A month to the day after Togo’s disputed presidential election, murder, rape and kidnappings by the security forces are continuing to drive people across the borders in search of shelter, refugees and human rights leaders said on Tuesday. “There have been several hundred victims,” Sidiki Kaba, the president of the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) said in an interview on Radio France Internationale. “A man-hunt is on that takes place at nights.”

The OAU Refugee Convention is most recognised for having extended the conventional concept of a refugee beyond the narrower scope of the 1951 Refugee Convention. Although the OAU refugee definition has been praised for its broad scope, relatively little effort has been made to subject it to a rigorous interpretative analysis.

Urgent action to address inequality is required in Kenya if a future major internal conflict is to be avoided. A new report launched in Nairobi, Kenya and at the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, demonstrates how inequalities between communities are increasing in this hitherto peaceful country and how government budget allocations are making the problems of minority and indigenous peoples intolerable.

One year after some 900 people were massacred in clashes between Muslims and Christians in northern and central Nigeria, the Nigerian government has failed to prosecute those responsible for this cycle of violence, Human Rights Watch said in a new report. The 75-page report, "Revenge in the Name of Religion: The Cycle of Violence in Plateau and Kano States," provides the first detailed analysis of these incidents and the factors that continue to threaten the stability of central and northern Nigeria. It provides detailed documentation of two major outbreaks of violence in the town of Yelwa, Plateau State, in February and May 2004, and a reprisal attack in the northern city of Kano in May 2004.

African Ministers of Health currently attending the World Health Assembly (WHA), have all joined South African health minister Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang in expressing their concerns about the continued migration and recruitment of health personnel from developing to developed countries. The resolution also calls upon the Director General of the World Health Organisation (WHO) to ensure that the previous decision of the WHA aimed at addressing this matter is fully implemented.

Armed conflicts and economic crises are the chief reasons for mounting world hunger, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said, while offering a grim outlook on plans to cut the number of those going hungry worldwide in half by 2015. "Peace encourages investments and allows social and economic development. Conflict destroys lives, opportunities and environments," the FAO's food security committee said as it began meeting in Rome.

In a Ugandan camp run by the United Nations refugee agency, southern Sudanese women and girls acknowledge that their access to free education has caused them to delay rushing back home, even though a peace accord went into effect in the region in January. Refugees outside the country often list education above peace and security as their main requirements for ending their exile and coming home, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees says.

The United Nations Security Council should work toward the prompt surrender of former Liberian President Charles Taylor to Sierra Leone's U.N.-backed war crimes court, Human Rights Watch says. This week the Security Council was briefed on the progress of the Special Court for Sierra Leone by the tribunal's president, Justice Emmanuel Ayoola. Since 2002, the court has been working to bring to justice those who "bear the greatest responsibility" for war crimes committed during Sierra Leone's brutal civil war.

"The Darfur Relief and Documentation Centre (DRDC) is alarmed by the increasing state of insecurity and banditry activities in many parts of the Darfur region. Although massive military operations including the use of aerial bombardment have stopped yet a new pattern of widespread and systematic attacks by small groups against individuals has developed."

After five years in prison, Prospere Kongo's only desire is to get out alive. "Here it's like, as soon as one guy dies, the next is about to drop dead," the illiterate taxi driver said. Prospere said he was caught with two accomplices when they tried to rob a Lebanese trader at gunpoint. The three men were jailed in Dimbokro, a small town in central Cote d'Ivoire. But Prospere's mates are already dead. "They contracted some kind of skin infection and died," he said.

Police in Guinea-Bissau fired teargas on Tuesday to stop hundreds of supporters of an ousted former ruler, as the interim leader said the country risked sinking into political chaos. Hundreds of supporters gathered outside the house of Kumba Yalla, who was ousted as leader in a bloodless coup in 2003 but says he is still the rightful head of state and declared himself president at the weekend.

