Refugees who have found employment in the booming security industry say the Private Security Industry and Regulation Authority (Psira) is pushing them out of the sector. Psira’s regulations state that only South African identity document holders may be employed by registered security companies.

West African bloc Ecowas on Monday 28 May rejected a rebel declaration of an independent Islamic state in northern Mali and repeated an earlier threat to take 'all necessary measures' to keep the country intact. The 15-nation Economic Community of West African States 'denounces in the strongest possible terms this opportunistic act', said a statement signed by Ecowas head Desire Kadre Ouedraogo.

Gambia's immigration ministry said on Tuesday 29 May Guinea-Bissau's former army chief, elections chief and ousted interior minister were being detained 'for security reasons' after fleeing to Banjul. Former army chief Jose Zamora Induta, elections commission chief Desejado Da Costa and Fernando Gomes, who was interior minister in the government overthrown in the country's latest coup last month, fled Guinea-Bissau over the weekend.

Somali President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed has escaped unscathed from an ambush by al-Shabab fighters during a visit to the al-Qaeda-linked group's former stronghold of Afgoye. Ahmed was making a rare trip out of Mogadishu on Tuesday when the convoy was attacked by gunmen in the Afgoye corridor, a key road about 30km north of the capital.

A Moroccan draft law that seeks to grant members of the armed forces legal immunity for 'military operations' carried out inside the kingdom has sparked criticism by human rights organizations who say it violates the principle of equal justice under law. The 'basic guarantees for the military' draft law states that 'criminal investigation shall not be applied to members of the Royal Armed Forces who are executing the orders of their commanders…during an operation inside the national territories.'

Morocco’s glittering Mawazine international music festival wrapped up recently with performances by Mariah Carey and Lenny Kravitz, after nine days of showcasing the North African kingdom’s cool factor - even as dissident Moroccan musicians are imprisoned for their anti-establishment lyrics. Just a week before the festival began, Human Rights Watch slammed Morocco for sentencing a rapper to a year in prison for lyrics deemed insulting to police - a common theme in rap music elsewhere in the world.

Many victims of police violence during Tunisia’s 2010-2011 uprising have received neither proper care nor effective government compensation for their injuries, Human Rights Watch said. Seventeen months after the start of the revolution that ousted Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali from the presidency, many victims depend on charity and suffer pain, disability, and need, as a result of the state’s failure to provide them with effective redress.

The leaders of Gambia and Mauritania recently expressed their concern over the deteriorating security situation in the Sahel region as northern Mali remains occupied by Tuareg and Islamist rebels. In a statement released after a three-day visit by Gambian leader Yahya Jammeh to Nouakchott the two leaders expressed 'their deep concern over the serious threat to peace and stability in the Sahel-Sahara sub-region following the Libyan crisis.' Armed groups, particularly the Tuareg separatist rebels, who seized northern Mali in the wake of a March coup, were boosted by weapons brought back with them from the war in Libya.

The petition available through the web address provided calls for the suspension of removals of failed asylum seekers in the United Kingdom until there has been a full inquiry into the safety of failed asylum seekers on return to the DRC, in order to prevent future ill-treatment of vulnerable Congolese asylum seekers.

Demonstrators have attacked African migrants in Tel Aviv in a protest against refugees and asylum-seekers that indicates an increasingly volatile mood in Israel over what it terms as 'infiltrators'. Miri Regev, a member of the Israeli parliament, told the crowd 'the Sudanese are a cancer in our body'. The vast majority of asylum-seekers in Israel are from Sudan and Eritrea. Around 1,000 demonstrators took part in the demonstration on Wednesday night, waving signs saying: 'Infiltrators, get out of our homes' and 'Our streets are no longer safe for our children.'

An explosion ripped through a building full of small shops in downtown Nairobi on Monday, wounding at least 16 people, the police commissioner said. He could not immediately confirm what caused the blast. The force of the explosion ripped apart the one-story building's aluminum roof, but a high-rise building with a glass exterior right next to the blast did not appear to sustain major damage.

