When stock is taken of the Kenyan coalition government’s first year in office no marks will be awarded to its handling of extra-judicial killings in the country. Human rights activists claim that the police have murdered about 500 people in the past 16 months. The government, constituted after a mediation process between President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s parties following a disputed presidential poll in December 2007, has dithered on its pledge that it would address the killings.

This latest policy briefing from the International Crisis Group, argues that the Technical Committee report submitted on 1 December 2008 represents the most promising effort to develop a coherent strategy in the Delta. It urges the government to seize the opportunity for ending armed conflict and beginning longer-term development in the oil-rich region.

Fears are being expressed that another poor rainy season could lead to a 'severe' humanitarian crisis in Kenya. The Kenya meteorological department is predicting the long rains will be poorly distributed and too little. It follows an appeal from the government for food aid for up to ten million people.

The number of Mauritanian refugees that have returned home from years of exile in Senegal under a programme launched by the United Nations refugee agency last year has now topped 10,000. Amath Thioye was named the 10,000th returnee and was part of a convoy carrying 360 Mauritanians that arrived in the town of Boghé in southwest Brakna province last week, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

A special court in Sudan sentenced a further 11 men to death on Sunday. The alleged members of the Darfur-based armed opposition group, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), were found guilty of involvement in an attack against the Sudanese government in Khartoum on 10 May 2008. The attack is reported to have killed over 220 people.

On April 8, the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone passed sentences on three former commanders of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), bringing to an end the trials of militia leaders deemed responsible for atrocities committed during the country's bloody civil war, fought from 1991 to 2002. Issa Sesay, the interim leader of the RUF after the death of its founder Foday Sankoh, field commander Morris Kallon and chief of security Augustine Gbao were found guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity and serious violations of international humanitarian law. The three were slammed with a total of 117 years in prison.

This 89-page report documents the task force's abusive response to alleged rebel and terrorist activity by unlawfully detaining and brutally torturing suspects.Human Rights Watch found that agents of JATT, as it is known, carry out arrests wearing civilian clothes with no identifying insignia and do not inform suspects of the reasons for their arrest. The agents force suspects into unmarked cars, blindfolded and handcuffed, and take them to JATT's headquarters in Kololo, a rich suburb of Kampala. Many are then taken to military intelligence headquarters in Kitante for further brutal interrogations.

Guinean soldiers have been implicated in regular acts of theft and violence against businesspeople and ordinary citizens since a new government took power in a military coup in December 2008, Human Rights Watch has said. The new government should put a stop to these attacks and make certain that the police, gendarmerie, and judiciary carry out independent investigations and prosecute implicated soldiers.

More than 100,000 displaced civilians in Lubero territory in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo desperately need protection from further attacks by Rwandan militias and Congolese forces, Human Rights Watch has said. Human Rights Watch called on the United Nations peacekeeping force and humanitarian agencies to take urgent steps to increase protection and assistance to the civilians at risk.

The South African government should immediately halt detaining and deporting Zimbabweans from South Africa in violation of the government's recently announced moratorium, Human Rights Watch has said. Police in the town of Musina, close to the Zimbabwean border, continue to detain Zimbabweans at a military base and then deport them.

cc In the second of a two-part article exploring the implications of the US AFRICOM (the United States Africa Command) programme, Daniel Volman and William Minter continue their discussion of the increasing prominence of the African continent within US strategic interests. Underlining the US' need to prioritise dialogue with African governments and civil society groups over merely assisting repressive regimes and emphasising military-to-military relationships, Volman and Minter argue that AFRICOM's activities should be fully integrated within overall US policy. While Africa's serious conflict-related problems will ultimately not be resolved by external interests, the authors contend, the US needs to take its responsibilities around not inflaming conflict seriously, responsibilities which can only be sustainably fulfilled through genuinely supporting measures to improve African livelihoods.

An ammunition dump on the outskirts of the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam has exploded killing at least three people. The BBC's Vicky Ntetema in Dar es Salaam says hundreds of people have been injured as they fled in panic. Police say several buildings in the area were set alight by debris from the blasts at Mbagala army base.

Army troops in the Central African Republic killed up to 30 civilians in February in the Ndele region, a BBC investigation has found. Witnesses say the government soldiers shot dead 21 people in the village of Sokumba, about 70km (44 miles) from the border with Chad. Other human rights abuses committed by both the national army and rebels have been reported in the area.

Diploma in Refugee Studies (RS) is a one-year programme of study and practical work experience. The first five months of academic training in Prague and Krakow are followed by six months of working at partner institutions in non-industrialized countries and Central Europe.

Police are investigating the death of a human rights activist and university lecturer Bantu Mwaura, whose body was found outside his gate at Sunlight estate in Nairobi’s Lang’ata area, on Monday morning. Sources said that family members of Bantu, who was also a renowned thespian, director, poet and storyteller, had reported him missing on Friday. Bantu was a respected poet whose work in English, Kiswahili and Gikuyu has been published in several journals.

A Rwandan man living in the United States state of Kansas was arrested on Thursday in connection with the 1994 genocide in his home country, the US Department of Justice said. Lazare Kabaya Kobagaya (82) was arrested on charges of lying on his naturalisation fraud and misusing his alien registration card, officials with the Department of Justice said.

Eleven members of a Darfur rebel movement have been sentenced to death by a Sudanese court in relation to a 2008 attack on Khartoum. The court passed the ruling on the members of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) on Wednesday.

Bochra Bel Haj Hmida is a lawyer, women's rights activist, and former president of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women. She has been one of the fiercest opponents of she regards as the oppression of Tunisian women regarding inheritance. Hmida is also responsible for saving dozens of young people from the gallows in 1984, when she met former president Habib Bourguiba and his wife Wassila and convinced the president to issue a pardon.

Plans are under way to release more child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a UN envoy has said at the end of a one-week visit, urging an end to ongoing violations against children in a humanitarian crisis engulfing the country’s east.

The number of Sudanese refugees returning home from Uganda this year with the assistance of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has topped the 20,000 mark. This brings the total number of people helped home by UNHCR since the signing of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which ended Sudan’s long-running north-south civil war, to nearly 150,000, including 85,000 from Uganda. An additional 160,000 others have repatriated on their own from neighbouring countries.