A symbolic weapons burning ceremony took place at Lungi, north of the capital Freetown, on Friday to mark the end of a decade of civil conflict in Sierra Leone. During the event 3,000 weapons and hundreds of rounds of ammunition were destroyed, Francis Kai-Kai, Executive Secretary of the National Committee for Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration, told IRIN on Friday.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has welcomed Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's assurances of a free and fair election in March, but says he is "acutely" concerned by the promulgation of a battery of restrictive laws in the troubled southern African country.

Presidential candidate Marc Ravalomanana has called on his supporters to return to the streets in protest following a High Constitutional Court ruling on Wednesday to recount votes cast in presidential polls on 16 December.

The head of the Ethiopian Orthodox church has warned about the spread of AIDS in a sermon marking the country's holiest day. Patriarch Abune Paulos, in an address to celebrate Ethiopian Epiphany, urged the community to provide support and show compassion to victims of the virus.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has released a CD-ROM containing the decisions and papers from the court's first five years of operation, the first such conference tool the UN has produced in international criminal justice, the world body reported on Thursday.

The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has agreed to help those among the 345,000 Burundi refugees in Tanzania return home, but said it was not calling for an immediate repatriation because of continuing insecurity in Burundi.

Representatives of the political opposition and civil society of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) - meeting in Brussels this week to discuss the future of their country - signed a 14-page document on Thursday aimed at paving the way towards the inter-Congolese dialogue.

The enduring phenomenon of internal displacement is one of the most evident and acute effects of the civil war in Sudan, which has been raging since 1983.

The government of Sudan and the rebel Sudanese People's Liberation Movement/Army from the Nuba Mountains (SPLM/A-Nuba) on Saturday signed a renewable six-month cease-fire agreement for the area in Southern Kordofan, south-central Sudan.

Worry over possible US attacks on Somalia has prompted an exodus from urban areas to the countryside for safety reasons, a senior official of Somalia's Transitional National Government (TNG) told IRIN on Monday.

Hundreds of people fled a rural town in Nigeria’s northern Katsina State fearing reprisal attacks after a mob killed seven policemen, residents said on Monday.

A new report from the United Nations Refugee Agency, UNHCR, paints a fascinating picture of how asylum seeking has developed and changed over the last two decades. And it is a measure of the rapid rate of change that countries from which people were fleeing in the early eighties are now in their turn actually becoming havens for those seeking asylum.

The Somali opposition grouping, Somali Reconciliation and Restoration Council (SRRC), on Friday urged the international community to step in and resolve once and for all the civil conflict that has blighted the war-ravaged country since 1991.

The Lutheran World Federation reports from Rwanda that tens of thousands of people fleeing a volcano near Goma, Congo, have made their way across the border into Rwanda seeking shelter in churches, schools and public buildings. Others are believed to have fled into the forests and along the shores of Lake Kivu. Some have already returned to their city to find lost loved ones.

The police are the first targets of an "aggressive war" on public corruption that has been launched in Kenya. Mr Swaleh Slim's anti-corruption police unit chose the graft-prone traffic police department as its first stop. Graft fighting experts will assess the magnitude of the problem in the police department before they move to other government departments perceived to be dens of corruption.

The arrest of a respected human rights lawyer underlines a consistent pattern of intimidation and harassment of human rights defenders in Cameroon, Amnesty International have said.

From January 28th 2002 highly waged people will be given freedom to move to the UK, under the new, Highly Skilled Migrant Programme (HSMP). High earners with exceptional skills, abilities or experience will be able to come to the UK to seek work The applicants will be assessed on a 'Money' - based system of qualifications and experience. To be considered for the scheme an applicant will need to obtain a minimum of 75 points from the five following areas: Past earnings - Educational qualifications - Work experience - Achievement in chosen field - suitably qualified doctors. HMSP, is just the latest piece in a long history of racist immigration rules. The vast majority (if not all) of immigration detainees, presently held in detention centres and prisons in the UK, come from the countries mentioned above. Very, very few of them would earn the sums quoted. HMSP, not only discriminates against these people but depletes these countries of badly needed skilled workers.

A long denial of its AIDS dilemma will transform Africa's smallest country into a destination for foreign migrant workers, to the dismay of a national leadership that seeks to keep the character of the traditional kingdom of Swaziland intact in the 21st century.

The European monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia has published its third report on developments in racism, xenophobia and Anti-Semitism in the EU Member States. The Annual Report 2000 was presented to the public in Brussels on the 18 December 2001. Read also our News Release. You may download an electronic version of the Report or fill in the order form if you prefer to receive a printed copy of EUMC publications.

A consortium of Nigerian lawyers opposed to the death penalty, are representing Safiya Husseini Tungar Tudu, the 30-year-old woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, in the northern state of Sokoto.