In the wake of the Obama administration’s gaffe in their attempt to replace the bloodied hands of Hilary Rodham Clinton with the bloodied hands of Susan Rice, comes now another historic and cruel irony

The Fahamu Refugee Programme is pleased to announce the December 2012 issue of the Fahamu Refugee Legal Aid Newsletter. The issue can be found . Please feel free to share it widely.

Many kids on the streets in northern Uganda are driven there by failing post-conflict recovery and reconstruction programmes and an indifferent central and often under capacitated local governments

The world seems to be in a state of paralysis in dealing with the problems in the DRC in which Rwanda and Uganda continue to pillage and plunder the mineral resources of the country. At the same time over 5 million Congolese have died.

The Fahamu Refugee Programme is pleased to announce the November 2012 issue of the Fahamu Refugee Legal Aid Newsletter. The issue can be found . Please feel free to share it widely.

Police in Kenya say 42 officers are now known to have been killed in the deadliest attack on police in the country's history. The officers were chasing suspected cattle rustlers on Saturday when a gun battle broke out in the remote Samburu district. Some police were airlifted to hospitals in Nairobi for treatment but later died from their injuries.

Ethiopians would like to continue to be good Samaritans to the hundreds of thousands seeking refuge from drought and conflict in neighbouring Somalia, but massive camps in fragile environments have sparked concern among both the government and the people sharing space with the refugees. 'We have had a million refugees at one time,' said Ayalew Awoke, Ethiopia’s deputy director for Refugee and Returnee Affairs (ARRA), the government’s refugee agency. Ayalew helped establish ARRA more than two decades ago.

President Museveni has been in touch with the Congolese rebel group, the M23, and told them to stop fighting, Defence Minister Crispus Kiyonga has revealed. Dr Kiyonga told the Sunday Monitor newspaper, in an exclusive interview, that secret meetings have been going on between Ugandan authorities and the rebels fighting President Joseph Kabila’s government, following a request by the Secretary General of International Conference for Great Lakes Region, Mr Ntumba Luaba. The revelation by the minister comes at a time when Uganda is fighting to clear its name with the UN, who, in a leaked report, accused Uganda of supporting the rebel group.

The UN refugee agency on Friday welcomed Brazil's recent decision to grant permanent residency to nearly 2,000 former Angolan and Liberian refugees. Brazil's Ministry of Justice issued a decree on October 26 confirming the new status for this group. The measure was adopted by the Brazilian migration authorities following a global UNHCR recommendation in January this year, asking states to apply the cessation clauses on the two refugee situations and recommending countries of asylum to pursue local integration or an alternative status for former refugees.

Libya's former prime minister will be put on trial for crimes he allegedly committed during the rule of Muammar Gaddafi. Al-Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi was extradited from Tunisia, which he fled to in September 2011 after the fall of Tripoli to rebel forces. Along with Saif al-Islam, Gaddafi's most prominent son, Mahmoudi is one of the few remaining keepers of the many state secrets under Gaddafi, who was killed on October 20 last year.

Bulawayo Magistrate Learnmore Mapiye on Thursday 08 November 2012 ended the four-day detention ordeal for three Counselling Services Unit (CSU) representatives who were finally charged with causing malicious damage to property, in contravention of Section 140 of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act, four days after their arrest. According to State prosecutor Marlvin Nzombe, the three CSU representatives together with some unidentified individuals smeared some MDC graffiti on an information centre located in Mpopoma high density suburb in Bulawayo 07 October 2012.

A 21 October attack in Guinea-Bissau - when soldiers stormed barracks near Bissau's main airport, targeting military figures and leaving six people dead - has provoked more fear than the numerous coups and counter-coups of recent years. The transitional government branded the attack a coup attempt, and accused former colonial power Portugal of backing it in an attempt to propel former Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Junior, who is in exile there, back into power. Within days, alleged coup leader Captain Pansau N'Tchama was arrested on the island of Bolama, in the Bijagos archipelago. He is expected to face a military court later in the year.

Sudanese government forces have blocked international peacekeepers accessing the site of an alleged attack that killed up to 10 civilians in the western Darfur region, the peacekeepers said. The African Union-United Nations mission in Darfur (UNAMID) said a team of peacekeepers went to investigate on Saturday after receiving reports of an attack on civilians in Sigili village, some 40km (25 miles) southeast of North Darfur's state capital El Fasher.

The Nigerian Ambassador to Mali, Mr Iliya Nuhu, has raised the alarm over the high rate of trafficking of Nigerian girls to the West African country. Nuhu said in Bamako, the Malian capital, that the problem had grown in 'magnitude and sophistication' to the extent that a substantial number of Nigerians in Mali seem to be thriving on it. He described the practice as 'a kind of modern-day slavery' with Nigerians going to their villages or towns to bring in young girls between the ages of 10 and 15.

The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) and the Department of Home Affairs on Monday (12 Nov) squared off in court over the attempted deportation of more than 30 foreign nationals. On Friday the commission launched a scathing attack on the department, alleging it had acted dishonestly over the issue. About 10 days ago the commission, together with the non-governmental organisation People Against Suffering, Suppression, Oppression and Poverty, brought an urgent application in the South Gauteng High Court to stop the department from deporting 39 asylum seekers detained at the Lindela Repatriation Centre in Krugersdorp.

In the middle of the night on 14 March 2012, the Sudanese National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) abducted a woman named Jalila Khamis Kuku from her home and took her into custody. Denied access to a lawyer and even a change of clothes, Jalila was dragged into a pickup truck in her night gown accompanied by a dozen NISS officers in civilian clothes, reports Global Voices Online. Out of the eight months Jalila has served in jail so far, three of them were spent in solitary confinement. She is now under threat of the death sentence as she has been accused of serious charges under the Sudanese criminal law; namely Article 51, of waging war against the state, and Article 50, which entails undermining the constitutional system.

Somalia's al Qaeda-linked militants are moving north into the semi-autonomous region of Puntland, long regarded as a relatively peaceful area, after having been squeezed out of their strongholds further south, the president of Puntland said. Until now, Puntland has largely escaped the worst of the upheaval in Somalia, which has been deprived of an effective central government for the past two decades.

West African nations have agreed to send a 3,300-strong invasion force to take back northern Mali from Islamists. The agreement occurred at an emergency summit of ECOWAS, a bloc of West African nations that has been discussing military actions in Mali for the last several months.

Town Two Khayelitsha is the site of tension between a local business association and Somali shops. The Zanokhanyo Business Association (ZBA) is accusing Somali shop owners of not abiding by a 2008 agreement which says that no new foreign owned shops should operate in the townships following the May 2008 xenophobic attacks.

Libya should not grant amnesty for war crimes committed during last year's uprising against former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, regardless of who committed them, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said. In her first official presentation to the UN Security Council as The Hague-based court's top prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda said that the ICC's pre-trial chamber would decide 'in due course' on whether the late Libyan leader's son Saif al-Islam Gaddafi should be tried in Libya or The Hague.