Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin has accused the independent Boundary Commission of "belittling" Ethiopia's calls for changes to the new border with Eritrea. "No-one expects the government of Ethiopia to accept these mistakes committed by the Commission," he said in a statement written in Amharic. A foreign ministry translation was received by IRIN on Wednesday.

Without exception, the humanitarian organisations in Ituri District say security remains their uttermost concern in continuing their relief work in this part of the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. The killing on 3 April of Hema in Drodro town and 14 surrounding villages in Ituri underscored this concern and the continued danger to people of the district.

Rwanda is safe for refugees in Tanzania and Uganda to return home, the head of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Ruud Lubbers, told IRIN on Tuesday. However, he added that any repatriation must be voluntary.

I remember them making me lie down, face on the floor, whilst one of them pressed his foot on the back of my ankles so that the underfoot faced upwards. I felt searing pain as the baton struck against my feet. The shoes had already been removed and I was starting to feel faint. They poured water on me and used the sjamboks (whips) to hit my back and behind.

Opposition group the People's United Democratic Movement on Monday threatened to intensify a political campaign against the Swazi government if it failed to meet its demands within seven days. “Already the international community has taken note of what is going on in Swaziland. If the government fails to heed our concerns we will make sure that increased pressure is brought to bear on the king to affect meaningful changes," Gabriel Mkhumane, the chief representative of PUDEMO for Africa and the Caribbean, told IRIN.

We are seeking a person with 3 years development/relief experience to work with Christian Aid partner organisations in Angola. Your experience should include field-based emergency response work and provision of training/accompaniment in relief and rehabilitation project management, preferably with local organisations. Experience of food security work and agricultural rehabilitation in a developing country context will be an advantage.

According to reports, Grody Dorbor, editor of The Inquirer newspaper, Oscar Dolo, Nyahn Flomo and William Quiwea, all local correspondents for the radio station Talking Drum Studio-Liberia, disappeared about a fortnight ago in the country's eastern and central regions, where government forces are fighting rebels, according to the World Association of Newspapers, who have written a letter to Liberian President Charles Taylor about the issue.

Some 3,000 refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) living in a refugee camp in Muyinga Province, northern Burundi, stoned vehicles belonging to an NGO on Saturday during a demonstration against what they termed poor human conditions, the privately owned Radio Isanganiro reported.

The Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO) clashed with the government on Tuesday over claims that 39 people “disappeared” after being held by the security forces. The group argues that the whereabouts of some 39 people who were held by security forces are unknown. But government officials described the findings in an EHRCO report as “extremely dubious”.

Congo's main rebel group says it has shunned the first session of a committee overseeing a power-sharing peace deal because of inadequate security guarantees. The accord is the latest attempt to try to end more than four years of fighting in Africa's third biggest country in which millions of people have died, mostly through hunger and disease.

Sudan is unlikely to be slapped with new US sanctions when a six-month review of its cooperation with regional peace efforts is presented to American lawmakers next week, local newspapers Tuesday quoted a senior State Department official as saying.

People in the self-proclaimed Republic of Somaliland have voted in their first multi-party presidential election. Almost one million voters were thought to have cast their ballots, hoping the election could boost its attempts to secure international recognition.

Just a year before he leaves office, Malawi President Bakili Muluzi has broken all records and appointed the tiny southern African country's largest cabinet in 39 years of independence. Using absolute constitutional powers to appoint a 46-strong cabinet, Muluzi last week more than doubled his predecessor's average size government.

As the U.S. continues to wage a devastating war in Iraq, Africa Action has released a statement signed by more than 70 groups calling for "Money for AIDS, Not for War!" Africa Action's Executive Director, Salih Booker, said, "Today, Africa Action is joining with friends across the country and around the world to make this simple statement - Money for AIDS, not for War. It is both a rejection of U.S. aggression in the Persian Gulf and an affirmation of the real priority that we should be addressing - the global AIDS crisis."

The Campaign for Good Governance (CGG) has noted with disappointment the recent decision of the Government of Sierra Leone to sign an Article 98 agreement with the United States. Although the full text of the agreement has not been made public, the official Sierra Leone News Agency (SLENA) stated that the agreement "essentially obliges Sierra Leone and the United States to first seek each other's consent before surrendering any of their suspected nationals to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for prosecution."

Sexually transmitted infections and HIV spread fastest where there is poverty, powerlessness and social instability characteristic of refugee and internally displaced populations. This document, produced by The Reproductive Health for Refugees Consortium (RHRC), provides an introduction for humanitarian programme workers to issues of HIV and AIDS. It describes the status of the epidemic, means of transmission and factors that make refugee communities especially vulnerable. This is a basic introduction to transmission, prevention and care of HIV and is backed up by a list of key resources.

US and Iraqi estimates of the numbers of dead in the war on Iraq put the combined figure at about 4 000. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, estimates are that up to 3.5 million people have died. If news value depended only on body count, newspapers would devote roughly 900 pages to the war in the Congo for every page devoted to the war on Iraq.

Government and rebel groups are responsible for serious human rights abuses against civilians in western Côte d’Ivoire, and Liberian combatants are fighting on both sides, Human Rights Watch has said in an open letter to the United Nations Security Council.

There were 159 reported cases of torture in Zimbabwe during the month of March, 105 cases of political discrimination, 103 cases of unlawful arrest, 53 cases of displacement and 40 cases of assault. This is according to the Monthly Political Violence Report for March 2003, released by the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum. "Disturbing incidents of violence and gross human rights violations have been documented in the month of March, indicative that the human-rights situation in Zimbabwe is deteriorating critically," the Forum said.

Masindi Resident District Commissioner Betty Adima has said about 7,000 internally displaced persons are destroying Kinyara sugarcane plantation because they do not have enough food. "These IDPs have nothing to eat and are eating up the sugarcanes," Ms Adima said. She was addressing the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers at Kiryandongo Refugee Settlement Camp in Masindi district at the weekend.