An investigation by the Conflict Awareness Project has exposed an active arms trading network of associates of former trafficker Viktor Bout that involves companies from the United States, South Africa and the United Kingdom, among other countries. All are cross-linked in a complex system with its centre in the island of Mauritius. The traffickers’ ultimate goal was to access countries such as Iran, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia and possibly Syria, researchers say.

Somalia's population exodus has crossed a new threshold, hitting the one million mark as more people continue to flee to the surrounding region, the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, said. The most recent arrivals continue to cite insecurity and dwindling food resources as the main reasons for their flight. Despite last week passing the 1 million mark for the first time since Somalia descended into violence in 1991, data compiled by UNHCR for the main arrival countries of Kenya and Ethiopia also shows lower but steady numbers of people leaving Somalia.

The British Government on Tuesday 17 July acknowledged that colonial forces in Kenya tortured and abused detainees during the Mau Mau rebellion. Queen’s counsel Guy Mansfield made the first ever official acknowledgement in the British High Court during the hearing of a case filed by three elderly Kenyans. Mr Mansfield told the Kenyans suing for damages that the British Government did not dispute that 'terrible things' happened to them. Before cross-examining witnesses, the lawyer said he did not want to dispute that civilians suffered.

Nigeria's army has warned thousands of Plateau state residents to leave their homes as it begins an operation against those accused of a recent spate of deadly attacks. Some 100 people were killed recently after attacks on villages inhabited by Christian ethnic groups. Two senior politicians then died after gunmen opened fire at a funeral for some of the dead. Reports say thousands of Muslims are refusing to leave. Plateau state straddles the dividing line between the mainly Muslim north of Nigeria and its largely Christian and animist south.

Abdirahaman Abdiwali, a leader in the local Somali community, in an interview with the website says the Somali community has contributed to Cape Town’s local economy, but that Somalis are vulnerable to crime when conducting their business. 'Most of these crimes are happening in townships such as Khayelitsha, Delft, Philippe, and Nyanga. For the past three months, sixteen people were killed. Some are still in hospital critically wounded and some were left paralysed. Thirty-six armed robberies were also reported. The criminals operate as a team. They target Somalis who will be coming from the Cash and Carries or other big wholesalers after buying goods for their Spaza shops. Normally they rob them of their goods and bakkies before they reach their shops, or they attack them while they are busy off-loading.'

Green Berets from the famous 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) out of Fort Carson, Colorado, trained with the Botswana Defense Forces Special Forces (BDFSF) on marksmanship, close quarter battle, medical and tracking training in an effort to strengthen relationships and to promote and support Special Operations Capabilities. This was all part of field training exercises called 'Eastern Piper 12'. Exercise Eastern Piper 12, conducted by US Africa Command (AFRICOM) and Special Operations Command, Africa (SOCAF), was a three week Foreign International Defense (FID) structured counter-terrorism base exercise, which took place at the Thebepatswa Air Base in Gaborone, Botswana.

Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo have agreed in principle to allow a neutral international force to patrol their borders, reports say. The proposed force would tackle militia groups in the eastern DR Congo. The deal was reached by leaders of the two countries on the side lines of an African Union summit, Rwanda's Paul Kagame told AFP news agency.

The so-called Arab Spring continues to reverberate locally, regionally and geopolitically. The 20 articles in this issue of Forced Migration Review reflect on some of the experiences, challenges and lessons of the Arab Spring in North Africa, the implications of which resonate far wider than the region itself.

Darfuri refugees in Chad continue to depend almost entirely on humanitarian assistance for their basic needs, notes a June 2011 report by the US Cultural Orientation Centre. Access to arable land remains generally non-existent for these refugees, says ACT Alliance, an alliance of 125 churches and related organizations that work together in humanitarian assistance, advocacy and development.

For the second time Kenyan fighter jets have targeted districts in southern Somalia, Radio Garowe reports. According to military sources, there are also contradicting reports saying that the strikes led to many civilian casualties, with a few Al Shabaab agents being killed in the strikes.

In the eastern Congo, a onetime rebel leader charged with a range of war crimes lived in high style for three years, in full view of a large United Nations peacekeeping force. How did the UN find itself in the middle of one of the world's bloodiest and most unmanageable conflicts? And why are its troops picking sides? These are the questions this Wall Street Journal article investigates.

