opened in Algeria a regional research centre aimed at combating terrorism on the continent. AU commission chairman Alpha Oumar Konanre said the centre in the capital Algiers would beef up AU member states' collective efforts to fight terrorism. Mr Konare also said the AU was working with international institutions to eradicate "a universal threat". AU delegates are also holding talks in Algiers, which has itself been the focus of attacks by militant Islamists.