With the continued influx of illegal immigrants into Maun, local authorities have launched a major move counter the situation. Maun District Commissioner Michael Maforaga dispatched trucks to fetch 14 more refugees from Shakawe, so they could be locked up in jail cells before facing repatriation. But a member of Women Against Rape (WAR) said Maun suffers from a more serious problem than is seen on the surface.

An Amnesty International (AI) research team has found widespread evidence of politically-motivated murder, torture, rape and violence. Tor-Hugne Olsen, head of the team, told IRIN on Wednesday that after spending a week in the country, they had established that such acts were "commonplace" and that the government was doing nothing to stop them.

The Mozambican public prosecuting authorities on Tuesday charged six people for the assassination of Carlos Cardoso, the editor of the independent newssheet, Metical. The six, who include businessman Ayob Abdul Satar and former bank manager Vicente Ramaya, were arrested following a six-month investigation.

In the White House earlier this month, U.S. President George Bush told Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo that the United States would continue to help train Nigerian troops as peacekeepers. This week en route to Mali, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters that President Bush's assurance represented an unbreakable promise, despite Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's intention to reduce overseas commitments by the Pentagon.

South Africa yesterday for the first time publicly criticised the illegal occupation of white-owned farms by self-styled veterans of Zimbabwe's 1970s independence war and their attacks on private companies and foreign aid organisations ostensibly on behalf of discontented workers. In the clearest sign yet of a shift by Pretoria from its policy of quiet diplomacy on Harare, Jeremiah Ndou, South Africa's High Commissioner to Zimbabwe, said in a statement that his country strongly condemned the current wave of company invasions.

Burundi army officers failed to turn up in Arusha today for a scheduled meeting with eight pro-Tutsi political parties. The meeting was to have addressed Burundi's transitional leadership. The eight parties are opposed to the current Burundi leader Pierre Buyoya leading the first phase of a three-year transitional plan proposed by Nelson Mandela, the facilitator of the Burundi peace talks.

Uganda, Rwanda and Congolese rebels have all described as evil-minded, senseless and ridiculous a new report in which the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) accused them of involvement in the assassination of the former Congolese President, Laurent Desire Kabila, in January. The report, released on Wednesday in the capital Kinshasa, said international intelligence agencies were also implicated but did not specify which.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan sounded an alarm Sunday that climate change "may well be the greatest global challenge" for the next generation, while expressing the "concern throughout the world" over the recent U.S. decision to reject the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.

The White House decided last week to nominate U.N. Vatican representative John Klink to head the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, overruling Secretary of State Colin Powell's choice for the position, the New York Times reports. The selection "marks the second time the White House has taken an antiabortion stance in the area of foreign policy and international population efforts" (referring to President Bush's executive order to ban U.S. funding of international organizations that use their own funds to provide or promote abortion), and is a "setback" for Powell, who, unlike Klink, supports abortion rights.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said today that the sentencing of human rights defender Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim to seven years' imprisonment is "alarming". The Supreme State Security Court sentenced Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Director of the Ibn Khaldoun Center for Development Studies in Cairo, and 27 co-defendants to between one and seven year prison terms. Charges included accepting foreign funds without authorization, disseminating false information harmful to Egypt's interest and embezzlement.

At the invitation of the Great Socialist Peoples' Arab Libyan Jamahiriya, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights held, under the Chairmanship of Professor Emmanuel V. O. Dankwa, its 29th Ordinary Session from 23rd April to 7th May 2001 in Tripoli, Libya.

To mark the tenth anniversary of the coming to power of the ruling Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), ARTICLE 19 today publishes a report exploring what progress has been made towards eliminating the
censorship dimensions of famine in Ethiopia over the past decade. Andrew Puddephatt, Executive Director of ARTICLE 19, said: "The apparent return of famine to Ethiopia in 1999-2000 suggests that, despite the progress that has been made since 1991 by the ruling EPRDF in strengthening freedom of expression, including access to information, much more remains to be done. If, as Nobel prize winning economist Amartya Sen argues, poverty and famine are forms of 'unfreedom', then it makes it literally a matter of life and death that those who govern Ethiopia push forward urgently with the process of deepening and consolidating respect for fundamental human rights and democratic principles."

