Thousands of Liberian troops have been sent to the country's troubled northern border with Guinea where the rebels control a number of towns. Officials said the troops had launched simultaneous counter-attacks on the rebel held towns of Foya, Kolahun, Vahun, Voinjama and Zorzor.

Zimbabwe Information Minister Jonathan Moyo has dismissed reports that President Robert Mugabe's governing party has suffered a setback in the High Court. The court nullified the result of last year's election in two constituencies on Thursday, including one contested and lost by the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai.

A Rwandan bishop who was arrested in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on Thursday has been charged with genocide and conspiracy to commit crimes against humanity by a UN tribunal in Tanzania.

Zambia's vice president and 10 government ministers are to boycott a special ruling party congress meeting called to extend President Frederick Chiluba's rule.

Six workers for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have been killed in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the organisation says.

The Health Ministry of the Somali Transitional Government has currently undertaken a health program aimed at orientating the public towards the dangers of AIDS for the human being.

COSATU’s Central Executive Committee today, at its scheduled meeting of 24-26 April, discussed the serious implications of recent allegations made by the Minister of Safety and Security in connection with alleged threats to the safety of the President, and its linkage to processes of contestation over political leadership
positions in the ANC.

Reverend Leon H. Sullivan, convener of the 6th African-African American Summit and world leader on Africa and related issues has succumbed to leukemia, announced his daughter, Hope Sullivan Rose.

The prospect of a new international treaty on forced disappearances is the top achievement of this year's United Nations Commission on Human Rights, which ends April 27 in Geneva, Human Rights Watch said today.

The truth about the Etireno may be less dramatic than first suggested, but far more typical of west and central Africa's exploding trade in children - and far more insidious for that.

Libya's leader, Muammar Gaddafi, has urged Africans to drive white people out of the continent and make them pay compensation for their exploitation of it.

The expected arrival in South Africa of former US President Bill Clinton to address a Civil Society Initiative (CSI) gathering Tuesday has been met with angry protests from the Confederation of South African Trade Unions (COSATU).

As civil society organisations prepare to converge on Durban for the World Conference Against Racism's NGO Forum in August, South African civil society will be uniting to face the challenges of transforming racism in the country.

Michael Portillo, the UK shadow chancellor, yesterday provoked fresh accusations of disunity within Tory ranks when he refused to sign an anti-racism pledge backed by the party leader, William Hague, amid what one shadow minister called a "McCarthyite witch-hunt" by race equality leaders.

A panel of experts on the plundering of natural resources in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) recommended Monday that the Security Council declare an embargo on trade in gold and diamonds and other resources from or to Burundi, Rwanda, and Uganda.

Foreign armies and criminal cartels are finding the phenomenal mineral wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) too hard to resist, said a United Nations report on the war that continues to ravage the central African nation.

The International Secretariat of OMCT requests your URGENT intervention in the following situation in Rwanda. The International Secretariat of OMCT has been informed by Agir Ensemble pour les Droits de l'Homme, a member of the OMCT network, of the disappearance of Mr. Olivier Mubiligi, since the beginning of March, 2001, following death threats allegedly made by the Rwandan Patriotic Army.

Human Rights Watch urged the United Nations Security Council today to take action against the looting of resources by foreign troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo and address the devastating human rights abuses being committed by the same troops.

The restoration of relative calm in southwestern Guinea has enabled the World Food Programme (WFP) to provide emergency food rations to 25,000 refugees in Kolomba camp, located in the Parrot's Beak, WFP said in a communique on Thursday.

Beninese police yesterday questioned the children found on the MV Etireno, a vessel originally believed to be carrying 250 enslaved children, the police agency said. While it is now believed that the Etireno did not transport slaves, the incident has drawn attention to the problem of child slavery in other African nations.