A newly-formed committee, set up to monitor a shaky ceasefire accord between the warring sides in Somalia, met on Thursday following clashes between rival warlords in Mogadishu. The monitoring committee - made up of the US, EU, AU, Arab League and the regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) - met at the venue of the Somali peace talks in Mbagathi near the Kenyan capital Nairobi, sources close to the talks told.

Fresh fighting has reportedly broken out in the west of the Ivory Coast despite continuing discussions on a new power-sharing government for the country. The claims, from rebel and government officials, come shortly after neighbouring Liberia accused the Ivory Coast of employing Liberian mercenaries to carry out cross-border attacks.

Use email, snail mail, signs, friends, your organisation and even your mind, body and spirit to help stop the war on Iraq. Visit the web site link provided to find out more.

Fighting has broken out near Burundi's capital, where several soldiers were killed by rebels, local officials and rebel sources said on Saturday as the president flew out for a peace parley. The clashes came as President Pierre Buyoya left Bujumbura for peace talks in neighbouring Tanzania with the main rebel movement, saying he hoped it would be the last ceasefire parley.

After waiting so long for peace and stability, there is something almost vindictive in the timing. A plague potentially more deadly than any battle is seeping across Angola just when people had reasons to hope. Open borders, family reunions, trucks of food and goods have been granted, but with them travels HIV/Aids, a killer that scythed through sub-Saharan Africa but spared Angola.

Police in the Zimbabwean capital Harare on Saturday arrested more than 50 members of the main opposition party who were canvassing ahead of a by-election, the opposition said. But police have denied the claim. The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said in a statement that those arrested were carrying out home visits in the suburb of Kuwadzana, where a by-election is to be held at the end of the month.

Recent attacks by government troops, and the pullout of the main rebel force from a ceasefire agreement, are combining to put civilians in Burundi in growing danger, Human Rights Watch says in a new briefing paper. Human Rights Watch urged the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Sergio de Mello to encourage the new African peacekeeping force in Burundi to protect civilians.

There are more than thirty undeclared wars and internal conflicts taking place in the world at present. The impact of this situation on women, who are affected both as combatants and as civilians living in combat zones, is manifold. However, the stereotype of war as fought among soldiers in the battlefield is very far from the reality of today's wars and conflicts, which take place in the midst of civilian populations and inflict untold brutality and hardship on non-combatants. It is now estimated that 90 percent of war casualties are among ordinary civilians, according to this document, War and Armed Conflicts, by Niamh Reilly from WHRnet.

Militia and vigilante violence continues to pose a real threat to security in Nigeria, especially in the period leading up to elections in April 2003, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released last week. One of the more notorious groups is the O'odua People's Congress (OPC), an organization active in the southwest, which has killed or injured hundreds of people over the last few years. The 58-page report, "The OPC: Fighting Violence with Violence," provides detailed accounts of killings and other abuses by the OPC since the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo came to power in 1999.

Mining operations in Ghana have displaced more than 50,000 indigenous people without just compensation, employed less than 20,000 Ghanaians (due to over-reliance on expatriate workers), burned villages, illegally detained activists, raped women and continually denied the culture. Ghana's Human Rights and Administrative Justice Committee has recently reported "overwhelming evidence of human rights violations occasioned by the mining activities, which were not sporadic but a well established pattern common to almost all mining communities." Now one of the world's largest gold mining companies, Denver-based Newmont, will be granted licenses for two new operations in Ghana. This dangerous precedent will allow Newmont to enter Ghana for the first time and pour in an initial US$450 million to exploit Ghanaian land, law and people, says a report from Drillbits & Tailings, a newsletter published by Project Underground, which works to support the human rights of communities resisting mining and oil exploitation.

Twenty-one church leaders were arrested in Zimbabwe last week when they tried to deliver a petition to the police urging an end to its abuse of power. The ministers, carrying three big wooden crosses, walked through the streets of Harare to the police headquarters to deliver a petition urging "immediate corrective measures to ensure that the police force in this country performs its duties with respect for the church and all citizens of Zimbabwe".

The Kenya Community Abroad has added its voice to those of millions around the world who have come out to demand a peaceful resolution to the stand off between the United States and Iraq on the question of weapons of mass destruction.

Gas lines, food shortages and political repression are making life tougher than ever for ordinary Zimbabweans. So why are regional leaders softening their stance on Robert Mugabe? asks Karen MacGregor.

The Sudanese government has denied the existence of a new rebel group in the country, which was this week reported to have seized a town in western Sudan. AFP reported from Khartoum on Wednesday that a new rebel group, calling itself the Front for the Liberation of Darfur (FLD), had seized the town of Gulu in Jebel Marrah province, and installed its own administration. The region is not currently covered by ongoing peace talks to end the long-running civil war in the country.

The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), whose summit has been dominated by the Iraq and North Korean crises, pledged steps to help billions of the world's poor as it wrapped up a summit in Kuala Lumpar. The rich-poor divide was of core importance to the summit of 116 nations, mainly developing states from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America, who rarely have a chance to air their views on the world stage.
Related Link:
* Tsvangirai blasts NAM for comforting Mugabe
http://www.dailynews.co.zw/daily/2003/February/February27/10628.html

Justice Paddington Garwe has ordered the chief witness in the high treason trial of three top MDC officials to provide the defence lawyers with certain documents they say would help exonerate their clients. Ben-Menashe, who was last Friday granted leave to return to his Canada base, will be notified of the ruling by the Attorney-General's Office.

Job Sikhala, 30, a tall, energetic leader of Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change, chain smokes as he tells his story: Although he sits in Parliament, he has been arrested 17 times in the last three years. The last time police took him, blindfolded, to a basement room outside Harare. During the next eight hours they beat him, applied electrodes to his mouth and genitals, urinated on him and forced him to swallow poison. Two days later they released him on bail, charged with sedition - an accusation quickly thrown out in court. During hospitalization, doctors confirmed evidence of torture. "It was a terrible experience, gruesome and horrendous,” he says. “This regime has lost control of its senses. It should not be recognized by anyone.”

An international committee is being set up to monitor a shaky ceasefire accord signed by Somali faction leaders, Kenya's special envoy for Somalia Bethwel Kiplagat said on Tuesday. He was speaking at a plenary session to relaunch the Somali peace talks at their new venue in Mbagathi, near Nairobi.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has announced that it is "set to close" two temporary border sites in western Burundi that had been sheltering at least 10,000 refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) since October 2002.

African Rights has written to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), in Arusha, Tanzania, urging it to address the "deterioration" in its relations with Rwandan genocide survivors, the human rights organisation reported on Monday.