At least 10,000 Ivorians have fled their homeland in the last two weeks, fearing a fresh chapter of violence after the government in Abidjan broke an 18-month ceasefire and bombed the rebel-held north. The refugees, most of whom are women, are strung out along remote areas of the border. Most appeared to have come from the area round Guiglo, on the government side of the frontline in western Cote d'Ivoire, and from around Danane, a rebel-held city near the Liberian border.

Summary executions, torture, rape, disappearances, arbitrary arrests and destruction of property continue to be reported throughout Côte d'Ivoire both in government- and rebel-controlled zones and in the United Nations-patrolled Zone of Confidence (ZOC) separating the combatants, the UN mission said. Despite its drastically reduced staffing, the UN Operation in Côte d'Ivoire (UNOCI) continues to investigate alleged human rights violations, especially since fresh fighting erupted two week ago when Government forces violated a nearly two-year-old ceasefire agreement with an attack on rebels in the north.

The UN Security Council on Friday re-affirmed its full support for the peace process in Somalia and the UN's commitment to help regional and sub-regional organisations working to restore stability in the Horn-of-Africa country, which has lacked an effective government for more than a decade. "The Council welcomes the progress made in the Somalia national reconciliation process - in particular the establishment of the Transitional Federal Parliament, the election of the speaker of the parliament, the president and the appointment of the prime minister, which provides a sound and solid framework to achieve a comprehensive and lasting solution to the situation," the Council said in a statement adopted on the last day of a two-day meeting in Nairobi.

The government of Somaliland and the Administration of Puntland should out an immediate end to hostilities and the spread of hostility, forbid the movement of armies and any form of military action, make a concerted effort to search for a political solution that will terminate conflict and stop the propaganda and the dissemination of hatred based on clan affiliation and clan animosity. This is according to a statement by a coalition of civil society organisations opposed to war in the region. Read the full statement by clicking on the link below.

The number of Burundian refugees returning home voluntarily has dropped by two thirds after the country’s general elections were postponed. Ngara District Commissioner Samuel Ndomba, told The Guardian at the weekend that before the elections were rescheduled, an average of 3,000 refugees returned home monthly. The number has now dropped to 1,000.

African leaders put final touches on a new, UN-backed peace plan for the troubled Great Lakes countries on Saturday amid fresh allegations of gun-running, abuse and violence in the vast, volatile region. Thirteen heads of state were expected to approve the peace framework - the first step toward stability in an area encompassing Rwanda, Burundi and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) at the close of a summit on Saturday in Dar es Salaam.

The Netherlands has extradited a former army officer suspected of having committed atrocities in Rwanda's 1994 genocide to the Tanzania-based UN war crimes tribunal, Dutch prosecutors said. The former lieutenant colonel is suspected of having played a leading role during the 1994 massacres.

The impunity enjoyed by the Sudanese authorities in their ongoing atrocities in Darfur demonstrates why the near-final peace deal to end the country’s North-South conflict must include accountability for human rights abuses, Human Rights Watch said this week. On November 18-19, the United Nations Security Council will hold an extraordinary session in Nairobi to push the North-South peace negotiations to a conclusion. The draft peace deal to end the 21-year conflict is known as the Naivasha protocols, named after the Kenyan town where the Sudanese government and the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) have negotiated a series of protocols since June 2002. “Unless they are held accountable for abuses in the South, the Sudanese authorities will continue to believe they can get away with murder in Darfur,” said Jemera Rone, Sudan researcher for Human Rights Watch.

The CLEEN Foundation, formally Centre for Law Enforcement Education in Nigeria, created public forums where citizens and police can discuss concerns and grievances regarding crime and police conduct. Communities and police forces can find themselves in an unproductive cycle of distrust. Community members are concerned about misconduct, brutality and corruption. The police, in turn, are concerned with the community is hostile and uncooperative in their investigations. In Nigeria, the centralized structure of the police force has contributed to the problem: one set of agendas and policies is applied to the whole country, creating a gap between the law enforcement priorities of the police and the needs of the local communities.

The Swazi government faces mass protest action by labour unions, human rights groups and banned political parties over the treatment of a local chief and his followers, who were evicted from their land for a second time by royal police in defiance a court ruling. The government's previous refusal to abide by a Court of Appeal ruling, allowing the chief and his people to return to their homes, resulted in the resignation of the entire bench and sparked a rule-of-law crisis.

