Millions of citizens from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have been killed or displaced during decades of political corruption and military conflict. Many forced migrants are young people, who are often seen either as passive victims or as radicalized and amoral child soldiers perpetuating the cycle of violence. Recounting Migration refutes these stereotypes by presenting young Congolese refugees' nuanced understanding of the complex power relations that affect their everyday lives.

This special issue of African Journal of Conflict Resolution (AJCR) on Southern Africa - 50 years after Hammarskjöld underlines the current relevance of Hammarskjöld’s legacy and the continued relevance of his mindset and convictions for our efforts today to enhance peace and reduce violence and discrimination. This covers not only dimensions seeking to protect individual people. It also includes efforts to ensure more equal relations among states within the international system, often misleadingly called ‘order’ but more often tantamount to a structurally embedded disorder. By doing so, the following contributions also articulate parameters for better conduct by and among states and their leaders, respecting the interest of ‘We, the Peoples’ as the Preamble of the United Nations Charter declares (in contrast to what follows in the actual clauses, which focus on the governments of states). the special issue.

Scholar Mahmood Mamdani has cautioned East Africans against copying the European model of regional integration, arguing that it is a recipe for disaster. He was addressing the East African Legislative Assembly symposium. Mamdani said those who call for unity in Africa have tended to follow a model - The European Community - yet developments in Greece, Spain, Ireland, etc should cause a rethink.

Those within the peace and justice movement seeking an end to NATO’s illegal bombing of Libya must also be careful not to extend misplaced support for dictators, writes Horace Campbell.

‘After so many years of work on Sudan, I thought myself fully braced for the worst the National Islamic Front/National Congress Party regime might do. As so often before, I was wrong. The litany of egregious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law over the past five weeks is simply overwhelming---in South Kordofan, in Abyei, but in other areas along the North/South border as well.’ Eric Reeves provides an overview of the situation.

Former international aid worker Christina Clark-Kazak uses extensive interviews done in Kampala and Kyaka II refugee settlement, Uganda, to present the narratives of 10 young people living as refugees. Their accounts reveal both political awareness and individual agency in everyday and extraordinary circumstances.

In light of the increasing homophobia perpetuated against marginalised gay asylum-seekers and immigrants, a Cape Town based community organisation, PASSOP (People Against Suffering Oppression and Poverty) has launched a Gay Refugee Programme, aimed at supporting and building a network for this group. In a statement, David von Burgsdorff, Programme Coordinator for PASSOP said, 'recognizing the vulnerability, the programme will provide support and advocacy for this social group and will include a solidarity network to unite Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) refugees, asylum-seekers and immigrants by providing them with outlets for emotional support and counseling.'

A ship packed with refugees bound for Saudi Arabia has caught fire and capsized off the northeastern coast of Sudan, killing 197 people, the Sudanese Media Centre, a state-linked news agency, has said. The ship had launched from the Red Sea State, one of Sudan's 26 states, and sailed for four hours in Sudanese territorial waters before the blaze broke out, according to the news agency.

Gamba Manyatta village is empty now, weeds already roping around the few skeletal hut frames still standing. The people who were evicted took as much of their building materials as they could carry to start again and the land where their homes stood is now ploughed up. The eviction of the villagers to make way for a sugar cane plantation is part of a wider land grab going on in Kenya's Tana Delta that is not only pushing people off plots they have farmed for generations, stealing their water resources and raising tribal tensions that many fear will escalate into war, but also destroying a unique wetland habitat that is home to hundreds of rare and spectacular birds.

Almost eight years after an estimated 50,000 people perished in a four-year conflict that also displaced 500,000 from their homes in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a tenuous calm prevails in the area. The 1999-2003 Ituri conflict was between the Lendu and Hema ethnic groups. In Nioka, Mahagi territory, about 90km northeast of the district capital, Bunia, the violence sucked in the Alur ethnic community, with the Lendu accusing them of supporting the Hema.

Persistent violence compounded by a serious drought have forced 54,000 Somalis to flee in June, bringing the total number of displaced Somalis to a quarter of the country’s population, the UNHCR has said. The food shortage problem is so acute that there are now reports of children under five dying of hunger and exhaustion while fleeing, or dying within a day of their arrival at refugee camps despite emergency aid, the UN refugee agency said.

