This briefing from the International Crisis Group examines the ongoing negotiations between the Ugandan government and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the necessity for the international community to remain committed and ensure the parties reach an agreement that brings both peace and justice in northern Uganda.

Following a recent nutrition survey, UNICEF and its partners estimate that 83,000 children in central and southern Somalia suffer from malnutrition - 13,500 of whom are severely malnourished and at risk of dying. “These children urgently require attention to ensure that they survive,” said UNICEF Representative to Somalia Christian Balslev-Olesen. “UNICEF is very concerned that their numbers might increase with continued civil strife, limited humanitarian access to these areas, food insecurity and a depressed economy,” he added.

In the wake of recent intense fighting in North-Kivu province between government forces and fighters loyal to renegade general Laurent Nkunda, Amnesty International has accused the DRC government and international community of having failed the people of eastern DRC.

Police in Angola are responsible for persistent human rights violations, with few perpetrators ever brought to justice, Says Amnesty International. A climate of arbitrary arrests and unlawful detention, torture and ill-treatment, deaths in police custody and extrajudicial executions is exposed in a new report. Officers that commit such abuses have almost total impunity.

Since July 18, 2007, several individuals have been reportedly arbitrary arrested and detained by the police in Nekemte town, Eastern Wellega Zone in Oromia Region for their alleged links with the armed opposition group Oromo Liberation Front (OLF).

Musicians from Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe are putting xenophobia on the cultural agenda in a musical initiative to get people talking about discrimination. South Africa, especially Johannesburg, is home to thousands of foreign Africans. Some are refugees, fleeing persecution and seeking asylum; others are looking for work and a better life. Many find that life is not what they expected. They face discrimination from government services, harassment by police and degrading treatment from people, whether in the taxis, schools, shops or streets.

In August, Uganda's Security Minister, Amama Mbabazi, threatened to re-enter the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) following two cross-border incursions by Congolese gunmen thought to have been linked to the army. Kinshasa stands accused of killing a British worker from the oil-exploring Heritage Corporation after a 15-minute exchange of fire with the Uganda People's Defence Force and private guards.

At least 20 Burundi fighters were killed on Tuesday in heavy clashes between two rival rebel factions that sent scores of residents fleeing the capital's northern suburbs, witnesses said. Machine gunfire and explosions shattered the air as insurgents opposed to Agathon Rwasa, the leader of the rebel Forces for National Liberation (FNL), battled fighters loyal to him.

Zimbabwe's police formally accused the country's main opposition leader on Thursday of "disorderly conduct" in connection with his recent tour of stores hurt by the government's controversial price freeze, his lawyer said. Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the biggest faction of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), was quizzed by police for nearly an hour in the capital, Harare, and then released from custody, one day after being instructed to appear.

Somalia's self-declared autonomous region of Puntland has cracked down on people smugglers who have been using its ports as a springboard to get illegal migrants into the Gulf States, the head of police said. The crackdown is intended to stop the smuggling of Ethiopian and Somali migrants to countries like Yemen and Saudi Arabia, a phenomenon that peaks at this time of the year.

Peacekeepers are unlikely to arrive in Chad for at least three months, according to senior UN diplomats who spoke following a joint military mission to the country by representatives of the European Union and the UN. Meanwhile the World Food Programme (WFP) is launched a new appeal for funds to assist Darfur refugees in Chad and victims of inter-communal clashes in Chad.

A coalition of Botswana Civil society organisations that include the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) Botswana , the Ditshwanelo-Centre for Human Rights and the Botswana Council of Non-Governmental Organisations (BOCONGO) have expressed disappointment following the refusal of the ruling party members of parliament to grant the opposition members a postponement of the discussion and voting on amendments to the Intelligence and Security Services Bill.

The opposition frontrunner in Sierra Leone's presidential election pulled out of a peace rally to have been held with his ruling party rival on Thursday, citing fears of renewed violence before a weekend run-off vote. The opposition All People's Congress (APC), whose candidate Ernest Bai Koroma led in a first round poll, said the ruling Sierra Leone's People's Party (SLPP) was arming supporters and had denied it campaign access to a contested eastern district.

The United Nations appealed for emergency funds for Chad to feed thousands of refugees from regional violence as U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon arrived on Friday to pave the way for international peacekeepers. Most of the 380,000 civilians sheltering in eastern Chad fled civil war at home in Sudan's Darfur region, but 150,000 of them are local people forced from their homes as ethnic conflict has spilled over the border in a regional spiral of bloodshed.

This paper explores the causal linkages between corruption and civil wars. It discusses the impact of corruption on the probability of violent conflict events and traces the shifts in the composition of corrupt transactions during and in the aftermath of violent conflicts. The author brings the two strands of empirical research of corruption and civil wars together and argues that anomalies arise that would have been difficult to detect within each field in isolation.

People are again fleeing from their homes in North Kivu as tension and terror return to the border province in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Petronilla Nsiya watched in horror early last week when armed men entered her village, Sake, frogmarched her neighbour from his hut, tied him to a tree and then butchered him. The man's wife was shot in the stomach.

The UN refugee agency said on Tuesday it feared that a lack of funding could bring a halt to confidence-building measures connecting Sahrawi refugees in Algeria and their relatives in the Western Sahara Territory. In January, UNHCR appealed for nearly US$3.5 million to continue the family visits and telephone services initiated in 2004 between refugees in western Algeria's Tindouf camps and their kinfolk across the border.

Sudan and Darfur rebels will hold talks on October 27 in Libya to push for peace ahead of the expected deployment of a 26,000-strong peace force in Darfur, a U.N.-Sudanese government statement said on Thursday. The statement said the United Nations "expresses the hope that parties will cooperate fully" with U.N. and African Union (AU) mediators.

A dissident Congolese general called for African mediation to broker a ceasefire in eastern Congo as fighting between his forces and government troops neared the provincial capital on Thursday. New clashes broke out before dawn around Karuba, a village about 30 km (19 miles) west of Goma, the capital of troubled North Kivu province, after President Joseph Kabila's government rejected talk of negotiations.

Last week South Africa’s Home Affairs Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula raised the hopes of millions of Zimbabweans living in that country after suggesting her government might consider granting them temporary residence permits. In what many said was a tacit admission Zimbabwe’s crisis has gone out of hand, Mapisa-Nqakula told reporters the government needed to adopt a new approach to deal with Zimbabwean citizens flocking into South Africa. She said deportations were a waste of money as people were going back within days of being kicked out of the country.