N’djamena is a rarity in the region - the trees lining the Chad capital are not scarred by plastic bags. When Marie Thérèse Mbailemdana became mayor of N’djamena in January 2010, she was determined to apply a 1992 law prohibiting the importation of plastic bags (known by the Arabic word ‘léda’); until then the law had not been strictly enforced. 'This plastic polluted the city – you saw plastic hanging on walls, on trees. And it destroys our environment. Plastic remains in the ground for centuries. No trees or plants will grow where plastic is in the ground,' she told IRIN.

International donors meeting in Dakar next week are expected to finance the prosecution of former Chadian dictator Hissène Habré nearly two decades after his removal from power, according to a coalition of rights organisations. Legal proceedings against Habré - who is accused of thousands of political murders and brutal torture during his rule of Chad from 1982 to 1990 - have been delayed for nearly a decade since he was first indicted in Senegal in February 2000.

Hundreds of thousands of Chadians uprooted by violence in the country's east say they can't go home unless the government improves infrastructure and health services in their towns and villages, aid workers say. Four years after inter-communal clashes forced people to flee their homes, Chadian authorities believe there is now enough peace and stability for the displaced populations to return.

Yaounde's Briketteri neighbourhood, home to Muslim traders in textiles and beef, is seeing a surge of climate migrants - farmers and fishermen fleeing fast - drying Lake Chad to the north. Lake Chad, a large shallow freshwater lake that borders Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon, has shrunk in size by as much as 90 per cent over the last four decades, forcing a growing number of farmers, fishermen and herders who depend on it to seek new livelihoods elsewhere.

Although there are signs of improvement in Niger, which is in the midst of a severe food crisis, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned that child malnutrition rates are alarmingly high in neighbouring Chad.
“We’ve seen the positive impact of timely, well-coordinated food and nutrition assistance delivered in partnership with the Government in Niger,” where almost half of the 15-million strong population are hungry, said WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran. But in Chad, which experienced a long and crippling lean season, “children are weak and need to continue receiving food and nutritional support,” she stressed.

A local variety of the nutrient-rich, blue-green algae known as spirulina could boost incomes for women in Chad who harvest the product as well as help fight nutrition, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has reported. The agency is running a $1.4 million project in which women are gathering and processing the product, known locally as dihé, from the shallow pools of water on the edges of Lake Chad where it forms at certain times of the year.

Around 170,000 people were internally displaced in eastern Chad and living in 38 camps in mid-2010, as a result of internal armed conflict, inter-ethnic violence over land and natural resources, and attacks by bandits against civilians. The majority of internally displaced people (IDPs) had little or no means of sustaining themselves, making humanitarian assistance vital. Chad also hosts 270,000 Sudanese refugees in 12 camps along the eastern border with Sudan, and 81,000 Central African refugees in 11 camps along the southern border with CAR.

BET, the acronym for the three northern regions of Chad – Borkou, Ennedi and Tibesti – comes up regularly in meetings of international aid agencies frustrated by the lack of information and difficulty of access to the remote territory. Drought in 2009 triggered the government’s call for international assistance, but no one really knows the full extent of the problem, according to a local NGO.

On 12 May, the United Nations Security Council extended the presence of the United Nations mission in Central African Republic and Chad (MINURCAT) for two weeks until 26 May 2010 to allow for more time to examine a possible revision of the mandate.

Hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people living in eastern Chad, including more than 450,000 Sudanese refugees from Darfur and internally displaced Chadians, are at risk if the UN mission in Central African Republic and Chad (MINURCAT) leaves or no longer has a mandate to protect civilians.

In a remote southern part of Chad, the UNHCR began this week the transfer of some 1,100 newly arrived Central African refugees from the border to a refugee camp where they can be assisted. These refugees crossed into southern Chad's Moyen Chari province two weeks ago, after violence forced them from villages in northern Central African Republic (CAR).

Chad's government says the army has killed 105 insurgents and beaten back a new attack near the Sudan border, but the rebels have denied the claims. FPNR leader Adoum Yacoub said both sides had lost lives but did not give any details.

For the two decades that he has been free, Souleymane Guengueng has constantly relived the two years he spent in a Chadian prison, where he watched hundreds of cellmates die from torture and disease. Thrown in jail in 1988 for still-unknown reasons, the deeply religious civil servant took an oath before God: If he ever got out alive, he would bring his tormentors to justice.

Nearly a fifth of the population in Chad will suffer food shortages this year, part of a broader hunger problem looming in the Sahel region, the United Nations said on Thursday. "Two million Chadians, or 18 percent of the population, are in a situation of food insecurity," said Michele Flavigna, the U.N.'s representative in Chad told a news conference.

Teachers demanding more pay to face higher food prices entered the third day of a nationwide strike. The government has called their demands "illegal" and "unjustified", because the "high cost of living is a general problem that does not concern only [the teachers' union]", said Employment Minister Fatimé Tchombi.

Amnesty International (AI) has called on the Chadian government to allow UN peacekeepers to continue protecting 250,000 refugees from Darfur and 170,000 internally-displaced people (IDPs) in the east of the country.

The African Union Chair Jean Ping has hailed the Governments of Chad and Sudan’s agreement to normalise the once soured relations between the two neighbours. The remarks followed the peace agreement signed on 15 January 2010 in N’Djamena.

A court in the capital N’Djamena has found the privately owned weekly La Voix “not guilty” of charges against it and lifted a provisional order for automatic seizure of all copies of the paper made on 3 December 2009. An appeal will be heard on 13 January

More than half of Chad’s nine million people live near sites potentially contaminated with unexploded ordnance (UXO) or landmines, according to the national demining centre. The government says more than 100 people are killed or wounded every year by landmines or UXO; aid organizations cover the bulk of medical care and rehabilitation for mine victims, according to NGO Handicap International.

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Chad is identifying pregnant women in refugee camps who have had their genitalia cut, in order to better prepare for potential complications, according to UNHCR and its medical partners. The exercise is part of efforts in the camps to tackle the health fallout of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) as well as prevent new cutting.