The number of people requiring emergency food aid is expected to increase as food security has not improved, according to the latest assessment of drought-affected areas, a senior government official said.

Gay and lesbian refugee claimants struggling to shed old-world views of their sexuality are turning to new-age technology to make their case. Facebook, the popular online social network, is being used as a tool by some claimants to help prove their sexual orientation to immigration officials in Canada. "Sexuality has always been very complicated and when you have to prove it as a matter of life and death you will use any resource you have available to you," says Diego Macias of Among Friends, a Toronto-based gay and lesbian refugee support group.

Final arguments in the lengthy trial of three former commanders of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) have ended in Freetown, making way for judgment which is expected by the end of this year. The three -- Issa Sesay, Morris Kallon and Augustine Gbao -- have been on trial since July 2004, following their arrest and indictment by the U.N.-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone on an 18-count charge of war crimes, crimes against humanity and serious violations of international humanitarian laws.

While conflict diamonds or blood diamonds, as they are known, have gained attention the world over in terms of the role illicit gems play in fuelling warfare, the role that the timber trade has played in abetting conflict has received considerably less consideration. That may be beginning to change.

For Absalom Moyo* the relief in getting his asylum seeker permit is obvious. "It's like a dream come true," exclaims Moyo, who recently entered South Africa illegally, fleeing violence in his native Zimbabwe. "Receiving this so quickly has taken me by surprise and it has definitely made up for the horrible experience I went through when coming to South Africa," he says, displaying the permit he says has allowed him to relax and not always be on his guard.

A civilian convoy with seven vehicles was attacked on Monday, leaving six dead and 28 wounded, the joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) has reported.

Sudan’s Anti-Terrorism Special Courts in late July sentenced 30 alleged rebels to death in trials that fell far short of international fair trial standards, Human Rights Watch has said. Human Rights Watch urged the government to abolish the hastily created special courts and instead prosecute all cases in the regular courts according to the 2005 National Interim Constitution.

Rwanda formally accused senior French officials on Tuesday of involvement in its 1994 genocide and called for them to be put on trial. Among those named in a report by a Rwandan investigation commission were former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and late President Francois Mitterrand.

Joseph F Kamara Appointed Deputy Prosecutor of the Special Court Prosecutor Stephen Rapp announced today the appointment of Sierra Leonean lawyer Joseph F Kamara as Deputy Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Mr. Kamara is the first Sierra Leonean to occupy the post. He succeeds Dr. Christopher Staker who has held the position since July 2005.

BAE Systems, the British arms manufacturer under investigation in several countries for alleged bribery, paid at least £20m to a company linked to a Zimbabwean arms trader allied to President Robert Mugabe, documents seen by the Financial Times show. John Bredenkamp, who has indefinite leave to remain in Britain, has had a controversial career ranging from supplying military equipment to the Zimbabwean military to mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Aid agencies working in a climate of heightened insecurity in Somalia have been forced to come up with inventive ways to keep their HIV programmes, and their staff, alive following the recent kidnappings of several foreign and local aid workers.

More than a million people are at risk of starvation in Uganda's semi-arid and remote northeastern regions and over 40,000 children are suffering acute to moderate malnutrition, a government official said. Musa Ecweru, Uganda's state minister in charge of refugees and disaster preparedness, said prolonged dry conditions after flooding in the region last year had led to a 90 percent crop failure. Plants had failed to germinate under very hot conditions.

Prison conditions in Benin are so deplorable that they were, alongside police brutality, one of two reasons that compelled the international human rights watchdog Amnesty International to list the country in its annual State of the World's Human Rights report for the first time in 2008. Prisons suffer from overcrowding, cases of unjustified detention, a lack of trained prison staff and lack of adequate food, according to the report.

Over the past week the UNHCR operation in Guinea embarked on a campaign informing Sierra Leonean refugees on the upcoming cessation of their refugee status and its implications. The UN refugee agency announced last month that as of the end of the year, Siera Leoneons who fled their country during civil war in the early 1990's will no longer be considered refugees since the root causes of the refugee problem in Sierra Leone no longer exist.

The head of the joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) says he concurs with a report by a group of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that the operation faces critical shortages in troops, personnel, equipment and logistics.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has sounded the alarm about the impact of escalating violence on young people in Somalia, where just last week seven children died in battles between anti-government forces and Ethiopian troops based in the capital, Mogadishu.

While each phase of disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) contains challenges, the most delicate and urgent component is disarmament. Written by Peter Swarbrick, this operational manual aims to educate donors, managers and practitioners about some of the most important obstacles to successful DDR operations. Using examples from the DDR programme in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the manual identifies common problems and practical solutions that can be applied to a variety of apparently dissimilar disarmament processes.

The Kenyan government should account for dozens of missing people detained during the security operation in Mt. Elgon, Human Rights Watch said in a report. Human Rights Watch also called on Kenya to support independent investigations into torture and war crimes committed by security forces, and urged donors, including London and Washington, to review military aid to Kenya.

Kenya is one of the first beneficiaries of "Operation Monogram," the British government's counter-terrorism training and equipment foreign assistance program, because it shares a border with war-torn Somalia and because of its own experience of terrorist attacks. Research by Human Rights Watch has now provided hard evidence of abuses by Kenyan security forces that received British training.

Mali's government and Tuareg rebels reached aceasefire agreement on Monday to end almost a year of sporadic clashes in the country's vast northern desert, Algeria's official APS news agency said. The truce came after four days of talks in the Algerian capital, Algiers, between government envoys and members of the rebel Democratic Alliance for Change mediated by Algeria's ambassador to Mali, Abdelkrim Ghrib.