If U.S. troops are sent to Liberia, they should not make any deals that involve a withdrawal of the indictment of President Charles Taylor by the Special Court for Sierra Leone, Human Rights Watch says. The top priority for any peacekeeping troops must be the protection of civilians, who have suffered from abuses by all sides in the Liberian conflict, says Amnesty.

"We are convinced of the crucial role played by civil society in development and governance and further call on the AU member states to establish the necessary mechanisms to involve civil society in policy making, development planning, implementation monitoring and evaluation in accordance with the African charter on popular participation and development...Civil society shall continue to engage with NEPAD. We urge African leaders to partner with African civil society in all processes of implementation and further urge for a process that does not replicate structural adjustment programmes, which have impoverished the continent but take into consideration the views and needs of Africa."

Forty-three people died in Bulawayo in April alone because of malnutrition, according to an official council report on the health situation in Zimbabwe’s second largest city. The city’s director of health services, Rita Dlodlo, said in the report – a copy of which was shown to The Daily News – that most of the deaths were among children in the five to 14-year age group.

The governance standards of at least two or three African countries are likely to come under scrutiny in the next few months, a senior official said last Friday. This should help maintain the integrity of the peer review mechanism under the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad), head of the Nepad secretariat Wisemen Nkuhlu said.

In the heat and dust of Kakuma and Dadaab refugee camps, in northern Kenya, there is little for the estimated 220,000 inhabitants from Somalia and Sudan to do but survive. But despite the staggering odds, a flicker of hope is emerging among young refugees who are not only learning to cope with their predicament, but are also looking towards a brighter future.

Ending impunity for human rights abuses should top President Obasanjo's agenda as he begins his second term in office, Human Rights Watch said in an open letter to the Nigerian President this week. The letter identifies several priorities for a new human rights agenda for Nigeria.

“On reading the searing race debate last week between official opposition leader Tony Leon and President Thabo Mbeki, who rebutted so angrily, I wondered what had become of non-racialism,” writes Ferial Haffajee in South Africa's Mail and Guardian newspaper. “And a saying of my gran came to mind: it seemed well and truly ‘in sy moer in’ - buggered, injured, perhaps fatally so.”

The National Assembly finally approved the Electoral Amendment Bill, following two weeks of intense pressure by the Regional Government Ministry that it be passed.

South African President Thabo Mbeki said on Tuesday he is committed to a peaceful resolution of Zimbabwe's political crisis, but won't pressure the country's embattled leader to hold elections.
Related Link:
* For how long will Zimbabwe's neighbours accept that a leader can beat when he cannot persuade? asks this article in the Zimbabwe Independent.
http://www.worldpress.org/Africa/1208.cfm

In a part of the world where one quickly becomes inured to the sight of scrawny, red-eyed, gun-toting teenage boys, there was an astonishing sight today along this capital's main road. In an empty field, in a heavy downpour in the middle of the rainy season in one of the world's wettest countries, was a small group of women, nearly all dressed in white, throwing their arms to the sky and dancing and singing, drenched from head to toe, calling to God to bring an end to war. These are Liberia's peaceniks - the Women in Peacebuilding Network - who for the last three months have been bent on praying on the side of the road, in sun and rain, every single day, to bring an end to war.

The case of Rwanda demonstrates significant differences among leading agencies and policy makers working with displaced people in their understanding of displacement and resettlement concepts. At the heart of the problem is the UN agencies' and NGOs' struggle to agree on whether Rwandans relocated into new villages should be considered permanently resettled or still displaced.

Almost one quarter of a million displaced Sierra Leoneans were resettled in their areas of origin by the end of 2002, officially ending the internal displacement crisis in the country and further consolidating recovery after more than a decade of devastating civil war. A success story, in which the wishes of internally displaced people themselves prevailed, said some observers. Not so, insisted others, pointing to numerous flaws and problems along the way. So was the resettlement process really the final chapter in Sierra Leone's displacement story? Arguably not, at least with respect to durability of return and resettlement as required by the UN Guiding Principles.

"The poor of South Africa did not vote for a government who would bring back laws declaring any dissenting voices as terrorists. We did not vote for the return of detention without trial and the indiscriminate banning of organisations. We did not vote for landlessness, evictions, electricity and water cut-offs and arms sales to an international terrorist like Bush. We did not vote for a government who would contribute weapons to occupying forces to kill thousands of Iraqi and Palestinian and East Timorese people, while at the same time claiming to be anti-War."

The Anti-War Coalition in Johannesburg, South Africa, is ratcheting-up its activities prior to U.S. President George W. Bush's meeting with the president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki. A mass demonstration will take place on Saturday at the Library Gardens, beginning at noon. A protest will also be held at the Union Buildings on Wednesday 9 July 2003 at 11am.
Related Links:
* Mandela avoids Bush meeting
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3032562.stm
* SACP joins protests against Bush visit
http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?a=11&o=23223

The Bush Administration's human rights agenda in Africa has been primarily focused on Zimbabwe and, to a lesser extent, Sudan. The primacy of the U.S. war on terrorism has meant that the United States has given even less attention to Africa than might otherwise have been expected. In the few African countries that the administration believes are strategically valuable, particularly in the Horn of Africa, the United States has often de-emphasized human rights issues. This briefing from Human Rights Watch on the eve of a visit to Africa by U.S. President George W. Bush to Africa examines areas of U.S. interaction with Africa and includes key questions related to the specific countries that Bush will visit.

Malawi's army has been deployed to quell violent riots after demonstrators attacked an American children's charity and several churches to protest the CIA-backed removal of five Muslim foreign nationals suspected of working for al-Qaeda.

The Kenyan government is to lift a colonial-era ban on the Mau Mau, a group which killed a small number of European settlers in the 1950s. Removing the ban is among several long-standing demands of veterans of the Mau Mau uprising against the British in which 32 settlers were killed.

Ivory Coast's rebel military chiefs declared a state of emergency on Monday and blocked access to the parts of the country they control, accusing the president of failing to fulfil promises meant to end civil war. Rebels who control around half of the West African country joined a reconciliation government in April and fighting has virtually ended since a comprehensive cease-fire in May. But Monday's declaration highlighted the deep bitterness and unresolved grievances.

The on-going strike embarked upon by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) over increases in the prices of petroleum products is continuing even as President Olusegun Obasanjo has set up a technical committee, comprising labour and government representatives, in a attempt to end the shutdown of the country. At least eight people have died since the umbrella Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) launched the walkout on Monday amid violent clashes between police and union militants.

A decade after 18 U.S. Army Rangers were killed by an angry mob in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, the Bush administration is facing mounting pressure to put American 'boots on the ground' in Africa once again. Calls for an active U.S. intervention in Liberia are coming from the United Nations and various member governments, including Britain and France and leading African officials.