The United Nations Security Council should extend the mandate of the United Nations Mission in the Central African Republic and Chad (MINURCAT) when it comes up for renewal in March 2010. Withdrawing the peacekeepers would expose civilians to increased violence and human rights abuses.

Colombia needs to respond effectively to the violent groups committing human rights abuses that have emerged around the country in the aftermath of the flawed demobilization of paramilitary groups. The successor groups regularly commit massacres, killings, forced displacement, rape, and extortion, and create a threatening atmosphere in the communities they control.

Burundi's government should immediately reverse a new policy of deporting Rwandan asylum seekers without considering their cases. On November 27, 2009, Interior Minister Edouard Nduwimana ordered police to return 103 asylum seekers to Rwanda, in violation of international law.

Israeli authorities in East Jerusalem should immediately stop demolishing Palestinian homes in violation of international law.

At least 87 persons, the majority women, children, and the elderly, were killed in aerial bombings in northern Yemen today, a witness to the attack and others reported.

Floods caused by heavy rains unnecessarily threaten more than 260,000 displaced Tamil civilians whom the Sri Lankan government has unlawfully detained in camps in northern Sri Lanka.

Today more than 280,000 Tamil civilians displaced from the war zone during the last brutal months of the fighting are locked up in detention camps.

The debate over Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories is often framed in terms of whether they should be "frozen" or allowed to grow "naturally." But that is akin to asking whether a thief should be allowed merely to keep his ill-gotten gains or steal some more.