Search results for

One of President Mandela's promises for a new South Africa was improvements in housing for the country's poor. NPR's Ann Cooper revisited a refugee shelter in Johannesburg, where people who lost their homes in political violence five years ago are still living. She found that many of the residents are frustrated with the government and don't anticipate living in homes of their own in the near future.

in the eastern part of the country. They are making advances on the strategically crucial town of Kisangani. Refugees fleeing the advance say that rebels have slain scores of people in their path.

Korva speaks with NPR's Michael Skoler in Kinshasa, where the Zairian army is forcing United Nations aid workers to take crates of weapons and ammunition aboard their relief flights to a refugee camp in embattled eastern Zaire. Skoler says the Zairian government is arming former Rwandan Hutu soldiers in the camps to help them blunt an anti-goverment offensive by Zairian Tutsi rebel forces.

The BBC's Jane Standley reports from Goma, Zaire, on how that city has changed since Zairean rebels took it over last fall. Goma once was home to hundreds of thousands of Rwandan refugees. Today it is the de facto capital of rebel-held Zaire. People in the town generally welcome the rebels' presence. They are seen as less oppressive and corrupt than the Zairean government and its army.

NPR's Ann Cooper reports from Kigali on the relief community's efforts to resettle the roughly half-million Rwandan refugees who have returned from Zaire over the past few days. United Nations officials say that the process has been relatively orderly, given the massive numbers of people who suddenly started pouring across the border last Friday.

NPR's Anne Garrels reports from Moscow that the Russian national security chief, Alexander Lebed, is back in Chechnya trying to stop the most recent fighting. This second trip is raising hopes that he can close on a deal to end the war...a war that has killed at least 30-thousand people and created more than half-a-million refugees.

NPR's Linda Gradstein in Jerusalem reports on a nine-hour gun battle early today between Israeli forces and Palestinian policemen outside a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. It was one of the heaviest rounds of fighting since the confrontation began two and a half months ago. Elsewhere, a Palestinian militant was shot dead in Hebron, apparently the victim of a new Israeli tactic aimed at eliminating those behind armed attacks on Israeli targets.

Tinariwen formed in the refugee camps of Libya and Algeria. They've carried instruments and rifles in their lives, and fought for the freedom of their Tuareg people. Their music is a mix of North African blues and at times reggae-influenced. Chris Nickson reviews their CD, Amassakoul.

Dan Kurtzer, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, discusses the prospects for next week's Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Md. Among the issues for leaders will be security for Israelis and Palestinians, Palestinian refugees and Israeli settlements.

NPR's A Martinez talks to Adnan Abu-Hasna of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, about the worsening humanitarian conditions in Gaza.