When large numbers of people are displaced from their homeland, neighbouring countries can find themselves shouldering a disproportionate share of the refugee burden. Yet, mass influxes of refugees, as happened in Tanzania after the Rwandan genocide, can also bring security threats and economic and legal problems for the host country.

One of the main rebel groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo was responsible for a massacre in the eastern town of Kisangani earlier this year, a report by the United Nations Human Rights Commission says. The report says up to 180 people, the majority of them civilians, were killed in reprisal attacks by gunmen from the RCD Goma rebel faction after a mutiny.

With the demobilizing of UNITA this week, reuniting war-shattered families becomes another gigantic task. According to local press on Tuesday, Angola is organizing to reunite families, seeing that more than four-million Angolans, roughly one-third the population, are refugees or displaced, after 27 years of brutal civil war.

The United Nations refugee agency has announced more than 230 refugees are en route from Djibouti to Somalia under a voluntary repatriation program. Many of the refugees have lived outside their country for at least 10 years.

Cape Town's Freeplay Foundation has developed an easy to assemble, solar-powered radio that will be used to change the lives of orphans in war-torn and Aids- ravaged countries.

The head of a Commonwealth committee that suspended Zimbabwe in March, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, warned on Tuesday that Commonwealth countries may impose sanctions on Zimbabwe. His warning followed a decision by Zimbabwe to deport the Harare-based correspondent of Britain's Guardian newspaper following his acquittal on charges of publishing falsehoods under Zimbabwe's tough new media laws.

After an eight-month long power struggle that divided the island nation, Madagascar's President Marc Ravalomanana has called for national reconciliation.

Unicef estimates that about eight million Nigerian children are employed in exploitative child labour and that 60 percent of children trafficked to Italy from Africa are from Nigeria. Nigeria's record will be under the spotlight when it hosts an international conference on human trafficking and child labour next month.

A wave of politically-motivated violence is sweeping across Masvingo province as marauding Zanu PF youths and war veterans continue to unleash a reign of terror on hapless teachers they accuse of having supported the opposition MDC during the run up to the March presidential election.

Tension is rising in the disputed Sool region of the self-declared republic of Somaliland as forces of Somaliland and those of the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland deploy in the area, a local journalist told IRIN on Monday.

The Horn of Africa region has become a leading destination for illicit weapons, which have in turn fuelled insecurity, economic decline, and political instability, a small arms conference in Nairobi was told last Friday.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR has denied media reports claiming that hundreds of refugees stormed its offices in northwestern Kenya, demanding a solution to a dispute over firewood.

The United States principal deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Mark Bellamy, announced on Sunday his country's willingness to accelerate the peace process in the Great Lakes region.

At least 12 people have been killed in a fresh outbreak of ethnic and religious violence in Plateau State, central Nigeria, sources from the area said.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan ended a three-nation African visit last Saturday in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, where he stressed the importance of dialogue in resolving the conflicts affecting the continent.

There's two-way traffic around Kuito at the moment. On the road leading south from the central Angolan town, a long column of people, bundles on their heads and hoes over their shoulders, are heading away from the town. They are internally displaced persons (IDPs) who, prompted by the end of the war, have abandoned the IDP camp to return to their villages.

A military court has acquitted gendarmes accused of killing nine youths who disappeared after being arrested by members of an elite crime-fighting unit.

Nigeria is planning a mission to Cameroon to assess the situation of an estimated 20,000 refugees who fled across its northeast border early this year following communal clashes, the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said.

The Liberian Red Cross will in the next two months conduct interviews with 6,000 Liberians in randomly selected towns, villages and camps for internally displaced people (IDPs) as part of efforts to develop its country assistance strategy.

As many as 200,000 teachers in five sub-saharan African countries could be killed by Aids over the coming decade, according to an International Labour Organisation study.