One of the most wanted war crimes suspects in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda is believed to be living in Kenya under the protection of Government officials, a senior US official said on Tuesday. Felicien Kabuga, an alleged financier of the genocide, has been using his personal wealth to buy protection from Kenyan authorities, said Pierre-Richard Prosper, ambassador at large for war crimes.

Parliament in Togo has changed the constitution, removing clauses that would have forced the president to step down before elections next year. President Gnassingbe Eyadema seized power in a coup in 1967, making him Africa's longest-serving head of state.

Fighting has again broken out around the villages of Jadid and Qararsoor in the Qardho area, some 260 km south of Bosaso, the commercial capital of the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland, with between 30 and 40 people reported to be killed, according to local sources.
Related Link: Puntland says Somaliland supporting dissident forces
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Central African Republic (CAR) President Ange-Félix Patasse has called on France to send troops to help a regional African force restore peace in his country. A French military presence would boost the current presence of some 231 CEMAC soldiers, all of them Gabonese. Patasse said a French presence would also enable CAR to exploit its oil-rich northern area.

Recent claims by Sudanese rebels accusing the government of violating a peace agreement have raised fears of a resumption of hostilities between the two sides and cast a cloud over ongoing peace talks. Under the terms of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), signed in November, the parties agreed on a cessation of hostilities. The agreement was to last until the end of March 2003. Peace talks are due to resume in the Kenyan town of Machakos later this month.

Zimbabwe's energy minister says that a vital fuel deal with Libya includes conditions the fuel-starved Southern African country cannot meet. Speculation has been rife in Zimbabwe that the deal with Libya, which supplies 70% of the country's fuel needs, has collapsed. Over the past two weeks, the fuel situation in the country has become desperate.

A Ugandan minister has said her country will not accept Rwandan refugees who have left Tanzania seeking asylum, according to the privately owned Kampala newspaper, the Monitor.

As Rwanda starts the full implementation of the gacaca traditional justice system, to try suspects of the 1994 genocide, Amnesty International has called on Rwandan authorities to ensure that gacaca trials conform with basic international standards of fairness so that the government's efforts to end impunity are effective.

Soldiers and police are patrolling Swaziland's major highway and other main routes, as an anti-government stay-away begins. The action is to protest against King Mswati III's plans to buy himself a R720 million private jet, as well as government statements and decisions that defy the country's courts.

A Belgian lobby group has warned of a possible genocide in Ivory Coast. Prevention Genocides is calling for the immediate deployment of an international police force to stop the mass killing of civilians following the discovery of mass graves and a wave of ethnically motivated murders.

With the next phase of Sudan's peace negotiations due to resume in early January 2003, the International Crisis Group has urged both the Khartoum government and the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) to prepare for compromise to end almost two decades of war. The last round of peace talks, which ended on 18 November 2002, made significant progress but a final protocol on sharing political power and Sudan's considerable oil wealth was not signed, and the late re-emergence of harder line elements on both sides was "worrying".

Cross-border and within country migration have generated complex and challenging difficulties for the provision of health care. Not only do migrant populations often require specialist treatment for unfamiliar conditions, the numbers involved and the distances traversed often change long-held epidemiological assumptions made about the local population.

More than 250,000 refugees returned from Sudan to Eritrea between 1991 and 2002, the majority of them without receiving international assistance. Though the causes of this displacement were removed more than ten years ago, there are still some 100,000 Eritrean refugees remaining in Sudan. What factors influence the return of refugees?

Many refugees in Africa avoid camps despite the offer of aid, preferring instead to integrate themselves with local communities in their country of asylum. What factors influence integration and what are the benefits?

There is something highly symbolic about the way Arthur Chindandala, who lives in a camp for Internally Displaced People (IDP) earns his living. He beats large shiny bowls out of recycled World Food Programme oil canisters, which he then sells for 25 kwanzas (about 30p) each. And he shapes them on an anvil made out of an upturned shell case. It's not exactly swords into ploughshares, but it's the modern-day equivalent. And it illustrates two great truths about Africa: the terrible toll war has taken on the continent and the spirit of vitality and inventiveness of Africans in their determination to forge new life from the ashes of battle.

Angola's remaining 1,500 troops backing President Denis Sassou-Nguesso in the Republic of Congo (ROC) began to pull out on Monday, thereby ending a five-year presence in the country, according to ROC Deputy Defence Minister Yvon Ndolou.

The repatriation of Rwandan refugees from camps in western Tanzania should be "substantively completed" by the end of the year, according to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Ahmad Haji Ali Adami, chairman of the electoral commission in the self-declared republic of Somaliland, has described this weekend's local elections as a success. Independent observers also described the polling - which took place on Sunday throughout the breakaway region - as peaceful.

West African efforts to halt war in Ivory Coast swung to Senegal on Wednesday as leaders headed there for last-ditch talks, while France hovered in the wings with its own peace initiatives.

Must refugees be kept in camps? Are there viable alternatives to refugee camps that can benefit both refugee populations and host developing countries? What specific circumstances and problems do developing countries face when dealing with refugee communities.