The Eritrean government is turning its country into a giant prison, according to Human Rights Watch. The Horn of Africa nation is widely using military conscription without end, as well as arbitrary detention of its citizens, says HRW. Hundreds of Eritrean refugees forcibly repatriated from countries like Libya, Egypt and Malta face arrest and torture upon their return, says the group.

The main opposition parties in Ethiopia have held a march in Addis Ababa to call for the release of their imprisoned leader, Birtukan Medeksa. The demonstrators handed in a petition to the authorities about Ms Birtukan. She is serving a life sentence, after officials revoked a pardon which had previously seen her set free.

The Burindi Minister of National Defence Forces (FDN), Lieutenant General Germain Niyoyankana, announced on Thursday a new agreement aimed at demobilizing, disarming and reintegrating 8,500 ex-combatants of the National Forces of Liberation (FNL). The agreement was signed in Pretoria under the South African mediation and aims at reintegrating 3,500 ex-rebels into the different defence and security departments -- 60 per cent in the regular army and 40 per cent in the national police for mula, Niyoyankana said.

Recently I was in Darfur for fieldwork research. The situation of violence is complex. However, for a sociologist, it would be impossible to resist the reality that the state authority organises an intent discrimination of specific ethnic groups in the region of Darfur to be killed inclusively at their villages. For instance, Tingo, a small village in the Southern Darfur State of Nyala was attacked on Friday by an armed force, which the victim called Janjaweed. The owners of the village are Fur from African origin and even though they were in a public prayer in the mosque of the village, the attackers whom they believe to be of the same faith – Islam – could not spare them in the mosque. In that particular assault, more than 263 people were killed in the mosque and the market.

In conclusion, when a killing is racialised to the extent of searching for the particular group, then that is genocide. But who says this? The UN Security Council is incompetent to act at least to stop the killing, even if it refuses to categorise it as a genocide. China, as a giant state with a moral obligation to respect of humanity, is badly enslaved by economic interest hence, it blocks all possible attempts to force President Bashir to stop the war.

The Nigerian government has given a final term to end the lingering civil and criminal charges against Pfizer. A lawyer representing the government of that country in the 1996 suit against the drug maker said it will head to court this April if Pfizer fails to comply with the settlement agreement.

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has warned Kenyan leaders that he will act expeditiously and relentlessly against the suspects of the post election violence that rocked Kenya last year. In a terse statement, the ICC prosecutor Louis Moreno Ocampo said through his adviser Beatrice le Fraper du Hellen that he and his team are ready to step in once called to do so. He added that when the Kenyan parliament fails to set up a special tribunal to try those behind the violence the ICC would react.

Intensified clashes in the Central African Republic have driven tens of thousands of civilians from their homes, the United Nations reported today, noting that the unrest could prolong the humanitarian crisis that has wracked the country for more than a decade. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that the violence could also jeopardize progress towards power-sharing between the Government and rebel groups.

Hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees in Kenya face abuse by corrupt and violent police and a rapidly growing humanitarian emergency in the world's largest refugee settlement, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. Kenya should immediately rein in abusive police and grant new land for additional camps, while the United Nations and international donors should urgently respond to Somali refugees' basic needs.

Some 250,000 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been displaced following an operation to flush out Hutu rebels, aid agency Oxfam has said. The joint operation against the rebels earlier this year was hailed as a great success by both Rwanda and DR Congo.

On March 4th, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan. In retaliation, 13 NGO’s were banished from the country the day after, a number that rose to 16 within the week. As a result, a handful of projects have halted operations: those offering drinkable water supply, food distribution, health care and teaching systems among others.

ECOWAS ministers responsible for women and children will meet in Accra, Ghana, on Fridayto adopt the regional policy for the rehabilitation of victims of human trafficking in West Africa. In a statement issued in Abuja, Nigeria's federal capital city, Thursday, and received by PANA here, ECOWAS said the policy seeks to establish and maintain a supportive and friendly environment where the victims, including those subjected to exploitative and hazardous child labour, enjoy equitable access to assistance in the region to enable them become functional members of the society.

The Rwandan Foreign minister, Ms. Rosemary Museminaly, said here Thursday that some legal technicalities were still stalling the extradition, to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), of rebel leader Laurent Nkund a batware, who was arrested in Rwanda in January. Museminaly, who was speaking as a guest of the European parliament, said, however, that the question of extradition had already been agreed upon in principle by the authorities concerned.

Zimbabweans can get permits to stay legally in South Africa for six months, the authorities have announced. Some three million Zimbabweans are believed to have crossed the border to escape the economic collapse and human rights abuses at home. The permit gives migrants the right to work and get healthcare and education.

As China expands its engagement throughout Africa, it increasingly finds itself involved in African conflict zones either by design or accident. This involvement takes essentially three forms: Chinese participation in UN peacekeeping operations, Chinese weapons, especially small arms, which make their way into conflict zones, and kidnapping of Chinese nationals or attacks on Chinese facilities and nationals.

Aghast, betrayed and angry describe the reactions of many South Africans to their government's refusal of a visa to the Dalai Lama. They describe, too, widely held views on the role that South Africa has played on the UN Security Council, the UN Human Rights Council, and in respect of the crisis in Zimbabwe. Why, many are asking, has South Africa squandered its enormous moral capital and its commitment to human rights to side with some very questionable regimes?

The mountain kingdom of Lesotho faces a number of unique hurdles with regard to HIV and AIDS. The country is landlocked within South Africa, the epicentre of the pandemic, and because of limited job opportunities and high unemployment rates within Lesotho, many of its citizens work as migrant labourers in neighbouring South Africa.

Israel carried out air strikes in January on a convoy moving through Sudan which it believed to be carrying weapons destined for Hamas in Gaza, according to a report by the US television network CBS. Two Sudanese politicians confirmed that unidentified aircraft targeted the convoy in a remote desert region north-west of Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast.

From the 28th March to the 4th April, women and men from all over the world will be in the streets to protest against capitalism and war and to affirm that they will not pay for the crisis. Launched by the Social Movements’ Assembly, that gathered during WSF 2009 in Belem.

Some of the most controversial issues stemming from the 1994 Rwandan genocide will be addressed at a symposium in Kigali, co-hosted by the University of Oxford, on 3 April 2009. The event entitled, ‘15 Years after Genocide: Where Now for Rwanda?’ will commemorate the 15th anniversary of the genocide and feature provocative presentations by leading policymakers, academics and journalists on a range of key issues affecting post-genocide Rwanda.

cc While most of the world is familiar with Rwandan genocide, fifteen years later the influence of a small band of deniers is growing thanks to the embrace of the deniers' arguments by a small but influential number of left-wing, anti-American journals and websites, cautions Gerald Caplan.