Subj: Africanews feb. 2000 - Date: 2/16/00 8:31:41 AM Eastern Standard Time

AFRICANEWS - News and Views on Africa from Africa - Issue 47 - February 2000

Human Rights

By Stephen Amin

Fourteen school children and a teacher in the rural Nuba mountains were killed in what many believe is the Khartoum's government move to coerce civilians to go to peace camps. This is an eye witness report on the incident.

On the morning of Tuesday February 8, around nine o'clock, a Russian made Antonov plane belonging to the Sudanese

AFRICANEWS - News and Views on Africa from Africa - Issue 45 - December 1999
Peace

by Mary Kimani

It was expected that nine Great Lakes region presidents would attend the meeting in Arusha, Tanzania to carve a way forward for a fragile Burundi peace process thrown apart by the death of facilitator, former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere. At the end of it only five Presidents and two prime ministers came.

When it was over the presidents of Burundi, Kenya, South Africa, Tanzanian and Uganda and the Prime Ministers of Ethiopia

KHARTOUM - As the world prepares for the year 2000, many Sudanese victims of this year's floods would be among those welcoming the new year in pain. For them, the beginning of the year would not be a good reason for happiness, for it would be the extension of 1999, a year of floods and agonies in the Sudan.

The floods affected millions of Sudan's population this year and have imposed a pessimism that overshadows the thinking of the victims. Their difficult struggle for food, shelter, medical and other services have made them feel that the future has nothing good in store for them.

Nairobi - At least 250,000 people in Sudan's Bahr El Ghazal region are threatened with starvation, the Catholic Bishop of Diocese of Rumbek, Monsignor Caesar Mazzolari, has said.

Speaking here last week, Mazzolari said: "There are undeniable signs of hunger in the counties of Yirol, Rumbek and North Tonj as a result of a severe drought... Even though the local people have planted twice or thrice since April, no harvest is expected due to failed rains".

Mazzolari, together with his counterparts from Sudan, attended the 13th Plenary Assembly of the Association of Member

by Sheila Mesa in Geneva

Nairobi - As the Sierra Leone peace talks in Northern Togo continue to stall, Sierra Leoneans remain sceptical of its outcome. The announcement that the government is willing to offer three cabinet and some other bureaucratic positions to the rebels of the Revolutionary United Front is met with mixed feelings by the Sierra Leonean public.

They expressed very strong feelings that the way the talks are going, the government and the international negotiators are determined to reward the rebels for their atrocities. This, many believed,

by Stephen Mbogo in Nairobi

JOHANNESBURG - Child malnutrition in Angola is now believed to have reached levels worse than at any previous time in over 20 years of civil war, according to a new report published last week.

The report, based on the results of a survey in the besieged government-held central highlands city of Huambo by Save the Children Fund (UK), Concern and Angola's Ministry of Health, "provides startling evidence" of the plight of Angola's population, an SCF spokesman said.

The survey conducted in May, showed that

Nairobi - Investigations by an international team during March and April have identified the epidemic that has ravaged Rumbek County since last year as louse-borne relapsing fever.

Consequently, a plan of outbreak control has been constituted in consideration of the local circumstances. The action plan is "based on local surveillance, tiered responses by primary health care personnel and community health workers supported by NGOs," according to a preliminary report of the investigation team.

The team comprised Rumishael Shoo, M.

Alexandria, Virginia - The following document was released by the International Strategic Studies Association on October 9, 1998:

A new offer of mediation has been made to end the deadlock in the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, it was announced today in Washington DC. Prince Ermias Sahle-Selassie Haile-Selassie, President of the Crown Council of Ethiopia and grandson of the late Emperor Haile Selassie, made the offer at the International Strategic Studies Association's closed-door conference, Strategy'98: The Global Strategic Forum, in Washington DC this week.

There are signs that the United Nations Observer Mission in Angola (MONUA) is struggling to meet its international obligations as military attacks by the rebel movement UNITA increase. The decision by the UN Security Council on 29 April to cut the size of MONUA's troops from 1,045 to 450 by the end of June has reduced the ability of MONUA to verify government allegations of attacks by UNITA, at the same time as military tension has risen in the country. In a last ditch attempt to resurrect the deadlocked peace process the UN Secretary General's Special