At least 100 people have died and thousands of others have been displaced during clashes over disputed land in southern Ethiopia during the past two weeks, humanitarian sources said. "The conflict started after the Guji, whose woreda [district] has recently been expanded by the government, started to claim land that previously belonged to Borena."

Between April 2005 and March 2006, some 19,000 Rwandan asylum seekers had arrived in Burundi's northern provinces. They were reportedly fleeing persecution under Rwanda's traditional ‘gacaca’ justice system, which the government introduced to expedite trials for thousands of suspects held in connection with the 1994 genocide. Since 12 April, the Burundian government has repatriated 5,206 Rwandans from its northern provinces of Ngozi and Kirundo.

More refugees from Ethiopia and Somalia have arrived in Zambia through Nakonde border in Northern province. Out of the 52 refugees, three are women and the rest are men aged between 20 and 30 years. Residents of Chinka are said to be unhappy with the government and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for not responding in good time to take the refugees to designated places. The residents feel the continued influx of refugees through Chinka is a threat to household food security in the area.

As the world commemorates World Refugee Day on 20th June, it’s worth noting that the history of Zambia and refugees is a history of the overwhelming hospitality of the Zambian people. Zambia has been a citadel of peace for many. The first occurred in 1943 during the second world war when Northern Rhodesia hosted Polish Refugees. The second was in the 1960s after independence when Zambia opened its newly recognised borders to Angolan refugees fleeing from conflict.

Although refugees and IDPs have separate legal regimes, operationally it is important they be dealt with in a more holistic way. As the UK Secretary of State for International Development Hilary Benn put it after visiting Darfur: "Is it really sensible that we have different systems for dealing with people fleeing their homes dependent on whether they happen to have crossed an international border? I have my doubts."

Factions from two Sudanese rebel groups that had refused to sign the Darfur Peace Agreement signed a declaration of commitment to the pact on Thursday, effectively pledging to abide by its terms. The main wing of the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A), led by Minni Minnawi, and the Sudanese government signed the African Union- brokered agreement on 5 May, but breakaway factions of the rebellion refused to sign it, prompting the international community to set a deadline of 31 May.

Efforts by authorities in southern Sudan to mediate in the conflict between the Ugandan government and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) appeared to be stalling at the weekend after Kampala refused to meet the insurgency's leadership because it had been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes.

Zimbabwe commercial farmers who accepted an offer to resettle in Shonga, about 100km north of Ilorin, the capital of the central state of Kwara, began farming in June last year. They all fled Zimbabwe after the government of President Robert Mugabe embarked on its controversial land redistribution programme in February 2000, seizing prime farmland owned from 4 000 white farmers and handing it over to the landless black majority.

After almost four years of seemingly intractable political crisis that has kept Côte d’Ivoire split in half and some 700,000 IDPs in government-controlled areas, there may at last be room for a small glimmer of optimism about the prospects of peace. Yet formidable challenges remain ahead of presidential elections scheduled for 31 October 2006 under a road map established by the International Working Group on Côte d’Ivoire.

Thousands of genocide survivors, whose school fees should be paid by a solidarity fund, no longer attend school and live in difficult conditions, said six members of the Rwandan Parliament in a report published last week by the New Times.

The parliament of The Gambia ratified the UN Convention against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, claiming that the country had never applied these practices and that it had not been ratified earlier "by omission." On the same day (June 6), however, Reporters sans Frontières released photos of a Gambian journalist who had been severely tortured by national security forces only last month.

Somalia's interim parliament is meeting in Baidoa to discuss whether to ask the African Union to send foreign peacekeeping troops into Mogadishu. But the head of the Islamist militia controlling Mogadishu, Sharif Shaikh Ahmed, has rejected any deployment.

In 2005, 8.4 million people were counted as refugees, which is a drop from 9.5 million in 2004. However, the number of displaced people due to internal country conflicts increased from 5.4 million in 13 countries in 2004 to 6.6 million in 16 countries in 2005. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres cited Darfur, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo as countries with high displacement rates that must work to remedy the situation. UNHCR officials continue to attribute the decline in asylum seekers to the imposition of tighter asylum restrictions in industrialized countries

What started as a seemingly insignificant skirmish between the army and antigovernment forces in Ouham Prefecture of northwestern Central African Republic (CAR) has spurred a humanitarian crisis in which almost 100,000 people have been displaced.

The stench of rotting corpses becomes unbearable. Locals say 75 of their men are buried in shallow graves in this glade on the village's outskirts, killed they say by men on horses, and by their own neighbours. The bodies were hastily buried in mid-May, days after a rag-tag group of men armed with guns, spears, and machetes overran the village in a dawn attack.

Peace talks between the government of Burundi and the country's remaining rebel group, the Forces nationales de liberation (FNL), which began on 29 May in Tanzania, are still at an informal stage, an official of the rebel movement said on Wednesday.

A militant group in Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger Delta claimed responsibility for kidnapping five South Koreans during an attack Wednesday on a gas plant operated by Royal Dutch Shell. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said in an emailed statement that several people were killed in the raid.

The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions 2006 survey of trade union rights violations reveals an intensification in the violent repression of workers' rights in Africa, the world's poorest continent. Among the most striking manifestations of the rise in repression was the failure of most governments to respect the rights of their own employees - the right to organise, to strike or bargain collectively.

The revised Anti-Terrorism Bill ran into trouble after a parliamentary committee dismissed its enactment as an "American priority". The committee said that even before the contents of the Bill were discussed, the Bush administration must accept that it was responsible for acts of terrorism. In a statement issued after meeting Islamic leaders, the committee said Kenya must not be lured into debating the merits and demerits of the draft until policy issues are resolved.

A Dutch court is due to deliver its verdict on a timber merchant charged with arms smuggling and war crimes during Liberia's civil war. A militia employed by Guus van Kouwenhoven, 63, is accused of killing a group of civilians, including babies. He allegedly broke a UN arms embargo by selling weapons to ex-President Charles Taylor. In return, Mr van Kouwenhoven allegedly received logging concessions.