The UN High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR) has welcomed a decision by the Mauritanian government to allow some 20,000 refugees to return from neighboring Mali and Senegal, where they have spent almost two decades in exile. The Mauritanian decision was… Read moreMauritania to repatriate 20,000 refugees?
At least eight people, including three children, died in Mogadishu in clashes between insurgents and Somalian interim government and Ethiopian occupation forces June 20. One of the dead was a Somalian police officer killed in an attack on a military… Read moreSomalia: Ethiopian troops fire on civilians
International aid agency Oxfam has announced it is pulling out of Gereida, the largest camp in Darfur, where more than 130,000 have sought refuge. The agency cited inaction by local authorities from the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), which controls the… Read moreOxfam pulls out of largest Darfur refugee camp, citing attacks on aid workers
The June 18 New York Times features a front-page above-the-fold story by Jeffrey Gettleman, “In Ethiopian Desert, Fear and Cries of Army Brutality”—the first significant account in the “newspaper of record” of the forgotten war on the Ogaden people (which… Read moreEthiopia: Ogaden struggle makes the NY Times
A suspected suicide blast in the middle of a Nairobi street June 11 has left at least one dead and dozens injured. The blast occurred during rush hour near the Ambassadeur Hotel in the city’s packed central business district. It… Read moreNairobi terror blast: Islamists or Mungiki?
The rights group Global Witness charges in a new report that cocoa profits fueled the brutal civil war in Ivory Coast just as diamonds did in Liberia, with both the government and rebels profiting from the trade. The study finds… Read moreIvory Coast: “blood chocolate” fuels civil war
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), publisher of the journal Science, has teamed up with Amnesty International for a project to monitor the Darfur conflict by satellite. From Medical News Today, June 10: A pioneering AAAS program… Read moreRights groups monitor Darfur villages by satellite
Former Liberian president Charles Taylor refused to attend the opening of his trial at The Hague for war crimes both in his own country and Sierra Leone, where he is accused of supporting a brutal guerilla movement. In a letter,… Read moreCharles Taylor defies war crimes trial
A militant Islamist group, the Mujahedeen Youth Movement, has claimed responsibility for a suicide attack against the home of Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi at the weekend, which killed five soldiers and two civilians. Several hours after the announcement,… Read moreSomalia: Mujahedeen Youth Movement continues resistance
Police stormed impoversihed Nairobi neighborhoods June 4 in search of Mungiki militants accused in a string of beheadings—killing 22 suspects and arresting 100 in overnight gun-battles. The raids came after two police officers were shot dead in the Kenyan capital’s… Read moreKenya: deadly police raids on Mungiki cult
A telling story in the June 2 New York Times, “Advocacy Group’s Publicity Campaign on Darfur Angers Relief Organizations,” reveals a rift between the Save Darfur Coalition and the aid agencies actually on the ground in Darfur. Save Darfur takes… Read moreSplit between activists and aid groups in Darfur campaign seen
Ethiopian Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin, in a recent visit to Mogadishu, refused to give a date for Ethiopian troops to withdraw from Somalia, saying Somalia’s transition government and civil society leaders had asked Ethiopia not to abandon the Somali people…. Read moreEthiopia grooms Somalia for Eritrea intervention?
