If Tony Blair’s Government is as concerned as it claims to be about the people of Darfur, then it should at the very least abide by its international obligation to protect these Darfuri asylum seekers and issue an immediate moratorium on the further removal of non-Arab Darfuri asylum seekers to Sudan.

The Central African Republic faces a growing humanitarian disaster, with the lives of a quarter of its people disrupted by civil and regional warfare, the U.N. children's agency UNICEF said on Wednesday. Although the United Nations appealed in January for richer countries to provide $11.7 million to fund basic health, schooling and water programmes in the impoverished country, only $2.5 million has been pledged so far, the agency said.

Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania have been accused of dragging their feet on incorporating the Bill of Human Rights in their constitutions despite ratifying relevant international laws.Addressing a judges’ seminar on human rights in Kilifi, Prof Chris Peter Maina of the University of Dar-es-Salaam, said though the Tanzania government had accepted the Bill of Rights in 1984, it had not domesticated it fully.

CIA and FBI agents hunting for al-Qaeda militants in the Horn of Africa have been interrogating terrorism suspects from 19 countries held at secret prisons in Ethiopia, which is notorious for torture and abuse, according to an investigation by the Associated Press (AP).

The Chadian government has accused Sudanese janjawid militiamen of attacking two villages in eastern Chad, killing 29 people. “Today there are between 6,000 and 8,000 more people who are exposed without shelter and who have completely lost everything,” government spokesman Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor told reporters on Monday.

The Somalia-Kenya border is to remain closed despite the arrival of thousands of new Somali asylum seekers escaping weeks of heavy fighting in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, a Kenyan official announced.

On 31 March 2007, five African Union peacekeepers in Darfur were killed in the most fatal attack on them since the force arrived in the western province of Sudan in 2004. At the time of writing, the spokesman for the African Union (AU) has been unable to say who was responsible for the attack. This is the conundrum in Darfur: the killers could have belonged to any of the several armed groups there, though most reports suggest that one of the rebel forces was likely responsible.

Zambian police have demolished makeshift street stalls in Lusaka, as part of what the government says is a drive to "clean up" the streets of the capital. Vendors watched as police used sledgehammers to tear down "illegal" stalls and destroy goods, in scenes reminiscent of a similar drive in Zimbabwe almost two years ago.

At least 65 Chadians were killed and up to 8,000 driven from their homes when Sudanese Janjawid fighters attacked and destroyed two villages in east Chad over the weekend, Chad's military has said.

President Robert Mugabe's government on Wednesday increased police patrols and stepped up a propaganda blitz to stifle a national strike over wages amid a devastating economic crisis. Many companies and shops in major cities were again open on Wednesday, the second and last day of a strike called by labour unions, as the government continued warning that organisers were "looking for trouble".

As the sixth mayor cyclone to hit Madagascar this season tears across the northeast of the impoverished Indian ocean island, a relentless succession of natural disasters has left nearly half a million people in desperate need of humanitarian assistance.

The United States, Europe and African countries on Tuesday called for all fighting to stop in Somalia after battles in Mogadishu killed hundreds and the rest of the country struggled with an influx of 100,000 refugees.

Thousands of people have been flooding into the small town of Balcad, north of Mogadishu, saying that life in the Somali capital has become unbearable. They are part of a massive exodus from battle-torn Mogadishu that has seen almost 100,000 people flee the city since the beginning of February, including some 47,000 in the last two weeks.

The UN refugee agency and its partners are dealing with a new wave of displacement in south-eastern Chad following a deadly attack at the weekend against the villages of Tiero and Marena.

According to a report by Magharebia news the Moroccan government has enacted a law explicitly forbidding money laundering and related financial crimes as a tool to combat both terrorism and organised crime.

The people of Angola, the government and the international community must pull together to ensure that returning refugees are able to reintegrate and have a sustainable future in their country, a top United Nations (UN) official has said.

Militias loyal to opposition leader Jean-Pierre Bemba have been integrated into the national army in Equateur province, in the northern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), United Nations officials said. Two hundred soldiers were signed up on Tuesday in Gbadolite, a spokesperson for the UN Mission in the DRC (MONUC), Lt Col Didier Rancher, said on Wednesday. Another 140 are expected to lay down their weapons soon.

John Holmes, the United Nations’ Emergency Relief Coordinator, has warned that the international community is dragging its feet on funding for humanitarian operations in Chad and is “underestimating” the scale of the crisis there.

Egyptian security forces broke up an opposition protest in Cairo on Sunday, on the eve of a referendum on constitutional changes which opponents fear will strengthen the ruling party's grip on power.

Violence conducted by Zimbabwe's security forces is spreading as they randomly beat up members of the public while swooping through neighbourhoods on the lookout for opposition supporters, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Thursday.