One of twenty-six hostages captured by Mai-Mai militia in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) begged for international help in a taped message heard by Human Rights Watch today. Bjoern Rugsten, a truck supplier for DARA-Forest, a Thai-Ugandan logging company, was visiting the compound of the enterprise near the town of Mangina, when he was abducted on May 15, along with a Kenyan and twenty-four Thai nationals.

A new report on global warming by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change points to an unusual paradox in sub-Saharan Africa. Although the region has the lowest emissions of the greenhouse gases that are the major cause of climate change, it is the most vulnerable to the effects of global warming.

Contact Details: HUREPI CENTRE FOR PEACE AND HUMAN RIGHTS STUDIES
P.O.BOX 14963,ARUSHA,TANZANIA
Contact Name:Mr.Peter O.B.MCOMALLA
Contact e-mail: [email protected]
TEL:255-27-2501081
HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION AND PEACE INTERNATIONAL or in short HUREPI-TRUST incorporating the HUREPI CENTRE FOR PEACE AND HUMAN RIGHTS STUDIES based in Arusha Tanzania has launched a long term HUMAN RIGHTS AND PEACE EDUCATION PROJECT.
-Currently Hurepi-Trust is performing the Training
courses in:-
Education for Conflict Resolution in Schools
Education for Peace(Creating Peaceable
Schools)
Education for Citizenship/Democracy/Good
Governance
Human Rights Education
The main purpose is to introduce a culture of Peace and respect for human rights to all.
-During its programmes,it also organizes,conduct training courses in the field of International Human Rights.

Start Date: July 21, 2001
End Date: August 18, 2001
Location: The Netherlands
The Institute for International Mediation and Conflict Resolution (IIMCR) invites students and young professionals to apply to the four-week International Student Symposium on Negotiation and Conflict Resolution.
The objectives of the symposium are to offer participants the following opportunities:
1) to understand the phenomenon of deadly conflict and to examine the resources that exist to undertake action against it in all levels of society.
2) to develop understandings of ways and skills to prevent or confront conflict.
3) to bridge the gap between theory and practice. 4) to learn about other views and cultures from peers and guests.
5) a forum for career guidance as well as an opportunity to network with others who share common ground.
6) encouragement and assistance in putting the skills learned into practice.
7) to promote the spread of these activities in the participants’ home environments.
8) to develop an international network of young conflict management professionals and volunteers.
E-mail: [email][email protected]

Fears are rising that if American evangelicals continue to focus exclusively on the religious dimensions of the Sudanese war, there could be a backlash from Islamic fundamentalists, thus intensifying the conflict. Analysts, mainstream Church officials, and aid workers are worried that the stance taken by the Christian Right might jeopardize relief operations and precipitate a humanitarian crisis in Sudan. They note that the Americans are oversimplifying a war that has economic, cultural and political elements.

The international community has agreed to seek a moratorium on debt service payments for the world's most highly- indebted countries in "exceptional" situations - such as those plagued by civil wars, floods and natural disasters - and to facilitate access to debt relief for post-conflict countries. "A historic decision, is what we call it," said Swedish trade minister Leif Pagrotsky, who served as president of the Third UN Conference on Least Developed Countries (LDC-III). "And that is on top of the present process going on to reduce debt for the least developed countries. This is a new step forward in that area".

Conflict over natural resources, such as land, water, and forests, occurs everywhere today, as it has for centuries. Whether it be a local dispute between neighbouring farmers or an international debate over shared resources such as a waterway, people compete for the natural resources they need to ensure or enhance their quality of life. Conflict can even be seen as “a normal feature of natural resource manage-ment,” says Jacqueline Ashby, Director of Research at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture. The conflict may unfold as a simple war of words or it may escalate to armed confrontation with loss of life.

UNITA has promised to search for and return about 60 children kidnapped by its soldiers during an attack on a children's home in Caxito, about 55 km outside the capital Luanda. Without accepting responsibility for the kidnappings, the rebel movement said in a communiqué released on Tuesday that "the UNITA General Staff has ordered a strict inquiry aimed at identifying children who might have been forced to accompany the Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FALA) in the wake of the 5 May 2001 raid ... ". It said the children would be handed over the closest Catholic mission if they were found.