The United Nations refugee agency said today it was hastening to replace supplies and put preventive measures in place after five accidental fires swept through two camps for Sudanese refugees in remote eastern Chad in the past four weeks. A 9-year old boy died and some 1,455 people were left homeless in the Amer and Djabal camps, due to the fires, which were caused by poorly tended open fires fanned by heavy winds, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has said.

Concern over malnutrition among long-term refugees from Western Sahara have sparked two assessment missions to their camps in western Algeria by humanitarian partners, the first of which embarks tomorrow, the United Nations refugee agency has announced. Staff of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the World Food Programme (WFP) will accompany representatives of donor countries and their partners from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on a three-day mission to the camps of Sahrawi people, starting tomorrow.

Attacks by the Hutu rebel group, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, are still causing displacement over a wide area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo's North Kivu province. On 20 January, Congolese and Rwandan forces launched an offensive to forcefully disarm the FDLR, considered by Rwanda as a major threat to its national security. FDLR has been retaliating against the civilian population and has launched sporadic attacks on villages in North Kivu.

More than 200,000 people in Namibia have been affected by heavy flooding near the northern border with Angola since January, the United Nations said on Friday. Fields of crops have been soaked and the loss of agricultural produce could have an impact on the region's food security, said Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

On Wednesday, Feb 25, 2009 Somali bandits raided the Samburu tribe near Lerata, Kenya, a small community between Archer's Post and Wamba located in the Samburu District, northern Kenya, once known as the Northern Frontier District. Bandits took hundreds of cattle, shot two men, stole a local conservancy vehicle, and kidnapped two Samburu children. The response of the Kenyan government has shocked Samburu victims and their advocates.

Sudan, by expelling foreign aid agencies, has created the conditions for "untold misery and suffering" among hundreds of thousands of victims of the six-year-old war in the Darfur region, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday. Also Tuesday, in a signal of the Obama administration's intention to step up U.S. involvement in the violence-wracked region, President Barack Obama settled on retired Air Force Gen. J. Scott Gration, a close personal friend with long experience on African issues, to be special envoy to Sudan, a senior administration official told The Associated Press.

African leaders have warned that parts of the continent could be plunged back into conflict if they are not helped to recover from the global downturn. The stark warning came as they gathered in London to put their case ahead of the G20 summit next month. The scale of the crisis faced by Africa because of the economic downturn is only now becoming apparent.

A forum of civil society organisations from the Great Lakes region have converged in Gulu town to craft fresh efforts towards a peaceful solution to the LRA conflict in northern Uganda. The call comes days after the Uganda People’s Defence Forces abruptly ended its three-month old military offensive against the LRA rebels in Garamba.

cc The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) issue of an arrest warrant against President Omar al-Bashir is a gamble with the future of Sudan, says Alex de Waal. De Waal cautions that with this warrant, the ICC – with its objective of representing principles upon which no compromise is possible – threatens to unravel eight years of efforts to accommodate diverse and distrustful people, all with the capacity to return Sudan to war. De Waal argues that there is little evidence for the effectiveness of arrest warrants in triggering regime change, and notes that since Bashir is not a one-man dictatorship, replacing him with one of his colleagues would not represent democratic transformation for the country.

Zimbabwe's finance minister gave warning on Thursday that the country's power-sharing government will fail, with potentially disastrous consequences, unless international donors urgently inject cash into its treasury. Tendai Biti welcomed Australia's move to boost humanitarian spending by $6,5-million but said donations channelled through international aid agencies would not save the transitional government that was sworn in last month.

A repeat of the xenophobic violence that swept through South Africa - killing at least 62 people and displacing 100,000 others - will return if the government continues to ignore its origins, says a report by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

In the cramped basement of a public housing apartment block in New York's Staten Island, 25 minutes by ferry from Manhattan's financial district, a small group of mostly volunteer staff are preparing to open the doors of health clinic in an area that recently saw the closure of two local hospitals. The weekly clinic caters to a cross section of the blue-collar Park Hill neighbourhood; day labourers, newly arrived immigrants and former refugees, most of the latter from Liberia.

The number of Rwandan Hutu rebels who have left the Democratic Republic of Congo and gone home has risen substantially since the beginning of the year, Bruno Donat head of the United Nations' disarmament, demobilization and repatriation efforts in the DRC has said. The UN official credits his organisation for convincing rebel fighters that repatriation is best for them and for the stability of Africa's Great Lakes Region.

Recent long-awaited multi-party talks in the Central African Republic (CAR) have provided a window of opportunity to make strides towards consolidating peace in the land-locked nation, a top United Nations envoy told the Security Council today. François Lonsény Fall, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative, said that last December’s successful talks held in the capital, Bangui, were a result of two years of “tremendous effort” by various actors, both national – including representatives of the Government, opposition and civil society – and international.

How can the international community help to bolster the rule of law in post-conflict states? This Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) report argues that hybrid courts can have a positive impact on the domestic justice system of post-conflict states. If used effectively, the opportunity afforded by the establishment of hybrid courts can act as a catalyst for change in legal institutions and culture.

How should the international community engage in election processes in post-conflict countries such as Rwanda, Cambodia and Sudan? This study from Princeton University argues that the international community should move towards a broader concern with fair political environments. Policymakers should not overstate the importance of electoral assistance in the short-term, nor lose sight of its ability to contribute to the conditions for genuine democracy in the long-term. Greater political will for longer-term electoral support is required.

Dissident troops in Madagascar say they have moved tanks into the capital amid a violent power struggle between the president and opposition leader. President Marc Ravalomanana issued a radio appeal urging civilians to help defend the presidential palace.

More than 10,000 Angolan refugees at a camp in western Zambia have declined to return home despite the restoration of peace in their country, the state-run Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation reported Wednesday. The refugees at Mayukwayukwa in Kaoma district have lived in Zambia since 1966.

There are many apologists for the Indian armed forces serving the ideal of world peace under the UN flag. They believe that serving in the conflict-torn areas of Africa builds India’s image worldwide, earns it long-lasting friends and secures India’s strategic and commercial interests. This news report about the Indian peacekeepers being unwelcome in Congo should come as a timely wakeup call to these misguides advocators.

When Manuel Noriega of Panama, was captured by a contingent of U.S. soldiers in 1989, the world was literally shaken from the heat it generated. Noriega, was then sitting President of Panama, one of the Latin American countries, known more for its drug-related image than many other things. In fact, his abduction and subsequent trial in America, was on account of this. But what seemed to make the most news was not the drug angle, but the fact that a sitting leader of a sovereign country, could be uprooted from his country and taken away in that fashion. However America, has since shown it is possible.