Arid eastern Chad has always suffered water shortages. In 2004, a quarter-million Darfuri refugees settled in the region, placing further strain on local water sources. Intensive labor by a wide range of aid groups -- drilling new wells, building dams to catch rainwater, opening up channels to feed rain into underground reservoirs -- has alleviated but not eliminated the problem.

The UN refugee agency has recently signed an agreement with three organizations aimed at ensuring the protection needs of refugees and asylum seekers in Libya. This is in line with UNHCR's responsibility to advocate for better protection of refugees in the context of mixed asylum and migration flows.

The Zimbabwe Exiles Forum said on Friday the South African government needs to take responsibility not only for the number of Zimbabweans fleeing into the country, but also for the growing number of displaced Zimbabweans – a figure that is now estimated at a quarter of a million since the March elections.

While officials at the US Embassy in Harare took the day off to celebrate America’s Independence Day on Friday, almost 200 victims of political violence were still waiting outside the embassy gates seeking refuge and shelter. An estimated 260 people fled their homes to seek shelter at the diplomatic mission on Thursday, as the state sponsored violence against MDC supporters continued.

Belgian authorities have transferred Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo, charged by the International Criminal Court (ICC) with multiple counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder and rape, to the Court’s detention centre in The Hague.

Ethiopia’s government should immediately abandon plans to impose strict government controls and draconian criminal penalties on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International has said. The two groups called on donor governments, whose behind-the-scenes efforts to see the bill reformed appear to have failed, to speak out publicly against the de facto criminalization of most of the human rights, rule of law and peace-building work currently being carried out in Ethiopia.

The following is the speech made by Joshua Nkomo at the funeral ofLookout "Mafela" Khalisabantu Vumindaba Masuku, in Bulawayo on Saturday 12 April 1986, 22 years ago. Tens of thousands of people converged to pay their last respects.

The Kenya government has commenced a profiling assessment exercise of the post 2007 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Molo district. The exercise was launched on June 5, 2008 at Mkulima primary school in Kuresoi division, Molo district and was expected to end on 3rd July 2008.

20 June 2008 was World Refugee Day. The theme for this year was ‘Refugee Protection’. For Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), it was a little ironic. In fact, MSF marked the day by placing public messages in major national and regional newspapers, calling for the South African government and the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) to provide the necessary assistance and legal protection to Zimbabweans guaranteed under international law.

"We hurriedly buried the seven in the shallow grave and fled due to fears of attacks," explained Joseph Mwangi Macharia as armed police accompanying him went through the motions of evacuating the cattle farmer’s entire family, all victims of post-election violence in Kenya.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/385/49179SAviolence.jpgSHATTER… MYTHS

On Thursday 22 May, Cape Town changed forever. The xenophobic violence that started 1,200 kilometres away in Gauteng spread to Du Noon township. On Friday the TAC offices began to get reports of violence on trains and Somali shops being looted. The details were scanty, but by Friday evening the consequences became visible even in the affluent city centre. About 150 people sought refuge outside Caledon Square, the city's main police station. Hundreds more gathered at the central train station so they could catch a train to Johannesburg in the morning and then leave the country.

A group of mainly Congolese men at Caledon Square, explained that they had no trust in any South African government institution and demanded to see the UNHCR so they could be repatriated. They said they would not move from Caledon Square until then even if it rained. One of them is a published writer and another lost his computer training school, worth tens of thousands of rands, in the violence. Angry young Burundians screamed at me that they wanted nothing more to do with my country. Malawian youths mournfully described how they felt they had no choice but to return home.

More than 50 people died and tens of thousands of people were displaced as a result of ‘xenophobic’ violence in South Africa during 2008. A number of urgent questions resulted from these attacks: Why are foreign African migrants the targets of violence in informal settlements? What is the explanation for the timing, location and scale of the outbreaks? Was this sudden and unexpected or was it predictable? And, what are the main drivers behind this violence?

This paper proposes an analytical framework to understand important internal links between household poverty and armed conflict. It argues that the economic behaviour and decisions of households to protect their livelihoods and economic status during conflict, and avoid poverty, matter substantially to the onset, sustainability and duration of armed conflicts because they determine the level of participation and supportof households for armed groups.

HIV-positive patients in Kenya have a low rate of coinfection with hepatitis B virus or hepatitis C virus, according to an international study presented to the Fourth International Workshop on HIV and Hepatitis Coinfection in Madrid on June 20th.

Prosecutors on Friday charged two Congolese warlords with killing 200 civilians, taking women as sexual slaves and recruiting child soldiers, as they launched the second case at the International Criminal Court. Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo are both accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity including murder, sexual slavery, rape, inhumane acts and using child soldiers.

The UN negotiators attempting to bring peace to Darfur have resigned, admitting that their mission has been a failure. Jan Eliasson, who has been leading the UN's peace efforts in Sudan for the past 18 months, announced that he and his African Union counterpart, Salim Ahmed Salim, would stand down to make way for a new negotiator.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has appealed for $49 million to assist families in Ethiopia where drought has left 75,000 children severely malnourished and 4.6 million people in need of immediate humanitarian aid. After completing a visit to Ethiopia UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Hilde F. Johnson said today that the situation in the hardest-hit areas of the country is extremely serious.

Hundreds, possibly thousands, of people, including children, suspected of terrorism-related offences, have been arrested in Tunisia since the introduction of the Anti-Terrorism Law in 2003. Authorities use the broad definition of ‘terrorism’ in this law to criminalize legitimate and peaceful opposition activities.

The conflicts and humanitarian disasters from Sudan to Somalia are closely linked and a failure to understand this is undermining efforts to find peace, says a new report by Chatham House. The report is a study of three peace processes in the region dealing with the conflicts in Somalia and Sudan and between Ethiopia and Eritrea. It shows how each of these different conflicts feed into each other and exacerbate conflicts in other countries.

Following the horrendous killings of albinos in Tanzania and recently in Kenya, a series of events has been scheduled to begin from June 28. The Hon MP from Tanzania who was appointed by the Country's President to help create awareness on the issue is jetting in today to help in the campaign. You can watch a documentary which was covered from Tanzania, together with an ensuing live interview between me and and a news director on Al-Jazeera TV at 6:00 PM and 9:00 PM East African time. They are bound to interview a Tanzanian at 6:00 PM on the subject of witchcraft.