The Angolan government forcibly evicted 20,000 poor people, including small-scale farmers, and destroyed 3,000 homes between 2002 and 2006 in the capital, Luanda, "to facilitate development and 'beautification' in the public interest". Human Rights Watch, an international lobby group, and SOS Habitat, an Angolan non-governmental organisation that focuses on housing, have published these findings in a report released Tuesday titled '"They pushed down the houses" - Forced evictions and insecure land tenure for Luanda's poor'.

Despite Angola's poor human rights record, a widening gap between rich and poor, and a reputation for world-class corruption, an elite U.S. group is calling for Washington to strengthen ties -- including military ties -- with Luanda, Africa's second-biggest oil exporter.

In the summer of 1994, against the backdrop of the Rwandan genocide and the deterioration of conditions in Somalia, one of the few hopeful developments on the African continent came from the Zambian capital of Lusaka, where Angolans from the Government and the rebel UNITA movement and international mediators were working to end two decades of civil war that had killed 500,000 people. This article by Donald Steinberg examines the importance of including women in peace building.

China is to train 10,000 agricultural technicians for Africa over the next four years, a Chinese academic has announced. Professor Heping Jiang from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, who headed a mission to apply the program to four Angolan provinces (Moxico, Bié, Huila and Kuand Kubango), told Angolan news agency Angop that of the total Angola would have 60 technicians trained.

Forget statistics on literacy, child mortality and access to clean piped water: In Angola, the shopping-mall is the key indicator of social and economic development. As OpenDemocracy's Lara Pawson reports, Luanda’s poor are paying a heavy price for the gleaming condominiums and shopping-malls arising around them.

The people of Angola, the government and the international community must pull together to ensure that returning refugees are able to reintegrate and have a sustainable future in their country, a top United Nations (UN) official has said.

A team of parliamentarians from the Southern African Development Community Parliamentary Forum (SADC-PF) has expressed concern about the extent of political and ministerial control in Angola's electoral process.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres has underlined the next challenge UNHCR faces in Angola, celebrating the end of organised repatriation of Angolan refugees from abroad while discussing how to find a solution for Congolese refugees who have been in Angola for decades.

Angola, which recently shared the stage with the world's most powerful oil-producing nations at its first OPEC meeting, is an unlikely candidate to be the darling of the global oil industry. Angola, underdeveloped, war-scarred and foundering for decades under corrupt leadership, is one of the poorest nations on earth.

A welter of multi-billion dollar projects to rebuild Angola's devastated roads, airports and administrative buildings are part of a post-war reconstruction boom that is changing the face of the country. Much of the development has been dependent on oil-backed commercial credit agreements from countries such as China.

The third Joint Economic and Trade Commission China-Angola is taking place from the 14th to the 16th of March in Beijing. This meeting signifies the augmentation in ties between these two nations in addition to the fact that Angola is already China's largest trade partner in Africa.

About 43,400 Congolese expelled from diamond mines in northern Angola are living in precarious conditions near the Congolese border, humanitarian officials said. Angolan authorities began expelling the Congolese in 2006, accusing them of being illegal diamond miners.

People have good reason to fear the democratic process. The last - and only - time any multi party elections were held was in September 1992, and they proved disastrous. Lara Pawson reports on a tired people haunted by conflict and finding the rewards of democracy elusive.

Angola's opposition party and former rebel group Unita has accused the government of trying to assassinate its leader Isaias Samakuva. Police in Kwanza Norte province opened fire at the place where he was staying, nearly killing him, Unita claims.

A campaigner for transparency in the international oil sector, employed by the nongovernmental organisation Global Witness, was released on bail on Wednesday after she was arrested in the oil-rich Angolan enclave of Cabinda and charged with spying. Dr Sarah Wykes, an experienced researcher into the links between corruption and human rights in resource-rich economies, is not allowed to leave the country and might have to wait for a year for the trial to begin.

Angola appears to be in no hurry to hold its first elections in more than a decade, political observers commented, but many voters are hoping that casting their ballot will translate into improved living standards. President Jose Eduardo dos Santos last week explicitly referred to 2008 as the year legislative elections would be held, with a presidential ballot to follow in 2009.

Almost a year into a cholera outbreak, aid agencies and Angola's government have learnt to address the symptoms, but tackling it's causes remains a challenge.

The cholera epidemic which has been plaguing Angola for nearly a year has placed the spotlight on the continuing lack of safe drinking water in that country. Over the past 11 months, the illness has spread to 16 of the 18 provinces and claimed the lives of more than 2,440 people, according to official estimates. But health workers in the country say the figure is probably much higher as many cases are not reported.

In line with the UNDP Corporate Gender Action Plan and to promote the achievement of MDGs, UNDP/Angola is making efforts to ensure gender is integrated at all levels of its operations and programme. The Country Office has just adopted a new strategy for programme and operations, which emphasizes the need to incorporate gender and capacity development in all its programmes, as drivers for development.

This paper examines the role that may be envisioned for the courts in Angola with respect to the poor. Looking at the period from 1992 - 2004, it analyses the factors that are necessary for getting social rights litigation successfully through the courts and identifies the type of impediments which exist. The paper finds that the failure to implement social and economic rights in Angola is not primarily due to constitutional limitations, but rather due to the lack of resources among the poor as well as to lack of human and technical resources within the justice system itself.