China has dramatically increased its participation in United Nations peace operations in recent years. China now provides more uniformed personnel than any other permanent member of the UN Security Council.

Next year’s elections in Burundi, billed as a milestone on the country’s long road to sustainable peace, could trigger more conflict because of a combination of widespread illegal weapons and well-organized youth wings of political parties, according to analysts.

President Museveni has joined the anti-gay crusade, saying he had received reports suggesting that “European homosexuals” had launched a recruitment drive in Africa. He urged the youth to reject the advances. Expressing his homophobia, Mr. Museveni said the youth must stand firm and abhor the divergent sexual orientation.

At least 3,000 foreigners, mainly Zimbabweans, have fled their homes in the De Doorns farming area on the Western Cape after they were attacked by South African mobs, the Red Cross said Wednesday.

Inter-ethnic fighting in the northwestern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo has resulted in the deaths of 100 people and the displacement of 25,000 others, the United Nations has said.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) has threatened to call off its indefinite ceasefire, after alleging a military attack against the Kula community in Rivers state in the early hours of the day.

The Hutu militia FDLR is responsible for much of the violence in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where murder, massacres, rape and kidnapping are widespread. The FDLR's leaders have lived untouched in Germany for years. Now the authorities have reacted -- far too late.

Three years after the Kenyan government began to promote emergency contraception as part of its family planning strategy, the “morning-after pill” remains as controversial as ever: critics argue that unless the public is better educated about its purpose, it risks undermining the messages of abstinence and protected sex, putting impressionable young people at risk of HIV.

Even when Guinea is not facing political crisis and reeling from a massacre, daily life is gruelling for many and instability is never far away. In this country that holds 30 percent of the world’s reserves of bauxite, the primary ore in aluminium, most people live hand-to-mouth; only about 19 percent of the population have access to proper sanitation facilities; malnutrition is widespread.

Some 20,000 people wounded in Sierra Leone's war are receiving micro-grants as part of efforts to rebuild lives and livelihoods in the still fragile country. The initial grants of 300,000 leones (US$80) each are part of a government "reparations" programme, implemented by the National Commission for Social Action (NaCSA).

The number of civilians fleeing tribal violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) into neighbouring Republic of Congo since last week has topped 21,800, the United Nations refugee agency has reported.

The United Nations refugee agency has voiced regret at Djibouti’s forced repatriation of 40 Somali asylum-seekers, including 13 women and children, who were rescued by a Dutch ship in the Red Sea last month.

Former president Thabo Mbeki, together with his controversial health minister, Manto Tshabalala- Msimang, must be charged with genocide, says the SA Communist Party youth league. Young Communists League leader Buti Manamela said Mbeki and Tshabalala-Msimang denied hundreds of HIV-positive people access to antiretroviral drugs when they were in government.

President Mubarak has called on the Extraordinary African Summit for Refugees and Displaced Persons to alleviate the pains of the refugees, to protect them and to facilitate their safe return to their homelands, as he said “we are capable to do this with our own resources and with the support of the international community and our international partners”.

At least 16,000 civilians have fled deadly clashes in western Democratic Republic of Congo and are now languishing, many without food or shelter, in neighbouring Republic of Congo, according to the UN and local officials.

This article explores how globalisation is challenging activist groups that use a human rights framework that has traditionally been used to hold national governments accountable for human rights violations.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has announced that the trial of Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo, a former senior official of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) who has been charged with war crimes, will begin in April 2010. Mr. Bemba, the former Congolese Vice President, faces charges for alleged crimes committed in the Central African Republic (CAR) between October 2002 and March 2003, including rape, murder and pillaging.

Congolese armed forces in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo have brutally killed hundreds of civilians and committed widespread rape in the past three months in a military operation backed by the United Nations, Human Rights Watch has said.

A group of parents in Sierra Leone has accused a charity of sending more than 30 children abroad for adoption without consent during the country's civil war. The parents say they have no idea what happened to their children after they were handed over to Help a Needy Child International (Hanci).

A camp housing thousands of mainly Somali refugees in north-eastern Kenya has been completely flooded following almost three weeks of constant rain. Reports indicate that the main road into the area has been cut off by flooding.