The last of three ceremonies to rebury victims of Rwanda's 1994 genocide who were washed up on the shores of Lake Victoria in Uganda has taken place. Nearly 11,000 bodies thrown into rivers in Rwanda were recovered from the lake and buried by Ugandan villagers. Their bodies have now all been exhumed from different places and buried at three special memorial sites.

The African Union has began a 90-day countdown to the International Peace Day, when all guns in the continent’s conflict hot-spots are expected to go silent. But, just for a day. The countdown began on Tuesday and is special for the political bloc given its declaration of 2010 as “the year of peace and security.”

At least 12 people either died in landslides or drowned in rising waters following the torrential rains that fell in Abidjan, the Ivorian economic capital, Thursday, according to the National Civil Protection Office.

Souréba, 3, is as light as a bird. Resting on her mother’s knee, the little girl seems indifferent to the noises and movements around her. When her mother, Habsatou, tries to give her some therapeutic food on her finger, the child turns away from the brown milky mixture. She is emaciated and has lost her appetite.

Four hundred sixty-five refugees from different nationalities are detained in various police stations at Sinai. Within the framework of the EFRR’s follow up on the cases of detained refugees in Sinai police stations, a committee was formed by the foundation. The committee is made of 4 lawyers who have visited north Sinai governor.

Perhaps Africa's World Cup began in earnest on Jun. 16, when a despondent green and gold-clad crowd began leaving the Loftus Versfeld stadium even before the end of South Africa's heavy defeat to Uruguay. Migrant African fans felt the first touch of cold post-tournament reality. In their final game on Jun. 22, Bafana Bafana, as the country's national team is known, went on to shine brightly for an hour against a pathetic France, but despite taking a two-goal lead, faded at the finish to make an unwelcome mark in the record books as the first host in the World Cup's 80-year history to fail to make through to the second round.

Namibia’s National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) calls upon visiting Zambian President Rupiah Bwezani Banda to help establish the fate or whereabouts of several Namibian freedom fighters who had disappeared without a trace to date on Zambian soil between 1976 and 1978. The Zambian security forces, presumably acting on the instructions of then SWAPO President Sam Nujoma, rounded them up after they were accused of being “radicals” and or “rebels”.

The International Refugee Rights Initiative (IRRI) and the Refugee Law Project have the pleasure in announcing the launch of a paper on the current situation of Rwandan refugees in Uganda entitled "A Dangerous Impasse: Rwandan Refugees in Uganda". The launch will be held on Monday 28th June 2010 at Hotel Africana starting at 3pm - 5pm.

Long before he learned to dunk on warped wooden backboards, Awet Eyob nursed a dream: to play basketball in America. He is 6-foot-8, built like an oak tree, and seems to have mastered a behind-the-back dribble and crisp passes from the corner of his eye. But one big problem stood between him and his dream: his homeland, Eritrea, an isolated, secretive nation in the Horn of Africa that is refusing to let its young people leave.

The number of refugees voluntarily returning home has plunged to its lowest rate in two decades, partly due to chronic insecurity in war-torn nations, according to the UN refugee agency. Only 251,000 of the world's 15 million refugees returned to their home countries last year, the lowest rate in two decades, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Only two years after its last revision, the Swiss Asylum Act is about to be 'reformed' again. The changes include a gag order on political activism for asylum-seekers and a modification of the concept of a refugee. Ever since Switzerland adopted the Asylum Act in 1981, it has constantly been tightened, largely at the expense of the refugees, as in most European countries.

Tunisia rejected on Thursday allegations from human rights campaigners that a new law setting out tough penalties for conspiring to harm the country's economy would suppress free speech. Tunisia's parliament this week passed amendments to the penal code which make it a crime for anyone to incite foreigners not to invest in the north African nation, give it loans or sign trade deals with it.

At least 11 people were killed on Friday and dozen others wounded after rebel militias attacked the barracks of Somali government forces in Hosh, southern Mogadishu. "Insurgents, supported by foreign terrorists, attacked our base in the Hosh area early this morning," government security official Ahmed Warsame said.

People look for refuge in other countries because they have no other option- they are being persecuted at home because of who they are, their beliefs or their opinions. Sadly, all too often, instead of finding safety in other countries, many find closed borders, xenophobia, detention and terrible living conditions. Some are denied a fair hearing of their asylum claims and could be forced to return home, where their lives are in danger. On World Refugee Day, 20 June 2010, Amnesty International calls on states to reaffirm everyone's right to seek and to enjoy asylum, as recognized in article 14 of the UDHR.

New clashes between the Senegalese army and members of the separatist Movement of Democratic Forces in the Casamance (MFDC) have caused new displacements since 2009 and hindered durable solutions for long-term internally displaced people (IDPs). Estimates of the overall number of IDPs in Casamance in 2010 range between 10,000 and 40,000, and figures remain unreliable in the absence of a comprehensive survey.

Shot at and raped. Arrested and beaten. Detained and deported. Extorted and robbed. Threatened and insulted. Ignored and shunned. The treatment of hardened criminals in some far-flung police state? The fate of political opponents by a repressive regime? Not quite. For Somali refugees - 80% of them women and children - this is their welcome to Kenya.

A Dutch court has sentenced five Somali men to five years in prison for attacking a cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden last year, in the first such case to come to trial in Europe. The men were convicted in Rotterdam of attacking a Dutch Antilles-flagged ship, the Samanyolu. They were arrested last year when their high-speed boat was intercepted by a Danish frigate.

The United States has welcomed the release by a Rwandan court of Peter Erlinder, an American lawyer who had been detained since May on charges of denying the 1994 genocide. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said US embassy officials were at the court hearing and immediately shared the news with Mr Erlinder's family.

Two Sudan rebel leaders appeared before the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges on Thursday over a 2007 attack that killed 12 African Union peacekeepers in war-torn Darfur. Describing themselves as revolutionaries, Mr Abdallah Banda Abakaer Nourain and Mr Saleh Mohammed Jerbo Jamus said they welcomed the chance to clear their names and urged other war crimes suspects to also hand themselves over.

A new report by UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said that global prices of food could climb by as much as 40 per cent in the coming decade. FAO said that the rise would be caused by the growth in global population, which would increase the demand for more food. The report, entitled: "The Agriculture Outlook 2010-19", which was made available to the Pan African News Agency (PANA) on Wednesday, anticipated that wheat and coarse grain prices could jump to levels of between 15 and 40 per cent higher than they were between 1997 and 2006.