South Sudan's security forces have committed 'shocking' acts of violence against civilians, including killings and rapes, Amnesty International says. In a report, the UK-based human rights group says the abuse has been taking place during a disarmament campaign in the eastern Jonglei state. Amnesty urges South Sudan to take 'immediate action' to end the violence.

Gunmen massacred at least 26 people in a student housing area of northeast Nigeria on Tuesday 1 October, calling victims out by name before shooting them or slitting their throats, officials said. The motive for the attack at the mixed Christian and Muslim school was not immediately clear. It occurred in the early hours in the town of Mubi, where the military last week carried out a high-profile raid against Islamist extremist group Boko Haram, which has been waging a deadly insurgency.

Paul Kagame has presided over the plunder of DR Congo's mineral wealth to consolidate Tutsi hegemony in Kigali. Now with the support of his powerful western allies, Kagame is eyeing Congolese territory.

The US Supreme Court began its new session recently by re-examining an explosive international case alleging that oil giant Shell was complicit in acts of torture by the Nigerian government. Fresh from their pivotal decision in June to uphold President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, the nine Supreme Court justices took up a case with enormously important ramifications for international human rights. The legal argument pivots on whether foreign plaintiffs have a right to file suit in American courts against US corporations accused of human rights violations, under an arcane 200-year-old statute.

The United States would support a 'well planned' and 'well resourced' African-led force to help oust Islamic rebels in northern Mali, provided its neighbours back the idea, a US official said Monday. 'Yes, I say there will have to be at some point military action to push' the rebels linked to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb out of northern Mali, the top US diplomat for Africa, Johnnie Carson, said.

France has granted its allies in the Sahel region a new batch of weapons ahead of a possible deployment of African troops in the Azawad region in northern Mali. A senior security source said that the countdown to a military intervention in northern Mali has begun, the exact date of which will be determined by France. Security sources said that French and Western military commanders have devised a plan for military intervention [in Mali] and the deployment of an African force in northern Mali. According to the plan, residential areas and major cities in the Azawad region would be taken control of, and the armed groups would be expelled from cities and later [militarily] exhausted.

Nigeria and Saudi Arabia held high level talks to resolve diplomatic tensions generated by Riyadh's decision to deport 1,000 Nigerian women hajj pilgrims who were not accompanied by male guardians. Nigeria retaliated to the move by stopping all hajj flights to Saudi Arabia. Nigeria's minister of foreign affairs, Olugbenga Ashiru and Saudi Arabia's acting minister of foreign affairs, Prince Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz met in Washington and the former registered his protest to the Saudi move.

Rwanda has defiantly denied claims at the United Nations that it was aiding rebels in Democratic Republic of Congo and rejected UN chief Ban Ki-moon's summary of a meeting on the crisis, diplomats said. According to Ban, most states attending a high-level meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly with Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Congolese President Joseph Kabila 'condemned all forms of external support' to the rebels.

South Africa’s judicial inquiry into the police’s killing of 34 striking mineworkers at Lonmin Plc’s Marikana mine begins on Monday with a visit to the site of the most deadly police action since the end of apartheid. Retired Supreme Court Judge Ian Farlam, assisted by two lawyers, is mandated to investigate events between August 9 and 16, Kevin Malunga, spokesman for the commission of inquiry, said in an interview on SAFM radio on Monday. Public hearings are being held in the northwest town of Rustenburg.

Former residents of the Kennedy Road informal settlement in Durban are pursuing damages claims against the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality, three years after the police failed to protect them from an armed gang that invaded the settlement in September 2009. This is an important case because it holds the police responsible to prevent violence perpetuated by others when it is in a position to do so, says this press release from the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa.

Lawlessness is reigning in the Somali port city of Kismayu, where gunmen have killed at least three people since the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab abandoned their last bastion there, residents said Sunday. After Kenyan and Somali troops' advances towards the strategic port forced the Islamists to abandon it Saturday, the Kenyan army said helicopter gunships were attacking Shabaab bases outside the city to clear the way for a final ground assault to occupy the city.

