Racism may be described as a 'polysemous' concept: it has many meanings that serve many purposes. At one extreme, our racism as belonging to the human race unites us and sets us apart from all other animals. At the other extreme, racism arising from distorted views of ethnicity, culture and nationalism is a fundamental property that separates individual humans. In between are the many forms of racism that can cause or be associated with social inequality, hatred, polarisation and gross disparities in wealth and privilege. Racism is not any one thing. Rather it is a social invention made up of a complex mixture of ingredients.

Presidents Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda vowed on Tuesday to set up mechanisms to improve their relations by ensuring that dissident groups do not destablise each other's governments, news organisations reported.

The Federal Government has set up a judicial commission of inquiry into the Benue killings and warned that it was now an offence for anybody to treat any Nigerian resident in any part of the country, other than his state of origin, as a non-indigene or a settler.

Sierra Leone's government and Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels agreed on Thursday to take "immediate action to facilitate fast disarmament" in all the country's districts by 30 November, a statement from the UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) said.

Sanctions against UNITA have reduced Jonas Savimbi's capacity to wage an expensive conventional war against the Angolan state, but according to analysts and a detailed UN report, they have not reduced the rebel movement's ability to indefinitely embroil the battered country in a state of war.

The Botswana government is going ahead with a constitutional amendment following a controversial referendum in which only five percent of registered voters bothered to cast their ballot.

After 16 years of instability and sporadic internal conflict in Uganda, this year so far has seen political and social gains that have reduced the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance fall from 1.1 million to around 717,000 - a reduction of 35 percent, according to the latest United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) situation update.

Somalis from every walk of life have been reacting with dismay, anger and fear to the decision last week by the US government to order the closure the Al-Barakaat money transfer company, one of Somalia's biggest, which is also the only source of income for tens of thousands of destitute Somalis.

An estimated 44,387 Eritrean internally displaced persons (IDPs) remain in eight camps in Gash-Barka and Debub provinces, the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) said in a press briefing on 9 November.

Burundian troops have killed 162 rebels in five days of fighting in the provinces of Ruyigi and Bururi, army spokesman Col. Augustin Nzabampema told IRIN on Thursday.

Aid workers say they are expecting another 2,500 displaced people on Friday in the besieged eastern Burundi town of Ruyigi, as rebels of the Forces pour la defense de la democratie scour the area looting and sometimes kidnapping school children.

The president of the Transitional National Government (TNG), of Somalia, Abdiqassim Salad Hassan, on Monday announced the appointment of Hasan Abshir Farah as his new prime minister, the TNG director of information told IRIN.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called on all parties to the 1999 Lusaka peace accord to "fulfill their important responsibilities", noting that "the peace process in the Democratic Republic of Congo may be at a turning point".

Chad's government does not plan to extradite the former military chief of the Central African Republic (CAR), who fled to Chad on Friday after several days of fighting in the CAR capital Bangui, Chadian government spokesman Moukhatar Wawa Dahab told IRIN on Monday.

The 11 September terror attacks on New York and Washington have dealt a severe blow to economic growth prospects in the developing world, and according to analysts, are likely to also undermine current debt reduction strategies.

Four EU diplomats, who had been recalled from Eritrea in protest against the expulsion in October by the Eritrean authorities of the Italian ambassador, have arrived back in the capital, Asmara.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson has urged Burundi's newly installed transitional government to respect and protect the human rights of all Burundians in the ethnically charged nation.

On Wednesday 31 October the security forces arrested four lawyers and two leading members of the Communist Party. The men have not been charged although officers alleged the lawyers had held an illegal meeting. The whereabouts of the men is currently unknown.

The High Court has asked counsel for the 33 opposition UDP supporters arrested by police in the wake of the presidential election, to find out within 48 hours if they had been released from custody as stated by the Director of Public Prosecution.

As the rainy season begins in Mozambique, aid organisations and the government are still to complete contingency plans to help cope with the possible repeat of the flood disasters that have hit the country for two-years running.