UN agencies in the Republic of Congo (ROC) say that at least 20,000 people in urgent need of humanitarian aid remain in inaccessible areas of the troubled Pool region. "At present, the UN has access to the towns of Djamballa, Kinkala, Madzia, Kibouende, the east part of the railway line (on the south side only), Kindamba and Bouenza region (west of Pool region)," the Office of the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator reported on Tuesday.

Following three years of heated debate, the Rwandan parliament has cleared a bill that, if approved by the Supreme Court and President Paul Kagame, should provide the country with greater media freedom. "The issues that were hampering the progress of its final stages have been addressed," James Vuningoma, head of the Association of Rwandan Journalists, told IRIN on Wednesday.

Apartheid is alive and well in rural South Africa as police, army commandos, prosecutors and magistrates conspire with the 60,000 white farmers who continue to occupy 85 percent of the country's land to prevent poor black and landless people from exercising their rights to land, life, justice and dignity, says the National Land Committee (NLC). The NLC was welcoming the dismissal of six activists arrested on 29 April during a march protesting against rural injustice.

The long-awaited trials to be conducted by Gacaca courts - an adapted form of Rwandan traditional participatory justice - are to begin on 18 June to deal with the perpetrators of the 1994 genocide, in which Hutu extremists in the country killed some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 100 days.

While the national Health Department is hailing the latest Aids figures as proof of the start of a turnabout in South Africa's pandemic, activists remain cautious, warning that this is no time for complacency. They say that without the release of full statistics, down to the detail of clinic-to-clinic, the numbers cannot be properly assessed for their accuracy.

Mozambique's ruling party, FRELIMO, on Monday announced Armando Guebuza as its candidate in the 2004 elections following President Joaquim Chissano's announcement earlier this year that he will not stand for a third term.

Sanctions against Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe and his regime must be stepped up, Labour MEP Glenys Kinnock has told the European Union. As Mr Mugabe attended a United Nations conference in Italy, despite an EU visa ban, Mrs Kinnock called on European nations to increase the pressure for change in his country. She said: "Mugabe is using these UN meetings to parade himself in Europe in defiance of our ban, while the people in his country suffer because of his policies."

The G-8 meeting in Kananaskis should introduce more concrete initiatives for protecting human rights into its action plan for Africa, Human Rights Watch has urged. Human Rights Watch also called for new controls on companies based in G-8 countries that illegally trade in resources from Africa and elsewhere. "If the G-8 can attack terrorism by freezing financial assets, it can attack human rights abuse by cracking down on companies that trade in 'blood diamonds,' valuable timber, and other scarce resources that are funding some very brutal civil wars," said Rory Mungoven, global advocacy director at Human Rights Watch.

Reggie Mugwara, director of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Harare-based Food and Natural Resources (FANR) unit has criticised regional governments for not learning the lessons of the last great food crisis in 1991/92. Given the impact of economic reform programmes, and the realities of the increased vulnerability of rural households, he called for a re-think of agricultural policies - gearing them to benefit smallholder farmers. He also urged a regional response to tackle the crisis of food security.

Thousands of residents were forced to flee into a nearby forest when Rwandan-backed Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD-Goma) forces attacked the town of Kampene, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, Missionary Service News Agency (Misna) reported on Saturday.

The governor of Burundi's Ruyigi Province, Isaac Bujaba, has appealed for more humanitarian aid, saying that the repatriation of refugees to the area was "in full swing", government-run Radio and Television Nationale du Burundi reported. Appealing for food and non-food items, he said that if help was not received the situation could become "overwhelming" and "catastrophic".

Refugees worldwide suffered the repercussions of the tragic events of September 11, says the World Refugee Survey 2002, published today by the U.S. Committee for Refugees (USCR). The United States, preoccupied by security concerns in the wake of the attacks on New York and Washington, temporarily shut down the refugee resettlement program on October 1. As a result, the United States admitted fewer refugees in 2001 than in any year since 1987. Thousands of refugees in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and elsewhere who expected to go to the United States became stuck where they were, often in places where they were at risk. "At a time when freedom is under attack, the world is turning its back on people fleeing war, persecution, and terror in search of freedom," said USCR executive director Lavinia Limón. "This indifference towards refugees undermines our stated values."

Sinje camps, near Liberia's border with Sierra Leone, are still inaccessible to humanitarian agencies, sources in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, told IRIN. The officer in charge of the World Food Programme (WFP) in Liberia, Felix Gomez, said that hopes of accessing Sinje were further dashed by recent reports of skirmishes in the surrounding areas.

The resettlement of internally displaced Sierra Leoneans in the formerly inaccessible districts of Kono and Tonkolili started on Tuesday last week and will continue to the end of June, an official in the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Activities (OCHA) told IRIN.

Some 80,000 former fighters of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) have been disarmed and assembled at demobilization camps, a UNITA spokesman said Monday.

Liberian President Charles Taylor said on Monday his forces had captured a northern rebel stronghold, but a rebel spokesman denied the claim. Rebels have stepped up their campaign against Taylor in recent months with attacks near the coastal capital Monrovia.

Some 68 opposition leaders in Equatorial Guinea have been sentenced to jail terms ranging from six to 20 years for reportedly plotting to overthrow President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, news agencies reported on Monday.

Food, that most basic of human needs, is in critically short supply for nearly one in every eight people on Earth. "Every day, more than 800 million people worldwide - among them 300 million children - suffer the gnawing pain of hunger, and the diseases or disabilities caused by malnutrition," UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan told delegates at the World Food Summit: Five Years Later, which took place in Rome.

Kenyan authorities are threatening to repatriate hundreds of Ethiopian and Somali refugees rounded up in a police sweep in Nairobi on May 30, 2002. If returned, many could face arbitrary arrest, torture, and other serious abuses in their countries of origin. "The Kenyan government must not return people to the hands of their abusers," said Alison Parker, refugee policy fellow at Human Rights Watch.

Amadou Toumani Toure has been sworn in as the new president of Mali, during a ceremony in the capital Bamako on Saturday attended by 11 other francophone African leaders. Making democratic history, Malians witnessed for the first time one constitutionally elected leader handing power to another duly elected president.