Recently, Zimbabwe’s Supreme Court unanimously 'chastised' state security agents for torturing Jestina Mukoko, national director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project, four years ago, reports blog Africa is a Country. 'They came at dawn, December 3, 2008. Armed men broke into the house of Jestina Mukoko, the only surviving parent of a teenage child who watched, helplessly. They took her, in unmarked cars, and held her incommunicado for 21 days. During that time, they beat her feet with rubber truncheons. They dumped her into solitary confinement. They forced her to kneel on gravel, to endure searing pain.'

Fearing mass arrests and deportations, a group of about a hundred desperate undocumented asylum-seekers have turned to the South African Human Rights Commission to seek redress. New applicant asylum-seekers in the province have been languishing in the cold by the Department of Home Affairs former Refugee Reception Office at the Foreshore after it shut down the Maitland Refugee Reception Office and ordered these asylum-seekers to travel up to Pretoria or Musina for documentation. The department’s refusal to process new-comers is in defiance of two recent Western Cape High Court orders ordering it to resume documenting new applicants at their refugee offices on the Foreshore.

A UNHCR project launched last month is aimed at providing an income for internally displaced people (IDP) while making it easier for people to travel to and from Halabokhad. UNHCR provided 11 tuk-tuks, the three-wheeled motorized rickshaws common in developing nations. Each vehicle was to be maintained and operated by four IDPs, who would pocket any money made from passengers.

Syria is just the latest in a long line of international crimes perpetrated by Western powers. But what makes the crimes in Syria, as those in Libya, even more offensive, is the cynical use of human rights to advance the diabolical interests of Western imperialism.

In this Peace and Conflict Monitor article, a researcher back from a trip to the Congo, shares her observations about the darker side of the peace industry in Kivu province. In a region where sexual violence is a prominent and ongoing issue, she provides a glimpse of how the UN Peacekeeping forces fuel a thriving underground sex industry.

Kenyan fighter jets have bombarded an airport in southern Somalia, where they are fighting al-Qaeda linked al-Shabab fighters, officials have said. The strikes took place in the port city of Kismayo on Tuesday 25 September. 'Our forces have reached Kismayo with jets and they have destroyed the armoury and a warehouse used by al-Shabab at the airport,' Cyrus Oguna, a Kenyan army spokesperson, said. He could not provide figures on the number of casualties incurred.

The UN refugee agency said Tuesday 25 September that fresh air and ground attacks in Sudan's South Kordofan state are causing a renewed population influx to South Sudan. 'About 100 refugees a day are arriving in the border town of Yida, in Unity state,' a spokesperson said, adding that the 'refugees are in poor health and without any belongings.' Some refugees told UNHCR they had also fled because of acute food shortages in South Kordofan. Many said they planned to build a shelter in Yida refuge camp before returning across the border to fetch family members.

Children in the Kivu provinces of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are not only getting caught in the crossfire of the area’s ongoing violence, but also facing health risks, threats of forced recruitment by local and foreign militias, and interrupted education, say officials. 'Children are swept up in the mass population movements that are currently ongoing in eastern DRC, with entire families fleeing multiple conflicts. Our hospitals have operated on children with bullet wounds who have been caught in the crossfire. Some children present late with life-threatening malaria, malnutrition or respiratory tract infections,' Jan-Peter Stellema, operations manager at Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), told IRIN.

Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) say they are trying to arrange for the assembly and disarmament of rival ethnic militias implicated in the massacres of hundreds of people in Masisi territory in the eastern province of North Kivu. Congolese army spokesman Lt-Col Olivier Hamuli told IRIN that following a visit to Masisi in September, the commander of the DRC's land forces, Gen Amisi Tango Fort, called on the militias to ‘regroup’ and disarm. Regrouping refers to the assembly of combatants in specific locations where they can be monitored prior to disarmament.