Some members of Namibia's white population have begun a drive to improve race relations in the country and will start with a public apology for apartheid crimes. This emerged after representatives of the churches, trade unions, business and a "reconciliation broker" briefed President Sam Nujoma on the campaign.

In a small, poorly lit classroom in Mtendeli refugee camp, western Tanzania, 20 Burundian and Tanzanian clinicians, midwives and HIV counsellors were on the final day of a three-day training course. They had been discussing HIV/AIDS and antenatal care, practising their counselling skills and learning about the pharmacology of anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs.

The four and a half year war in the Democratic Republic of Congo has taken more lives than any other since World War II and is the deadliest documented conflict in African history, says the International Rescue Committee. A mortality study released this week by the IRC estimates that since August 1998, when the war erupted, through November 2002 when the survey was completed, at least 3.3 million people died in excess of what would normally be expected during this time.

Government and rebels battled in Ivory Coast's western borderlands Monday, threatening the stability of a unity government days after the insurgents joined it.

Coalition for Peace in Africa (COPA) recognizes violent conflict as a major contributor to Africa's deplorable state of poverty and underdevelopment for it is extremely difficult to carry out meaningful development under situations of violent conflict and socio-political instability. Thus, COPA has developed programmes to build the capacity of Africans to deal with conflict in constructive ways at different levels of society, so as to prevent and transform conflict in ways which promote positive change and enhance peaceful coexistence in society. The two-week course in Conflict Transformation and Peace building is an effort in this direction.

Three African nations, Angola, Cameroon and Guinea, found themselves on center stage at the United Nations Security Council before international diplomacy failed and the U.S. led a "coalition of the willing" to war with Iraq. These three countries withstood intense pressure from the Bush Administration to support its impending military action against Iraq. How were these countries able to withstand superpower pressure? Afriscope Weekly interviewed Salih Booker, Africa Action's executive director, who says the Bush Administration is more focused on victory in Iraq than on "Africa's urgent priorities."

Rafael Marques, an Angolan journalist currently working for the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa in Angola, presented a paper at a Conference on Conflict and External Interferences in Barcelona last year. In the paper, Marques explores the causes of the Angolan conflict by observing that numerous failed peace agreements perpetuated and nurtured the conflict instead of helping to resolve it. He further states that the illegitimacy of power, internal contests for power, ethnic divisions, corrupt elites, social fragmentations, and colonial and Cold War legacies contribute to the continued conflict.

For the first time since independence, economic and political reform has become a strategic imperative for the government of Angola. Elections and the desire to enhance its image after four decades of war are important motivations. But reform will not come quickly and requires a long-term strategy of international engagement. This report from the International Crisis Group sets out policies to encourage a democratic post-war transition and fiscal transparency - especially in the oil sector.

Ugandan forces and their allies must prevent the killing of civilians in Ituri in northeastern Congo, Human Rights Watch said in an open letter to President Museveni of Uganda this week after information of yet another massacre of civilians surfaced over the weekend. The killing of civilians in Drodro and Blukwa in Ituri, northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on April 3 is the latest in a surge of killings and other serious human rights abuses that have taken place in the area.
Related Link:
* Report says 996 die in Massacre
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=515&ncid=723&e=3&u=/ap…

Swaziland Solidarity Network (SSN), the civil society umbrella group, says that it plans to picket in South Africa next week against human rights violations in its country. Bongani Masuku, the SSN secretary-general, said in Johannesburg that the demonstration would be held outside the Swaziland consulate, in Braamfontein, on April 12. "Gross violation of human rights, strategic intimidation tactics perpetrated by the government on the judiciary, and suppression of women in Swaziland, have reached a stage where they are unbearable," he said.

A spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva last Friday said the agency's operations for refugees from Cote d'Ivoire in Liberia were now severely hampered by an upsurge of recent fighting in eastern border regions.

