04/24/2013 19:07 GMT

LUANDA, 24 avr 2013 (AFP) - La Haute commissaire pour les droits de l'homme de l'Organisation des Nations Unies (ONU), Navi Pillay, a plaidé mercredi pour une enquête sur les violences perpétrées contre les migrants à la frontière entre l'Angola et la République démocratique du Congo (RDC).

"Les allégations de violences et d'abus sexuels contre des femmes traversant cette frontière durent depuis plus de dix ans", a affirmé Navi Pillay lors d'une conférence de presse faisant le bilan d'une visite de trois jours en Angola.

04/07/2013 15:03 GMT

LUANDA, April 07, 2013 (AFP) - Torrential rains left nine people dead and flooded hundreds of homes in the Angolan capital Luanda, local media reported Sunday.

Four people are still missing after the storm that hit earky Saturday, according to local government spokesman Antonio Resende, quoted by the Angolan news agency Angop.

Landslides also forced the closure of a number of roads.

06/26/2012 03:04 GMT

by Estelle Maussion

NAMACUNDE, Angola, June 26, 2012 (AFP) - Thousands of Angolan refugees are trekking home hoping for a new start in life a decade after the end of brutal wars that drove them to neighbouring countries.

On June 30 their refugee status expires so many are returning to Angola, but they face an uncertain future in a country plagued by poverty despite its booming oil-rich economy.

05/10/2012 20:31

by Estelle Maussion

LUANDA, May 10, 2012 (AFP) - Angolan soldiers could stay in Guinea-Bissau if the international community requested it through a United Nations resolution, minister for economic affairs Manuel Vicente said Thursday.

In April Luanda agreed to recall about 600 soldiers from the poor and unstable west African nation, though it denied Angolan troops had any role in Guinea-Bissau's coup last month.

By Estelle Maussion (AFP)

LUANDA — A drought is threatening Angola's already modest food production, in a setback for efforts to revive once-vibrant farmlands abandoned during decades of war.

The dry season that normally lasts only about three weeks in December has stretched to three months in parts of the southern African country where most regions are used to abundant rainfall almost year-round.

The government has promised to help farmers, mostly smallholders producing for their own survival, but most of that aid has yet to materialise.

LUANDA — The northern Angolan province of Uige has declared a state of medical emergency after a 14-month-old boy tested positive for polio, which has made a resurgence in the country, UNICEF said Thursday.

The boy, who was not vaccinated, lives in Quimbele, an isolated region near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) district of Popokobaka, which has had nine confirmed polio cases this year, the UN children's fund said.

"This shows that surveillance is working," said World Health Organisation representative Rui Vaz in a statement.

LUANDA — Angola has expelled 47 Democratic Republic of Congo nationals living illegally in its northern Zaire province and six Brazilians with fake work visas, the immigration service said Sunday.

The Congolese were "exposed by the locals," an immigration official told AFP. "These foreigners have lived in the province illegally for more than two months without being disturbed," the official said.

Every week the immigration service in Zaire deports at least a dozen migrants, who are mostly from Congo, through the border posts of Luvo, Soyo and Noqui.

LUANDA - Linda Afonso's right leg is stiff and atrophied but she does not know the name of the disease that made it that way.

The 13-year-old lives in Cacuaco, a sprawling slum in the northern suburbs of the Angolan capital, Luanda. When she was a small child, her leg became partially paralysed.

"My parents took me to the hospital, but they couldn't do anything," she said.

Afonso doesn't know the name of her disease because polio, the acute viral infection that can cause irreversible paralysis

"His excellency the Minister of Territorial Administration gave the Angolan government's promise not to demolish houses in this area, but in September this year 1,500 houses were destroyed in Lubango," Jose Patrocinio told AFP.

Speaking on the sideline of a conference on housing rights organised by his human rights group, Omunga, he said