Nigeria is about to set itself apart, yet again, in one of the most sweeping anti-gay laws in the world. While the pending civil law proposes a lighter sentence than the criminal law, its legal reach is breathtaking. Interestingly homosexuality is already criminalized in Nigeria. Depending on whether the accused is Christian or Muslim, the penalty is either 14 years imprisonment or death by stoning.

Garissa district, in Kenya's arid and semi-arid North Eastern Province (NEP), was host to national events marking World Environment Day on June 5th. This year, the focus was on safeguarding drylands, and those who inhabit them. According to the UNEP, "people living in drylands, 90 percent of whom live in developing countries, lag far behind the rest of the world in human well-being and development indicators."

The Islamic courts in Somalia may have taken control of the capital, Mogadishu, but they face immediate challenges of whether to set up an administration in the city or hold talks with the Baidoa-based transitional government, analysts said. "They are not immune from Somali politics," said Suliman Baldo, Africa programme director for the International Crisis Group (ICG). "In the past, they have been hardline. It is doubtful that they have become more moderate. For them, the hard part is just beginning."

The Special Court for Sierra Leone has dismissed an application by former Liberian president Charles Taylor challenging a bid to change his trial venue, a court official said. Taylor's lawyer Karim Khan filed in April a motion asking that the court's president either withdraw his request to transfer the trial to The Hague or that the defence be allowed to comment on the issue before a decision is reached.

More than a decade after US troops withdrew from Somalia following a disastrous military intervention, officials of Somalia's interim government and some US analysts of Africa policy say the United States has returned to the African country, secretly supporting secular warlords who have been waging fierce battles against Islamic groups for control of the capital, Mogadishu, reports the Washington Post.

Today, less than 20,000 Somalis live in the one remaining camp in the country, Kebribeyah. The people there cannot return home because it is still too violent and dangerous. The harsh landscape in Ethiopia was once home to more than half a million Somali refugees who lived in eight camps. After more than a decade in exile, assistance has diminished significantly.

The decision by Interpol to issue wanted person's notices against several Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) leaders will scuttle ongoing efforts to peacefully end the war in northern Uganda and may escalate the violence there, religious leaders in the war-affected region have said. Interpol issued its first warrants on behalf of the International Criminal Court (ICC) for five LRA commanders on Thursday. The ICC had earlier issued its own arrest warrants for the five rebels on charges including murder, rape and the forced enlisting of children.

A former Rwandan media director has been sentenced to six years in prison after admitting inciting violence during the 1994 genocide. Joseph Serugendo this week agreed a plea bargain at a UN court, under which charges of genocide were dropped. Serugendo, 53, is terminally ill. Some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in the 1994 slaughter. Serugendo is a former technical director of Radio Mille Collines (RTLM), which urged Hutus to murder Tutsis.

Public debate about asylum seekers has become increasingly "negative and vitriolic", despite a rapid fall in the number arriving in the UK, according to a report from the UN high commissioner for refugees. The author, commissioner Antonio Guterres, said asylum seekers were an easy target for politicians and media pundits wishing to score points.

Somali refugees are leaving Zambian settlement camps, and although they have the right to move, the government and the UN refugee agency are concerned about being used as a "stepping-stone" to other destinations. Peter Mumba, permanent secretary of the Zambian Ministry of the Interior, told IRIN: "Out of the over 120 Somali refugees that we officially registered in March this year, only two are in Meheba camp now. This is a very sad situation for us, because it will make us to start treating every refugee with suspicion."

From Kashmir to the Congo, the UNHCR joined hands with internally displaced persons and refugees to celebrate World Environment Day. This year's theme was Desert and Desertification and the slogan, "Don't Desert Drylands!" But in order for the theme to be more applicable and relevant to most refugee situations, UNHCR chose to use the slogan "Combat Land Degradation in Refugee-Hosting Areas."

The decision of the South African Constitutional Court in "Government of the Republic of South Africa v. Grootboom" is one of the leading examples involving judicial enforcement of socio-economic rights known to comparative constitutional lawyers. At the time of the decision, many praised the court's decision, as pragmatic and a democracy-sensitive approach to the enforcement of socio-economic rights by the judiciary, which provided important evidence of the possibility of judicial enforcement of these rights.

Some humanitarian workers, particularly Sudanese ones, are concerned that the services provided by the camps may entice residents into staying even after peace has come to Darfur. "In the camps they find a lot of water and good health provisions, fine schools for their children," says Khalil Tukras who heads the Sudan Social Development Organization.

The UN Security Council must ensure the urgent deployment in Darfur of a strong UN mission authorized to use force to protect civilians, said Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the International Crisis Group, in a joint letter to Security Council member states.

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan says that desertification is exacerbating extreme poverty and sparking conflict over dwindling resources, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia.

When Guinea Bissau troops launched a six-week offensive in mid-March to oust rebels from villages along the country’s northern border with Senegal, Jaura, like many others, lost everything. “This is what’s left of my house,” said Jaura, sweeping his arm to take in the patch of rubble that used to be his mud-brick home in the trading and farming town of Sao Domingos, 126 km north of the capital Bissau.

On match days, Bouake's usually bustling central market is empty. Twenty-eight-year-old Mamadou Kone sells shoes there, and though he was born just a few hundred metres away in the city's hospital, he is still referred to teasingly as the Guinean, the nationality of his immigrant father. "The leaders of this country have created this xenophobia."

The internal situation in Chad is deteriorating rapidly, and spill-over from the Darfur crisis is only part of the reason, says the International Crisis Group. "Sudan’s deliberate use of Chadian warlords in its counter-insurgency strategy in Darfur and as a tool in its attempts to topple President Idriss Déby is just one aspect of Chad’s woes. The ever deeper convergence of the two crises underlines the difficulty of settling one independently of the other," says the group.

Despite a recent peace accord, a new UN Security Council resolution, and agreement by Sudan to permit a UN assessment team to travel to Darfur to determine how to strengthen peacekeeping forces there, the situation in the region, as well as in eastern Chad, has continued to deteriorate, according to sources here. Attacks on villages and refugee camps by Khartoum-backed Arab militias, or Janjaweed, have been reported throughout Darfur in the past week, while fighting between various rebel factions has reportedly intensified.

There is a call for papers from the Households in Conflict Network for an international conference to be held in Washington D.C., United States, on 8-9 November 2006. The closing date is 12 June 2006.