Overseas news archive

30.09.2005 As the Interim Legislative Council of southern Sudan, which brings together many former military and political adversaries, was officially inaugurated in Juba, hundreds of thousands of Sudanese were trekking home in a previously unreported migration of displaced people.

30.09.2005 A Belgian judge has issued an international arrest warrant charging Chad’s former dictator Hissène Habré - now living in Senegal - with atrocities during his 1982-90 rule.

30.09.2005 Fears are growing in Uganda that the country is once again heading for dictatorship and misrule.

30.09.2005 Tunisia's continuing rights abuses make it an unsuitable place to hold this year's United Nations World Summit on the Information Society, concludes the latest report of the Tunisia Monitoring Group.

30.09.2005 New country-by-country data reveal inadequate progress on protecting children and women from vaccine-preventable diseases, despite the availability of low-cost vaccines, according to a new UNICEF study.

30.09.2005 European Union plans to boost its sugar exports are condemned by a Make Trade Fair campaign because it will hurt poor farmers in developing countries.

29.09.2005 Five days after their leaders were arrested and beaten, the Kalahari Bushmen today learnt that their organisation, First People of the Kalahari, had won the "Alternative Nobel Prize" for "resolute resistance against eviction from their ancestral lands, and for upholding the right to their traditional way of life."
The organisation shares the Right Livelihood Award with activists from Canada, Malaysia and Mexico.

29.09.2005 Three Nepalese army officers found guilty of torturing and murdering a 15-year-old girl will probably not serve a single day in jail following a court martial ruling that highlights the impunity of the Royal Nepal Army, a leading rights group said today.

29.09.2005 Activists from Botswana, Canada, Malaysia and Mexico have won this year's Right Livelihood Award - the "alternative Nobel Peace Prize".

29.09.2005 Continuing violence in the Sudanese region of Darfur is hindering humanitarian efforts and creating a chaotic situation there, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Jan Egeland, warned this week.

29.09.2005 President Robert Mugabe’s drive to win wealthy and uncritical friends in East Asia is doing little to rescue the economy.

29.09.2005 Four representatives of a grassroots organisation fighting for the rights of the Gana and Gwi Bushmen to return to their ancestral homeland have allegedly been beaten in custody since their arrest on 24 September.

29.09.2005 Opium production must be made legal in Afghanistan to end the country's heroin addiction crisis and bolster its economy, says an international drug policy think-tank.

29.09.2005 European Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson has been urged to stop using "hyperbole and half-truths" to persuade developing countries that opening their markets to European big business will help the poor and to admit the extent of opposition to his free-trade proposals for Africa, Caribbean and Pacific countries.

29.09.2005 The proportion of illiterates in Tibet increased by more than 10 per cent in 2003, to 55 per cent, according to new figures.

28.09.2005 Political, military and ethnic tensions in the North-Kivu province of Congo threaten to provoke armed conflict that could destabilise the country’s fragile peace process.

28.09.2005 Infecting crops with a fungus could be an alternative to genetically modifying them to boost yields, say scientists.

28.09.2005 Current efforts to prevent two lakes in north western Cameroon from releasing toxic gasses and killing nearby inhabitants, as they have done in the past, are insufficient, say researchers.

27.09.2005 European banks are setting a huge new oil-backed loan for Angola, one of the most corrupt and impoverished countries in the world, reports Global Witness.

27.09.2005 The leaders of a group of 28 Bushmen, which included seven children, have been arrested by Botswana police as they tried to enter their ancestral homeland, the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.