The Chadian government handed 82 under-18 child soldiers over to UNICEF during an official ceremony. The children were caught following armed clashes between the Chadian national army and rebels of the Union of the Resistance Forces (UFR).

Defence ministers on 18 May discussed a French proposal to enhance the EU naval operation fighting piracy off the Somali coasts with a police training mission in the African country that could start in September. "There was a French proposal discussed today on a police training mission in Somalia, but no decision was taken yet," Czech minister of defence Martin Bartak told a press conference after the meeting.

Growing insecurity in eastern Chad is limiting aid workers’ access to refugees and displaced Chadians, aid workers say. Rebels and government troops recently clashed in eastern Chad and armed banditry – long a problem in the region – is on the rise, including the fatal shooting of a UN-trained national policeman on 13 May.

Months have passed since Hoda's husband paid smugglers to take him from this port town in northern Somalia across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen, but she has not heard a word from him. She now believes he probably drowned at sea. Despite such a vivid lesson in the risks of the Gulf crossing, Hoda plans to make the journey herself, leaving her youngest children in the care of her eldest daughter, who is just ten.

A Security Council delegation on a week-long visit to Africa met with internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) today to assess efforts by the Government and the United Nations to consolidate peace and security in the area, a spokesperson for the world body said.

Despite a lull in clashes between Government forces and insurgents in the Somali capital, the number of people who have fled Mogadishu in the past 12 days has climbed to 45,000, the United Nations refugee agency has reported.

The United Nations Security Council should vigorously condemn war crimes by Congolese army soldiers in the eastern part of the country, Human Rights Watch said. Human Rights Watch urged the Security Council to condition UN support for Congolese military operations on the removal of known human rights abusers from command positions.

Sudan's Government of National Unity should act to prevent a recurrence of clashes by military units and ensure justice for abuses committed in the Southern Sudanese town of Malakal in February 2009, Human Rights Watch has said in a letter to President Omar al-Bashir and First Vice President Salva Kiir. The government's Joint Defense Board, which commands the military units that clashed in Malakal, is scheduled to meet in the last week of May.

Ethiopian military forces have crossed back into Somalia, four months after leaving, witnesses told the BBC. Their reported return comes as Islamist militants continue to seize towns from the fragile Western-backed government. One resident said he saw Ethiopian troops digging trenches in Kalabeyr, a town 22km (14 miles) from the Somali-Ethiopian border.

Dadaab, in north-eastern Kenya, is the world's biggest refugee camp, home to 260,000 people. It was built in 1991 for Somalis fleeing the fighting that erupted with the collapse of Siad Barre's military regime. Eighteen years on, conflict is still raging and Somalis continue to seek safety there.

The trial has begun in Burundi of 11 defendants accused of attacking and killing 12 albino people, starting with the murder of a young girl. It is thought to be the first trial linked to the recent spate of albino killings in East Africa, which has claimed more than 50 lives.

The UN refugee agency says the number of people fleeing the Somali capital in the last 12 days has now risen to 45,000 despite the lull in fighting in the war-ravaged nation. A statement from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on Wednesday said a significant proportion of the displaced are heading towards the Afgooye corridor, southwest of Mogadishu.

Nigeria's oil militants, routed from some of their key bases in the oil producing Niger Delta, have vowed to strike back at the military as well as the oil industry as the military offensive in the region continued Thursday. Against allegations that the offensive, launched on Friday, has targeted innocent civilians and razed palaces and traditional shrines, the region's largest militant group - Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) - said: ''We promise to pay back the oil industry and the government the same measure of destruction that was meted out to the innocent civilians by this cowardly act.''

It was just a small loan worth the equivalent of $100, from a local microfinance bank. But it enabled Mojamah who had just come back to her home in Kenema, Sierra Leone, after the country’s civil war, to set up a dressmaking business to support her family of six. In neighbouring Liberia, Amelia, a single mother with five children, got a loan of $83 to help expand her work crushing rocks used to build roads. The loan worked so well she applied for another, worth $200, so she could hire workers to help meet the growing demand for roading material, as Liberia rebuilt itself after the war.

cc Around 40,000 Burundian refugees face involuntary repatriation when Tanzania’s Mtabila refugee camp is closed at the end of June, writes Zachary Lomo. Officials have told refugees that ‘if they are still in the camp after 30 June, they will be beaten and forced to run empty-handed to Burundi’. Although the camp schools have been closed and the markets destroyed, very few refugees have registered to return home. There is no longer fighting in Burundi but many refugees fear the reprisal killing of anyone suspected of supporting opposition groups, as well as disputes over property. Tanzanian field officers claim they have no plans to force the refugees to return to Burundi and will negotiate the integration and naturalisation of those unwilling or unable to go back with the Tanzanian government.

cc In an

cc Having been asked in 1998 to write a report on Rwanda's 1994 genocide by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), Gerald Caplan outlines a series of 10 broad lessons about genocide. Stressing his conviction that the ultimate purpose of knowing about genocide should be to have something to say about its prevention, the author argues that there should be no hierarchy when considering genocides committed around the world. Citing the ultimate conclusions of Primo Levi, a Jewish–Italian survivor of Auschwitz, Caplan underlines the troubling reality that rather than increasing the resolve not to see history repeated, the existence of one genocide merely affirms the possibility of future tragedy elsewhere in the world. While history suggests that there is ample reason for cynicism, Caplan concludes however that committed action on the part of the public and civil society represents a genuine means of forcing the UN Security Council to put the welfare of those suffering above its members' interests.

The Burundian government has released 203 National Liberation Front political prisoners as part of the ceasefire agreement signed between the government and the former rebel group, Ministry of Justice has said late yesterday in a statement.

'Provinces on fire with kidnapping rumours; every day more stories of missing children', read the May 1 headline of independent daily Al-Dustour. For months now, the independent press has been carrying reports of the disappearance of young children, mostly from Egypt's rural provinces. On Apr. 11 two children from the Sharqiya province vanished without a trace; on Apr. 28, four young children - three of them under six years old - were reported missing in the northern city Mansoura. Dozens of other cases have been reported through this period.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is stepping up its humanitarian activities in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in response to the deterioration of the humanitarian situation that has taken place since autumn 2008. The lack of security arising from ongoing clashes and military operations is exacerbating the already bleak conditions for displaced people (IDPs) – estimated to number more than 300,000 – and their host communities in North Kivu and is having a devastating impact on people's livelihoods.