Internal displacement in Zimbabwe has been caused by various internal and external factors that have since the late 1990s assured the country’s severe economic and social decline. Population movements have become an increasingly visible and common reality against a backdrop of political violence and a critical humanitarian situation.

The demobilisation of army troops and ex-rebels scheduled for 1 September has been postponed because the National Commission for Demobilisation has not yet received the lists of combatants to be discharged, a commission official told IRIN on Tuesday. The process is to take four years. A total of 55,000 combatants are to be demobilised; 25,000 could be eligible to join the new national defence force.

Amnesty International (AI) seeks a Refugee and Migrants' Rights Coordinator to lead our work on behalf of refugees and asylum-seekers, the internally displaced and migrants. You will be the principal legal and policy adviser, taking the lead in developing strategies, plans and actions involving AI's staff and membership.

The Zambian government declared a five-year emergency over the AIDS pandemic to allow for cheap generic anti-retroviral drugs to be produced locally. The AIDS emergency will be in force from August 2004 to July 2009 and local drugs manufacturers will be allowed to produce cheap AIDS medication for local consumption.

Families forced to flee violence in western Ethiopia need more humanitarian support to help them rebuild their shattered lives, Oxfam America urged. Hundreds of people were reported killed in communal fighting that flared up in December in Gambella, western Ethiopia, and continued during the early part of this year, government officials said. As many as 15,000 were reported to have fled to neighbouring Sudan. The fighting, which was sparked by an attack on a vehicle in which eight government workers were killed, fuelled existing tensions between ethnic groups in the area.

"The Government of Sudan is pursuing the high-risk strategy of seeking a solution on its own terms in Darfur, anticipating that international interests in the Naivasha process will allow it to prevail. It may yet be proven right. It has made only modest progress in implementing its commitments in Darfur, focusing its efforts on building an international coalition opposed to sanctions. The practical obstacles to ensuring security are considerable, but the GoS needs to demonstrate much more goodwill and determination." This is according to a briefing on Sudan by Justice Africa.

Residents in the southern Somali port of Kismayo are reported to be nervous that forces loyal to warlord General Morgan are planning an assault. The advance is being resisted by the Juba Valley Alliance militia, and there were reports of skirmishes outside the town on Sunday. General Morgan has refused to join the latest Somali peace talks, or take up a seat in the planned transitional parliament set up in Kenya last month.

Angola's recovery after decades of war is being threatened by a lack of funding support from both the government and the international community for assisting returning refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs), the World Food Programme (WFP) has warned. With nearly 4 million refugees and IDPs having either returned to their home areas or settled in new areas, the focus has shifted to the re-establishment of livelihoods, noted Dawn Blalock of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Luanda. "This process is still far from complete," she said, explaining that returnees needed support while trying to re-establish themselves in their homeland.

The impact of this conflict on the people of Darfur has been atrocious. Massive human rights violations committed in the region include: extra-judicial executions, unlawful killings of civilians, torture, rapes, abductions, destruction of villages and property, looting of cattle and property, the destruction of the means of livelihood of the population attacked and forced displacement. Clicking on the link provided will take you to an interview with Victoria Eluzai, a founding member of the Sudanese Young Women Empowerment Network (SYWEN), who discusses the situation in Sudan.

"When the devastation of AIDS enters a household, it is the women who take on the burden of added responsibilities. In hard-hit communities all over the globe, women are caring for sick and dying family members around the clock, while trying to fulfil their regular household responsibilities, such as child care, household maintenance and food preparation. In sub-Saharan Africa, where the epidemic has hit with terrible ferocity, women not only prepare the food, they also grow it. When women farmers are pulled out of production, many households are pushed to the brink of starvation." - Noeleen Heyzer, Unifem Director

Women ex-combatants from Rwanda have asked for a role in regional peacekeeping missions in Africa. Pointing specifically to the recent Rwandan government's commitment to support regional peacekeeping missions by sending soldiers to help protect African Union cease-fire monitors, they are urging that ex-combatant women be included in such missions, because of their experience of warfare and its particular impact on women, and their interest in assisting women caught in conflict.

Beyers Naude, an Afrikaner cleric who spent half his life using the bible to justify apartheid before becoming one of the anti-apartheid movement's most important moral voices, died early Tuesday, a family spokesman said. He was 89. South Africa's former white rulers denounced Naude as a traitor and tried to prevent him from spreading his message of racial tolerance. His church marginalized him and many whites ostracized him.

Violence and human rights abuses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's Ituri District will not end until the government takes control of the extraction of natural resources there, said a newly released special report from the UN Mission in the DRC, known by its French acronym MONUC. "The competition for the control of natural resources by combatant forces, exacerbated by an almost constant political vacuum in the region, has been a major factor in prolonging the crisis in Ituri," said the special report on events in Ituri from January 2002-December 2003.

Memory Moyo witnessed the horror of her village being burnt and destroyed by President Robert Mugabe's notorious youth militias. She decided to flee Zimbabwe after fighting off several attempts to rape her. In South Africa, she had hoped the income earned from plaiting women's hair would allow her the basics of survival. But now the 19-year-old Moyo says her life in Johannesburg has become "hell on earth" thanks to the South Africa Police Service (SAPS).

More than 3,000 people have fled renewed violence in Sudan's troubled Darfur province in the past few days, the United Nations says. It was not clear who was behind the latest fighting near the town of Zam Zam in North Darfur, a UN report said. Last week, the UN said that the Sudan government had failed to stop the Arab Janjaweed militias from attacking black African villagers in Darfur. More than a million people have fled their homes in the past 18 months.

The number of people suspected of participating in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda is expected to spiral from the present 100,000 to over 500,000 within the coming year, a senior official with the courts set up to try genocide suspects told Hirondelle News Agency on Wednesday. "Statistics drawn on the basis of information collected from the first phase of Gacaca court hearings indicates that we will end up with between 500,000 and 600,000 genocide suspects", the director of the legal department in National Service for Gacaca Jurisdictions(NSGJ), Augustin Nkusi said.

The Zimbabwean government should withdraw a proposed law on nongovernmental organizations, Human Rights Watch says. The law would grant a government-appointed body wide power to interfere in the legitimate activities of these civil society groups and sharply curtail local human rights organizations’ access to funding. “The law would unduly restrict the freedoms of association and of expression,” said Georgette Gagnon, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Africa Division. “It would also enable the government to intervene in the reasonable activities of NGOs.” A full copy of the Bill is available by clicking on the link below.

An analysis of international migration in Africa poses a challenge. The continent has 56 countries or areas, 53 of which are independent states. The possibilities of international population exchanges among such a large number of units are ample. Furthermore, the dynamics of international migration movements in Africa continues to be coloured by the continent's history of colonization, when colonial powers imposed arbitrary borders that often divided people belonging to the same tribal or ethnic group.

Migration in Africa is dynamic and extremely complex. This is reflected in the feminization of migration, diversification of migration destinations, transformation of labour flows into commercial migration, and brain drain from the region. Completing this picture are trafficking in human beings, the changing map of refugee flows, and the increasing role of regional economic organizations in fostering free flows of labour.

Video footage shows how Harrismith police opened fire indiscriminately on demonstrators as they slowly crossed a highway last week and then continued firing at them as they fled for cover. This move led to the tragic death of 17- year-old Teboho Mkhonza. The video shows how the toyi-toying group slowly started crossing the highway. The demonstrators were not throwing stones, as some reports claimed. Before the demonstrators were halfway across the road, police opened fire without any warning.