(IRIN) – Hundreds of religious leaders running Koranic schools in Senegal are keeping their students in “slave-like” conditions, forcing them into exploitative labour through begging on the streets and depriving them of food or medicines, says US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) in a new report.

The governments of Senegal and Guinea-Bissau, Islamic leaders and parents are failing to stop the practice and protect children from such exploitation and abuse, it says.

“As the forced begging is done with a view towards exploitation, it is a practice akin to slavery,” says HRW. “For at least 50,000 children in Senegal, economic exploitation is masquerading as religious education, as children are forced to beg for long hours to benefit the teacher, and are subjected to severe physical abuse for failing to meet his quota,” Matthew Wells, report author, told IRIN.

These children, who live with a `marabout’ (religious leader) and attend his school or `daara’ are known as ‘talibés’ in Senegal. Over half of them are under age 10 and some as young as four. They spend over seven hours each day pacing the streets to reach their quota – on average 87 US cents – and the “overwhelming majority” HRW spoke to, are regularly beaten if they do not bring back the full amount.

Some 99 percent of the `talibés’ HRW spoke to must beg for their own food and medicines.

“When I could not bring the quota, the `marabout’ beat me – even if I lacked five CFA [francs], he beat me. It was always the `marabout’ himself,” a 13-year-old former `talibé’ told HRW. “He took out the electric cable and… I stood there and… he hit me over and over, generally on the back but at times he missed and hit my head.”

Read more – http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88828

IPS - The past week brought new scrutiny of Zimbabwe’s human rights record with the deportation of a senior U.N. official sent to investigate torture there, and demands by a coalition of civil society groups that the international community address human rights violations stemming from Zimbabwe’s lucrative diamond industry.

Special Rapporteur Manfred Nowak had been invited to Zimbabwe by Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition party leader and prime minister, but Tsvangirai cut off cooperation with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF, leading to Nowak’s deportation.

Upon his arrival in Harare on Oct. 29, Nowak was denied entry to Zimbabwe and sent back to Johannesburg.

“The president feels it is not a good thing if an independent human rights expert is assessing the situation of torture and ill-treatment in the country,” said Nowak at his arrival in Johannesburg.

Read more – http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49110

UNICEF – Zambian President, His Excellency, Mr. Rupiah Bwezani Banda, today launched the National Communication Strategy against Gender-based Violence. The President called on all stakeholders to ensure that there is enough information through all media channels to empower the Zambian people to fully realize their rights and campaign against gender-based violence. He said gender-based violence is now the number two scourge in the country, next only to HIV and AIDS, in ravaging local society.

The theme of the campaign is “Abuse, Just Stop It.”

“HIV/AIDS has become the nation’s number one enemy. Second is the sexual- and gender-based violence, and almost silent is the problem of human trafficking,” said President Banda.

The President has declared zero tolerance against perpetrators of these gross human rights violations.

Read more – http://www.unicef.org/media/media_51566.html

The Congolese government’s military operation in eastern Congo, Kimia II, backed by United Nations peacekeepers and aimed at neutralizing the threat from a Rwandan Hutu militia group, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), has resulted in an unacceptable cost for the civilian population, said 84 humanitarian and human rights groups in the Congo Advocacy Coalition today.

The coalition urged diplomats and UN officials, who are due to meet in Washington, DC, this week to discuss the situation in eastern Congo and the wider region, to take immediate steps to increase protection for civilians.

“The human rights and humanitarian consequences of the current military operation are simply disastrous,” said Marcel Stoessel of Oxfam. “UN peacekeepers, who have a mandate to protect civilians, urgently need to work with government forces to make sure civilians get the protection they need or discontinue their support.”

Read more – http://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressrelease/2009-10-13/dr-congo-civilian-cost-military-operation-unacceptable

Michael Mann has stated in ‘The Dark Side of Democracy’ (2003) that ethnic and religious conflicts continue to simmer around the world and the death toll in the 20th century for them is somewhere over 70 million. Above 80% of people killed in wars during the 90s were civilians in civil wars, mostly ethnic in nature, which have taken over from interstate or conventional ideology based wars. Displacement, bloodshed and a very convoluted conflict are not new to Congo, which continues to reverberate from the violent aftershocks of Rwanda’s genocide in 1994. After Hutu death squads exterminated hundreds of thousands of Tutsi in Rwanda, only to be stopped by the Rwandan Patriotic Front’s take over of the country in July the same year, many killers fled into eastern Congo in what became known as the Great Lakes refugee crisis. The Hutu militias have regrouped, and United Nations officials blame them for terrorizing civilians, especially women, although they claim to have no part in these atrocities (Gettlemen. J, 2007). Read more…