African Union-sponsored peace talks will resume in Nigeria on May 30 aimed at bringing an end to the conflict in Sudan's western Darfur region, a Nigerian minister said on Tuesday. "It has been decided that the Abuja round commences on May 30, 2005, that's now agreed," African Cooperation and Integration Minister Lawan Gana Guba told a news conference at the end of an African mini-summit in Tripoli.

A recent statement by Kenyan Justice Minister Kiraitu Murungi that it was ”no longer necessary” for the country to establish a commission to investigate atrocities committed under previous governments was greeted with both outrage and delight. The promise to set up such a body, modeled on South Africa's internationally acclaimed inquiry into rights abuses that occurred during apartheid, was one of the key pledges made during the current head of state's campaign for office. President Mwai Kibaki and his National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) were elected to power in December 2002.

A human rights groups has asked the government to investigate and prosecute police officers who shot and wounded 5 people during a food distribution exercise in Merti division of Isiolo district over the weekend. In a protest letter to the minister for Justice and constitutional affairs,the co-ordinator of the Hussein Fora Foundation Yussuf Huka Jillo accuses the police of using excessive force against un-armed innocent residents.

The United Nations food agency warned that it would soon have to reduce rations to refugees in Africa unless donors came up quickly with the $315 million it needed. The World Food Programme (WFP), which aids some 2.2 million people worldwide, said it had received only $460 million of the $775 million sought in funding for 2005, of which 75 percent is spent in Africa.

Not far from scenes of war and conflict, which arise from the civil unrest that currently divides Côte d’Ivoire, children in Abobo primary school in the capital city of Abidjan are learning about peace. Pupils in a class taught by Florence Abo Kossia have just written words of peace on their slates. ‘Forgiveness’, ‘reconciliation’, and ‘peace’ are just a few. The pupils eagerly await their teacher’s approval.

The Ugandan government must prosecute perpetrators of torture, said Human Rights Watch and the Ugandan-based Foundation for Human Rights Initiative this week. Last week during its session in Geneva, the United Nations Committee Against Torture reviewed Uganda's initial report. In its report, the Ugandan government explained measures it has taken against torture to comply with its obligations under the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. On Friday this week, the U.N. committee is scheduled to publish its conclusions and recommendations to Uganda.

Burundian President Domitien Ndayizeye and Agathon Rwasa, the leader of the country's remaining rebel group, the Forces nationales de libération (FNL), agreed on Sunday to end hostilities and to work for lasting and sustainable peace in the country. "We have agreed to end hostilities immediately," Ndayizeye said in Tanzania's commercial capital, Dar es Salaam, shortly after signing the agreement with Rwasa. "Technical committees of the two parties are going to be picked as soon as possible so that they start working out modalities for negotiations and implementation of the ceasefire."

Revelations of a covert rendezvous in Washington between top CIA officials and the head of Sudan's secret police have starkly exposed just how hollow and hypocritical are the US administration's expressions of concern for the plight of millions of Darfuri peasants, who have been systematically targeted by Sudan's rulers in a vicious 26-month-long campaign of ethnic cleansing and mass murder. Ken Silverstein, writing in the April 29 Los Angeles Times, reported that US government officials revealed to him that, in the previous week, "the CIA sent an executive jet ... to ferry the chief of Sudan's intelligence agency [General Salah Abdallah Gosh] to Washington for secret meetings sealing Khartoum's sensitive and previously veiled partnership with the administration".

"The Coalition for Justice and Peace in Somaliland (CJPS) is concerned about the implications for human rights of statements made on 10 May by the Minister of the Interior, Ismail Adan Osman, during a conference to debate a proposed National Human Rights Commission. The comments, given prominent coverage by the local media yesterday, underline the government’s intolerance of criticism, and its determination to control the flow of information that reaches the outside world. The Coalition shares the desire of the government and public in Somaliland to attract international interest and investment. But it believes that sweeping unpleasant facts under the carpet, rather than confronting reality and addressing problems, is detrimental to the interests of Somaliland."