Sudan's human rights status should not be "upgraded" by the United Nations Human Rights Commission, said the Cairo-based Sudan Human Rights Organisation (SHRO). SHRO said it was "deeply stressed" that the commission might "upgrade" Sudan's status from an item 9, which mandates a special rapporteur to the country, to an item 19, which provides UN technical assistance, such as human rights training. The commission is due to take a vote on the matter on 16 April.

The Burundian government said last Friday it had released Jean Baptiste Bagaza, the leader of the suspended Tutsi opposition Parti pour le redressement national (PARENA), from house arrest. Bagaza, a former president of Burundi, was placed under house arrest in November 2002 for allegedly plotting to kill President Pierre Buyoya.

A major resettlement programme for thousands of people is underway in northern Ethiopia, despite a warning that facilities like water and health supplies are not in place. Some 75,000 people are expected to be moved from central Tigray to western areas of the region within the next five months. Several thousand started moving in late February. The aim of the move is to tackle widespread environmental degradation by helping families move to more fertile lands.

Either side of an 1800 mile front-line, a country the size of western Europe with a population no larger than England’s has been carved up by warring factions and foreign armies from nine different countries, leaving millions dead or homeless. What little infrastructure dictator Mobutu Sese Seko did not wreck during his three decades of misrule has mostly been destroyed by fighting, or has finally succumbed to neglect. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is possibly the most mineral rich place on earth – though this has proved a curse to the people of the Congo. The Congo holds millions of tons of diamonds, copper, cobalt, zinc, manganese, uranium (the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were built using Congolese uranium), and coltan. Coltan, a substance made up of columbium and tantalum, is a particularly valuable resource – used to make mobile phones, night vision goggles, fiber optics, and micro-capacitors. The war on Iraq, says this article in the latest Corporate Watch newsletter, is not the only war in the world and it is not the only war being fought for our material benefit. Western consumers' seemingly insatiable demand for mobile phones, laptops, games consoles and other luxury electronic goods has been fuelling violent conflict and killing millions in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Related Links:
*A Past that Haunts the Future
http://web.amnesty.org/web/wire.nsf/April2003/Congo
* Kgame Denies DRC Troop Prescence
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=33349

UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) Executive Director Carol Bellamy has arrived in Southern Africa to focus attention on the humanitarian crisis in the region, the agency said last Thursday.
Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe were "battling a lethal mix" of food shortages and HIV/AIDS, a UNICEF statement said. "About one in four adults in the six countries now live with HIV or AIDS," UNICEF added.

Ethiopia, Mozambique and South Africa will send 3,500 peacekeepers to enforce a truce ending nearly 10 years of civil war in Burundi, the state-owned news agency said Wednesday. Defense ministers of the three peacekeeping nations said after a two-day meeting they had "finalized preparations and worked out a plan" to send the force to Burundi, the Ethiopian News Agency said.

A curfew imposed a month ago after several nights of violence in two Burundian refugee camps in western Tanzania continues, IRIN learnt on Thursday. Calm has returned to the Mtabila and Myovosi refugee camps, near Kasulu, but the 20:00 to 06:00 local time curfew imposed by the Tanzanian authorities is still in place.

Many of the most important challenges in the world today can be found in Africa and those challenges do not include the threat of terrorism or weapons of mass destruction. The US, and other rich countries in the so-called “Coalition of the Willing”, instead of spending tens of billions on an unjust war, should invest their energy in combating the AIDS epidemic that threatens entire countries, beating back a famine that threatens millions, cancelling debt which prevents countries from providing healthcare and education to their people, restructuring an exploitative trade system, and working without self-interest to promote peace, democracy and human rights.

Gene experts have declared race to be no more than an accident of geography - and predict the future of black and white South Africa will probably be more shades of brown. Racism is scientifically unfounded, confirmed Professor Trefor Jenkins, Professor Emeritus at Wits University, and Dr Himla Soodyall, director of the Human Genomic Research Unit. The genetic pool in the country was already so mixed that supremacists had no hope of a pure lineage, they said during a series of workshops at the National Festival of Science, Engineering and Technology in Grahamstown this week.