The United Nations health agency has started preparations for the expected return of tens of thousands of displaced people to their homes in the disputed central Sudanese town of Abyei. The World Health Organization (WHO) said in a media statement that it is focusing on restoring basic health services for the returnees and controlling the health risks for both the returnees and the people still displaced after deadly fighting erupted in May.

The United Nations refugee agency has interviewed nearly 180 Eritrean and Ethiopian asylum-seekers detained in Egypt to assess their claims for refugee status, and urged the authorities to continue to provide unhindered access to others who are being held.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has announced that it is expanding its operations to feed 4.6 million people in Ethiopia, in response to the Horn of Africa nation’s pressing appeal for help in staving off hunger-related deaths. “Ethiopia is facing a perfect storm with soaring food prices and a devastating drought,” said the agency’s Executive Director Josette Sheeran. “We hear the Government’s plea, support it, and are moving to reach all we can.”

With a third group of Chinese peacekeepers sent to Sudan to replace their predecessors, China has sent more than 10,000 peacekeepers to participate in 18 UN peace-keeping missions. At the request of the United Nations and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, China decided to participate in a hybrid force of the United Nations and the African Union.

With the revelations that the Director General of Kenya Anti Corruption Commission Mr. Aaron Ringera, the Governor of Central Bank Mr. Njuguna Ndungu and the Finance Minister Mr. Amos Kimunya have conspired to sell Grand Regency Hotel to the Libyan Government, all that Kenyans can do is to immediately boycott doing business with Grand Regency Hotel immediately.

What role does traditional justice play in dealing with legacies of human rights abuses? How can interpersonal and community-based practices interrelate with state-organised and internationally sponsored forms of retributive justice and truth telling? This International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) report provides a comparative analysis of traditional justice mechanisms in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Uganda and Burundi. Most of the countries studied combine traditional justice and reconciliation instruments with other transitional justice strategies.

Morgan Tsvangirai's withdrawal from the presidential run-off scheduled for June 27, and his decision to seek the protection of the Dutch embassy in Pretoria, has secured for Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe a Pyrrhic victory. Mugabe's triumph comes at a huge cost to democracy and stability in Zimbabwe, as well as in the region. The actions of the Mugabe regime in the run-up to Tsvangirai's decision demand a strong regional response to what is clearly a stolen victory.

After a terror campaign and a sham 'election' last Friday, Robert Mugabe has declared himself President of Zimbabwe. The country is in crisis and its fate depends on talks between Mugabe and the winner of the first round election -- Morgan Tsvangirai.

This latest report from the International Crisis Group, analyses the national and international policies necessary to put an end to the country’s endless cycle of political crises. Despite 35 years of institutional incapacity, Guinea-Bissau has a chance for democratic reforms thanks to the signing of a Stability Pact by the three most important political parties in March 2007.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Wednesday approved a three-year, 79-million-U.S.-dollar plan to support Zambia's efforts to alleviate poverty and sustain economic growth. The new Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) plan succeeds a previous arrangement successfully completed last year, the IMF said in a press release.

The EU has not ruled out taking action against Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe in the wake of presidential elections marred by extensive violence. In a statement issued following the elections on Friday (27 June), Slovenia, which currently holds the six-month rotating EU presidency warned "The European Union does not exclude the possibility of taking appropriate measures against those responsible for the tragic events of recent months."

Paul Collier, a professor of economics at Oxford University and the author of The Bottom Billion, discusses policy options for helping the poorest countries in Africa. He says "there are severe limits on what we as outsiders can do," but suggests the United States should work on developing a set of international guidelines for natural resource management.

A disturbing fact about most of the material that finds itself published by the so-called Eritrean opposition, such as , is that it has an uncanny similarity to the anti-Shaebia and anti-Eritrea propaganda that we used to be bombarded and suffocated with day and night by the Ethiopian media – both during the former Derg regime era and the current Weyane regime ("Can an Ethiopian change his skin?"). Even the very wording at times seems to have been copied from there. Is this a coincidence? What is more disturbing is the fact that the so-called opposition groups are judging the Eritrean President and the ruling party not in terms of what works they have accomplished and are accomplishing but rather on their personality. This has a disturbing resemblance to the "inferiority complex" so prevalent in Ethiopian societies (particularly the Amhara and Tigrean groups). Is this similarity a coincidence or is "the friend of my enemy..." theory holding true?

People are suffering in Zimbabwe and it seems like nothing is being done about it. We need more than public statement condemning Mugabe's actions. We need to secure the safety of the citizens of Zimbabwe.

Click for an online petition directed towards the U.N. Security Council and the neighboring Southern African nations to put more pressure on Mugabe.