The Sudanese authorities should immediately stop the torture and ill-treatment of those detained following demonstrations since mid-June 2012, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said. 'Torture and other ill-treatment are absolutely prohibited under international law,' said Aster van Kregten, Amnesty International's deputy director for Africa. 'We call on the Sudanese authorities to ensure that every credible allegation of such abuse is subject to prompt and impartial investigations, and to ensure that the victims receive reparations.'

When Abdo Giro*, a 55-year-old evangelist minister and political dissident from southern Ethiopia, paid smugglers 55,000 birr (US$3,095) to take him from the Kenyan border town of Moyale to Johannesburg in South Africa, he was completely unprepared for the ordeal that lay ahead. Instead of the promised 'nice car', he was lucky to end up in a packed mini-bus for the first leg of the journey through Kenya and Tanzania. Smugglers are capitalizing on the demand for their services and the relative impunity with which they operate by making increasing financial demands on desperate migrants while showing little regard for their safety.

Over 500 foreign nationals have been displaced in xenophobic attacks in Botshabelo in the Free State, the SA Red Cross Society (Sarcs) said. The Red Cross said it was currently supporting 584 displaced foreigners at the community hall, providing food, blankets and other aid. 'Sarcs is pleading with the public, businesses and corporates to assist with clothes, school uniforms, toiletries and food to help the victims.'

Somalis living in the world’s largest refugee camp risk being recruited by armed groups and bandits as children grow up without education in increasingly desperate conditions, eight aid agencies said. Kenya’s overcrowded Dadaab camp, whose population swelled to 465,000 as a result of last year’s famine in war-torn Somalia, has been hit by a wave of bomb blasts and grenade attacks. 'You have lots of youth in Dadaab who can’t work - they don’t have an education, they’ve got limited ways of feeding their families,' Alun McDonald, Oxfam’s East Africa spokesman, told AlertNet.

Non-governmental organisations in the Democratic Republic of Congo province where Thomas Lubanga Dyilo used children as fighters in his militia in 2002 to 2003 have slammed his 14-year sentence as inadequate - and potentially dangerous. The International Criminal Court sentenced Lubanga, a former leader of the Union of Congolese Patriots, to 14 years in prison for recruiting children during a bloody conflict in the northeastern DRC province of Ituri. 'Fourteen years is a joke. Taking into account the six years he has already spent in prison (since his arrest in 2006), he will serve only eight more,' Joël Bisubu, from the NGO Justice Plus, told IPS.

The Tunisian League for Human Rights (LTDH), the Arab Human Rights Organization (Egypt) and the Libyan Human Rights League, among several organizations and activists, signed on Sunday an international Pact of Honour against torture in Tunis, reported TAP news agency. LTDH President Abdessatar Ben Moussa said that 'the pact commits the signing parties to defend and campaign for the respect of human rights and fundamental liberties', stressing that the league will spare no effort to include the principle of criminalising torture in the future Tunisian Constitution.

Authorities in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo accused neighbouring Rwanda on Tuesday 10 July of 'invading' a volatile border area, portraying an advancing rebel insurgency as a Rwandan military operation. The Rwandan government has consistently denied allegations by Congolese officials and United Nations investigators that it is fomenting and supporting the Tutsi-dominated M23 rebel movement in Congo's mineral-rich North Kivu province, long a tinderbox of regional ethnic and political tensions.

Renewed fighting over the last week in Democratic Republic of the Congo's North Kivu province has caused more than 5,000 people to flee across the border into south-west Uganda and left an unknown number internally displaced. As of Monday 9 July, Uganda Red Cross staff in the crowded Nyakabande Transit Centre in Uganda's Kisoro District had registered 5,075 new Congolese arrivals from North Kivu's neighbouring Rutshuru territory since the latest fighting between government troops and the rebel March 23 movement exploded. The defectors on Friday captured the border town of Bunagana followed by the important town of Rutshuru, causing thousands to flee.

Uganda is 'overwhelmed' by the current influx of Congolese refugees fleeing renewed fighting in North Kivu Province in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and is calling for an emergency meeting of countries in the Great Lakes Region to work out a road map for lasting peace, say officials. 'We have a problem of feeding these big numbers. The influx has come at the time when our donors are experiencing financial shocks, which has a direct impact to government and UNHCR [UN Refugee Agency] to look [after] and cater for the refugees,' Musa Ecweru, Uganda’s state minister for relief, disaster preparedness and refugees, told IRIN.