Human Rights Watch has asked the Ugandan government to honor its international obligations to rehabilitate child soldiers in the case of Bushobozi Irumba, who was abducted by the Allied Democratic Front (ADF) rebel forces at the age of 9. Arrested at the age of 15, Bushobozi was charged with treason and is due to face a court in Uganda on January 8, 2009.

The South African government should end its sole reliance on an overburdened asylum system that protects only a tiny fraction of the more than a million Zimbabweans who cannot return to the humanitarian disaster in their home country, Human Rights Watch has said.

Ethiopia's parliament enacted a new law on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that criminalizes most human rights work in the country, Human Rights Watch has said. Human Rights Watch said that the law is a direct rebuke to governments that assist Ethiopia and that had expressed concerns about the law's restrictions on freedom of association and expression.

There is confusion in Kenya over how to deal with bodies piled in the town of Eldoret's morgue for more than a year. The deceased died in a church burnt down by a mob during ethnic violence after elections in December 2007. Thirty-seven bodies were to have been buried on Wednesday but after the first 10 were interred they had to be dug up amid furious protests from relatives.

A galaxy of former African leaders will attend a peace c onference to discuss the political transformation of Kenya from an ethnic-divisions-ridden state, into a more tolerant democracy in the region.The conference, dubbed "The Kenya We Want," will be held in Nairobi on 2-4 February to chart the way forward for the country, Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga, has announced.

A Tanzanian refugee, who escaped death by hiding in a bathroom, is reeling after losing a second brother to alleged xenophobic violence in less than a year. Zane Omari's younger brother, Said, died on Monday as a result of injuries he sustained when he was allegedly forced out of a sixth-floor window at Venture Africa, a shelter for refugees in Broad Street in Durban.

Lamenting the greater insecurity and civil unrest provoked by African governments’ excessive spending on defence, Chuma Nwokolo argues that arms stockpiles act as a central obstacle for countries’ development and stability. Emphasising that the practice of supplying African territory with arms remains a throwback to the slavery era, the author highlights the high proportion of GDP spent on arms and the military by particular African governments such as Angola and Eritrea. In a bid to catalyse effective action, Nwokolo calls upon people to support the worldwide .

Chronicles of a Refugee is a 6-part documentary film series looking at the global Palestinian refugee experience over the last 60 years. Starting with 'al-Nakba' (catastrophe) in 1948 (part I) and continuing through repeated community and individual expulsions (part II) and enduring discrimination by virtue of being Palestinian (part III), the first three episodes are more historical and informative, presenting an almost comprehensive review of 60 years of dispossession.

EU forces in the Gulf of Aden have prevented several pirate attacks in the last few days and arrested more than 25 pirates. Somali pirates gave up a raid on a Greek oil tanker on Friday (2 January) after the intervention of EU forces, the Greek merchant marine ministry has reported.

Darfur rebels accused Sudan's army of bombing their positions on Thursday, breaking a period of relative calm in the country's violent west. No one was immediately available to comment from Sudan's armed forces. International sources, who asked not to be named, said they had heard similar reports.

Ugandan rebels have killed 38 people since Christmas in a wave of attacks on southern Sudanese villages, a senior Sudanese official said on Thursday. Jemma Nunu Kumba, governor of south Sudan's Western Equatoria state, said thousands of civilians had fled the area fearing more raids by Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) fighters.

Egypt deported a group of 32 Eritreans on Wednesday, most of whom had tried to flee across the Egyptian desert to Israel, security sources said. The Eritreans had been arrested over the past two months and were flown back to their country's capital Asmara, the sources said.

This latest International Crisis Group report, argues that the announced withdrawal at year’s end of the Ethiopian army, which intervened in December 2006, opens a new period of uncertainty and risk but also provides a chance to launch an inclusive political process. “The world is preoccupied with a symptom – piracy – instead of concentrating on a political settlement, the core of the crisis”, says Rashid Abdi, Crisis Group’s Somalia Analyst. “There is no quick fix to Somalia’s tragedy, but this opportunity must not be missed”.

In response to on Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem’s article,

The Swedish government has suspended 80 million kronor in aid to Rwanda following the United Nations report accusing the country of supporting armed rebellion in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, International Development Cooperation Minister Ms Gunilla Carlsson said.

UNHCR is seeking $92 million to ease the plight of nearly 250,000 Somalis in one of the world's oldest, largest and most congested refugee sites amid growing fears of even more arrivals as the situation in Somalia deteriorates. The emergency assistance to Somali refugees in Dadaab, Kenya, focuses on relieving dramatic overcrowding in three adjacent camps that are now three times their initial capacity, with thousands more people continuing to arrive each month.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has said it is very concerned about reports that rebels are putting pressure on those displaced by the deadly fighting in the far east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to return to their villages.

Actor-director Ben Affleck and Rolling Stone singer Mick Jagger have released a short film to help raise $23 million for United Nations efforts to pay for clean water and emergency aid kits for 250,000 people driven from their homes by renewed fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The film – “Gimme Shelter” – set to the Rolling Stones’ song of the same name, was shot last month in North Kivu province, epicentre of the latest surge in fighting.

United Nations-backed talks between the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and a main rebel group, aimed at finding a peaceful resolution to the strife-ridden country’s brutal armed conflict, resumed today after a week-long break. This round of negotiations is slated to end on 20 December when the two sides are set to adopt a framework for substantive dialogue attempting to end the conflict that has been plaguing the eastern part of the vast DRC.

Survivors of Rwanda's genocide and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon have welcomed the life sentence given to its mastermind Theoneste Bagosora. Bagosora and two co-defendants were found by a UN tribunal to have led a committee that plotted the massacre of ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Mr Ban said the sentences were a "major step in the fight against impunity".