An aid agency has said 27.8m people around the world were internally displaced by conflicts and natural disasters last year, calling it a global crisis.

EUROPE’S policy — our policy — on asylum seekers is a moral and political failure. It may, in time, become the catalyst for terrible social division. In time it will certainly be ranked among the great inhumanities the rich and secure inflicted on the destitute and powerless.

Somali militants ambushed an aid convoy today, killed a Kenyan aid worker and kidnapped four international workers at a Kenyan refugee camp near the border with Somalia.

ABOUT 42 million people were forced to flee their homes because of natural disasters around the world in 2010, more than double the number during the previous year, experts said yesterday.

The United Nations has set up a team of experts in conflict mediation who can deploy quickly to global hotspots with advice on power sharing, constitution drafting, security, justice and human rights.

Riot police fired tear gas and water cannons at crowds gathered in Kenya today for a protest rally.

Children in Darfur are enduring “unspeakable acts of violence and abuse” from killing and rape to abduction, torture and recruitment, as fighters in the escalating four-year conflict, a world group of relief and human rights organisations said today.

The Norwegian Refugee Council today said it is closing down its humanitarian operations in Darfur because it is impossible to work in the troubled region of Sudan.