The Refugee Law Project, a project of the School of Law, Makerere University, embarked on a countrywide conflict-mapping exercise dubbed: the National Reconciliation and Transitional Justice Audit (NR&TJ Audit) to document all major current and past conflicts and their legacies in Uganda. One of the main objectives was to document from a community perspective all the post-independence armed conflicts in Uganda. Six briefs are now available for their website.

We are pleased to announce that the May 2012 issue of the Fahamu Refugee Legal Aid Newsletter is now .

In this issue:

- Pending questions: UNHCR Recommendations regarding the Cessation Clause for Rwandan refugees
- Asylum victory on appeal: Immigration Judge placed ‘unreasonable expectations’ on applicant to demonstrate the motive behind violence against her
- UK detaining Sudanese asylum seekers with an aim towards deportation
- Understanding psychology can make asylum decisions fairer
- EU resolution against human trafficking in the Sinai
- Hungarian asylum process condemned by the UNHCR
- Thai NGO collecting signatures to petition for a Refugee Act
- The Moroccan Arab Spring: Protecting migrants rights in theory and practice
- Campaign for access to detention centres in Europe
- Engaging with our readers
- Refugees in Egypt: Between rights and responsibilities
- Publication profile: Migration Information Source

Also in this issue: Deportation news; Country of Origin and legal news; Resources; Publications; Vacancies; Courses, conferences and seminars; Calls for papers; Links.

As always, we welcome feedback and suggestions.

Renewed heavy fighting in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) North Kivu Province has pushed some 3,000 Congolese refugees into northern Rwanda where they are in need of humanitarian assistance, says a senior UN official. 'The situation is worsening since humanitarian volunteers are now overwhelmed by the influx of Congolese refugees who are arriving in Rwanda,' Neimah Warsame, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) representative in Rwanda, told reporters on 3 May.

Rights groups in Kenya have warned of a potential miscarriage of justice after the government moved to have the cases of four people charged with crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court (ICC) transferred to a region tribunal which has no experience in handling such crimes. Two of the suspects, Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta and former higher education minister William Ruto, are likely candidates in a forthcoming presidential election.

Sahelian governments and local and international aid groups are struggling to cope with both the continual arrivals of people fleeing the regions of Gao, Timbuktu and Kidal in northern Mali, and the mounting number of hungry people across the region as the lean season gets underway. Altogether some 284,000 Malians have fled the north according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 107,000 of them thought to be displaced within Mali; 177,000 in neighbouring countries.

The army has dismissed allegations that Uganda is propping up rebel groups in Sudan. The allegations, which have lately become a staple in mainstream Sudan media is, according to the Uganda government, a deliberate ploy by Khartoum to 'deflect attention from the daunting challenges it is facing.' According to the Sudan government, Uganda is giving assistance to the Justice and Equality Movement rebels who have been engaged in mortal combat with Khartoum for the last 10 years, together with SPLM-N rebels in Unity and South Kordofan areas.

A new asylum seeker process has been established in Israel, but a new report from The Hotline for Migrant Workers notes in it's conclusion that the picture emerging from the analysis of the new system 'is bleak'. 'It would seem that a system that was established not with the declared goal of providing protection to refugees, but rather with the intent of enabling the deportation of as many people as possible as quickly as possible, is a system that is bound to be unfair and degrading.'

A special summit of West African leaders held in Dakar, Senegal, agreed to dispatch a regional force to Mali if the interim government officially makes the request. 'The conference instructed the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) to prepare the standby force for immediate deployment as soon as Mali asks for it,' a statement issued at the meeting said.

Former Liberian President and war crimes convict Charles Taylor has picked Morris Anyah as his appeals counsel. The announcement came ahead of the sentencing hearing slated for May 16, to be followed by the sentencing judgement later on May 30. Anyah has since 2007 served as co-counsel on the Taylor Defence team. The African-American legal expert is an international legal expert, who also cross examined the actress Naomi Campbell over 'blood diamonds' at The Hague where the model acknowledged receiving 'dirty looking stones'.

