On November 21st 2008, a new campaign aimed at identifying and recognizing those who played a positive role during and immediately after the post elections chaos in Kenya will be launched. Who were the people that were prepared to risk their own lives to save others?

IOM and USAID has released a new six-month study, entitled “No Experience Necessary: The Internal Trafficking of Persons in South Africa.” This qualitative study is the first survey research on the trafficking in children, women and men for labour and sexual exploitation within South Africa.

Fighting in eastern Congo continues to put the lives of thousands at risk. The need for an urgent response only grows. But Europe shamefully continues to fail to take the kind of action that is most needed - sending in a rapid-response military mission.

With violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo continuing unabated, German President Horst Köhler says it is time for Western countries to help the UN bring the conflict to an end. France, too, would like to see a robust UN mandate for more peacekeepers.

Amnesty International says that hundreds of those awaiting execution on Nigeria's death row did not have fair trials and may therefore be innocent. At an Oct. 21 press conference in Abuja, the capital, releasing its latest report on the death penalty in Nigeria, co-authored by the Nigerian rights organisation Legal Defence and Assistance Project (LEDAP), Amnesty called for an immediate moratorium on executions in the country.

The number of people sentenced to death for their alleged role in the rebel attacks on Khartoum last May could rise if the government carries through its plans to set up more special anti-terrorism courts, according to human rights lawyers. So far, 50 people have been condemned to death for laying siege to the nation’s capital on May 10. The attack was led by one of Darfur’s most prominent rebel groups, the Justice and Equity Movement (JEM).

HelpAge International is working to ensure the protection of older people and their dependents in West Darfur through the ongoing crisis. We seek to address the immediate needs of older people, while at the same time affecting some longer-term change. We are based in El Geneina, close to the Chadian border, where a high number of those displaced by the conflict are found. As Emergency Programme Manager, you will be responsible for the implementation, management and administration of HelpAge International's humanitarian programme in Darfur. Closing date: 28 November 2008.

The Sudanese government’s announcement of a ceasefire in Darfur would not alone solve a crisis that has lasted nearly six years and left hundreds of thousands of people dead - but it offered a glimmer of hope, analysts said. President Omar el-Bashir announced an "immediate, unconditional ceasefire" in Darfur on 12 November. He called for an immediate campaign to disarm militias accused of committing some of the worst atrocities during the conflict.

Tens of thousands of refugees at a frontline camp in eastern Congo will be urgently moved to prevent them being caught in crossfire between rebels and the army, aid officials said on Thursday. More than 65,000 civilians who have fled weeks of fighting are camped at Kibati, a few kilometres south of combat lines between Tutsi rebels loyal to renegade General Laurent Nkunda and government troops.

The KHRC has been a moving force in advocating for Kenyan prison reform and prisoner’s rights. However, even though relations between human rights organizations and the Prison Department have improved over the last few years, prison conditions are still inhumane and in stark violation of human rights laws.

Islamist rebels moved on Friday into a small town on the outskirts of Somalia's capital near a checkpoint manned by Ethiopian troops, sparking fears among residents of renewed fighting. This week's advance by al Shabaab militants towards the capital Mogadishu is a potential setback for a fledgling U.N.-brokered peace process to end 17 years of conflict in the Horn of Africa nation.

More than 160 Egyptian personnel arrived in Darfur today as part of a large battalion that will boost the strength of the joint United Nations-African Union force deployed earlier this year in an attempt to quell the fighting and humanitarian suffering in the strife-torn Sudanese region.

Fighting continues on several fronts in North Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo despite a unilateral ceasefire declared by the armed group, the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), on 29 October. The CNDP's offensive in October forced a routed government army and hundreds of thousands of civilians down roads towards the provincial capital, Goma.

When a solution comes to the Darfur crisis–as with Sudan’s national crisis–it will be a domestic solution, created and led by Sudanese, with the internationals in a supporting role. There is a flicker of a chance that the Sudan People’s Initiative marks the beginning of Sudanese taking ownership of the Darfur crisis and finding a way towards a solution.

“The Government of Kenya is failing to take the necessary steps to stamp out torture in our country.” This is the central message of the reports prepared by a group of Kenyan NGOs, together with the World Organisation Against Torture, to inform the United Nations Committee Against Torture as it begins its examination of Kenya’s record on the prevention and eradication of torture, in Geneva, Switzerland.

Since August, the conflict in Nord Kivu, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), between the DRC Armed Forces (FARDC) and the troops of rebel general Laurent Nkunda of the National Congress for the Defense of the People (Congrès national pour la défense du people, CNDP) has intensified and has been accompanied by grave and massive human rights violations of the civilian population.

The UN Security Council should urgently increase the number of peacekeepers to help protect civilians in northern Democratic Republic of Congo following renewed attacks by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), four international and national human rights organizations has said. Human Rights Watch, Enough, Resolve Uganda, and the Justice and Peace Commission of Dungu/Doruma also called on the United Nations, the United States, the United Kingdom, and governments in the region to develop and carry out an arrest strategy for LRA leaders wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The Kenyan government, foreign donors, and United Nations agencies should rapidly increase their response to the worsening Somali refugee crisis in Kenya, Human Rights Watch has said. More than 65,000 Somali refugees will have sought refuge in Kenya by the end of this year, up from 19,000 in 2007. New arrivals face extortion and abuses when trying to cross Kenya’s officially closed border and are received in appalling conditions in overcrowded, underserviced refugee camps.

Since June 2007, Egyptian border guards have killed at least 32 African migrants trying to cross into Israel, and Israel has forcibly returned at least 139 border crossers to Egypt, Human Rights Watch has said in a report. Egypt has detained those returned, not revealed their whereabouts, and reportedly deported some to their home countries where they face a substantial risk of persecution.

The Algerian parliament has approved a constitutional amendment that abolishes a two-term limit for the president. The change opens the way for President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to run for a third term in elections due next April.