Pambazuka News 349: Kenyans must seize democracy for themselves

One of the greatest challenges following the post-election violence in Kenya is to restore the physical and mental wellbeing of 150,000 displaced children, many of whom have witnessed atrocities and lost contact, in many cases permanently, with their families, humanitarian workers told IRIN.

A culture of impunity is the root cause of Somalia's humanitarian and political crisis and unless the world urgently addresses it, war crimes and crimes against humanity will continue unabated, a civil society activist has told IRIN. "No one has ever been held accountable for these crimes," Marian Hussein Awreeye, chairwoman of the Isma'il Jimale Human Rights Centre, said.

Buyers of minerals from rebel areas of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) should be punished under a United Nations arms embargo, a group of experts has told the Security Council. A five-year war in the vast Central African nation that ended in 2003 has left much of DRC's eastern borderlands a volatile patchwork of rebel fiefdoms and militia-controlled zones.

People living with HIV in Chad risk becoming victims of the explosion of violence in the capital, N'Djamena, in early February. During clashes between the army and groups of rebels from the east of the country, health services were damaged and many organisations working to fight the epidemic were looted.

Eight Egyptian men who were arrested and forced to undergo HIV tests, and the subsequent torture of the two who tested HIV-positive, has unleashed a storm of controversy in a country where people still know very little about the virus. "You can find people who know what you are talking about when you talk about AIDS, but I could say that most people who live here don't know the difference between a person with HIV and a person with AIDS," said UNAIDS Country Officer Wessam El-Beih.

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