Forty years after the rights of Africa’s refugees were enshrined in a landmark convention, the continent’s leaders are due to make legal history again by adopting a new instrument to assist people displaced within the borders of their own country. The African Convention on the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa is the main agenda for the heads of state summit on refugees, returnees and IDPs in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, from 19-23 October.

Targets to cut the number of hungry people in the world will not be met without greater international effort, UN food agencies have warned. The UN's annual report on global food security confirms that more than one billion people - a sixth of the world's population - are undernourished. It says the number of hungry people was growing before the economic crisis, which has made the situation worse.

The Graduate Studies in International Affairs (GSIA) program in the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, in partnership with the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO) and Bjørknes College, offers one scholarship each year for full-time study in the Master of International Affairs specialising in Peace and Conflict Studies degree program. Tuition fees will be covered by The Australian National University and Bjørknes College; and students will receive some funding towards living costs as a stipend. Oslo Peace Scholarship Applicants Deadlines is April 30, 2010.

The tit-for-tat expulsion of thousands of Angolan refugees living in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and the repatriation of thousands of undocumented Congolese migrants working in Angola, is raising fears of a "humanitarian catastrophe" in the making. According to ANGOP, the Angolan state-run media outlet, the number of Angolans forcefully removed from the DRC since a large-scale repatriation operation kicked off in August 2009 had topped 23,000 by 13 October.

A police strategy of shoot-to-kill won’t stop South Africa’s runaway crime, William Gumede writes in this week’s Pambazuka News, when the real issues are corruption, inefficiency and a lack of skills and resources in the police service and criminal justice system. What the country needs, argues Gumede, is ‘a comprehensive anti-crime, poverty and job creation strategy.’

The news that Barack Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize last week has created much discussion around the world as he has only been in office for nine months. In this week’s Pambazuka News, Ama Biney finds Obama unworthy of the prize as he still presides over one of the biggest nuclear arsenals in the world, as well as just having pushed one of the largest military budgets through Congress. The main question for Biney is, has a man whose country is at war received the prize for peace or has he received the prize simply for prizing peace?

Thousands of Congolese citizens are being deported from Angola to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) under alarming circumstances, say humanitarian workers. "The deportees have nothing with them, everything was taken; there are cases of violence, rape and sexual abuse," said Severine Flores, spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Umaru Fofana looks dishevelled. His hair is overgrown and people who do not know him could be mistaken for thinking he just joined an Afro band. And his hanging beard will surely solicit suspicious glances. But Fofana is not some musician or an unkempt hobo. He is the president of the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ) and his appearance is all for the cause of media freedom. The association petitioned the court for an interpretation and repeal of the criminal and seditious libel law contained in the Public Order Act of 1965.

Somalia's U.N.-backed government has recruited more than 170 young Kenyans and former servicemen to help it fight rebels in the failed Horn of Africa state, local leaders in eastern Kenya said. Mohamed Gabow, the mayor of Garissa, told Reuters the enrolment of ethnic Somali Kenyans was being conducted at a home in Bulla Iftin village, on the outskirts of his town.

More than a million Ugandans driven from their homes by decades of violent conflict are gradually moving back to their homeland in the north of the country thanks to an innovative United Nations-backed farming project, the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) has said. A new rice-based farming system aimed at improving food security and reducing poverty in Uganda has enabled the incremental return of around 1.5 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) after living in makeshift camps for more than 20 years.

A former senior Rwandan military officer indicted by the United Nations war crimes tribunal for his role in the 1994 genocide in the tiny Central African country was handed over to the court today after being on the run for nearly nine years – the second fugitive to be delivered up in two months. Idelphonse Nizeyimana, former second in command for intelligence and military operations at an officers’ school, was arrested in Kampala by the National Central Bureau of Interpol in collaboration with the tracking team of the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and transferred to the court’s detention facility in Arusha, Tanzania.

Guinean authorities should immediately free all those detained without charge following the bloody crackdown on an opposition rally on September 28, 2009, or charge them with a specific criminal offense followed by a fair trial, Human Rights Watch has said. The group also supported the call by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to establish an international commission of inquiry into the violence, in which an estimated 150 or more demonstrators were killed.

The Sudanese government should end attacks by its armed forces on civilians in Darfur and make the major human rights reforms envisioned in the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), Human Rights Watch has said in a new report. The 25-page report, "The Way Forward: Ending Human Rights Abuses and Repression across Sudan" documents human rights violations and repression in Khartoum and northern states, ongoing violence in Darfur, and the fighting that threatens civilians in Southern Sudan.

Two weeks ago President Mwai Kibaki ordered the closure of the camps, which at the peak of the violence were home to around 500,000 people. But more than a year-and-a-half later there are Kenyans still living in tents some of whom are reluctant to leave.

A dispute broke out at the head of Guinea’s military government late on Wednesday after a junta leader sought to arrest a military officer for his part in the mass killings of anti-government protesters last month. The incident at junta leader Captain Moussa Dadis Camara’s headquarters in the capital Conakry is the latest sign of rifts within the leadership and came just hours after France for the first time suggested Camara could be implicated in the deaths.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) has activated its emergency preparedness plan for Influenza A H1N1/A virus viral outbreak after 21 cases were confirmed in two large refugee camps in Kenya – collectively home to more than 320,000 people. There have now been 5 confirmed cases in Kakuma camp, northwestern Kenya, as well as 16 cases in Hagadera, Dadaab – one of the world’s largest refugee camps, where overcrowding and lack of resources are already putting a strain on healthcare systems.

The Oakland City Council unanimously voted in favor of a resolution urging the U.S. State Department to facilitate peace in the Niger Delta through independently monitored peace negotiations. The City’s call contrasts with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s pledge in August to explore further U.S. military assistance to the government of Nigeria. The resolution marks a new level of support to pressure the United States to adopt a foreign policy that promotes constructive change through dialog in alignment with the American values of democratic civic engagement, and freedom of speech and the press.

Some 8,299 militants embraced the Nigerian government's amnesty programme for oil militants, which ended 4 October, according to officials of the Coordinating Committee on the Amnesty. Chief Coordinator Lucky Ararile, an Air Vice Marshall, told journalists that the militants also surrendered 287,445 ammunition, 2,760 assorted weapons, 18 gunboats, 763 dynamites, 1,090 dynamite caps and 3,155 magazines.

The Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) notes with concern the escalation of unbridled attacks in the on human rights in the Gambia. Since the 2004 murder of Deyda Hydera and several other alleged extra judicial killings, disappearance in detention, the wanton abuse of human rights especially the right of the freedom of expression and media freedoms have increased.

At least 42 people are killed, 70 others injured following nearly a week-long fighting between Mundari and Bor youth, officials figures indicate. While 8,000 internal displaced persons (IDPs) are at the augury of starvation in Terekeke and Pariak in Terekeke and Bor Counties respectively and in dire need for humanitarian assistance.