If members of the UN security council were writing an exam on African conflicts, they would be repeating the year. That's according to an Oxfam report that rates the performance of the security council with regards five African conflicts at a dismal average of 36 percent. Rating Sudan at 2/10, Oxfam says: "As a major focus of world attention, the Council has been forced to take some limited steps, though these are woefully inadequate given the scale of the crisis. Thousands of lives and the Council's credibility now depend on its ability to follow-through and hold the parties to their commitments."

Political conflict and instability are symptoms of deeper economic and social ills that must be addressed for real peace to take hold in Cote d'Ivoire and throughout West Africa, argues this commentary on the Foreign Policy in Focus website. "The U.S. can work with the African Union and the United Nations, not to pass sanctions, but to put in place new approaches that would ensure peace in Cote d’Ivoire and surrounding countries. Such policies would include the disarmament of the rebel movements whose ranks are filled with child soldiers and mercenaries from Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Burkina Faso; the re-unification of the country under one authority; and a referendum on aspects of the constitution such as land tenure and eligibility criteria for the presidency."

As the Kenyan capital prepares to host a two-day meeting of the United Nations Security Council this week, reports about the situation in Darfur, western Sudan, are piling up. On Tuesday, Amnesty International (AI) – the London-based human rights watchdog – issued a report entitled ‘Sudan: Arming the Perpetrators of Grave Abuses in Darfur’. The document came on the heels of an earlier report by Human Rights Watch, based in New York, which called on the Security Council to back its criticism of Khartoum with actions against key Sudanese officials. AI is calling on the Security Council to extend an arms embargo that it passed against non-governmental groups in Sudan, to include the government.

Amnesty International has said it is concerned about reported statements by government officials suggesting that crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Northern Uganda would be addressed in traditional reconciliation procedures, rather than in fair trials before independent and impartial courts in accordance with international law and standards. "Uganda cannot 'withdraw' its referral, in January 2004, to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) of the situation in the northern part of the country," the organization declared.

Africa is in danger of losing the war against deadly sleeping sickness-carrying tsetse flies, a UN expert warned, adding that total eradication by sterilising male flies using radioactive rays was the only viable option. Ali Boussaha, head of the African division at the UN International Atomic Energy Agency told IRIN on Monday that attempts to control the spread of the tsetse-transmitted trypanosomosis had not worked in Africa, but the new Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) could be a success.

More than 10 000 Ivorians have fled to Liberia since the sharp escalation in Ivory Coast's civil war 10 days ago, the United Nations refugee agency said. The latest figure is more than double those given by the UNHCR on November 10, when it estimated that between 3 000 and 5 000 Ivorians had fled to Liberia. Refugees were fleeing Ivory Coast because of the fear of renewed violence, but were not being forced out by fighting on the ground, it was emphasised.

The UK government is to end its two-year suspension of deportations of failed asylum seekers to Zimbabwe because the concession has been abused, the immigration minister, Des Browne, announced. The decision was immediately criticised by refugee welfare groups who expressed concern that anybody was to be forcibly returned to Robert Mugabe's regime and demanded that the fate of those sent back be monitored by the British authorities.

This paper by Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict presents a practical and detailed Action Plan for a system that would enable the UN Security Council, the Secretary-General and all others obligated to protect effectively the security and rights of children in armed conflicts to monitor, document and respond to violations. This Action Plan addresses various activities that must be carried out at the local, country, regional and international levels and the actors that will carry out this work. Therefore, the primary audience for this paper is the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly, member states, UN agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and other civil society organizations.

The Government of Sudan is forcibly relocating thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Sudan, without respect for international law. The government’s actions defy both the letter and the spirit of its August 21 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), in which it committed to international involvement in assuring “voluntary, safe, dignified, and sustainable” return of IDPs in Darfur.

There tends to be a factor of irrationality that lurks around to make fools of us whenever we base arguments solely on race, disregarding other aspects of our humanity or human frailties. One such factor that has posed problems for generations of black people, for example, is that too many of them have allowed people from other races to determine for them how they should see themselves in terms of beauty. For this reason it has not been difficult for far too many black people, even today, to accept that anyone black can be beautiful. For these to be black is to be ugly.