Chad's military launched air-strikes and ground assaults against rebels from the Union of Resistance Forces (UFR) in the east of the country Dec. 15, in the first major fighting since May. The UFR says four civilians were killed and many more wounded in the clashes, near the Sudan border. The government, which charges that Sudan backs the insurgency, denies any civilian casualties. (BBC News, Dec. 15)

A new Human Rights Watch report, "'You Will Be Punished': Attacks on Civilians in Eastern Congo," documents in detail the deliberate killing of more than 1,400 civilians between January and September 2009 during two successive Congolese army operations against a Rwandan Hutu militia, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). The report is based on 23 HRW fact-finding missions this year and interviews with over 600 victims, witnesses, and family members.

The family of Kenyan Guantánamo Bay detainee Mohamed Abdulmalik has filed a lawsuit against the Kenyan government claiming that he was illegally detained, tortured, and renditioned to US authorities. The suit seeks Abdulmalik's return to Kenya and $30 million in damages.

Eastern Sudan hosts more than 66,000 registered Eritrean refugees, the first of whom arrived in 1968 during the early years of Eritrea's war of independence against Ethiopia. Today, Eritrea's policy of indefinite military conscription, coupled with drought and poor economic opportunities, prompt some 1,800 people to cross into Sudan every month, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR. "It is as far as we know the longest-standing refugee situation in Africa that is still protracted," said Peter de Clercq, the UNHCR representative in Sudan. "That is mostly because of the political situation inside Eritrea."

Climate change could increase the likelihood of civil war in sub-Saharan Africa by over 50% within the next two decades, according to a new study led by a team of researchers at Stanford University, the University of California-Berkeley, New York University and Harvard University. The study is to be published online this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague began proceedings Nov. 24 for the trial of two Congolese nationals believed to be responsible for the killings of more than 200 men, women, and children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in 2003. Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui both pleaded not guilty to three crimes against humanity and seven war crimes, including murder, sexual slavery, pillage, and the use of child soldiers.

The US Justice Department Nov. 23 unsealed indictments against eight defendants for recruiting for and providing financial support to the Somali insurgent organization al-Shabaab. The defendants are being charged with recruiting approximately 20 individuals in the Minneapolis area on behalf of al-Shabaab, providing financial support for travel and weapons, and conspiring to kill, kidnap, maim or injure persons outside the US.

A new report by the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights details "extensive and systematic" rights violations faced by thousands of political prisoners in Eritrea. The report charges that between 10,000 and 30,000 people are held in a country of about five million. Prisoners are held in shipping containers, or in bunkers deep underground. Torture is routine, with victims sometimes hung from their wrists and feet from trees in the sun or the rain.