Clashes between Ethiopian troops and Islamist insurgents have killed more than a dozen people in southern and central regions of Somalia, residents said. Islamist fighters, opposed to Ethiopian soldiers in Somalia to support its interim government, ambushed a convoy of Ethiopian forces in the central Hiraan region on Wednesday, triggering an exchange of mortar bombs and machinegun fire.

About half the internal refugees left after Kenya's post-election violence have been resettled this week and the remaining 70,000 should be home within a month, Kenya's government said on Thursday. "It's a logistical challenge. The numbers that want to go back home are higher than the transport available," government spokesman Alfred Mutua said in a progress report on a resettlement programme that started on Monday.

The South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu) says the Chinese vessel An Yue Jiang carrying weapons for Robert Mugabe's beleaguered regime in Zimbabwe is still on African waters looking for a friendly port more than three weeks after being turned away from South African waters.

When Naa Adorkor’s 15 year-old daughter was raped by a 45 year-old neighbour she vowed no expense would be spared in prosecuting the man. Four years later she has spent all her money and still received no verdict from Ghana’s courts. “I am fed up and frustrated. Sometimes I regret seeking justice in the court,” she said after the case was adjourned for the umpteenth time last week.

The Burundian military has announced the deaths of at least 11 fighters from the National Liberation Forces (FNL) in fresh fighting near the capital Bujumbura. The clashes on Monday between the government and the FNL comes after the United Nations warned of sanctions unless a ceasefire is observed.

A significant proportion of the world's 2.2 billion children, many of whom are victims of violence, sexual abuse, labour exploitation and preventable diseases, are from the crisis-plagued African continent.

Trouble getting an education or finding a job is a fact of life for young, disabled Moroccans. Government plans are already in place to end workplace discrimination and expand integrated classrooms.

Climate change is the newest threat to the increasing HIV and Aids epidemic worldwide, panelists said Wednesday at an HIV forum at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, the AAP/Age reports. The forum, titled "A Future Free of HIV," was moderated by Justice of the High Court Michael Kirby and included several HIV and Aids researchers, according to a UNSW release.

The Food Security Analysis Unit for Somalia deteriorating at an accelerated pace due to sky rocketing food prices, a deepening drought due to an abnormally harsh dry season and a delayed and poor start to the seasonal rains (mid-April to June). As result the number of people in need of assistance has increased to 2.6 million people in Somalia (35% of the total population), which is an increase of more than 40% since January '08.

A Congolese warlord known as "the Terminator" is being sought for prosecution, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague has revealed. The arrest warrant for Bosco Ntaganda, was issued in 2006 but not made public and he is still at large. He is accused of conscripting children under 15 to fight in hostilities in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo between July 2002 and December 2003.

Police in Mozambique have been accused of killing and torturing people with near total impunity. The human rights group Amnesty International has published a report saying the Mozambique police appear to think they have a licence to kill. The group says officials have responded to rising crime rates with often lethal force, but that they almost never face criminal proceedings.

I had been out of journalism school for barely two weeks when Julia Opoti, a friend and an editor at Kenya Imagine, a popular online discussion forum for Kenyans, sent a text message to my cell phone. My name, she wrote, had been the subject of another online forum. "Hey, did you know that there is a whole thread about you on Mashada?" the message read.

Angola's government has authorised a Chinese ship carrying arms destined for Zimbabwe to dock, although it says it will not be allowed to unload weapons. In a statement, the government said the vessel would only be allowed to deliver goods intended for Angola.

Seth Donnelly looks at the continuing human rights abuses by UN soldiers in Haiti.

Note: the following article is based on a recent investigation carried out in Haiti by a member of the Haiti Action Committee and other US human rights observers in Haiti.

On Saturday, April 11th, a little past 3 p.m., a MINUSTAH (UN) soldier, Nigerian Cpl. Nagya Aminu, was shot and killed in downtown Port-au-Prince. While this killing was widely reported in the international media, what followed the killing was not.

In the immediate aftermath of the killing, at approximately 3:30 p.m. that same afternoon, MINUSTAH troops launched a massive assault on Haitian vendors at the open-air sidewalk market near the main Cathedral in downtown Port-au-Prince - the area where the soldier had been killed.

According to many different street vendors who directly witnessed the MINUSTAH assault, four or five MINUSTAH soldiers emerged from parked trucks near the market and began smashing up the property of street vendors, setting the market on fire, setting off tear gas, and shooting directly at unarmed vendors.

According to one vendor, MINUSTAH soldiers used flame throwers to torch the stalls. He said the soldiers also grabbed hammers and began destroying property. This vendor was hit in the head by MINUSTAH soldiers with these hammers. On April 17th, he showed a member of the Haiti Action Committee and other US human rights observers a massive wound to his head and a blood soaked shirt. He lost consciousness and was taken by a friend to the St. Joseph Hospital nearby.

