Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president, claimed the war crimes case against him was built on lies and deceit as he took the stand as a witness in his trial at a special court in The Hague. Mr Taylor, 61, is accused of orchestrating a campaign of terror in Sierra Leone to gain control of the neighbouring country’s diamond resources, using methods including murder, sexual slavery and the recruitment of child soldiers during a decade-long civil war.

A leading militant group in the oil-rich Niger Delta on Wednesday declared a 60-day ceasefire and said it would seek talks with the Nigerian government. The ceasefire comes 48 hours after militants expanded their attacks beyond the delta with an assault on a fuel-importing facility near the financial district in Lagos, the commercial capital.

UNHCR staff in Libya have been carrying out interviews with 82 people who were intercepted by the Italian Navy on the high seas on July 1 about 30 nautical miles from the Italian island of Lampedusa. They were transferred to a Libyan ship and later transported to Libya. Based on subsequent interviews, it does not appear that the Italian Navy made any attempt to establish nationalities or reasons for fleeing their countries.

Because of the by people like you, 36,000 refugees in the Mtabila refugee camp in Tanzania are no longer in danger of being forcibly returned to Burundi where they feared they would face persecution.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/442/57758_darfur_tmb.jpgStoppi… genocide is apolitical, purely a matter of conscience and goodwill. At least, that's what the Save Darfur campaign would have us believe, says Bruce A. Dixon. While Save Darfur's good-vs-evil battle has consistently touted a total figure of 400,000 dead in Darfur, sources on the ground indicate that there were actually around 1,500 deaths last year. That people are dying is not to be minimised or downplayed, Dixon contends, but the notion that the US's global might is needed to slay a unified evil is increasingly revealing itself as purely a means to establish domestic consent for military intervention in Africa.

Uganda, Rwanda and the United Nations High Committee on Refugees set a target date of July 31 for all Rwandan refugees in Uganda to return home, with the U.N.'s refugee commission planning to reduce support for remaining Rwandans in August. The closer that date gets, the more it worries Beatrice Mukasekuru, who has asked that her real name not be used to protect her privacy.

Nigerian militant leader Henry Okah, who is on trial for gun-running and treason, has accepted a government offer for "unconditional" amnesty, his lawyer told Reuters on Thursday. President Umaru Yar'Adua last week ordered his interior minister to extend the amnesty offer to Okah and promised to release him if he accepted.

The precarious security situation in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where rebel fighters are continuing attacks against several villages, is a major obstacle to assistance programmes in the area, the United Nations humanitarian arm has said.

More than 200,000 people have now been forced to flee the Somali capital Mogadishu since fighting broke out between the Government and opposition groups in early May, in the biggest exodus from the troubled city since Ethiopian forces intervened in the Horn of Africa nation in 2007, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has said. By July 6, the eight-week offensive led by the Al-Shabab and Hisb-ul-Islam militia against the Government had driven a “staggering” 204,000 people from the capital, agency spokesperson Ron Redmond said.

United Nations humanitarian agencies operating in Benin are conducting rapid assessments to determine how they can best assist the thousands of people caught up in the heavy floods that have struck the West African country. At least 20,000 people are estimated to have been displaced or otherwise affected by the floods, with the area around Cotonou, the commercial capital, and along the entire southern coastline among the hardest hit regions.

This latest report from the International Crisis Group examines the failed attempts of the past to dismantle the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), an insurgency with roots that go back to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. It recommends a new approach to help end great civilian suffering and restore state authority in the eastern Congo. Clear division of labour and better coordination are needed to capitalise on recently improved Congo-Rwanda relations.

United States President Barack Obama should use his visit to Ghana on July 10 and 11, 2009 to encourage its new president, John Atta Mills, to take a leadership position in Africa on issues of democracy and justice, Human Rights Watch has said.

The Congolese military has promised to punish any soldiers found guilty of rights abuses, after activists claimed troops were carrying out mass rape. Military spokesman Colonel Leon Richard Kasonga said commanders must ensure the safety of civilians.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has ended marathon hearings into atrocities committed during the Liberian civil war, recommending stiff penalties, in a final report, likely to affect some 150 Liberians, including President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. The report recommended that 50 Liberians, including Johnson-Sirleaf, be barred for 30 years from contesting and occupying political office in the country.

A group of forty-one (41) Congolese refugees and asylum seekers (men, women and children) have this morning finally fled Namibia for their lives to an undisclosed destination through the neighboring Republic of Botswana. The group includes 23 children between the ages 1 and 17. According to NSHR’s latest information, the group is stranded, without food, in ‘no[wo]man’s’ land between Namibia and Botswana, some 300 kilometers east of the Namibian capital of Windhoek. NSHR has appealed to the Government of the Republic of Botswana to “accord them all the necessary assistance on humanitarian grounds”.

A group of forty-one (41) Congolese refugees and asylum seekers (men, women and children) have this morning finally fled Namibia for their lives to an undisclosed destination through the neighboring Republic of Botswana. The group includes 23 children between the ages 1 and 17. According to NSHR’s latest information, the group is stranded, without food, in ‘no[wo]man’s’ land between Namibia and Botswana, some 300 kilometers east of the Namibian capital of Windhoek. NSHR has appealed to the Government of the Republic of Botswana to “accord them all the necessary assistance on humanitarian grounds”.

While there have been reports of an increase in the number of Zimbabweans entering and leaving South Africa legally because of the recent introduction of the 90 day visa waiver for Zimbabweans by the Department of Home Affairs in March, refugee service providers have observed that illegal entry into South Africa by Zimbabwean economic migrants has continued to escalate, with many Zimbabwean asylum seekers still opting to jump the border and apply for asylum once already in the South Africa, rather than entering the legitimate way.

In October 2008, several refugee and Kenyan journalists met in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya, to discuss the development of a press in Kakuma using the Kanere Free Press. In previous years, they had been involved in a camp newsletter, produced by the refugee journalists, but edited by humanitarian agency staff and only intended for local in-camp circulation. That newsletter had eventually collapsed, but the journalists had continued to meet together and analyze the news events in their local milieu.

Irish Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire speaks from her jail cell in Israel. She was taken into custody along with twenty others, including former US Congress member Cynthia McKinney, when the Israeli military boarded their ship in international waters as it tried to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza

If HIV treatment standards in the global South do not keep up with standards in wealthy nations, history will not judge well current efforts to expand treatment in resource-limited settings, Dr Kevin M De Cock, outgoing head of HIV at the World Health Organization, told the 2009 HIV Implementers’ Meeting in Windhoek, Namibia, earlier this month.