The leaders of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), John Garang, and of the Sudan People’s Defence Force (SPDF), Riek Machar, on Monday announced that the two forces had formally merged under the name SPLM/SPLA and agreed on collective leadership, on the basis that unity was "paramount for the success of the liberation struggle".

In a recently released preliminary report, Rwanda's Ministry of Local Government and Social Affairs says that 1,074,017 people were killed in massacres and genocide between 1 October 1991 and 31 December 1994, Radio Rwanda reported on Monday.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Tuesday condemned the execution of a man on the order of a Sharia court in Nigeria, and urged the Nigerian authorities not carry out the death sentences of such courts.

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The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, is to close its offices in seven West African countries because of a shortage of funds.

The Egyptian Minster of Justice Couns. Farouk Saif Al Nassr announced on Wednesday, 2 January 2002, that a new bill for Egypt's ratification to the ICC Statute has been drafted among 14 new laws aiming at reforming the structure of the Egyptian legal system. The 14 bills deal with judicial, economic, and penal issues.

4 men have recently been sentenced to amputation of the right hand in Sudan. The punishment of amputation is against the Government of Sudan’s international obligations, with regard to article 5 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and article 7 of The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

On 25 December 2001, three men form Northern Darfur were executed with death by handing after being convicted for robbery under Articles 167 and 168 of the 1991 Penal Code which state that the punishment for armed robbery (harraba) death and death followed by crucifixion.

Eritrea and Ethiopia surprised the world by going to war in May 1998 over the position of their common border, ending seven years of peace. A peace agreement signed in December 2000 brought hopes of a new era of reconciliation and rehabilitation. What challenges now face the two nations and their peoples, the region and the international community? Is peace sustainable?

Zambian ruling party candidate Levy Mwanawasa has been sworn in as president amid high controversy after the tightest election since independence in 1964.

The creation of this investigation committee is a consequence of the debates held in the Commission for Foreign Relations on 8 December 1999 following the publication of the book “The Murder of Lumumba” by Ludo De Witte. Besides reaching conclusions about Belgian responsibilities in the murder of the first Prime Minister of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba (and his fellow-victims Okito and M’polo), it was also the intention to instigate a debate on colonisation and decolonisation.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has authorised a war crimes tribunal to be set up in Sierra Leone despite a big shortfall in funding pledges from the world body's member-nations.

Victims and survivors of the 1980s Matabeleland genocide have renewed their call for the arrest and prosecution of President Robert Mugabe and his security and defence ministers for crimes against humanity.

There is a one in 20 chance of a dramatic rise in world sea levels over the next century due to global warming, according to a new risk assessment. The survey -- by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and Norwegian environmental safety organisation, Det Norske Veritas -- said there was a five percent chance of the giant West Antarctic Ice Sheet disintegrating due to climate change and raising sea levels by one metre (yard) in the next 100 years.

In the past decade the situation in Nigeria’s oil belt - the Niger Delta, has been characterised by restiveness among the local communities. The over seven million people in the region -source of most of the oil that is the lifeblood of Nigeria's economy - feel cheated of the wealth pumped from their soil.

Nigeria continued last year to reap a grim harvest of ethnic and religious violence, as it had in 2000, which began with clashes that claimed over 2,000 lives in the northern city of Kaduna, and ended with fighting in Lagos in which hundreds died.

Leaders of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) decided at their 25th summit in Dakar, Senegal, to set up special police units to combat trafficking in humans beings usually children and women -, the UN News service reported. They also decided that special training would be provided for police, customs and immigration officials, prosecutors and judges.

Amnesty International (AI)called on the UN Security Council to take a lead role in urging the international community to provide adequate protection and assistance to internally displaced people (IDPs) in Liberia.

The U.S-Russian decisions about their nuclear arsenals are going to set the pace for the whole show. If we decide that we have to have 2,000 nuclear weapons in the year 2010, we are guaranteed that other poorer nations will say, as India has already said, that they don't want to live with nuclear apartheid. The two-tier world, to use a phrase beloved by the strategist, is an unstable world. It's got to go one way or the other. Either it's going to go to zero nuclear weapons, or it's going to go to a much fuller proliferation.

The Nigerian government could and should have prevented mass killings in Jos in September, Human Rights Watch said in a detailed report. As many as one thousand people are believed to have been killed in just six days as Jos, capital of Plateau State, was rocked by unprecedented violence between Christians and Muslims.