The Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) this week strongly condemned the arrest of the Mayor of Harare, Engineer Elias Mudzuri on Saturday 11 January 2003. ZESN said the arrest, for holding a meeting without police clearance, was "ridiculous" as the mayor was an elected representative who was supposed to know the problems and concerns of the people.
Related Link:
* Mayor released without charge
http://irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=31694

Merlin has just finished an assessment in the west of Ivory Coast in the government held areas and has identified locations where vulnerable IDPs, displaced by the fighting, have settled or are in transit. It proposes a three-month emergency programme of mobile clinic health care and water and sanitation provision for which we need to put together an experienced medical and logistical team.

Iraq has made a direct appeal to Africa for more help in preventing a war with the United States. The call came during the Afro-Arab Parliamentary conference currently taking place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The International Committee of the Red Cross is warning that immediate action is needed to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe in Ethiopia. The Swiss-based organisation says months of drought have left millions of people in urgent need of aid.

* Refugees in Western Tanzania: The Distribution of Burdens and Benefits Among Local Hosts
Beth Elise Whitaker, pp. 339-358

* On the Threshold of Africa: OAU and UN Definitions in South African Asylum Practice
Anais Tuepker, pp. 409-423
http://www3.oup.co.uk/refuge/hdb/Volume_15/Issue_04/150409.sgm.abs.html
* Book Reviews
Caroline O. N. Moser and Fiona C. Clark, eds.
Victims, Perpetrators or Actors? Gender, Armed Conflict and Political Violence
Reviewed by Fiona Wilson, pp. 424-425
http://www3.oup.co.uk/refuge/hdb/Volume_15/Issue_04/150424.sgm.abs.html
* Book Reviews
Anne F. Bayefsky and Joan Fitzpatrick, eds.
Human Rights and Forced Displacement
Reviewed by Hannah R. Garry, pp. 426-427
http://www3.oup.co.uk/refuge/hdb/Volume_15/Issue_04/150426.sgm.abs.html
* Book Review
Rotimi T. Suberu:
Federalism and Ethnic Conflict in Nigeria
Reviewed by Youssef Kamal, pp. 432-434
http://www3.oup.co.uk/refuge/hdb/Volume_15/Issue_04/150432.sgm.abs.html

A relieved World Vision says it has resumed its feeding programme in the Beitbridge area in southern Zimbabwe, following a month-long delay in the delivery of food aid from the United States.

“When one listens to a Congolese guy’s experience with our ‘government’, it makes one think of the people who work for the Department of Home Affairs. He mentioned our government’s excellent policies on the rights and privileges of refugees. However, he did not get the service and support he needed. For an example, he was told on enquiry that he couldn’t get government financial support because it is only for South Africans.”

Four opposition supporters in Zimbabwe have been arrested after demonstrating in support of the Harare mayor, Elias Mudzuri. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change said it hoped to have 2,000 people at the demonstration, but the police banned the protest, and arrested those who turned up.

Poverty and war have driven more than half of Liberia's 1,628,726 children, between the ages of 3-18, out of school, according to records at the ministry of education. Liberia, with its vast resources of diamond, timber, iron ore and gold, could be one of Africa's richest nations, with the best system of education. But the brutal 1989-1997 war and the current insurgency, which erupted three years ago, have obliterated all hopes.

Amnesty International is urging President Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to use his prerogative to immediately commute the death sentences passed on some 30 defendants for their alleged role in the assassination of President Laurent-Desiré Kabila in January 2001.

Thirty rebels and four government soldiers have been killed in recent fighting in the troubled southern province of Casamance, an army source says. For the past 21 years, a separatist movement has waged a violent campaign to create a separate state in southern Senegal.

South Africa had become part of the Zimbabwe problem and its actions were worsening the crisis, said MDC President Morgan Tsvangirai in a meeting with MDC members of parliament in December. Tsvangarai said Pretoria's policy had cast "serious doubt" on the role of President Thabo Mbeki as an "honest broker" in the rapidly deteriorating situation and humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe. "Pretoria is free to pursue its own agenda. But it must realise that Zimbabweans can never be fooled anymore. Open expressions of solidarity with Zanu PF and Mugabe will never resolve the crisis of governance in Zimbabwe today," he said. In the same speech, Tsvangarai said a cabal within Zanu PF was working with some businessmen, and had "hatched a plan to protect Mugabe and his regime, for political convenience, through a further militarisation of Zimbabwe". Read the full speech by clicking on the link below.

Rebel groups have started withdrawing from a disputed town in northeastern Congo, a U.N. official said Wednesday, but more than 80,000 displaced people are hiding in nearby jungles and need urgent international aid.

Swaziland's labour unions are once again taking the lead in the pro-democracy movement that seeks to transform King Mswati from sub-Saharan Africa's last absolute monarch into a constitutional monarch within the democratic framework of an elected government.

French President Jacques Chirac has announced “a summit of reconciliation for the Côte d'Ivoire” in Paris later this month, with the participation of African leaders and United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The announcement comes after France finds itself drawn more and more into the civil war raging in the Côte d'Ivoire. France has sent more than 2,000 soldiers to the Côte d'Ivoire since a civil war began September 19. Its military presence has been raised from 600 to about 3,000 soldiers.

The old man of African politics, former Kenyan president Daniel arap Moi, was swept from power in largely peaceful elections held in Kenya on December 27, but as the euphoria died down, analysts pegged corruption and an end to human rights abuses as some of the most serious problems that would have to be overcome by the new government. Kenya's new leader Mwai Kibaki immediately promised sweeping reforms in the form of free primary education, better healthcare, a stronger economy and an end to corruption - but stressed his National Rainbow Coalition (Narc) party would not engage in a witch-hunt against Moi's displaced Kanu party, the party that ruled the country since its independence in 1963.

As Zimbabwe enters 2003, the entire formal business sector is being driven underground and the elite of Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF party are acquiring revered names on the company register at fire-sale prices. Several hundred, perhaps several thousand, evicted white farmers surreptitiously try to keep some production going, risking jail terms. Independent journalists live in a nebulous state, and the only daily newspaper not controlled by the state is in trouble.

Zimbabweans have had enough of violence, agreed church leaders and civil society actors gathered from across the country at a National Peace Convention in Bulawayo. The group met from 13-14 December, 2002, to develop an action-oriented, non-partisan response to Zimbabwe’s growing crises and spiralling violence.

The offices of a local human rights group in the south-central town of Baidoa have been attacked by armed militiamen, according to an official of the organisation. The offices of the group, Isha (Somali for "eye"), were overrun and looted by militiamen, who stripped them of their equipment.

The leaders of the various militia groups that have been fighting in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are to meet this week in the northeastern city of Kisangani, according to the UN Mission in the DRC, known as MONUC.