Another vendor reported that he was shot in the leg by MINUSTAH soldiers and showed his wound to the delegation. He also showed his medical records from the hospital where he had gone to be treated.

Vendors spoke of people killed by MINUSTAH gun fire. According to an officer of the National Association of Vendors, at least three people were shot and killed by MINUSTAH soldiers, who allegedly zipped bodies into bags and took them away. Reportedly, the families could not locate the bodies in the local morgue. A different source indicated that more people may have been killed. The Vendors Association officer also stated that several hundred vendors may have lost their property in the raid.

The National Association for the Defense of Haitian Vendors and Consumers has filed a formal complaint asking the Haitian President to take action and secure compensation for the 263 Haitian vendors whose property was reportedly destroyed by the MINUSTAH troops. Members of the association provided our human rights delegation with a full listing of the names of these vendors, what property they lost, and how much it was valued. For many of these vendors, who live in dire poverty, the loss in property is truly devastating. Additionally, the Association provided us with a list naming seven people who were injured and two killed - Amonese Pierre and Anna Ainsi Connu - by the MINUSTAH troops.

This kind of massive assault by MINUSTAH troops on the civilian population has happened many times before, such as the notorious attack on the people of Cite Soleil on July 6th, 2005. I was part of a small human rights delegation that visited Cite Soleil approximately 24 hours after this attack. We saw firsthand the bodies of murdered civilians, including a mother and her two young children, who community members told us were gunned down by MINUSTAH soldiers. Our delegation later interviewed the military high command of MINUSTAH who reported that the command was unaware of any civilian casualties during the assault.

It is time for the international human rights community to face squarely what has happened in Haiti: a US-backed coup in 2004 that ousted a popular, democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and a subsequent UN occupation (MINUSTAH) authorized by the rich nations on the Security Council. Under this occupation, some 9,000 military and police officers from different countries - ranging from Jordan and Sri Lanka to China and Brazil - are charged with keeping the "peace". These forces have been accused by many in Haiti of targeting Aristide supporters. Indeed, the occupation serves to consolidate the anti-democratic qualities of the coup. Until the international human rights community starts to pay attention to what is happening in Haiti and join in solidarity with the Haitian people, more egregious human rights violations will be perpetrated in the name of "peacekeeping" operations.

Take action to demand that the MINUSTAH soldiers involved in this latest outrage are prosecuted for crimes against civilians!

Take action to demand that the street vendors receive full compensation for what they lost!

Contact:
UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH)
Tel: 011-509-244- 0650/0660
FAX: 011-509-244- 9366/67
Or, Fax Office of Secretary General (New York): 212-963-4879

President Rene Preval
Send a fax to 206-350-7986 (a US number) or email to [email][email protected]
Your letter will be hand-delivered to the Presidential Palace in Haiti.

Haitian Ministry of Justice
Tel: 011-509-245- 0474

*Seth Donnelly is a Bay Area High School social studies teacher and a member of the Haiti Action Committee. This article first appeared at www.dissidentvoice.org

**Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

The young man, who agreed to be called Hamed, has come a long way to do nothing. The Ivoirian would prefer to work but, after sneaking into Israel from Egypt about a month ago, he’s got nothing better to do than sit in a park everyday in central Tel Aviv, wait, and hope for a government decision on his refugee application.

Climate change in Africa could leave 250-million more people short of water by 2020, spurring conflicts and threatening stability on the world's poorest continent, the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner said on Tuesday. Rajendra K Pachauri, chairperson of the United Nations panel of climate experts who shared the prize with former United States vice-president Al Gore last year, said the responsibility lay with wealthy developed nations to curb their carbon emissions.

About 95 people have been killed in tribal clashes in south Sudan, which have also targeted equipment and facilities used in an historic nationwide census, local press reports said on Friday. Clashes broke out on Tuesday in the southern Lakes State between two rival branches of the Dinka tribe after a dispute over cattle, the daily al-Sahafa reported, adding that dozens were left dead in the streets.

The victims of human trafficking in Southern Africa are often invisible because many countries in the region have failed to implement laws to combat it, Hans Petter Boe, Regional Representative for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), said in his opening remarks at a conference in the South African port city of Durban.

A human rights group has accused Ethiopian troops of deliberately "targeting civilians" during a deadly raid on a mosque in the Somali capital Mogadishu that left 21 people dead. But Wahide Belay, a spokesman for the Ethiopian foreign affairs ministry, on Thursday dismissed Amnesty International's report as "total rubbish".

The World Food Program lacks crucially needed funds to help feed Haiti's poor, and international donors must provide urgent and massive aid, a spokesman for the United Nations agency said on Thursday. "The situation is particularly serious because 56 percent of the Haitian population was already living with less than one dollar a day," the WFP regional public information officer, Alejandro Lopez, told Reuters.