Chad said on Wednesday it had foiled a coup attempt by a group of soldiers who had been plotting to shoot down President Idriss Deby's plane. Information Minister Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor said two high-ranking plotters, a colonel and a commander, had been captured while others were fleeing towards the east of the country with government forces in hot pursuit.

A large number of asylum seekers, who are flouting Zambia's laws by living outside settlement camps, pose a challenge to the UN's repatriation efforts. The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, estimates that at least 30,000 of the more than 100,000 refugees in Zambia are living illegally outside of the five settlement camps in the country.

The United Nations food agency says it has been forced to reduce food aid rations to some 230,000 Somali and Sudanese refugees living in two camps in remote areas of eastern and northeastern Kenya as a result of insufficient funding. The ration cuts for refugees in Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps come as WFP struggles to raise US $170 million for its operation to feed 3.5 million Kenyans affected by severe drought.

Burundi has freed a final batch of 1,846 political prisoners, including some accused of involvement in ethnic massacres and the assassination of the president in 1993. Human rights activists, including the largest group Ligue Iteka, said they wanted the constitutional court to cancel the releases arguing it was against Burundi's constitution and international law to free detainees charged with murder. Some 1,453 prisoners were released in January and February as part of a plan by President Pierre Nkurunziza to free all prisoners accused of politically-motivated crimes during the tiny central African nation's civil war.

The Nigerian Army Headquarters in Abuja confirmed the exchange of gunfire between its men and the militants in the Okerenkoko area, Delta State. It said that three of its soldiers were wounded in the offensive. The Director of Army Public Relations, Col Mohammed Yussuf, said that the exchange occurred when the militants attacked and tried to hijack two tankers going to berth in Warri, Delta State

Independent experts from Africa, Europe and the US have endorsed the draft ECOWAS Convention on Small Arms and Light Weapons after a two-day review meeting held at the ECOWAS secretariat in Abuja, an ECOWAS statement said. The Convention will replace the eight-year-old regional Moratorium on the Importation, Exportation and Manufacture of Small Arms and Light Weapons, which was signed by regional leaders in October 1998. Among the novelties in the 20-page draft Convention, which was prepared by two ECOWAS consultants, are sanctions and monitoring mechanism for violations of its provisions. This will equip the region with the instrument to curb the inflow of these categories of arms into the region.

ABA/Africa is looking for a Country Director to handle a Four Year Anti-Trafficking Program in Nigeria. The ideal candidate for the Anti-Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Advisor is a senior legal professional with demonstrated success in the area of criminal prosecution, including sex crimes and domestic violence, as well as rule of law programming and management in Africa.

Press statement on International Women’s Day,
8 March 2006
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Ditshwanelo, the Botswana Centre for Human Rights, wishes to express its concern at the recent case of Ms Lesedi Ramathuba, reported in Mmegi on 1 March 2006. An alleged rape survivor, she is to be prosecuted by the State for “lying to the police after she recanted a statement saying she was raped”. The report states that her attorney, Mr Isaac Seloko, has said she “decided to withdraw the case at her own will after considering her position”. This has brought into sharp focus how little protection or legal assistance exists within Botswana for women who allege rape. Currently, an alleged rapist is able to freely contact the alleged survivor during the case. There is inevitably the serious risk of intimidation of the survivor by the alleged rapist. This could lead to the withdrawal of the report of the alleged rape.

This is a guide for radio professionals and young people who want to make good, entertaining youth radio programmes which also build peace. The tools described here are meant for use by those working in radio, but they can also be used by youth workers and young leaders to design and implement their own radio initiatives.

The report focuses on what skills and type of experience individuals need to develop a successful career in the field of international peace and conflict resolution. Its aims to provide a guideline for individuals interested in pursuing and/or advancing their career in the field. It is based on interviews with 55 employers involved in international and peace and conflict resolution work, from leading non-profit organisations, US government agencies, international organisations, foundations and universities.

This report provides a series of case studies addressing specific religious conflicts through a variety of methodologies. The authors argue that in the popular mind, to discuss religion in the context of international affairs automatically raises the spectre of religious-based conflict. The many other dimensions and impacts of religion tend to be downplayed or even neglected entirely.

The delegation of the Botswana government is facing tough questions at the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights on its record of racial discrimination. In particular, the forced relocation of the indigenous San people (also known as Bushmen or Basarwa) from a Kalahari desert game reserve caused concern at the UN conference in Geneva. The Batswana human rights group, Ditshwanelo, held that ‘the decision to terminate basic and essential services to the residents inside the Game Reserve was wrongful and unlawful. We believe that it was a deliberate attempt by the government to force the residents out of the Reserve.’

Sudan's Special Court for Darfur has not been able to try officials accused of war crimes. Sudan established the court after blocking the International Criminal Court (ICC) from investigating in Darfur. To date, the court has not tried any persons for their actions during the Darfur conflict.

This allAfrica article claims that East Africa could be the target of US strikes against "suspected al Qaeda elements" in the coming years. Special forces play a major part in that endeavor, but the US will increasingly use unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to carry out "unilateral quick strikes."

The British medical journal Lancet recently took greater notice of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) than all western media outlets combined, says this article from "Some people have suggested the reason that there isn’t greater awareness and equitable intervention in the Congo is because 'we simply don’t know what to do' to remedy the situation.  However, it is fairly clear what needs to be done, the West is just unwilling to do it because of powerful economic and geopolitical reasons."

Since the mid-1990s, millions of Congolese have fled their homes to escape fighting between rebel groups and the national government in a complex conflict which has, at times, involved as many as nine neighbouring states. Close to four million people are estimated to have died as a result of the conflict which has been accompanied by widespread human rights violations. Displacement in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) peaked in 2003, with an estimated 3.4 million people forced from their homes, most of them in the east.

The first time Micha De Winter walked into a child-friendly space in a camp for displaced people in Darfur in March 2005, he found 150 children crowded into 25 square metres, supervised by one animator holding a stick in one hand and a whip in the other. "What I found was quite awful. Animators received very little training. There were no materials, and the numbers of children were so huge that hardly anything meaningful could be done in terms of psycho-social support," De Winter, a child psychologist, said.

The Moroccan Ministerial Commission, chaired by Premier Driss Jettou, approved the lifting of some reservations to international conventions Morocco ratified to uphold the principles of a modern and democratic society, human rights and gender equality, said a Justice Ministry communiqué. The lifting of the reservations comes as part of the country's move to revise the citizenship code to allow women to hand down their nationality to children born to foreign fathers.

The Freedom of Expression Institute is disgusted by the high- handed, illegal and brutal attitude of the eThekwini Municipality against shack dwellers today (February 27). Early this morning, police invaded both the Foreman Road and Kennedy Road shack settlements in Durban and prevented residents from leaving the settlements. A number of shack dwellers were arrested. We have just received reports that some of the detainees have been beaten up by police at the Sydenham police station. The military-style operation of police is an attempt to prevent a shack dwellers march from taking place today. The Shack Dwellers Movement, Abahlali Base Mjondolo, had planned to march today in protest against the lack of housing. They were due to hand over a memorandum to the MEC for Housing in the Kwazulu-Natal Province.

Zimbabwean authorities have warned that more arrests will follow as it unravels an alleged plot by opposition members to overthrow the government following the discovery of an arms cache in the east of the country. Minister of Security Didymus Mutasa confirmed on Tuesday that security forces had arrested Peter Hitschmann, a former member of the pre-independence Rhodesian army, after police found weapons and communication equipment at his home last week in Mutare, 260 km east of the capital, Harare.