Ethiopia was criticised on Friday for ignoring an order by the international Boundary Commission to remove resettled Ethiopians from Eritrean territory. The Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC), which met the two sides in London last week, said the Ethiopian government had “not complied with its obligations”.

Interference in the judiciary and an increase in the alleged harassment of journalists in Malawi are issues that the Malawi Human Rights Commission (MHRC) aims to address in a plan to promote and protect human rights in the country. The plan being drafted in consultation with civil society and the government, would study rights that include civil, political and economic, and compare "gaps" between what the constitution enshrined and the government's performance.

UNHCR has resumed the relocation of Liberian refugees in Guinea from a transit centre near Gueckedou, near the border with Liberia, to locations farther inland. The insecurity in Liberia, plagued by fighting between rebels and government forces since 1999, has prompted nearly 40,000 Liberians to flee to Guinea, 50,000 to Sierra Leone and 17,000 to Cote d'Ivoire.

The distribution of agricultural and health packages has started in Liberia in six camps for internally displaced persons (IDP) under a grant of US $105,000 provided by the German government and managed by World Vision's Liberia office, the organisation said on Tuesday.

Some 26 Sierra Leoneans who had been living in a transit centre in Côte d’Ivoire’s commercial capital, Abidjan, were helped to return home on Friday by the International Organization for Migration (IOM). They were among some 50 Sierra Leoneans made homeless by the razing of shanty dwellings in Abidjan following a 19 September mutiny, IOM said in a news release.

A government ban on genetically-modified (GM) foods has resulted in a scramble to source stock to feed the thousands of refugees camped in Zambia. The World Food Programme (WFP) was forced to distribute US-donated milled GM maize to refugees in the first week of November, as the government ban was announced on 29 October, giving the agency little time to source non-GM food.

Dramatic evidence has been unearthed of such systematic British brutality in the former colony of Kenya that it may require the rewriting of imperial history. Hitherto secret files show that the then colonial secretary, Alan Lennox Boyd, sanctioned a policy of violence towards interned guerrilla suspects. A former colonial official, Terence Gavaghan, now living in London, was, according to a memo written by the governor, Sir Evelyn Baring, authorised to use force. Some detainees allegedly had their mouths stuffed with mud and were beaten unconscious by his men.

Since the beginning of November, 2002, several activities have been carried out both in Dodoma and Dar es Salaam. The most important achievement has been to engage members of Parliament, the media and general public to understand the bill and flaws embedded in it. We received good responses from a number of MPs regarding the campaign.

Opposition parties in the country are working out ways to contest together the forthcoming general elections, president of the Malawi Congress Party Gwanda Chakuamba says.

International humanitarian aid agencies fear that displaced farm workers and their families are being forcibly relocated to areas close to the borders of Zimbabwe. It is noted that from there they are being encouraged to leave the country.

A new issue of International Journal of Refugee Law has been made available. Table of Contents:
* Internal Flight/Relocation/Protection Alternative: Is it Reasonable?
Ninette Kelley, pp. 4-44

* UNHCR Resettlement: Evolution and Future Direction
Gary Troeller, pp. 85-95
http://www3.oup.co.uk/reflaw/hdb/Volume_14/Issue_01/140085.sgm.abs.html
* Anne F. Bayefsky and Joan Fitzpatrick, eds. Human Rights and Forced Displacement
Reviewed by Jane McAdam, pp. 173-174
http://www3.oup.co.uk/reflaw/hdb/Volume_14/Issue_01/140173.sgm.abs.html

Nigeria and Cameroon will not go to war over the long-disputed Bakassi peninsula, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has said. The 1,000-square-kilometre (400-square-mile) area was recently awarded to Cameroon by the International Court of Justice, but Nigeria has refused to accept the decision.

"I come to you today to appeal to you for prayers to ease out most serious situation in Zimbabwe and to appeal to you to lobby by all means possible for a peaceful solution to the Zimbabwean crisis. We face an absolutely desperate situation in Zimbabwe and the government is lying to the world about it. Our government continues to engage in lies, propaganda, the twisting of facts, half truths, downright untruth and gross misinformation, because they are fascists." - Archbishop Pius Ncube, Archbishop of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, speaking at the The Archbishop Denis Hurley Lecture, 7th November 2002.

The headlines from South Africa have been sneaking their way, ever more alarmingly, into our consciousness. The most recent – "White extremists set off bombs in Soweto" – came only last week, but the trend had been developing for months – "Ten charged with plot against Pretoria", "Afrikaner arms cache seized", and so on. In isolation, each might be shrugged off as part of the background noise of global strife. Together, they raise a question that the world never imagined would have to be asked again: is the ghost of apartheid stirring? Will a resurgent white right attempt bloodily to turn back the clock and destroy the dreams of Nelson Mandela's "rainbow nation"?

Talks between Burundi President Pierre Buyoya and ethnic Hutu rebels ended last week without them agreeing a ceasefire. Regional leaders had imposed a deadline which expired at midnight last Thursday for a deal to be reached.

Three years after the signing of the Lome Peace Accord, young people in Sierra Leone say they remain traumatized by their country's decade-long war and express frustration at the slow pace of recovery, according to a new study commissioned by the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children. Six hundred Sierra Leonean adolescents and youth in the western and northern regions of the country who were interviewed say their experiences of adult manipulation and betrayal had made them distrustful.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has warned that Ethiopia faces a famine worse than that of 1984, saying 6 million Ethiopians are in need of food aid and 15 million could face starvation early next year. World Food Program Ethiopia head Georgia Shaver echoed the warning, saying that while up to 14 million people need food aid across six southern African countries, "In Ethiopia, we could have the same number in just one country."

Missionary group The Dehonian Fathers have denounced recent violence in the DRC. Father Dino Ruaro, one of the eye witnesses, writes: “What Bemba's soldiers did is beyond imagination. In 33 years in Africa I have never seen anything like this. The city of Mambasa was plundered."

A shadowy cell of white right-wing military officers and apartheid-era forces are suspected of trying to incite a race war in South Africa, beginning with a series of bombings that rocked black settlements around Johannesburg last Wednesday.

The Article 19 has welcomed the adoption of the declaration of principles of the freedom of expression in Africa, by The African Commission, on Human and Peoples’ Rights. The Article 19 expressed that the declaration symbolised the commitment and determination of the African Commission, to tackle the increasing violations of the right to freedom of expression and information in many African countries.