The United Nations mission set up to protect civilians and facilitate humanitarian aid in Chad and Central African Republic (CAR) received a boost this week with the arrival of troops from Cambodia.
Activists in the southern province of Katanga in the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, have urged the authorities to try to return shegues, or street children, currently in care to their parents.
The United Nations is appealing for international aid to assist some 18,000 Chadian villagers who have returned to their homes in a resource-poor region of the strife-torn African country after fleeing inter-communal violence and a spill-over of the conflict from neighbouring Sudan's Darfur region.
Humanitarian assistance to tens of thousands of people in eastern Chad is under threat from banditry, which has led several aid agencies to temporarily halt their operations in the face of attacks, the United Nations relief wing reported today.
The top humanitarian official in Chad called for urgent attention to be paid to providing a better life for young men and women languishing in camps for refugees and displaced persons, warning that the alternatives for them would be prostitution or violence.
Ambassador Segun Olusola has advised Nigerian youths to explore their creativity rather than copying the works of others, so that they can contribute their own quota to the development of the country.
Landmines and armed attacks in Senegal's Casamance region are preventing farmers from maximizing production from the region's fertile soil, but there is another problem, too: not enough young people are taking up farming, residents and experts say.
