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Close to three million people are facing starvation as the country grapples with the dim forecasts of severe food shortages by mid-year. The shortage could get worse because of the poor harvests recorded last season, special programmes’ permanent secretary Mohammed Ali warned. This could also push up the cost of basic food items. Right, Masai children are among the most likely vicitms, as many among their ethnic group live marginally, and in some of the worst affected areas.

The December 14 assault on Lord’s Resistance Army, LRA, camps in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, surprised many. The offensive came after LRA leader Joseph Kony, right, had rebuffed the international community three times in 2008 by failing to sign a peace deal with Republic of Uganda that had been negotiated over the previous two years. Those negotiations came to a halt late November.

Fifty people are feared killed and at least nine abducted in attacks on villages in southwest Republic of the Sudan, near the border with Democratic Republic of Congo (in DRC), locals said. Officials in the Southern Sudanese capital Juba said the men who conducted the 5 January attack were suspected remnants of the Ugandan rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). Right, LRA child soldiers posing after a previous attack in Southern Republic of the Sudan.

The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights defenders, a joint programme of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), denounces the adoption on January 6, 2008 of a law that considerably restricts the activities of NGOs in Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. -I am deeply concerned, denounces Eric Sottas, right, OMCT Secretary General.

The War Crimes Section of the State Prosecution filed an indictment against eight former policemen from Prijedor for their participation in a crime committed at Koricanske stijene in August 1992. The indictment has been forwarded to the State Court for confirmation.

Сустрэча ў ДПЧ выкрывае кантроль над грамадскім меркаваннем па пытаннях гендэру ў Беларусі і Літве.

News that six Gambian journalists have been jailed for two years for “ridiculing the head of state” signal that the country has become one of Africa’s worst abusers of press freedom. The convictions could effectively be the end of the country’s independent press.

-The government of Islamic Republic of Iran should amend or abolish broadly worded national security laws used to stifle peaceful dissent in the country’s Kurdish areas and end arbitrary arrests of Kurdish critics and dissidents,-Human Rights Watch.

Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights invites human rights activists, university teachers and representatives of institutions from all levels of public administration dealing with human rights issues from Central, Eastern European and CIS countries to take part in the Summer School on Human Rights.