The office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees sent a mission to The Gambia on Tuesday to take stock of possible population displacement following an announcement last week by the Senegalese army that it had launched security operations in Casamance, a UNHCR source told IRIN on Wednesday. The Senegalese army announced last weekend that it had begun an operation to curb increased insecurity and banditry in Casamance, an area in southern Senegal that borders on The Gambia.

Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) has acknowledged an upsurge in human-wildlife conflict in the country. A communications officer, Mr Daniel Njaga, said the service is concerned by the sharp increase in the human-wildlife conflict that has seen several people lose their lives.

Burundi and Tanzania announced on Tuesday that they would send a delegation to Geneva to ask the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to facilitate the repatriation of all Burundian refugees now in Tanzania. Close to 500,000 Burundian refugees are camped in Tanzania, thousands of who have been returning home on their own or under UNHCR-sponsored operations. However, the UNHCR position is to facilitate repatriations only to safe areas, while extending "limited assistance" to refugees insisting on going elsewhere in Burundi.

The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has transferred up to 1,043 Somali refugees, who have been stranded for weeks in the northeastern Kenyan border town of Mandera, to the Dadaab refugee camp 500 km to the south. The refugees are part of a group of 10,000 who fled inter-clan fighting in the Somali town of Bulo Hawa near the border with Kenya starting in April, and have been camped in and around Mandera under difficult conditions.

Two hundred victims of human trafficking were deported to Nigeria last week, bringing to 1,098 the number sent back from Europe and North America in the past three years, figures released on Wednesday by the Nigerian immigration authorities showed. More than 98 percent or 1,081 were women who had been sold to prostitution rings in the different countries. Only 17 of the victims were male.

Dozens of lions died in Tanzania in 2001 after flies carrying distemper spread to eastern Africa. This is an example of how the changing, warming climate around the globe is triggering unprecedented numbers of disease outbreaks in both land and ocean based wildlife populations in habitats ranging from coral reefs to rainforests. Ecologists and epidemiologists have expressed concern over this rising trend in a new report in the June 21 issue of the journal "Science."

The EU on Tuesday expressed grave concern about the humanitarian situation in many parts of Sudan, particularly in western Upper Nile (Unity/Wahdah State), Eastern Equatoria and Bahr al-Ghazal - all in the south and affected by serious fighting. Humanitarian actors working in Sudan estimate that between 150,000 and 300,000 people were displaced in western Upper Nile alone between January and April.

The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported on Tuesday that the number of Eritrean refugees repatriated from Sudan has passed the 50,000 mark. The operation, which is now a year old, reached this milestone when, on Sunday, its 91st convoy carried 960 Eritreans from the eastern Sudanese town of Kassala to Teseney in western Eritrea, according to the UNHCR spokesman, Kris Janowski.

A case in which the Ogiek community have challenged the government over their tribal Mau Forest land will now be heard on July 23. Although the community went to court over a year ago contesting a government decision to excise parts of the expansive Mau forests of Kenya to settle other communities, the case has yet to be heard because the government has yet to file its defense.

One of the ways in which the G8's actions impact on the lives of ordinary Africans threatens to remain in the shadows - the way in which the transfer of military, security and police equipment and expertise contributes to human rights violations and exacerbates ongoing conflicts in the region.

Church World Service (CWS), an umbrella group of Christian organisations in the US, has appealed for urgent support for relief efforts to assist thousands of families displaced in Rubkona County, southern Sudan, by government military action in the oil-rich area.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) is due to begin transporting some 11,000 Somali Bantu refugees living in Dadaab refugee camps in northeastern Kenya to Kakuma refugee camp in the northwest from Wednesday, 26 June, in close collaboration with the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Heavy fighting has broken out again in South Kivu Province, southeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), between the leader of a mutiny among troops of the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD-Goma) and loyal forces of the Rwandan-backed rebel movement, news agencies reported.

Bekele Sakuma is now hoping for calm and peace. Just four weeks ago he identified the body of his 17-year-old son, shot dead during clashes with security forces in the southern Ethiopian town of Awasa. "The hardest thing a father can do is pick his son out of a line of bodies," said Bekele, a 55-year-old security guard who lives in the nearby village of Loke. The village was where some 7,000 protesters gathered on 24 May before marching towards Awasa to demonstrate against a change in the town's status. Like many Sidamas - the ethnic group whose heartland surrounds Awasa - he believed that he might lose his land with impending political changes.

An estimated 4,000 people have fled to Sierra Leone from Liberia following a rebel attack last Thursday on Sinje refugee camp, northwest of the Liberian capital, Monrovia, the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said.

The presidents of Togo, Gnassingbe Eyadema, and the European Commission, Romano Prodi, held talks on Monday in Brussels on Togo's political situation and bilateral relations. Eyadema told Prodi his country was suffering because the EU had cut financial aid following controversial elections in 1998. He blamed the aid cut on opposition parties which had lobbied against his government after the elections, the pro-government Republic of Togo online news service reported.

The Zimbabwean government has systematically ensured that those responsible for torture, abductions and political killings are never brought to justice, Amnesty International says in a new report called 'The Toll of Impunity'. "Impunity has become the central problem in Zimbabwe where state and non-state actors commit widespread human rights violations without being brought to justice. Unless the cycle of impunity can be broken, human rights abuses will continue unchecked and victims and their families will not see justice," the organization said.

The single most notable message from the recent elections in Algeria was the high rate of voter disinterest, according to a new International Crisis Group (ICG) report. In the capital, Algiers, 70 per cent of voters stayed away. In the Kabylia region, where there have been massive anti-government protests, alarming levels of violence and a powerful movement to boycott the elections, turnout was as low as 2 per cent. ICG Middle East Program Director Robert Malley said: "Since they won their independence, the Algerian people have gone from the enthusiasm of the post-colonial days, to authoritarian single-party rule, chaotic pluralism, and then a grisly war that has been civil in name only. Today, Algeria's political class - in power and in opposition alike -- faces a straightforward task: to prove that it can be useful and that politics can work".

An initiative aimed at financing activities that promote human rights was launched on Friday in Burkina Faso by UN Development Programme (UNDP) Resident Representative Christian Lemaire. "UNDP's support for such initiatives aims at enabling local action in favour of human rights for a sustainable improvement to the daily life of Burkina Faso's populations," Lemaire said at the launch of the programme in Burkina Faso's capital, Ouagadougou.

"The situation remains grim, dramatic. It's sad to say, but people are dying, and over the coming months, I'm certain that quite a number of people will perish," says United Nations Humanitarian Co-ordinator for Angola, Erick de Mul.