A disarmament programme for the Karamojong in Uganda is being used as an excuse for systematic brutality, writes a special correspondent. Army elements have seen the disarmament as an opportunity to exact revenge on the feared and despised pastoralists, taking their cattle, persecuting, and killing.

The Burundian human rights advocacy group, Iteka, reported on Monday that about 1,000 Congolese refugees of Tutsi origin, known as the Banyamulenge, were refusing transfer from transit camps in Bujumbura Rurale and Cibitoke to a refugee camp in northeastern Burundi where Hutu rebels are active. The Burundi government and the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees began transferring Congolese refugees to a camp in Gasorwe Commune, Muyinga Province, on 27 May. "They think their security will not be guaranteed in the new camp, which is situated close to the borders with Rwandan and Tanzania," Iteka reported.

The World Food Programme (WFP) revealed last week that about 80 Sudanese refugees enter Uganda everyday. This daily influx adds to the approximately 50,000 Sudanese already living in refugee camps in northern Uganda.

Burundian army soldiers forced more than 30,000 civilians from their homes in Ruyigi province in eastern Burundi in late April and early May, Human Rights Watch reports. Burundian authorities have refused to allow humanitarian aid groups to provide assistance to the displaced persons, who are suffering from malnutrition and disease.

As fighting persists in Liberia, the exodus to neighbouring countries has been continuing, with 3,400 Liberian refugees arriving in Sierra Leone's camps over the last week and 13,000 arriving in Guinea's camps since the beginning of the year.

Thousands of people fled northern neighborhoods in Burundi's capital Tuesday after rebels attacked military positions a few miles away, witnesses said. National Liberation Forces rebels attacked two military positions about nine miles north of the capital's center, said a witness who did not want to be identified. The National Liberation Forces are one of two main Hutu rebel groups fighting the Tutsi-dominated army.

The prime minister of Lesotho took up his post on Tuesday following his party's victory in an election rejected by the opposition. At an inauguration ceremony boycotted by opposition parties, Pakalitha Mosisili pledged to fight HIV/Aids, the food shortage and massive unemployment.

Up to 12 people are reported to have died in fighting in Madagascar's north-eastern, vanilla-producing region of Diego Suarez. Seven soldiers and three civilians were killed on Monday, reports the French news agency, AFP, quoting hospital and military sources.

Malawi's High Court on Monday ruled that President Muluzi Bakili cannot ban demonstrations over a controversial campaign urging him to stand for a third term in office. The court ruling came after influential religious groups, including the Roman Catholic church and the law society of Malawi, applied for an injunction against Muluzi's threat to stop demonstrations over the third term issue.

About half a million Mozambicans are in need of food aid, a Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) joint assessment has found. The Crop and Food Supply Assessment Mission visited Mozambique from 21 April to 10 May this year to evaluate the current situation and determine needs in the wake of a regional food crisis.

The Sudanese army and Popular Defence Forces (PDF) militias have claimed recent military victories in Bahr al-Ghazal State, southern Sudan, and in Blue Nile State, in the east of the country, during recent engagements.

Kenyan immigration authorities and the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) are making arrangements to facilitate the transportation of hundreds of refugees whom the police arrested last week in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, to refugee camps in the north of the country.

Cameroon's security forces came in for special mention this year in Amnesty International's latest report on human rights violations worldwide. However, local rights advocates say they are also worried by abuses committed by other sectors, including traditional chiefs. "Unbelievable and unacceptable things are happening in the traditional chiefdoms in the north of Cameroon," says Hilaire Kamga, president of the Cameroonian chapter of the France-based NGO, Nouveaux Droits de l'Homme.

A total of 518 of 3,000 refugees of Congolese origin have been transferred from transit centres in Cibitoke and Bujumbura Rural to Muyinga Province in a government-led move to establish a unified refugee camp in the north of the country. Some of the refugees had been living in the "transit centres" for up to two and three years, an official from the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees told IRIN.

Perpetrators of armed attacks in the run-up to the last general election in Kenya have said that they were backed by ruling party officials, Human Rights Watch has revealed in a new report."The spread of small arms and the manipulation of ethnic tensions are an explosive mix," said Lisa Misol, researcher with the Arms Division of Human Rights Watch and author of the report. "Kenya must stop weapons from getting into the hands of people who would use them to disrupt the vote."

The systematic use of helicopters to attack villages in the Pool region of the Republic of Congo shows "a wanton disregard for civilian lives", Bill Paton, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Brazzaville, has said. "We have first hand testimonies from several villages of helicopter attacks on civilians. We have the names of ten villages we are sure of," he told IRIN on Tuesday.

The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has expressed "grave concern" over the situation of refugees in the northeastern Kenyan town of Mandera where disease and malnutrition have claimed the lives of 10 Somali refugees. The refugees - estimated at between 3,500 and 5,000 - fled to the northeastern Kenyan town of Mandera in April from inter-clan fighting in Bulo Hawa, just across the border in Somalia.

Six men have been jailed for terms of up to 20 years for their alleged involvement in a failed coup attempt in early 2001 in Côte d’Ivoire. Seven others were acquitted, the pro-state Fraternite Matin daily reported. At the end of the three-week long court case, four of the accused were found guilty of taking part in the alleged 7-8 January plot to overthrow President Laurent Gbagbo's government and of being part of an armed group. Each received a 20-year sentence. Two others were given three-year jail terms for the illegal possession of firearms, the newspaper said.

Some 32,000 displaced people in Ruyigi, eastern Burundi, are still without aid because fighting between government and dissidents has prevented relief workers from reaching the needy in three localities in the Nyabitsinda District, an OCHA humanitarian affairs officer in Burundi said on Thursday.

Hundreds of people who were arrested and detained by immigration authorities after they entered Zambia illegally during recent years are to be returned to their home countries this week, according to a government spokesman. More than 200 people without documentation to prove their legal status in Zambia face deportation in the next few days as part of a three-year government operation to end the movement of "prohibited aliens" into the country, immigration spokesman Ibvuta Lungu told OneWorld Tuesday.