With hundreds of new Somali refugees arriving daily at the congested and overcrowded Dadaab refugee camps in northern Kenya, incumbent refugees are going around the camp with loud-hailers appealing for help for the newcomers, most of whom lack food, clothes, and blankets. 'As the numbers [of new arrivals] kept increasing and more people kept coming, we decided to organise and pool our efforts,' Abdiwali Hussein Mohamed, a member of the refugees' committee, told IRIN. 'We must do what we can, even if it is one pair of shoes.' The new refugees arrive in a deplorable state, Mohamed said.

The Inter-Governmental Authority on Development Assembly (IGAD) wants the United Nations to impose a No fly zone on Somalia in a bid to cut off arms supplies to the Al Shabaab terrorist group. President Kibaki led the East African leaders in asking the UN to enforce no fly zones on key towns during an IGAD meeting held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The meeting also directed its anger on Eritrea, which they accused of supplying arms to the Al Shabaab through Kismayu.

Egypt has a new law banning the sale of human organs, imposing severe restrictions on transplant operations for foreigners, and stipulating long jail sentences and huge fines for violations. The law, approved in December 2010 after protracted discussions in parliament, took effect only in June owing to country-wide political turmoil since January. Doctors say about 1,500 illegal transplants take place annually. Most live organs come from the destitute who sell body parts to pay debts or start small projects to earn a living to escape unemployment and poverty.

Equatorial Guinea is principally a destination for children subjected to conditions of forced labour. Children are recruited and transported from nearby countries – primarily Nigeria, Benin, Cameroon, and Gabon – and forced to work as domestic servants, market laborers, ambulant vendors, and launderers. This is according to a 2011 US State Department report that finds Equatorial Guinea's response to human trafficking to be inadequate, particularly given the government’s substantial financial resources.

The temperature climbed a few degrees in the arms deal kitchen this week as the Swedish prosecutorial authority directed a seemingly low-key missive to South African counterparts inquiring whether investigations into the defence procurement scandal had been reopened. The letter, under the signature of Gunnar Stetler, the director of the Swedish National Anti-Corruption Unit, notes that details have come to light of what he describes as an alleged 'bribery scheme towards South Africa', and asks whether in response to the new information, the South African judicial authorities have seen fit to open preliminary investigations.

In a week that saw two Somali traders shot dead in Cape Town and two more in Port Elizabeth, the South African government's handling of xenophobia received the lowest possible rating in a report by the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) Monitoring Project. Three years after widespread violence against foreigners broke out across the country, evaluators from the Monitoring Project noted that the government had failed to prioritize the issue, and that 'there is even an element of denialism on the part of some officials'. Tara Polzer Ngwato, of the African Centre for Migration and Society (ACMS) at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, agreed with the assessment. 'Government responses have been fragmented, poorly resourced and with limited political commitment,' despite a significant rise in attacks on foreign-owned shops in several provinces since the beginning of 2011.

Libyan rebel leaders have welcomed an African Union offer to open talks with the government in Tripoli without the direct involvement of Muammar Gaddafi. The Transitional National Council said it was the first time the AU had recognised the people's aspirations for democracy and human rights in Libya. The talks offer was agreed at an AU summit in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea. The AU also told members not to execute an arrest warrant for Col Gaddafi from the International Criminal Court (ICC).

At least five people have been killed in a bomb blast at a police beer garden in the troubled northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri, a military source and a witness said. Sunday evening's blast took place in the middle of a 'mammy market' near the police barracks in the Wulari area of the city. Mammy markets are open-air pubs and eateries found around police or military barracks and are open to both security personnel and civilians.

Two years after the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) promulgated the Law on Child Protection, an estimated 3,000 children remain in prisons across the country. The law, which came into effect in January 2009, replaced a 1950 colonial law on juvenile delinquency that set the age of criminal responsibility at 16, leading to a number of severe penalties against children, including life imprisonment and the death sentence. The current law has provisions for judicial, penal and social protection of children under 18 and states that a judge can send child law-breakers to 'a public or private institution of a social character, but only as a measure of last resort', and not to a prison.