The number of reported rapes in camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Bosasso, in Somalia's self-declared autonomous region of Puntland, is increasing and rape has become "a major problem", says a civil society source.

The Republic of Congo’s civil war may have ended in 2003, but violence against women continues, according to civil society activists and aid workers.

Chadian government forces were forced to launch both air and ground assaults in defense to the appalling offense by the Rebels from the Union of Resistance Forces (URF). This is the major confrontation between the rebels and government forces since May.

Dulane Jama and his family suffered in silence for three years in a remote corner of eastern Ethiopia before he finally decided to go and look for a safe place to live before they all died. After an arduous and dangerous trek across Somalia, he ended up about four months ago at Dadaab, a sprawling and overcrowded refugee complex in north-east Kenya housing almost 300,000 refugees. Most are Somalis who have fled conflict or persecution in their troubled homeland.

A new police force plan to recruit youths in each community, to help fight the country-wide spate of armed robbery, has provoked controversy and sparked a nationwide debate. Communities are concerned that some area volunteers are known to be ex-child combatants, who may have participated in committing horrific atrocities against civilians.

When 18-year-old Tsitsi Makwiyena looks down at her son Desmond in her arms, she sees not just a one-week-old perfect baby boy, but also the high price she paid to escape her home country of Zimbabwe and start a new life in urban South Africa

Uncertainty surrounding the impasse in Guinea Conakry is forcing Guineans to flee their country. Reports say that about 200 Guineans have been registered to have entered Senegal through its borders with the troubled West African nation.

Tribal violence in the north-west of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has sent 84,000 people fleeing across the border into the Republic of the Congo since last month, with the United Nations refugee agency reporting that supplies to assist the displaced are running low.

International assistance is vital to prevent the Central African Republic (CAR) from falling back into political crisis and potential new fighting as it prepares for elections next year after a decade of violence and conflict between Government and rebel forces, the top United Nations official for the country has warned.

Nearly three years from the signing of a peace agreement in Côte d'Ivoire, emergency operations are slowing but humanitarian needs remain, aid workers say. More funds are needed to support the transition from humanitarian to development.

The killing and rape of hundreds of opposition supporters on September 28, 2009, by Guinean security forces are likely to amount to crimes against humanity. Accountability for the attacks is key to addressing Guinea’s ongoing political crisis, which deepened following a December 3 shootout involving the country’s coup leader and his aide de camp, both implicated in the September violence.

An high-profile former Nigerian minister has gone to court to challenge the international arrest warrants issued last week on corruption charges. As a close ally of ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo, former Abuja Minister Nasir el-Rufai used to be one of Nigeria's most powerful people.

A Western Sahara activist expelled by Morocco has been allowed to return from Spain after maintaining a hunger strike for 32 days. Aminatou Haidar, 42, left Lanzarote airport in the Canary Islands on a small, private plane after a deal was reached, details of which are unclear.

The African Human Rights and Peoples Court based in Arusha, Tanzania, has said that it was incompetent to examine a request to suspend the judicial proceedings in Senegal against Chad's former president Hissein Habré.

Amnesty International deplores the continuing failure of the South African authorities to investigate impartially and fully human rights abuses which occurred during and after armed violence at the Kennedy Road Informal Settlement (Kennedy Road) in Durban last September. This despite repeated calls since October for an independent and impartial commission of inquiry into the surrounding circumstances and extent of the violence and its aftermath.

This latest briefing from the International Crisis Group examines the situation in the run-up to national elections due next year and the early 2011 referendum on self-determination in the South. It concludes that key elements of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which ended the two-decades-long civil war between North and South Sudan, have not been implemented.

Namibia’s National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) condemns, in the strongest possible terms, the alleged scheming to assassinate a number of ruling party critics. Those targeted for physical elimination include NSHR executive director Phil ya Nangoloh and Max Hamata, one the country’s top investigative reporters.

Following the forced closure of the Addis Neger newspaper, Alemayehu G. Mariam condemns the concerted assault on Ethiopia's free press perpetrated by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's government. Saluting the commitment and success of the publication's staff and those working in the country's independent media as a whole, Mariam stresses that Ethiopians owe their compatriots in the free press a debt of eternal gratitude.

Eastern Sudan hosts more than 66,000 registered Eritrean refugees, the first of whom arrived in 1968 during the early years of Eritrea’s war of independence against Ethiopia. These days, Eritrea’s policy of indefinite military conscription, coupled with drought and poor economic opportunities, prompt some 1,800 people to cross into Sudan every month, according to the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR.

Aid agencies have been unable to fully meet the needs of tens of thousands of people who have fled inter-communal clashes over natural resources in northwestern Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).