Kenyan officials "violated with impunity" the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement during an operation to resettle people displaced by post-election violence early this year, human rights activists have said. "Kenya has no specific policy on internal displacement; it has no domestic law on protection and resettlement of IDPs [internally displaced persons]," Ndungu Wainaina, executive director for the International Centre for Conflict and Policy, a Kenyan non-governmental think-tank “committed to transitional justice”, told IRIN.

An intensive evening and weekend program of experiential learning and new perspectives on ways to bring about conflict transformation and peacebuilding. The goal is to develop the knowledge and skills needed to facilitate the transformation of interpersonal, organizational, community or complex societal conflicts, including ethnic, religious or cultural tensions, using techniques of multi-track and citizens’ diplomacy.

More than 26,000 people displaced from southern Somalia to Somaliland are not receiving adequate assistance because officials in the region, which regards itself as an independent country, give priority to those displaced within Somaliland. "We have a different definition of IDPs [internally displaced persons] compared with the international community because the international community regards the displaced from southern Somalia as IDPs but we regard them as refugees," Ali Ibrahim, Somaliland's minister for planning and national coordination, told IRIN.

About 200 Somali businessmen in South Africa's Western Cape Province are being threatened with violence if they continue doing business in the townships. They recently returned to the areas after fleeing a wave of xenophobic attacks in May 2008. A group of local township businessmen, acting under the banner of the Zanokhanyo Retailers Association (ZRA), sent the Somalis letters in September, warning them to close their shops or face "actions that will include physically fighting".

Following a recent offer by Kenya to train Somali forces, Islamists have responded with a threat to launch an attack on Kenyan territory if it goes ahead with plan. According to reports, Kenya had offered to train 10,000 Somali government troops in a bid to boost capacity to deal with insurgency and bring back law and order in that country.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has accused its neighbour Rwanda of sending troops across the border in support of a Congolese rebel leader. Dozens of people were injured in fighting near Goma, the eastern provincial capital of eastern Nord-Kivu, but Rwanda denied involvement saying the accusations from Kinshasa were "ridiculous".

The European Union will press Mauritania's military government next week for a return to constitutional rule and the release of ousted President Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi. The bloc could impose sanctions if no progress is made in talks which start in Paris on Monday, the French EU presidency said on Friday.

An increase in violence in northern Darfur last month has displaced around 50,000 people, many of whom could be short of food and water, a United Nations official said on Saturday. Gregory Alex, head of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in northern Darfur, said around 24,000 people fled their homes after clashes between government and rebel forces near the areas of Birmaza and Disa.

As millions of Zimbabweans face a daily battle to survive, it is becoming clear that ZANU PF continues to hold the nation hostage – this after police and war veterans prevented the MDC from distributing critically needed food to hungry orphans in the Nyanga rural district in the eastern Manicaland province last week. The severe food crisis is taking it’s toll on the country and unknown numbers of people are beginning to suffer the effects of extreme hunger and malnutrition.

An additional 5,500 people have been displaced this week from the capital of strife-torn Somalia, the United Nations reported today, bringing the total number of those uprooted by fighting between Government forces and Islamic insurgents since 21 September to over 61,000.

Life is getting tougher and tougher for Burundi's 12,000 urban refugees and asylum seekers. Amid rising prices and dwindling opportunities to make money, hundreds of refugees have left the capital, Bujumbura, over the past two years and moved to refugee camps where they can get assistance and free schooling for their children.

Sudan's president, accused of genocide by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), launched a national initiative on Thursday to bring peace to Darfur. Rebels dismissed the move by President Omar Hassan al-Bashir as a public relations trick and boycotted the launch.

An international tribunal should be set up in Kenya to try those implicated in clashes after December's disputed poll, an inquiry into the violence says. The commission found that in some areas, the violence was planned and organised with the support of politicians and businessmen.

Judges at the International Criminal Court have asked for more evidence before deciding whether to issue an arrest warrant against Sudan's leader. Chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo wants the court to issue a warrant for President Omar al-Bashir over war crimes allegedly committed in Darfur.

The International Organization for Migration estimates that up to 35,000 sub-Saharan clandestine migrants leave for North Africa and Europe every year. But researchers concede the near impossibility to track what is carried out in secrecy, facilitated by family connections and favours, bribes and beatings. Despite increased security crackdowns and forced mass expulsions by North African security forces, thousands of West African migrants still attempt the desert crossing from northern Niger through the gateway town of Agadez.

The United Nations will do everything possible to stop Congo's eastern conflict from becoming a wider war after the government accused Rwanda of sending troops over the border, a U.N. official said on Friday. Democratic Republic of Congo has asked the U.N Security Council to hold an emergency meeting on what it says was a Rwandan military incursion this week into eastern North Kivu province in support of Congolese Tutsi rebels.

The number of Ethiopians needing emergency food assistance has jumped to 6.4 million from 4.6 million in June, the aid agency Oxfam said on Friday. Drought and high food prices have both contributed to the worsening crisis in Ethiopia and other parts of the Horn of Africa like Somalia and north Kenya, aid workers say.

At least one person was killed when police in Guinea cleared protesters from a railway carrying bauxite for Russian aluminium company RUSAL, police and industry sources said on Friday. The trains, which have been blocked since Monday, had still not restarted, the sources added.

At least 5,000 refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have arrived in South Sudan in the past two weeks after fleeing “ferocious” attacks by the notorious Ugandan rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), the United Nations refugee agency reported. Ron Redmond, a spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told reporters in Geneva that an estimated 150 Congolese are crossing every day into the villages of Sakure and Gangura, in the Yambio area of South Sudan.

Libyan prisoner of conscience Idriss Boufayed was released by the Libyan authorities on Wednesday 8 October.An outspoken critic of Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi and secretary general of the Libyan organisation National Union of Reform, Idriss Boufayed was arrested on 16 February 2007 for trying to organize a peaceful demonstration against the Libyan government.