As the election nears, Egypt’s fragile transition to democracy is slipping into turmoil. It is not just the killings, or the repetition of the generals’ heated denials – on Thursday they insisted that they had nothing to do with the bloodshed, had no preference for who should be president, and had no desire to cling [...]

There is still a long way to go before the goal of ending impunity for crimes against humanity has been reached The conviction of Charles Taylor for aiding and abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sierra Leone was an important step in what can only be described as the faltering path of international [...]

International judges in the Hague have found former Liberian president Charles Taylor guilty of aiding and abetting war crimes during the Sierra Leone civil war. “While today’s conviction brings some measure of justice to the people of Sierra Leone, Taylor and the others sentenced by the Special Court are just the tip of the iceberg.” [...]

People in Sierra Leone and Liberia say what the imminent verdict in the ex-president’s war crimes trial will mean Between 1991 and 2002, at least 50,000 people were killed across the country, thousands more were mutilated and 2 million displaced from their homes – close to half the population. For many, there is one man [...]

South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir says Sudan has “declared war” on his country, following weeks of fighting along their common border. Mr Kiir was speaking in China, which is a major buyer of oil from both countries but has long been an ally of Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir. On Monday, UN chief Ban Ki-moon condemned [...]

Food shortages and rural deprivation exacerbated by World Bank policy, says NGO ahead of land and poverty conference The World Bank is helping corporations and international investors snap up cheap land in Africa and developing countries worldwide at the expense of local communities, environment and farm groups said in a statement released on Monday to [...]

All-out war between Sudan and South Sudan has edged closer as warplanes bombed a large town in the South, destroying a street market, killing a boy and injuring 10 people. Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, further ratcheted up the tension on Monday by suggesting the time for talking is over, leaving only “the language of the [...]

South Sudan is to withdraw its troops from the disputed oil town its forces took over last week, pulling back from an offensive military action that pushed the south closer to all-out war with its northern neighbour, Sudan. In a statement, President Salva Kiir said the south still claimed Heglig as part of South Sudan [...]

The protests were aimed at stepping up pressure on the generals to hand over power to civilians and bar ex-regime members from running in forthcoming presidential elections. Both Islamists and liberals turned out in force for the protest, to show the widespread anger at the military over the country’s political chaos ahead of the first [...]

We look at the controversial video, “Kony 2012,” that targets Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a group notorious for kidnapping children, forcing boys to become fighters, and using girls as sex slaves in Central Africa. Released on March 5, it was viewed more than 100 million times online in just under a [...]