cc Mirjam de Bruijn explores the rise of Chad’s global visibility, with a particular focus on the exploitation of the country’s oil reserves and the conflict in neighbouring Darfur. Through an intimate account provided by Nakar Djindil, a Chadian academic and nutritionist, de Bruijn examines the impact of conflict and instability upon the livelihoods of Chad’s citizens. As a result of a system of governance enforced through violence and oppression, the health and psychological well-being of Chad’s people is perpetually threatened. Having personally witnessed attacks and their aftermath, Djindil affirms the severity of President Idriss Déby’s irresponsible and reckless actions. Fear permeates Chadian society, with the country’s citizens facing internal displacement due to the demolition of homes and land, as well as inadequate nutrition caused by soaring food prices and minimal access to cooking supplies.

The United Nations refugee agency said today it was hastening to replace supplies and put preventive measures in place after five accidental fires swept through two camps for Sudanese refugees in remote eastern Chad in the past four weeks. A 9-year old boy died and some 1,455 people were left homeless in the Amer and Djabal camps, due to the fires, which were caused by poorly tended open fires fanned by heavy winds, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has said.

Aid groups in eastern Chad are on alert for an eventual flooding of people into the area, after the government of Sudan sent out NGOs providing water, food and health care to millions of people in Darfur. The Sudanese government had expelled 13 aid groups from Darfur after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant of arrest for its president, Omar el-Bashir.

Belgium has lodged a case at the International Court of Justice seeking to compel Senegal to prosecute former Chadian President Hissene Habre. Mr Habre, who is accused of crimes against humanity, has lived in Senegal since being removed from power in 1990.

Last July, my young son was enlisted in an armed group during a recruitment campaign near his school. Despite my repeated attempts to intervene, he was covertly sent into military training", a Chadian man recently told JRS. On Red Hand Day, 12 February, JRS calls upon the government, with the support of local and international communities, to increase efforts to prevent the use of children in armed groups through the creation of safer schools.

One year after the battle between government and armed opposition forces in N'Djaména, Chad, serious human rights violations perpetrated by the security forces are continuing with no one being held accountable. "A year after the conflict, members of the security forces who carried out a regime of murder, torture and enforced disappearance of suspected government opponents have not been brought to justice, fuelling an already pervasive problem of impunity," said Tawanda Hondora, Amnesty International's Africa Deputy Programme Director.

Cécile Moutouba marched with a knife in one hand, a stick in the other. She said her husband has used both against her. Moutouba was among some 100 women who recently walked for more than 2km, their hands on their heads (a sign of mourning), in the Chadian town of Guelendeng, 153km from the capital N’djamena.

Diarrhoea and other deadly waterborne illnesses threaten some 28,000 Chadians in an eastern town, after armed attacks – including the theft of a water pump – forced out the last aid workers running already scaled-down operations. UN aid officials fear that people will begin to flee the area – Dogdore – if aid operations do not resume there soon, thus further complicating humanitarian efforts in Chad's volatile east. About 24,500 displaced Chadians live in Dogdore, along with some 4,000 local residents, according to the UN.

Despite difficult security conditions, ICRC staff are pressing ahead with their activities aiming at addressing the needs of the people worst affected by armed conflict and other situations of violence in eastern Chad. The lack of security remains the primary factor impeding displaced people from returning to their homes, and the main challenge for the delivery of humanitarian aid. ICRC activities from July to September 2008

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has proposed that the Security Council consider sending 6,000 United Nations troops to replace a European Union force in eastern Chad and north-eastern Central African Republic (CAR), which have both been wracked by violence and civilian displacement in recent years.

A Chadian court on Friday sentenced a former president and 11 rebels to death for crimes against the state, an official said. Former president Hissene Habre is currently awaiting trial in Senegal for torture and murder. A Chadian commission of inquiry concluded Habre killed tens of thousands of political opponents during his eight years in power until he was ousted by rebels in 1990.

The Security Council working group on children and armed conflict should urge Chad to take measurable, concrete steps to demobilize children from its armed forces and stop continued recruitment, Human Rights Watch has said in a letter. On September 5, 2008, the working group will discuss violations of children’s rights in Chad. The working group asked Chad to take steps to bring an end to the recruitment and use of child soldiers a year earlier, in September 2007, but government efforts to comply have been largely ineffective.

Seventy-two people were killed in clashes between supporters of a radical Islamic preacher and police who went to arrest him in Chad, Interior Minister Ahmat Mahamat Bachir said on Wednesday. The fighting broke out on Sunday night at Kouno, 300km south-east of Ndjamena, when officials tried to stop the inflammatory sermons of the preacher on holy war and the end of the world.

Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has agreed to restore diplomatic ties with neighbouring Chad, broken off in May after a rebel attack on the Sudanese capital Khartoum, mediator Senegal said on Friday.

International aid workers have temporarily suspended their work at a village in eastern Chad following attacks on their compounds and ethnic violence, British aid agency Oxfam said on Friday.

Chad's security forces have claimed to have killed more than 60 people loyal to a Muslim spiritual leader in clashes in the town of Kouno, around 300km south east of the capital Ndjamena. Government soldiers fought with the followers of Ahmat Ismael Bichara, a "marabout" or holy man, who had allegedly threatened a "holy war" in the country.

Arid eastern Chad has always suffered water shortages. In 2004, a quarter-million Darfuri refugees settled in the region, placing further strain on local water sources. Intensive labor by a wide range of aid groups -- drilling new wells, building dams to catch rainwater, opening up channels to feed rain into underground reservoirs -- has alleviated but not eliminated the problem.

Every morning soon after sunrise, Fatne Abdaraman walks a short distance across the Iridimi refugee camp in eastern Chad hauling a twenty-litre plastic jug. She lines it up along with other women's containers at the water distribution point, then awaits her turn to draw her daily allotment of one of Central Africa's scarcest resources, one that underpins ongoing conflict in the region.

Chad accused Sudan's army of attacking a town on its eastern border on Tuesday and blamed its neighbour for Chadian rebel raids that have disrupted international aid operations to help thousands of refugees. The Chadian accusation showed tensions flaring again between the two oil-producing neighbours, who often accuse each other of supporting cross-border rebel attacks over their frontier running along Sudan's violence-torn Darfur region.

Rebel forces fighting the Chadian government have rejected claims that they were "totally destroyed" in fighting on Wednesday. Ali Gueddei, a spokesman for the rebel National Alliance, said on Thursday that his group had lost just 27 fighters, rather than the more than 160 claimed by the government, in fighting in Am Zoer.