In response to : At least RSA is an independent republic, our last PM & Foreign Minister rechained us as a US colonial possession...idiots. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

"If we fail, the white man, who has been so surprised by our movement, the white man, who has entirely miscalculated every facet of this struggle, will have garnered a new range of knowledge about the potential of the black man and prepared himself to combat us should we ever again rear our ugly head. We owe it, therefore, to Africa not to fail. Africa needs a Biafra. Biafra is the breaking of the chains. It is not enough just to fight the Nigerians or their friends. We have to fight as a starting point of the African revolution…. If the revolution fails, we do a disservice to our race. But…what really frightens the white man is this whole challenge to the direction of international economy…. This is the one black society that on its own can go out and seek raw materials, manufacture finished products and sell them with absolute equality in the open world market. Once this has been demonstrated, you will find that the basis of neo-colonialism has been removed; which is continued economic dominance." —C. O. Ojukwu, at the Biafran People's Seminar, Umuahia, March 5, 1969.

The barbaric acts of violence against foreign African nationals in South Africa over the past month appears to have drawn to a close. However, thousands remain displaced and face the daunting task of putting their lives back together. Government indecisiveness, continuing xenophobic sentiment and the bitter cold of winter remain sizeable stumbling blocks in advancing the process of their reintegration into South African society. Durban suffered mainly reverberations of the mass violence emanating from Gauteng, but reports of harassment, poor living conditions for displaced refugees and growing fear amongst immigrant communities continue to filter in. What are the underlining issues and are they new? More importantly, how do we move forward? Azad Essa speaks to Pierre Matate, Deputy Chairperson of the KZN Refugee Council, to find out more.
===

Q. What is the KZN Refugee council?

A. We try to bring back the dignity of foreigners who have been pushed down by the denial to documentation. The council is there to advocate that a person needs to be treated as a person, with respect and with dignity. We are also trying to stop the brain drain; we need to send people back home with skills so they can go back and rebuild their country. We strive to have programs to promote the dignity and pride in their homes. The South African government has failed, in all ways, to utilize the skills offered by foreigners. They leave them exposed and treat them like cows and sheep standing in a queue.

Q. What is the latest situation in Durban?

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http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/385/49182mugabe.jpgAfter the African Union issued a statement so tepid that it might as well as have come from a high-school student conference, low expectations have further diminished. The African Union can now be seen in the same light as its predecessor – the OAU, a drum that beats hollow when it most counts for the African citizen.

But nevertheless, Mugabe’s one-man act has irreversibly damaged his reputation. The extent to which Mugabe has misread the continental and international political climate is shocking.African people, who previously saw Zimbabwe as a metaphor of their own countries where the elite exist at the expense of the poor, are abandoning him en mass. Having lost international legitimacy to George Bush and Tony Blair - a remarkable feat considering the extent to which his two adversaries are hated - the African people became his last defense.

But there has always been the African people and their governments. In regards to the African Union statement, Bishop Desmond Tutu dismay by saying that he was "distressed that (AU leaders) have not thought it was important to declare the illegitimacy of the runoff and the illegitimacy of the Robert Mugabe administration.”

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/385/49180xenophobiaSA.jpgWEEK ONE

The sms’s came fast and furious. As furious as the fiery images we were subjected to by our television and our daily newspapers. I dreaded opening a newspaper for days - afraid of being confronted by yet another grisly product of the negrophobic xenophobic violence, which by the end of week three had claimed the lives of about one hundred people and displaced about 100 000, according to some estimates. The mind spins out of its axis, out of the normal.

As the Alexander Township burnt, I was reading text messages from my cappuccino-loving Tito Mboweni-fearing middle class friends. The messages were generally along these lines; “I’m so embarrassed to be South African right now”, or more engaging: “I’m so tired of feeling angry about this and not being able to do something about it…” . Email lists held similar messages of shame; at least Winnie Madikizela-Mandela went to Alexander and told the terrified victims cramped at the police station; “We are sorry, please forgive us. South Africans are not like this”, before hopping back into her nice car and driving back to her life.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/385/49177markofcain.jpgThe farcical run off took place in Zimbabwe, predictably so, in the face of a world opinion dismissing the sham elections and the irrelevant result rightly so already in advance. Mugabe’s legitimacy is one of a dictator, whose power is dependent upon a military junta’s good will. If not for the securocrats and their silent coup after the first round of elections, Zimbabwe would now be governed by political office bearers who would have the legitimacy of a majority of the voters. Even with the state organized terror machinery intimidating the people and forcing them to vote for an unwanted aging despot, his “victory” is nothing but a fallacy and mockery. Shame on SADC, who were willing to witness such a defiance of the people’s will.

Intimidation, repression, physical harm, torture, rape and murder were all part of a so-called election campaign. At the end, the contester - who unlike six years ago in 2002 - could no longer be denied the claim to legitimate political power . Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew for admirably sound ethical and moral reasons. After all, the regime had disclosed its intentions through the systematic use of brute force in ruthless way, To have contested the second round would have been to add further misery, mutilation and death to the long register of human rights violations bordering on crimes against humanity. That would have been an irresponsible symbolic political act.