At least 20 people have been killed in clashes in the central Nigerian city of Jos following a protest against the killing of seven Muslims in a nearby village. The violence is believed to have begun after news spread that Muslims had been killed by Christian youths in an attack on a bus. Nigerian soldiers fired into the air to disperse youths burning vehicles and tyres in Jos in protest at the killings, villagers said on Saturday.

Egyptian activists are calling on the government to take action to save African asylum-seekers from what they call the 'systematic torture' they are being subjected to by their Bedouin captors in the Sinai peninsula who demand thousands of dollars in ransom. 'The government says it does not have information [on this],' said Magda Botrous, a violence and physical safety specialist at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a local NGO. 'But the problem is that the government doesn't try to get the information,' she told IRIN.

A human rights team from the joint United Nations-African Union mission verified that one rape occurred when Government paramilitaries and police started shooting in the air at a camp market in Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region last month, a UN spokesman has said. Two human rights officers from the mission (UNAMID) were sent to Tawilla camp to verify reports of rapes and other abuses during and after the shooting incident on 25 December.

Sudanese activists Ali Agab and Abdel Monim Elgak were forced to flee their homes for defending human rights. Ahead of the referendum on the future of South Sudan, they spoke to Amnesty International about the challenges they face and what keeps them positive about the future.

Somali youth in the US should form a volunteer peacekeeping force, says this reader.

As Sudan approaches its historic referendum on 9 January, Current Analyst discusses the possible range of developments.

Activist Kambale Musavuli has a new year message for Congolese youth.

At the end of 2010 at least 4.5 million people were internally displaced in Darfur, the Greater Khartoum area, South Kordofan and the ten states of Southern Sudan. It is thought that in December 2010 there were between 4.5 and 5.2 million IDPs, in the western region of Darfur (where estimates ranged between 1.9 million and 2.7 million), in and around Khartoum, in the state of South Kordofan and in Southern Sudan. In addition, there were unknown numbers of IDPs in the other northern and eastern states.

Tunisian lawyers have been making a stand throughout protests in that country - and paying the price for it. The lawyers have been protesting regularly to denounce what happened in Sidi Bouzid and the social situation in Tunisia. This is why the government has decided to ‘punish’ them. Every day, news of the kidnapping, arrest, or assault of lawyers is surfacing on social networking sites, report bloggers via Global Voices.

France's highest court has upheld an order to extradite Rwandan rebel leader Callixte Mbarushimana to face trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC). A lawyer for Mbarushimana said the court had rejected his client's appeal against extradition. Mbarushimana is accused of 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, allegedly committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo last year.

South Africa may start deporting more than 1.2 million Zimbabweans in April after they missed a deadline to legalise their residency, Lawyers For Human Rights said. Almost 255,000 Zimbabweans applied to legalise their residency before the 31 December deadline, South Africa’s government said while ruling out an extension to the process. A 'conservative' estimate by Johannesburg’s University of The Witwatersrand is that there are 1.5 million Zimbabweans in South Africa.

More than 5,000 Mauritanian refugees, intending to return home following a tripartite agreement between the governments of Senegal and Mauritania and the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), signed in November 2007, have expressed uncertainty in the move, PANA has reported. Mamadou Wane, spokesman for the Steering Committee of Coordination of the Associations of the Mauritanian Refugees in Senegal, said no information had been given to the UNHCR representative in Dakar to assure the 5,000 Mauritanian refugees awaiting repatriation.

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information has said that the bombing of a church in Alexandria proves that the emergency law imposed on Egypt for 30 years has not provided security and safety to Egyptians. 'This law resulted in nothing but an acute retreat in civil and political freedoms and wasting rights of Muslim and Christian Egyptians.'

A French judge placed Rwanda's defence minister and five other aides of President Paul Kagame under investigation in a probe into an attack seen as sparking the African country's 1994 genocide, legal sources said on 16 December. Placing the men under investigation means that international arrest warrants issued for them - which led to Rwanda cutting off diplomatic relations with France in 2006 - can be dropped, reports The Independent.

The future of Zimbabweans without legal documentation in South Africa is uncertain, after a brief window to regularise their stay in the country slammed shut last week. The South African government has said more than 232,000 Zimbabweans applied to legalise their stay in the country before the December 31st deadline passed last Friday. This means that an estimated million Zim nationals who live in South Africa have missed this opportunity to apply for relevant work or study permits.

Somali pirates have hijacked a Mozambican-flagged fishing vessel about 200 nautical miles (370 km) southwest of Comoros in the Indian Ocean, the European Union's anti-piracy taskforce said at the beginning of January. The capture of the 140-tonne Vega 5 and its 14-strong crew of unknown nationalities is the second successful strike by pirates off the northern tip of Madagascar in a week.

The Uganda government is seeking $1 million under a supplementary budget request to parliament to facilitate a meeting with Congolese officials and lawyers – whose country accuses Uganda of war crimes and plunder of its resources. The meeting is slated for later this month in Kampala. DR Congo accuses Uganda of war crimes and plundering its resources when the latter, together with a bevy of regional countries, invaded it between 1998 and 2003. In 1999, Congo took Uganda to the World Court - seeking reparations of between of $6b and $10b - which the court said was a fair claim. The UN court sitting at The Hague, however, gave the countries an option of settling the matter between themselves.

Angola has denied that mercenaries from the country were operating in Ivory Coast, following reports that defiant strongman Laurent Gbagbo's camp had recruited hired guns from Angola and Liberia. The statement came after the United Nations' top peacekeeper, Alain Le Roy, said last week the UN had confirmed that Gbagbo forces were working with foreign mercenaries in their bid to gain the upper hand in the political stand-off between Gbagbo and presidential rival Alassane Ouattara.

Defense spending in Africa has increased significantly over the last few years, largely because the continent's key oil producers have scored heavy economic gains as crude prices have risen, finds a new survey. The surge in oil revenue 'has provided an opportunity for African governments to support much-needed military acquisition and improvement programs, resulting in defense spending growth that has significantly outpaced that of non-petrostates,' the survey said, as reported by United Press International.

The Forced Migration Current Awareness Blog is a current awareness service highlighting web research and information relating to refugees, asylum-seekers, internally displaced persons (IDPs), and other forced migrants. Visit the website for analysis and commentary related to this field.