In January 2011, after years of civil war, the people of South Sudan voted overwhelmingly for separation from the Republic of Sudan. As part of the process of separation of the two states, people of South Sudanese origin who are habitually resident (in some cases for many decades) in what remains the Republic of Sudan are being stripped of their Sudanese nationality and livelihoods. This is happening irrespective of the relative strength of their connections to either state, and their views on which state they would wish to belong to. This summary of a forthcoming detailed legal commentary from the Open Society Initiative for East Africa (OSIEA) and AfriMAP looks at the issues created by the respective nationality laws of the two Sudans.

Egypt has seen a new round of violence this week as clashes broke out between protesters and unidentified aggressors at the Ministry of Defense, leaving over 11 people dead and hundreds injured on Wednesday. The thugs, [called ‘beltagia’ locally], were wearing civilian clothes and allegedly sponsored by the military, according to protesters. Al-Azhar students, Salafists, Revolutionary Socialists, the Kefaya Movement and the April 6 Youth Movement have all assembled today at the army’s headquarters to denounce the violence and demand the military’s removal.

The Kenyan security forces have committed widespread human rights abuses against ethnic Somalis with total impunity, Human Rights Watch said in a report. Between November 2011 and March 2012, Kenyan police and soldiers arbitrarily arrested and mistreated Kenyan citizens and Somali refugees in North Eastern province in response to attacks by militants suspected of links to Somalia’s Islamist armed movement al-Shabaab.

Tunisian demonstrators have gathered in the capital, Tunis, to express solidarity with Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, Press TV reports. Demonstrators gathered on the major Habib Bourguiba Avenue in the capital on Saturday. The event was organized by a group of Tunisian activists who had gone on a 24-hour hunger strike in support of Palestinian prisoners before the demonstration on Saturday.

At least 34 people have been killed in an attack on a cattle market in north-eastern Nigeria, security officials have told the BBC. Another 29 people were injured, said Nigerian military spokesman Col Dahiru Abdussalam. The market in Potiskum, Yobe state, was set on fire by gunmen armed with explosives.

Fourteen persons, half of them civilians, died in Mali when they were hit by stray bullets following the eruption of violent clashes between troops loyal to the coup plotters and those still supporting the ousted President Toumani Toure, PANA learnt from official sources. In a statement, the Committee for the recovery of democracy and the restoration of the state (CNRDRE), the military junta that ousted Toure in a coup on 22 March, accused 'the intruders' of attacking the Kati barracks, the Malian national broadcaster (ORTM) and the international Bamako-Senou airport with a view to destabilizing the process of returning the country to constitutional order.

The whole rationale behind UNHCR’s recommendation to invoke the Cessation Clause is suspect. The refugees body should be urged to withdraw it.

Confronted with a declining World Order it can no longer control, does the West want to re-assert its will through a new world war, which this time would be really global?

The Charles Taylor trial reportedly cost a whopping $250 million. Was it worth it?

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN) has called upon the European Union (EU) to continue to monitor the constitutional reforms that have recently taken place in Morocco. 'The EMHRN is pleased to note that the reforms include the recognition of a multifaceted Moroccan identity and the return of legislative power to the Parliament. While the Network also welcomes the inclusion of the principles of gender parity and the primacy of international law over domestic laws, it wishes to draw attention to the fact that the recognition of these principles remains subject to interpretation,' the organisation said in a statement.

An Egyptian doctor volunteering at one of the makeshift hospitals in the Abbassiya district of Cairo assisting the wounded on Wednesday told the al-Dostour newspaper that at least 15 people have been killed in violent clashes that erupted massively on Wednesday morning. According to activists, 'army sponsored thugs' attacked the demonstrators near the ministry of defense on early Wednesday morning, firing live ammunition, Molotov cocktails and rocks at the unarmed protesters.