A refugee rights group in South Africa has accused the United Nations refugee agency of ‘xenophobia,’ for not affording Zimbabwean refugees the same treatment as other refugees in South Africa. The group PASSOP has this week said that Zimbabwean refugees in South Africa are victims of a form of ‘selective assistance’ by organisations meant to help them.

Saviour Kasukuwere, the Minister of Indigenisation, in charge of the new regulation that requires businesses to hand over at least 51 per cent ownership to indigenous Zimbabweans, has said the regulation will not be reversed.

Officials from the United Nations health agency and the Beninese Government are urging the West African nation’s citizens to be extra vigilant in observing good hygiene amid a recent cholera outbreak that has already claimed several lives. Since the outbreak began in early January, 131 cases have been confirmed of which two resulted in death, according to Léon Kohossi with the UN World Health Organization (WHO) in Benin.

Despite fighting that has displaced hundreds of thousands of people in Mogadishu, health workers have fanned out across the war-torn capital of Somalia in a three-month United Nations-backed campaign that has immunized nearly 300,000 women of child-bearing age and 288,000 children.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has voiced concern about events in Côte d’Ivoire, where the Government has suspended voter registration ahead of this year’s already delayed presidential election because of rising tensions.