The International Secretariat of OMCT has been informed by the Observateurs des droits de l’Homme (CODHO), a member of OMCT, that Diyavanga Nkuyu, Mbumba Ilunga, Mwati Kabwe, Bosey Jean-Louis and Banga Djuna, 5 children condemned to death by the Military Court (COM, Cour d’Ordre Militaire), had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment. According to the same information, Nanasi Kisala was also condemned to death, but has not benefited from the presidential decision and is still awaiting execution.

Research by NIPILAR and the Restorative Justice Centre. November 2000. Further details on downloading the file by email are on the RJC website.

To create a forum and an enabling environment for the sharing of knowledge and expertise by private and public practitioners and researches in the criminal justice field focusing on modern criminal investigation, organized crime and human rights. The emphasis of this conference will be on global best practices, innovative investigative strategies and encouraging international co-operation and networking.

Although Zimbabwe is likely to face serious food shortages this year, the situation is not likely to lead to the predicted flood of refugees entering neighbouring countries, observers and civic organisations told IRIN on Friday. "Those with skills are leaving, but this is not a new phenomena," a foreign economic analyst told IRIN from Harare. Estimates suggest about 400,000 Zimbabweans have left in recent years, mainly for South Africa, Botswana, Britain and North America.

The evacuation of tens of thousands of refugees from the Parrot's Beak in southern Guinea is nearing completion, UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski said on Friday. He said about 2,000 refugees remaining in small groups in camps and villages inside the Beak, an insecure area wedged into Sierra Leone, would be transferred over the next two days to the Katkama transit camp to the north.

US President George W. Bush has prohibited the import of all rough diamonds from Liberia, the US State Department reported. Liberia is under UN sanctions for dealing in Sierra Leonean diamonds and otherwise supporting Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels.

On 24 May, Eritreans celebrated 10 years of independence from Ethiopian rule. In an address to the nation, Presidents Isayas Afewerki stressed the need to reduce the size of the army, swollen after the two year border conflict with Ethiopia in 1998, the pro-government Visafric news agency said. The demobilisation of enlisted soldiers and their reintegration into civilian society would reduce government expenditure on the military and generate economic growth, Isayas said.

A former MP is among 10 people sentenced to death in a ruling on genocide by a court in the northwestern town of Gisenyi, Rwandan radio reported on Saturday. It said Wellars Banzi, who was an MP under the former regime and an ex-chairman of the Mouvement republicain national pour le developpement (MRND), was among 54 people on trial for genocide. Twenty three others were sentenced to life imprisonment. He was found guilty of "inciting ethnic division" through articles he wrote for the extremist 'Kangura' newspaper.

The group of eight pro-Tutsi parties supporting Colonel Epitace Bayaganakandi as transitional president have issued a statement condemning the "unacceptable manipulation by the government and its associates aimed at avoiding the implementation of the Arusha agreement", the private Burundi news agency NetPress reported. It said the parties believed that a recent meeting brokered by the Italian San Egidio religious community which brought together the CNDD faction of Leonard Nyangoma, the hardline Tutsi PARENA party, the government, and ruling party UPRONA, as well as the recent visit to South Africa by President Pierre Buyoya were attempts to "exclude Bayaganakandi".

Research funded by the Jesuit Refugee Services (JRS) has found that 90 percent of respondents displaced by tribal land clashes feared to return home due to ongoing hostility, the Catholic NGO reported on Friday. Land clashes directly linked to the 1992 and 1997 multi-party elections in Kenya had prompted JRS to commission research to assess the situation of those displaced by the clashes and to identify warning signs that portended violence, it said.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Saturday urged Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi to step aside next year, when his term of office finishes under the constitution, and to let a new president be elected, the 'New York Times' reported. President Moi sidestepped direct questions as to whether he would stand again, saying that the destiny of Kenya was in the hands of the people themselves.

The JRS-backed Radio Kwizera has donated 50 solar powered free-play radio sets to schools in the refugee camps of Ngara and Biharamulo districts of Tanzania, the Catholic NGO Jesuit Refugee Services (JRS) reported on Friday. Forty six of the radios would be used by primary schools in the camps of Lukole, Lumasi and Kitali to monitor education programmes produced and broadcast by Radio Kwizera, it said.

Somalis in the self-declared state of Somaliland, northwestern Somalia, will be asked on 31 May to vote on a new constitution which includes an article on territorial independence. Somaliland independence was unilaterally declared in May 1991, but has never received international recognition. The declaration followed the collapse of Muhammad Siyad Barre's military dictatorship, which had pursued brutal policies in the north during the civil war of the 1980s. During a recent visit to the capital, Hargeysa, IRIN spoke to Somaliland President Muhammad Ibrahim Egal about independence, and the issue of past atrocities. A number of sites discovered in 1997 were identified by an international forensic team as having characteristics of mass graves, but no further investigation followed.

Sixty Angolan children abducted by UNITA forces earlier this month were freed on Friday, but an unknown number of juveniles remain captives within the rebel movement's ranks, humanitarian officials told IRIN. The children, along with two adults, were released at Camabatela in the northern province of Kwanza Norte. They had been abducted from an orphanage more than 300 km south run by the development agency ADPP, during an attack on the town of Caxito on 5 May.

Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe's government has been thrown into disarray by the death of the defence minister, Moven Mahachi, the second cabinet minister to die in a car accident in the past month. Mr Mahachi, 53, was killed late Saturday afternoon in a car accident in Zimbabwe's eastern mountain district of Nyanga. He had been one of Mr Mugabe's longest serving and most trusted allies. In 1975 he helped Mr Mugabe escape Rhodesian authorities by sneaking across the eastern border to Mozambique.

Senior army officers in Zimbabwe have secretly warned the South African government that they may launch a coup against Robert Mugabe if the growing political and economic crisis results in riots. Pretoria has strongly advised against any move to overthrow the Zimbabwean president by force but has been made aware of the circumstances in which it may be attempted.

The Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir, and the main rebel leader, John Garang of the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA), are to attend a summit aimed at ending the country's 18 year civil war. The peace summit, organised by the regional Inter-governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) is due to take place in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, in June.

Residents of the Central African Republic's capital, Bangui, have been fleeing continuing fighting between the presidential guard and rebellious soldiers. The authorities had said on Monday that they had the city under control, following what was described as a coup attempt against President Ange-Felix Patasse carried out by disgruntled soldiers.

South African investigators begin public hearings today into alleged corruption by senior politicians in the hugely controversial purchase of £4bn worth of weapons from European manufacturers. But scepticism about the effectiveness of the public protector's investigation - one of three by government agencies looking into the accusations of corruption - has grown as the African National Congress has sought to use its overwhelming majority in parliament to limit the political damage.

Racism is alive and well, and thriving in South Africa and the world at large. Racism is both overt and subliminal. Sometimes it is hard to distinguish the one from the other. Overt racism is in the face of the white farmer who shoots at black children crossing what he thinks of as his property, or in the face of the other white farmer who covers a black worker from top to toe in silver paint to make a point about what the farmer considers to be insubordination.