This penetrating study of successful mediation in a half-dozen violent conflicts across the African continent focuses on a hitherto neglected dimension of mediation and the motivations of the parties in conflict—and of the mediators themselves—in initiating the mediation option.

Chad's president and the leader of a rebel faction that tried to oust him earlier this year signed a peace accord in Libya late on Sunday (24 December 2006), but other Chadian insurgents dismissed the deal and vowed to fight on. Several rebel groups bent on overthrowing President Idriss Deby have been fighting a low-intensity war in the desert, mountains and scrub of eastern Chad, occasionally striking further west.

Somalia's government claimed Tuesday (2 January 2006) to have full control of territory wrested from Islamists with Ethiopia's military help, but militia fighters took no notice of orders to turn in their weapons in the capital. In Kenya, President Mwai Kibaki urged his Somali counterpart Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed to resume peace talks with the Islamists, who still pose a security threat despite defeat, in order to achieve stability.

Thousands of people have gone into hiding in hills near the North Darfur village of Abu Sakin after Arab militias continued their destructive rampage across parts of the western Sudanese region, aid workers said.

At least 160 Ugandans were deported from the United Kingdom this year compared to 120 who were returned in 2005. Another 25 Ugandans who sought asylum in the UK were arrested and are in detention. The detainees were arrested under the UK Immigration Act.

The South African Border Control Operational Co-ordinating Committee (BCOCC) is preparing for the expected influx of foreign migrant workers back into the country after the December holidays.

Thousands of people have been displaced from their homes in eastern DRC due to renewed clashes between the regular army, and forces allied to renegade commander Laurent Nkunda, according to military sources and the UN peacekeeping mission, MONUC.

A further several thousand people have been displaced by floods in west and northeast Kenya following a week of heavy rains, the Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) has reported. Areas under water include Budalangi, Migori, Nyando and Kisumu in Nyanza in Western Province, the KRCS said.

Kenyan authorities have deported hundreds of Somali refugees who tried to seek refuge in the neighbouring country to escape fighting back home. Police in Kenya escorted the refugees across the border into Somalia from a registration centre in Liboi on Wednesday (3 January 2006).

A British court has remanded four Rwandan men accused of taking part in the 1994 genocide of minority Tutsis. The men, in their 40s and 50s, appeared in a Westminster magistrates’ court on Friday (29 December 2006) after they were arrested in raids conducted in various parts of Britain.

Sudanese refugee community leaders are claiming that their living conditions in the Egyptian capital are worse than ever, one year after scores of their members were killed by Egyptian troops. The precise number of Sudanese refugees living in Egypt is not known, however observers put the number between one and three million.

The government of Robert Mugabe has, in an attempt to silence one of the president's fiercest internal critics, stripped the owner of Zimbabwe's largest private newspaper group of his citizenship. The Zimbabwe registrar general said Trevor Ncube, publisher of South Africa's Mail and Guardian newspaper, was not entitled to Zimbabwean citizenship.

An increasing number of children are being conscripted into Somalia's fighting factions, exposing them to attacks and separating them from their families, humanitarian agencies have warned.

“The Ethiopians now are advancing, but that is not the end," Omar Idris, a senior official of Somalia's Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), told the BBC on Wednesday (27 December 2006). "We know what happened in Iraq, the experience of the Americans... I think this is very, very early to say that the Islamic Court forces were defeated."

Suspected separatists in Senegal's Casamance province have killed a prominent local ruling party official and slit his throat. Armed men attacked Oumar Lamine Badji, a leading member of the president's ruling Democratic Party (PDS), late on Saturday (30 December 2006) at his home in the village of Sindian.

Ivory Coast's northern-based New Forces rebels have rejected an attempt by the country's president to bypass a UN-backed peace plan and hold direct talks with them. Last month, Laurent Gbagbo, the president, had suggested direct talks with the rebels to end the partition of the cocoa-growing country after the civil war in 2002 and 2003.

Assists in the logistics & supply component of the Emergency Programmes through improving the logistics system for procurement, importation, inventory control, warehousing and distribution of supplies and equipment to DPPA/B warehouses, and project sites.

In the context of growing complexity in global governance arrangements, it is becoming increasingly difficult to understand issue-areas – such as ‘security’, ‘migration’, ‘human rights’ and ‘development’ - in isolation from one-another. This paper develops two main concepts: embeddedness (the structural relationship between issue-areas) and linkages (the way issue-areas are grouped together in bargaining), and explores the relationship between the two.

The north is in a state of crisis as civilians are currently caught between rebels, government forces and armed bandits. This has resulted in the displacement of an estimated 150,000 people, though this number may be higher now. In addition, 20,000 people have fled to neighboring Cameroon and 50,000 are in refugee camps in southern Chad. With the continued fighting and insecurity in northern CAR, the number of displaced people is expected to increase.

Rescuers fear at least 100 suspected African migrants have drowned after their boat capsized off Senegal. The boat set out in early December with as many as 124 people on board, thought to be headed for the Canary Island, but it ran aground in bad weather. Fishermen rescued 24 people from the boat on Saturday (16 December 2006) off the northern coast of Senegal.