Harare executive mayor, Elias Mudzuri, has been denied entry into the Hatfield Municipal Hall, where about 500 Zanu PF supporters were distributing maize meal on a partisan basis.

Nearly 30,000 Liberian refugees living in five camps near Bo in southeastern Sierra Leone are receiving health care from Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), the medical charity reported last Wednesday.

Despite the almost complete withdrawal of Rwandan and Ugandan forces from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in recent weeks, fighting has intensified throughout eastern regions of the country where most of the over 2.27 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) are located, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) as at August 2002.

Several thousand Eritrean ethnic Kunamas who sought refuge in Ethiopia during the 1998-2000 border war may be exempted from a UN ruling ending refugee status for Eritreans living in exile, UN sources have told IRIN.

Abyan Abdinur has a roof over her head. Other than that she has nothing. She has seen two of her children die, lost the few possessions she owned and all her livestock - her most valuable asset - have perished. Abyan is an internally displaced person (IDP), someone who has been forced to flee their home due to war, ethnic cleansing, or natural disasters like famine.

The United Nations is assisting at least 8,000 people on the outskirts of Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo, who were displaced in October by instability. Many of the IDPs, who started to flee "lawless conditions" in the Pool region in mid October, had arrived in Brazzaville in "poor conditions", the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported last Friday.

Bendu Kiadii, 38, fled fighting in western Liberia in April, along with her family. After they had trekked through bush for days, her husband Momoh contracted cholera and died, leaving her to continue eastwards with their eight children aged three to 15 years. "We lived in the bushes for many days. Eventually I arrived at the Wilson camp for the displaced, and have since stayed with my sister and her four children," she told IRIN.

The US State Department on Wednesday condemned human rights abuses in Cote d'Ivoire, including extra-judicial killings, extra-legal activity, harassment, and extortion, which it said were perpetrated by both government and rebel forces.

Half the internally displaced primary school-age children in Burundi do not go to school due to a high level of poverty, according to a recent survey conducted by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Humanitarian assistance has been manipulated cynically and devastatingly as a war strategy by both sides in Sudan, though overwhelmingly by the government, throughout the nineteen-year conflict. There is now an historic opportunity to end these aid restrictions permanently, but it will require immediate, determined and coordinated action by the international community, says the International Crisis Group.

Reports from Tanzania say parliament has passed a new anti-terrorism law which gives the police and immigration officials sweeping powers to arrest suspected illegal immigrants or anyone thought to have links with terrorists. Under the new law, passed by the National Assembly in the capital, Dodoma, police will not need warrants to detain people suspected of committing those offences.

Responsibilities will involve: Managing all Field Operational activities in the Kissidougou Field Office; Supervising daily activities of Field Finance Manager and insure compliance with ARC policy on payments, bank transfers, withdrawals and cash reconciliations; Submitting monthly, quarterly and annual reports to the Conakry Office; Attending NGO and Donor meetings on behalf of ARC Kissidougou and act as liaison for the Country Director where required; Organising and chairing staff meetings as well as disseminating information as required to all Coordinators; Ensuring adherence to all Administrative Directives and Policies, as well as the Personnel Policies and Procedures for both expatriate, national and refugee staff and arrange for staff training and development as appropriate.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (former Zaire) is the third largest country in Africa and one of the poorest. Decades of dictatorship under Mobutu and ongoing and unresolved civil war have left much of the national infrastructure in tatters. The current project aims to revitalise existing primary health care services with additional support to referral facilities including a network of 90 health centres and three referral hospitals in 5 health zones targeting a population of 860 000 and full support to the Kindu referral Hospital SMI project in Goma.

Guinea-Bissau President Kumba Yala said last Thursday he would dissolve parliament, call early elections and seek a popular mandate to strengthen his powers, news organisations reported. Yala accused the legislature of "subversion" and charged his minority Social Renovation Party (PRS) government with corruption, the Portuguese news agency LUSA reported.

The Delimitation Commission's report, which was submitted to President Sam Nujoma, is to be discussed by Cabinet before being made public, according to an official at State House. The Delimitation Commission decides on the demarcation of constituencies for elections.

Malnutrition rates in Angola have declined, but conditions in the war-ravaged country remain extremely poor, Médecins Sans Frontières said this week. The medical relief agency reported that malnutrition, crude mortality rates, lack of access to health care and food insecurity all remained unacceptably high.

Talks between Nigeria and Cameroon, chaired by the Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, have ended without a final agreement in the Swiss city of Geneva. The presidents of the two countries were attempting to resolve a dispute over an oil-rich section of their border, the Bakassi peninsula, which was awarded to Cameroon last month by the International Court of Justice.

Bus-loads of people leaving Ivory Coast for the safety of their own country say they have been fired on during their journey. Some of the 800 who arrived in Mali in the convoy had cuts from flying glass and said their buses were fired on by armed men at checkpoints in Ivory Coast.

South Africa this week dropped its ambivalence on Zimbabwe by endorsing President Robert Mugabe’s controversial policies, but analysts warned that Pretoria and southern Africa could pay a heavy price if such support pushed Zimbabwe to the brink.

After suffering decades of civil war, recurrent drought and widespread inter-ethnic conflict, Sudan now hosts the largest number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the world - some 4 million people. The main cause of this unparalleled level of displacement has been, and continues to be, the civil war which has been fought since 1983 between the Khartoum government and southern rebels, including the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A).