The outcome of the elections of April 12 and 19 has again brought Nigeria to the precipice. The elections were generally peaceful, even if not totally violence-free. There were some logistic hitches that were later smoothed out, but by and large, the elections were impressive. The jinx, it seemed, had been broken. But having peaceful elections is totally different from having free and fair elections. One does not necessarily lead to the other. The events of the last few days suggest it is too early to celebrate a successful civilian-to-civilian transition. There is every reason to be afraid for the democratic project in Nigeria, and for Nigeria itself. Lagos' independent This Day urges all Nigerian political parties to adopt a more conciliatory tone and to unite behind the effort to produce real electoral reform.

The All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) has foreclosed its participation in the next government to be formed by President Olusegun Obasanjo, who won the last presidential election.

Protection of refugees, displaced persons and Ivorian civilians in general is becoming the central issue around the crisis in Cote d'Ivoire, the UN Humanitarian Envoy for the Crisis in Cote d'Ivoire, Carolyn McAskie said last Friday.

There were substantial flaws in some of the critical stages leading up to the elections which tended to undermine the credibility of the process, says a preliminary report from the Transition Monitoring Group (TMG), a coalition of 170 human rights and civil society organisations. Preliminary election-day reports received from TMG monitors all over the country indicate a large voter turnout in most of the states and substantial improvements in the arrangements made by the Independent National Electoral Commission for conduct of the elections. The TMG observes that there were cases of electoral violence and numerous reports of electoral fraud in some parts of the country. Since this report is being issued ahead of the final release of all the results from the elections and the receipt and final analysis of all the data from TMG monitors in the field, the TMG will refrain at this stage from making a final determination as to whether the elections were free and fair. Also included in this posting are two reports on the conduct of police during the recent elections held in Nigeria.

Three million, three hundred thousand people dead in a four and a half year war. Sound familiar? Have you seen it on the news? Have you heard about it being debated by any parliaments or congresses or world conferences? In less than five years, the equivalent of the entire population of Chicago was wiped out in the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. That's the equivalent of every man, woman and child in Ireland being killed. Surely if something of this nature occurred, it would have made the headlines. It's too shocking and horrible to ignore, one would think. In this commentary, Michael Despines, now senior policy and programme adviser for the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in New York challenges humanitarians to influence humanitarian policies that would result in real change.
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Fighting has intensified in Burundi in the months before the transfer of power to a new president, Human Rights Watch said. There have been military operations in nine of Burundi's seventeen provinces in the last two months. All parties to the war in Burundi need to deliver on their promises for peace and justice, Human Rights Watch urged as the new president, Domitien Ndayizeye, was due to take office in Bujumbura.

Political parties can now operate freely, the Attorney General, Francis Ayume, said. Ayume, however, stressed that parties "whether old or new can only exist and operate after registering and paying the necessary registration fees."

Trade union officials last Thursday said up to 70 percent of the country's businesses remained closed on the second day of a three-day national strike. "Banks, stores and factories across the country have continued to heed the call to shut down. This is a promising sign that the strike has achieved what it set out to do. We expect that the success of this action will increase the pressure on the government to make some significant changes," the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) secretary-general, Wellington Chibebe, told IRIN.

Close to 1,000 people fled Uvira, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), on Friday after fighting broke out between rebel Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie-Goma (RCD-Goma) forces who control the town, and Mayi Mayi militia, local sources told IRIN.

A new rebel group, Movement for Democracy in Liberia (M0DEL) has attacked the strategic southeast Liberian coastal town of Greenville, while an older rebel group hit Tappita in the northeastern county of Nimba.

Human Rights Watch has criticised the lack of action by the UN Commission on Human Rights regarding alleged abuses in Zimbabwe. The rights group issued a statement at the end of the commission's meeting in Geneva last week. The Zimbabwe Media Monitoring Project reported that the official The Herald newspaper "celebrated Zimbabwe's escape from criticism" at the meeting which ended on Friday 25 April, while reports in the private press "indicated that human rights abuses in the country were as bad as ever".

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) distributed last Friday non-food items to more than 500 Burundian families who were displaced when rebels shelled Kanyosha Commune, Bujumbura Rural Province, the agency reported.

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, has welcomed plans by the Kenyan government to allow refugees to live outside camps. Home Affairs Minister Moody Awori said the government was considering the possibility of relocating some of the estimated 230,000 refugees from neighbouring countries to reside outside the camps, where they are currently living under difficult conditions.

Weary and frightened villagers straggling from the bush in western Ivory Coast have told of dozens of killings and wanton abuses after a surge of fighting that has soured hopes of peace, reports Reuters. It is hard to get a precise toll for recent deaths from the accounts of people limping into the French-protected town of Duekoue.

Thousands of people in Liberia's coastal city of Greenville have fled the town in fear of rebel attacks, civilians in Monrovia have said, reports Deutsche Presse-Agentur. Many had reportedly fled into jungles after hearing that an unknown rebel group calling itself Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) had advanced to nearby Sinoe County.

Thousands of people in Liberia's coastal city of Greenville have fled the town in fear of rebel attacks, civilians in Monrovia have said, reports Deutsche Presse-Agentur. Many had reportedly fled into jungles after hearing that an unknown rebel group calling itself Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) had advanced to nearby Sinoe County.

De Wet Kritzinger believed he had to shoot innocent black people to keep a promise with God, the Pretoria High Court heard this week. "I believed that by keeping my promise to God and obeying God I (did) not act wrongfully," he said in a statement to court read by his counsel, Harry Prinsloo. But he also believed the government was planning farm attacks and that a message had to be sent out in this regard. Kritzinger, who carried a Bible in the dock, pleaded not guilty to the murder of three black people on a bus in Constantia Park, Pretoria, in January 2000, and the attempted murder of four more.

This is a powerful and sobering collection of photographs, bringing to light and documenting some of the most tragic aspects of Africa's recent social history. The book is structured as a series of photographic montages of the conflicts in Sierra Leone, Angola, Mozambique, Eritrea and Burundi; each section introduced with a short critical essay on the history of the conflict. The photography is particularly concerned with the role of children in armed conflicts, the impact of war on children's education and lives, and the refugee implications of war. In all, the book contains 124 duo-tone photographs produced on high quality paper.

At least 32 government soldiers and 20 rebels were killed in a foiled rebel attempt to capture an airport in Sudan's western regional capital, the government-owned al-Anbaa newspaper reported here Saturday. Last Friday's fighting between the military and the recently emerged rebel movement in the Darfur region destroyed several planes and inflicted heavy damage at the airport in al-Fashir, the paper cited senior officials as saying.

A global coalition of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) is calling on governments participating in the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) to ensure that the scheme has credibility and helps stop the trade in conflict diamonds. NGOs were calling on the governments to strengthen their efforts in the lead up to the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) plenary scheduled for April 28-30 in Johannesburg South Africa. The meeting will be the first since the KPCS came into force on January 1, 2003. The three-day session will focus on implementation of the KPCS and will bring together representatives of the vast majority of the governments of diamond producing and trading countries, the international diamond industry and non governmental organisations who have spent the last three years trying to address the issue of conflict diamonds.