At least 31 people were killed in a clash between south Sudan's army and rebel militia fighters, the army said on Wednesday (20 April), the latest violence to unsettle the region ahead of its independence in July. Twenty southern army soldiers were killed on Tuesday in a clash in the oil-producing Unity state with fighters loyal to Peter Gadet, a former senior southern army (SPLA) officer who rebelled this month, the military said.

Human Rights Network Uganda says it is gravely concerned about the unjustified and excessive use of violence in recent protests in Uganda. Demonstrations throughout the country, from the southwestern town of Masaka to Gulu in the north, all reported excessive aggression and violence on the count of the police.

‘Three months ago Gaddafi was a friend, today he is the leader of a pariah and failed state.’ As the US, France and Britain pursue military action to remove Libya’s Gaddafi from power, Sokari Ekine has her doubts that it is democracy they are supporting. (Plus updates from Swaziland, Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Uganda and Kenya).

Some people arrive with only a pair of worn out flip flops on their feet, because they couldn’t get anything better. Some drag suitcases and bundles filled with the little they were able to take away with them. All the languages of the world are spoken at Ras Ajdir, the frontier, on the border between Tunisia and Libya. Since the beginning of the Libyan crisis, more than 230,000 people fleeing war have crossed this checkpoint in an endless flow, 85,000 at the start of the conflict alone.

In January, a Nouakchott court sentenced Oumoulmoumnine Mint Bakar Vall to six months in prison for enslaving two girls, ages 10 and 14, in the city's Arafat neighbourhood. Last month, two men and three women were arrested for keeping three young female slaves in Nouakchott. The arrests came after anti-slavery NGO chiefs Boubacar Ould Messoud, Biram Ould Dah Abeid and Aminetou Mint El Moctar launched a hunger strike to compel authorities to press charges in the case.

The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) has welcomed the decision taken by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) on 3 March 2011 to institute proceedings against Libya before the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Court). 'It is the first time since its creation that the Court has been seized of an application lodged by the ACHPR on the basis of NGO communications. This is an historic step taken by the African regional human rights instruments which gives hope to any individuals whose rights are violated by a State. We are glad to have facilitated such important procedure,' said Souhayr Belhassen, President of FIDH.

Burkina Faso's government will hold talks with soldiers to discuss issues which led to a military mutiny and days of unrest across the West African nation. The mutiny, which began with shooting near the presidential palace, triggered riots and looting in the capital, Ouagadougou, and in other towns and cities.

Britain will send a team of experienced military officers to Libya to help support and advise the country's opposition council, the UK foreign minister has said. William Hague said that military advisers would join a group of British diplomats already co-operating with the Libyan National Transitional Council, based in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi. 'They will advise the National Transitional Council on how to improve their military organisational structures, communications and logistics, including how best to distribute humanitarian aid and deliver medical assistance,' he said.

Civilians evacuated from the war-ravaged western Libyan city of Misrata have described the humanitarian situation there as grim, saying families are barely able to find enough food and water, that medical treatment is hard to come by, and corpses are lying in the streets. 'We could hear the snipers picking people off in the street outside,' said Mariam Doua, a teacher in the city. 'Eventually some [rebel fighters] came to lead us to safety in the middle of the night when the militia were dozing. We covered the mouths of the children and ran out into the street, barefoot.'

Additional charges are being brought against a Nigerian being held for an alleged terror attack in his country last year, the Johannesburg Regional Court heard on Monday (18 April). Henry Okah, who was living in Johannesburg at the time, was arrested the day after the twin car bombing in Abuja, Nigeria, in October, in which 12 people died and 36 were injured. The State prosecutor on Monday said additional charges of terrorism and terror financing were being added to the charge sheet.

Heavy flooding in Namibia has killed at least 65 people and displaced 60,000, damaging crops and infrastructure in the southwest African state, a UN report said. 'Sustained high water tables over the past three years mean that it may take months for the floodwaters to subside completely,' said the report by the office of the UN's resident disaster coordinator.

