In June this year, the United Nations (UN) extended, Special Representative on Human Rights and Business, John Ruggie’s mandate to continue finding solutions to bridge the gap between business and human rights. Ruggie’s work is largely aimed at addressing the perils of globalisation given the increasing mobility of big companies marching across the planet in search of the best labour deals in the most pliable working environments

The Democratic Republic of Congo army is collaborating with rebels to mine gold and tin, instead of fighting them, says lobby group Global Witness. Its researchers found that the two groups operated their own mines and even traded with each other.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has appealed for $14m (£8m) to help the nearly two million victims of sexual violence in Africa's wars. The ICC said sex attacks against women and girls had been found to be the most widespread form of criminality. Rape has become a weapon of war often used to fuel ethnic cleansing, it said.

The army recently expelled 91 Africans who crossed the border into Israel from Egypt - in violation of its own procedures, which it presented to the High Court of Justice less than four months ago. In an affidavit presented to the court, obtained by The Jerusalem Post, the state admitted that the 91 infiltrators, who came from Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia, had been returned to Egypt on four separate occasions between August 23 and August 29.

Cape Verdean singer Cesária Évora has been nominated for the second time for the Prince of Astúrias Concord Award, which is given to people or institutions whose work has contributed toward promoting peace and freedom and combating injustice and poverty in the world.

Here is an unassailable truth: if sexual violence is not addressed during the course of a conflict, then sexual violence will haunt the post-conflict period, and make of the ostensible peace a mockery for half the population.

Three days ago, I returned from Liberia. While in the country, I met with President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, with senior officials of the Ministry of Health, with the Minister of Gender, with the leadership of the Clinton Foundation, with the consultant who drafted the legislation for the special court to try sexual offences, with the UNICEF Representative and significant numbers of the UNICEF staff. Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to meet with UNMIL, but the UN Mission in Liberia and its peacekeeping forces were inevitably a part of every conversation.

She was speaking about the contagion of sexual violence that currently engulfs the country and causes such intense concern. The statistics are horrifying: a recent study by UNICEF indicated that more than fifty per cent of all reported rapes are brutal assaults on young girls between the ages of ten and fourteen. The gender advisor in UNICEF felt that the percentage was probably on the rise, and it’s feared that increases in the HIV rates among female youth will not be far behind. The Minister of Gender showed me figures for March, 2008, indicating that the majority of reported rapes in that month were committed against girls under the age of twelve, some under the age of five, and she narrated stories of gang rape so insensate and so depraved that it reminded me of exhibits in a Holocaust museum. A further survey, of all fifteen counties in the country, found that girls and boys were united in their conviction that young girls were the most endangered group in Liberia, and incredibly enough, that there was no place and no time of day or night where adolescent girls could be considered safe.

The context of my discussions is encapsulated in the words of the Deputy UN Envoy for the Rule of Law in Liberia when she said, as recently as May 20th: We cannot expect the future leaders of Liberia, the doctors, nurses, and engineers of Liberia to be brought up amongst men who are rapists and women who are angry, degraded, frightened, depressed, embarrassed and confused.

Systemic Conflict Transformation, or SCT, attempts to combine best practice in conflict transformation with systemic models of social relations, drawing on methodologies from various other disciplines, such as family therapy, change management, organisational development and cybernetics. In our dialogue, the exposition of a systemic approach in the context of Sri Lanka is discussed by five international experts. They reflect, among other things, on additional tools and techniques, comparative experiences in Nepal and Kenya and the general added value and utility of systemic conflict transformation.

On the occasion of this year’s International Day of the Disappeared Persons -30th August- International Center for Policy and Conflict [ICPC] express its solidarity with families of all those who suffer from enforced disappearance in Kenya and internationally and pays special tribute to the selfless efforts of human rights defenders working for enforced or involuntary disappeared persons and their relatives.

In 1968 the BBC's Africa Editor Martin Plaut was one of 600 students at the University of Cape Town protesting because black lecturer Archie Mafeje had been denied a teaching post there. Returning to Cape Town 40 years later for a reunion of campus rebels, he discovered the real reason for the university's stance.

Fighting resumed on Friday between government troops and rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in a new breach of a truce agreement, sources on both sides said. The governor of Nord-Kivu province, Julien Pakulu, said forces of renegade general Laurent Nkunda had attacked positions of the government's Seventh Brigade at Katsiru, about 100km north-west of the provincial capital, Goma.

The release of detainees suspected to be members of the Palipehutu-Forces for National Liberation (FNL), Burundi's last rebel group, would remove a major impediment to the ceasefire between the group and the government, sources said. The FNL has repeatedly demanded the release of its detained members as a pre-condition for implementing a ceasefire with the government, according to local observers in the capital, Bujumbura.

South Africa is one of only seven countries in the world that grants refugee status on the basis of sexual orientation. But people seeking that relief are battling as much as other refugees in the country. In Uganda, homosexual acts are punishable with life imprisonment; in Mozambique with three years’ imprisonment, and with seven years in Botswana.

In South Africa non-nationals, refugees, asylum seekers, and other immigrants are often excluded from the services, welfare, and dignity they are guaranteed by South African law and constitutional commitments. Issued annually in commemoration of World Refugee Day (20 June), this report represents research by members of the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa (CoRMSA), a national network of service providers and research bodies in South Africa.

Persons with disabilities remain among the most hidden, neglected and socially excluded of all displaced people today. People with disabilities are often literally and programmatically “invisible” in refugee and internally displaced persons (IDP) assistance programs [adapted from author]. This resource kit provides practical ideas on how to improve services and protection for people with disabilities and enhance their inclusion and participation in community affairs.

Climate change threatens to cause the largest refugee crisis in human history. More than 200 million people, largely in Africa and Asia, might be forced to leave their homes to seek refuge in other places or countries over the course of the century.This paper argues that current institutions, organisations and funding mechanisms are not sufficiently equipped to deal with this looming crisis and advocates a blueprint for global governance for the protection of climate refugees.

Growing numbers of Congolese refugees like Kashindi Iddi are opting to head home from Tanzania as the situation eases in their home province of South Kivu across Lake Tanganyika. "In 1998, I fled my home town of Matongo because of the war in South Kivu. Today, I'm returning with my wife and three children," Iddi, holding his two-year-old son by the hand, said as he waited to board a UNHCR-charted ferry at the port of Kigoma.

Leaving Algeria illegally is now considered a criminal offence. In the new Penal Code, approved Sunday (August 31st) by the Council of Ministers, harragas (illegal immigrants) may receive prison sentences of up to six months. Penalties are harsher for the traffickers who co-ordinate the migration networks, allowing sentences up to ten years in the worst cases.

The top United Nations humanitarian official has begun his three-day visit to Ethiopia, where he is holding talks with Government officials, relief groups and individuals affected by the country's drought and food crisis. John Holmes, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, travelled to Ethiopia's Konso Special Woreda in Southern Nations Nationalities and People's Region (SNNPR) today to review humanitarian efforts.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has dismissed an appeal by prosecutors against its earlier decision to suspend the trial of the Congolese rebel leader Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, accused of recruiting child soldiers to serve in his militia. The court announced the decision in a statement, noting that judges with the ICC’s trial chamber had made the ruling.

The Security Council has welcomed the recent signing of a peace and reconciliation agreement by Somalia’s warring political groups and urged the two sides in the troubled Horn of Africa nation to fully implement their commitments under the accord.