Guinea risks becoming West Africa's next failed state, says a new briefing from the International Crisis Group (ICG). "Its economy is faltering, the government has nearly ceased to provide services, and in 2004, there were isolated uprisings in at least eight towns and cities in all regions of the country. Getting it wrong in Guinea now could have disastrous consequences. Getting it right will require a greater engagement by both the Guinean population and the diplomatic and donor communities, including a focus much more on reforming institutions than on the immediate personnel issues involved in the succession to the ailing and dictatorial president, Lansana Conté."

Action by Churches Together (ACT), a global alliance supporting communities in emergencies, has appealed for nearly US $8.6 million to help thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees spontaneously returning to southern Sudan. ACT said the money would be used on health care, education, agriculture, water, transport and poverty alleviation programmes.

Ignoring UNHCR pleas for restraint, Burundi and Rwanda pressed ahead Monday with a joint operation to return thousands of Rwandan asylum seekers to their homeland. Authorities denied UNHCR and its NGO partners access to the transit centre from where the return operation was being conducted.

Replacing the discredited United Nations Commission on Human Rights with a standing Human Rights Council would be a major step forward for the protection of human rights worldwide, says Human Rights Watch. On Friday the president of the U.N. General Assembly, Ambassador Jean Ping of Gabon, presented a draft outcome document for the General Assembly Summit in September which included a commitment of support for a Human Rights Council. The proposed Human Rights Council would operate year-round to allow it to act both preventively and during urgent crises.

The trial of a former Rwandan minister suspected of playing a key role in the 1994 genocide of some 800,000 people started at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) last Thursday. Prosecutors accuse Andre Rwamakuba of drawing up lists of Tutsi people to be killed and allowing militiamen with him to kill women and disembowel those who were pregnant. The former doctor also allegedly walked around a hospital with an axe hanging from his belt, striking any ethnic Tutsis he found in wards or corridors.

The North-South Civil Society Conference on Refugee Warehousing will gather advocates from refugee hosting and donor countries to learn from one another and to collaborate on tactics and strategies to win the basic rights of refugees elaborated in the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and other human rights instruments to live free, dignified, and productive lives even as they await durable solutions.

Delegates from the Burundian government and the rebel Forces nationales de liberation (FNL) began talks on Friday on how to implement a ceasefire agreement, after almost a week of delays. FNL is Burundi's only rebel group to continue fighting. All other former rebel groups have signed peace agreements with the transitional government and have since joined transitional institutions.

Death-row convicts will soon have their sentences reduced to life imprisonment. Justice Minister Kiraitu Murungi said he was working closely with the President's Office to commute to life all the death penalties. Said Mr Murungi: "We are committed to abolishing the death penalty. The death sentence is a violation of the right to life."

The Egyptian government stifles academic freedom in universities by censoring course books, outlawing research about controversial issues and intimidating student activists, Human Rights Watch says in a new report. The authorities also fail to protect citizens from Islamist militants who publicly attack professors and students.  “The government’s persistent violations of academic freedom have badly undermined Egypt’s standing as the educational leader of the Arab world,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The authorities should end their excessive and arbitrary interference in the activities of scholars, students and universities.”  

As the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced that it will begin investigations of crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Darfur, Amnesty International said that the ICC investigation must take priority over any Sudanese investigations and that all states, including the government of Sudan, must support the ICC investigation in every way possible. "This announcement brings hope for justice and accountability for the victims of killings, massive forced displacement and rape in Darfur," said Kolawole Olaniyan, Director of Amnesty International's Africa Programme.

The five-year anniversary of the Kimberley Process marks an important time to assess how the Kimberley Process is working to prevent the trade in conflict diamonds, and what more needs to be done to ensure that the process is credible and effective. This briefing document from Global Witness and Partnership African Canada reflects on some of the accomplishments of the Kimberley Process while highlighting that much more work remains to be done to ensure that it is effectively implemented and strengthened to prevent diamonds from ever again fuelling conflict.

At least 20 people were killed, 50 wounded and hundreds more displaced during inter-clan fighting that began on Monday in the town of Beletweyne in south-central Somalia. The fighting broke out on Monday at around 5:00 p.m. [02:00 GMT] when militias from the Galje'el and Jajele sub-clans clashed on the west side of the town, local journalist Abdullahi Muhammad told IRIN on Tuesday.

At least 1,700 people have fled villages in the Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) Katanga Province following attacks by Mayi-Mayi militiamen, a UN official told IRIN on Tuesday. "The Mayi-Mayi raped seven women, eight under 18-year-olds and burnt eleven houses," Rachel Scott, the spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said.

Eight people are shot, hacked and beaten to death and their bloodied corpses dragged to the middle of a dirt road for aid workers to find. Six other fatally wounded victims are left lying nearby, screaming in agony. They die hours later. After nearly two decades of bloodshed, Ugandans are asking why atrocities such as this May 27 attack by Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels still plague the traumatised people of the north - and why they seem to have been forgotten by the world.

The Roman Catholic Church in Francistown has offered to assist refugees at Dukwi refugee camp to access anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs. The refugees have been excluded from the government- funded ARV programme because it is exclusively for Batswana only. The under Secretary for Political Affairs in the Office of the President, Ross Sanoto, appreciated the gesture by the church, but added that sustaining the programme would be a challenge. The bishop said his church would work along side the UNHCR to ensure that the refugees continued accessing the drugs even when they would have returned to their countries.

Flooding continues to plague the Horn of Africa, with the number of dead and missing in Ethiopia rising and heavy rains washing away shelter for 25,000 Somali refugees in Kenya. Most of the refugees’ shelters in Ifo – one of the three camps in Dadaab – collapsed or were swept away by torrential rains on the same day. Ifo hosts more than 53,000 refugees, mainly from neighbouring Somalia. There are fears of an outbreak of water-borne diseases as large numbers of pit latrines in the camp have also collapsed.

"The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and its member organisation, the Sudan Organisation against Torture (SOAT), welcomes the launch of a formal investigation by the International Criminal Court into the Darfur situation, in Sudan. FIDH and SOAT urges the Sudanese Government to accept the help of the international community in the fight against impunity for the crimes committed in Darfur, by fully cooperating with the organs of the Court, especially with the investigation teams of the ICC."

It's common courtesy to clean up after yourself, but some refugees in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have gone one step further by greening their camps before repatriation. More than 17,000 out of a planned 60,000 seedlings have so far been planted in the villages of Nkondo and Kilueka in the Bas Congo province of south-western DRC. The area hosted more than 23,000 Angolan refugees for six years, but fewer than 3,000 of them are left now after the majority headed home to Angola.

Although he has nothing more than a tent to keep rain off his head, Andre Tahou says he won't leave the Catholic mission in this western Ivory Coast town until security has been restored following ethnic clashes which claimed 70 lives. Tahou, chief of the neighboring village of Diourouzon, is one of over 5,000 people believed to be holed up in the mission following the outbreak of clashes in the cocoa growing region.

On January 10, 2005, the Sudanese witnessed the signing of a peace agreement after many years of war. It was a day that Sudanese living in Kenya had awaited for a long time, but many viewed it with trepidation. Having lived in Kenya for a long time, many have mixed reactions about going back home. Will they be foreigners in their own country, having adopted a new lifestyle in Kenya?