Hundreds of Salafists have attacked bars and shops and clashed with security forces in a Tunisian town in the latest incident to raise religious tensions in the home of the Arab Spring uprisings. Police and witnesses in the northwestern town of Jendouba said on Saturday that hundreds of the ultra-conservative Muslims began rioting to protest the arrest of four men in connection with previous attacks on alcohol vendors.

Mali's embattled transitional government has rejected the declaration by an alliance of northern rebels of an independent Islamic Tuareg state. 'The government of Mali categorically rejects the idea of the creation of an Azawad state, even more so of an Islamic state,' a government official told the AFP news agency on Sunday. 'Even though this state creation is just on paper and not de facto, we are coming forward to stress that Mali is secular and will remain secular,' said Hamadoun Toure, information minister in the transitional Malian administration. The two groups that seized control of Mali's north had announced that they agreed to merge and create an independent state in the northern half of the west African nation.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is ruling out a peaceful solution to a stand-off with rebels in the east. The government has refused to negotiate with the group known as M23, who have deserted from the army. In this exclusive video report, Al Jazeera crosses the frontline to speak to the fighters.

Most of those displaced by post-election violence mainly in Kenya’s Rift Valley Province five years ago have been resettled, but those whose relatives were killed or who lost their property are seeking justice and further compensation. With few perpetrators of the violence having been bought to book, 'the compensation they need is not only in monetary terms, but also in accessing justice for lost lives', said Collins Omondi, an official with the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR).

Africa's newest sovereign state, South Sudan, is the highest riser in this year's internationally acclaimed global ranking Peoples Under Threat, indicating that the risk of further ethnic killings in the country remains critical, Minority Rights Group International (MRG) says. In South Sudan, a new entrant in the top ten, a history of cattle raiding between the Lou Nuer and the Murle, as well as other groups, has developed into inter-communal violence on a highly organised scale in Jonglei state, affecting some 120,000 people. Tens of thousands of refugees have also fled across the border into South Sudan in recent months, escaping Sudanese government shelling of communities in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile state.

The International Refugee Rights Initiative has launched the seventh paper in its series on Citizenship and Displacement in the Great Lakes Region. The paper, 'Darfurians in South Sudan: negotiating belonging in two Sudans' is about the construction of citizenship, identities and belonging at a moment of profound political change: the secession of South Sudan from the Republic of Sudan (Sudan or North Sudan) that took place on 9 July 2011. The full paper can be accessed through the website of

Arts and human rights charity, Sandblast has been knocked offline in an internet attack. The charity, founded by West Hampstead resident, Danielle Smith, works with the indigenous people from Western Sahara, the Saharawis, whose identity and culture is threatened by the impact of prolonged refugee life and Morocco’s occupation. Sandblast’s mission is to empower the Saharawis to tell their own story through the arts. The attack has come two weeks before the launch of its ambitious music empowerment project, Studio-Live, which aims to engage UK-based musicians, producers, technicians, and music industry specialists in building a Saharawi music industry from scratch in the refugee camps in the Algerian desert.

The rejection of race discrimination claims brought by a young Nigerian woman who was brought to the United Kingdom illegally by her employers, brutalised and denied wages, gives a green light to racism, says this article from the Institute of Race Relations website. Mary Mounga was probably only 14 when her employer brought her from Nigeria to work in the UK as an au pair, promising to send her to school and to pay her £50 a month on top of her board and lodging. She was told to say that she was 20 and that she was coming to visit her grandmother. Once here, she was beaten, never paid any wages and not given the opportunity to go to school.

Kenyan police arbitrarily arrested, detained, and beat refugees following the discovery of explosives and an attack on a police vehicle in the Dadaab refugee camps in mid-May 2012. Senior officials visiting the camps on 23 May should ensure a full and speedy investigation leading to the identification and disciplinary measures against any officer responsible for abuse and the compensation of victims.