The death of Andries Tatane at the hands of police officers has forced South Africans to question the direction in which the nation's law-enforcement body is moving. Tatane, a teacher, activist, husband and father of two young sons, was among a group of about 4 000 Meqheleng township residents who marched on the Ficksburg municipal offices. Observers have noted the increasing brutality of the police force over the past few years. In 2009, the police chief raised eyebrows when he called for a change to legislation that would allow police offers greater freedom to shoot at suspects.

After four months of a growing crisis which threatened to tip Côte d’Ivoire into civil war Gbagbo was detained at the presidential compound on Monday (11 April) by forces loyal to Ouattara. French troops and UN peacekeepers, who had struck Gbagbo’s home in Abidjan from the air earlier, provided crucial support. The president-elect of Côte d'Ivoire has heralded 'the dawn of a new hope' since the arrest of his rival. In a television address to the nation, Alassane Ouattara said his predecessor would receive 'dignified treatment' and called on all fighters in Côte d’Ivoire to lay down their arms.

The bodies of sub-Saharan refugees who tried to escape Libya by boat have been found in the sea with gunshot wounds according to an Eritrean priest who tracks migrants as they make the perilous journey across the Mediterranean. Father Mussie Zerai, a Catholic cleric based in Rome, told The Independent that his contacts in Tripoli have seen five bodies in a hospital that were recently washed back onto the Libyan coast. Human rights groups have called on the international community to investigate the killings and have blamed Nato for not doing more to try and locate boats that have gone missing in a corner of the Mediterranean that is now bristling with international vessels.

In Eilat, the small city in Israel, refugees find their children barred from municipal schools. And in a move that has alarmed both human rights organisations and the local branch of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the municipality has hung red flags throughout the city as part of a municipal campaign against African migrants - initiated by employees of the state of Israel and financed with public funds.

About 162,520 refugees from various African countries are residing in DRC, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (HCR) said. An estimated 79,626 Angolans are by far the largest number of refugees in the country, followed by Rwandans and Burundians who number 67,707 and 11,259 respectively. Ugandans are the lowest number, 16, behind the Central African Republic, estimated at 700 refugees.

Since the Libyan conflict began only a few short weeks ago, some 236,000 people have crossed Libya’s western borders in search of safety and protection, including Libyans fleeing for their lives and many foreign nationals who had gone to work in Libya as migrants, reports an Amnesty International blog post. Already, around 100,000 of them have been able to return to their homes through the joint efforts of the two main international agencies that exist to assist migrants and refugees, IOM and UNHCR.

Rebel fighters in eastern Libya fought off an attack by government troops in the town of Ajdabiya on Sunday, a day after retreating from a key oil facility around 100 kilometres farther west. Forces loyal to longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi advanced on Ajdabiya under a heavy artillery barrage in the morning and fought at close range with rebels on the town’s southern outskirts before a counterattack forced them back, witnesses said.

Mutinous soldiers have rampaged through a southern town in Bukina Faso as the revolt against Blaise Compaore, the West African nation's ruler, enters its fourth day. Soldiers at a military garrison in Po, near the Ghana border, fired in the air, looting and seizing private vehicles, residents told the AFP news agency. Compaore, who came to power in a 1987 military coup, has faced a series of protests since February, staged first by students and then by soldiers. He won a new five-year term in office after taking 80 per cent of the votes in November elections.

Ravensmead brothers who are alleged to have subjected three black workers at a factory in Blackheath to sexual, verbal and physical abuse appeared in court today (14 April) amid high drama. About a hundred people protested outside the Blue Downs Magistrate’s Court. The charges relate to claims by the three workers that the brothers, owners of a timber company in Blackheath Industria, had beaten, sexually assaulted and hurled racial remarks at them after they reported for work last Tuesday night.