Mawingu internally displaced persons stormed out of the camp on Monday protesting government’s failure to purchase land for them. Led by their chairman Peter Kariuki and other officials, they regretted that the government had failed to respond to their request to have them resettled on a 6,000 acre piece of land that they had identified at Wiyumuririe in Laikipia.

The Eugene Terre'Blanche murder trial was expected to enter its second week in the high court sitting in Ventersdorp on Monday. Last week, seven witnesses took the stand. Five of them testified that the two farmworkers accused of killing the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) leader had confessed to the crime. Terre'Blanche's former employees, Chris Mahlangu and a minor, are accused of beating and hacking him to death in his North West farmhouse on 3 April last year.

According to the 2009 United Nations Human Development Index, almost 80 per cent of households in this Central African nation now live on less than two dollars a day. Child poverty is estimated to be even higher, says the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), with eight out of 10 children not having access to basic services, such as education, health, nutrition or safe drinking water. 'The situation of Congolese children is worrisome. Only about a third of children of primary school age attend primary school,' says UNICEF DRC monitoring and evaluation specialist Bertin Gbayoro.

Almost half a million Ivoirians remain displaced five months after the country’s post-electoral civil conflict ended, afraid of returning to their homes for fear of reprisals, while a sluggish response to funding appeals means living conditions for many are getting worse. A 12 October report by NGOs Oxfam, CARE and the Danish Refugee Council warned of a two-thirds shortfall in the UN appeal for emergency funding to deal with around 450,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) throughout the country, as living conditions for many deteriorated.

Lawyers for a Gambian minister charged with treason have said that his health is at risk as he was being held in a filthy prison cell. Mr Borry Touray told the high court in Banjul that former information and communication minister Amadou Scattred Janneh is confined in a leaking and dirty prison cell that could harm his health.

Why is the US sending its troops to finish off a fractured band of bush fighters in the middle of Africa?
President Barack Obama announced he is dispatching about 100 US troops - mostly special operations forces - to central Africa to advise in the fight against the Lord's Resistance Army - a guerrilla group accused of widespread atrocities across several countries.

Kenyan troops have crossed into Somalia and have driven out al-Shabab fighters from two bases near the border in a joint operation with Somali soldiers, according to a Somali military commander. Kenya has said it would hunt the fighters they accuse of being behind several recent kidnappings of foreigners.

Despite years of trying to obtain legal documents of his citizenship and residency status, Jabulani Sibanda remains undocumented. Without them, he is resigned to living quietly and unobtrusively under the radar of officialdom. 'I always find myself back at square one,' he said, shrugging at the repeated obstacles he faces. 'I know no other life but one of being sent from pillar to post, begging and ingratiating myself into and out of situations. It is my life.' Sibanda's problems started when he was seven, when he and his mother crossed illegally from Zimbabwe into South Africa.

AWDF has congratulated the three winners of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, describing the prize as ‘significant recognition’ of the efforts that all three have made ‘to create sustainable peace in their respective communities’.

In 'Detention Abuses Staining the New Libya', Amnesty International reveals a pattern of beatings and ill-treatment of captured al-Gaddafi soldiers, suspected loyalists and alleged mercenaries in western Libya. In some cases there is clear evidence of torture in order to extract confessions or as a punishment. 'There is a real risk that without firm and immediate action, some patterns of the past might be repeated. Arbitrary arrest and torture were a hallmark of Colonel al-Gaddafi's rule,' said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty International's deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.

In the space of a fortnight, Africa lost one Nobel Prize winner, Kenya’s Wangari Maathai and gained two more – Liberia’s Leymah Gbowee and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. But as we celebrate their achievements, we should be mindful that ‘womanhood is not synonymous with sainthood’, cautions Sokari Ekine.

With World Mental Health Day marked on 10 October, the Refugee Law Project says more attention needs to be given to the mental health of refugees.

Hundreds of families are on the move in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, after three days of fighting between government troops supported by African Union peacekeeping troops (AMISOM) and Islamist insurgents, local sources told IRIN. 'We don’t have exact numbers but hundreds of families are on the move, particularly from Heliwa, Suuqa Xolaha, Karan [north Mogadishu] and Dayniile [northwest],' Abdullahi Shirwa, head of Somalia's National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA), told IRIN.

The latest news about the US conflict minerals law is that California State has become the first state in the United State to pass its own conflict minerals legislation. This legislation mirrors Section 1502 of the national legislation, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, which also aims at addressing the problem of conflict minerals originating from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). All companies, regardless of whether they are importing to the US raw or processed minerals, or as finished components, are expected to report on the due diligence they have undertaken to verify their supply chain and avoid conflict-promoting metals.

Lucy Hovil reports about the uncertain future of thousands of Burundian refugees in Tanzania who are under increasing pressure to return home against their wish. Tanzania has set a new deadline for return, after which the government will force them out

The Nigerian Government Investigation Panel on the 2011 Election Violence on Monday submitted its report to President Goodluck Jonathan, warning that if the current social, economic and security situation in Nigeria are allowed to continue without addressing them it could 'escalate to social revolution'.

Transnational criminal networks are corrupting and undermining state institutions in some countries to such an extent that they pose a threat to the state itself, according to two new reports from the International Peace Institute (IPI) made public on 4 October in Nairobi. The reports, entitled 'Termites at Work: Transnational Organized Crime and State Erosion in Kenya', were launched at an event, co-hosted by the International Peace Institute and the Nairobi-based Africa Centre for Open Governance (AfriCOG).

The African Encounter for the Defence of Human Rights (Raddho) has urged Mauritania's government to opt for dialogue over a census under way and to reject 'blind police violence'. One man has been killed and at least 15 others have been injured, according to Mauritanian rights groups, in southern Mauritania since 24 September during clashes between police and black opponents of the census.

takes special focus on the Rwandan Cessation Clause and the danger it poses to Rwandans who need protection and refuge. Insisted upon by Rwanda and supported by UNHCR, the Cessation Clause would revoke the refugee status of Rwandans throughout most of Africa at the end of this year, creating a crisis for Rwandan refugees and those who provide them legal aid. In response, please consider

In the year and a half since the earthquake in Haiti, the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH by its French acronym) has expanded its role in the name of security, stability, and relief. However, since its establishment in 2004, multiple independent human rights organisations have documented myriad violations of the human rights of Haitians. These transgressions have continued unchecked since the earthquake, positioning MINUSTAH as a threat to Haitian stability and security instead of a safeguard.