Chad is failing to protect its civilians from armed groups who kill, mutilate and rape in the conflict stricken central African country, an international refugee body said. In a report released late on Wednesday, the Norwegian Refugee Council said the estimated 172,600 people who have been uprooted by fighting in eastern Chad over the past two years often lack access to water, food and health care.

The French Defence Ministry is helping UNHCR and a new museum of primitive art in Paris to deliver hundreds of toys to young Sudanese and Central African Republic refugees in Chad. A small party of officers and men from the army and air force arrived at Quai Branly Museum near the Eiffel Tower on Thursday and helped staff of the UN refugee agency and the museum to load 35 boxloads of toys onto two trucks for transportation to a military airport in Orleans.

Some 300 people took part in a march through the Chad capital, N'Djamena, on Wednesday to express solidarity with the country's almost half-a-million refugees and internally displaced persons. The UNHCR-organized event was one of many activities planned by UNHCR around the country to mark World Refugee Day on June 20.

Trade unions are expressing their concerns over what they call an "escalating violence" by security officers against their representatives all over Chad. The country has been paralysed by an unpopular general strike for over one month. The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has denounced what it called "the recent escalation in anti-union repression in Chad," where a public sector strike launched a month ago by the Inter-Union Group continues.

Reporters Without Borders has been told by the Chadian government that the country's newspapers can again be published without having to obtain prior approval for each issue from a censorship committee that was set up under a state of emergency in November 2006. "This a great relief," the press freedom organisation said. "The Chadian government has finally realised that all censorship did was humiliate and undermine the press, which was unfairly blamed for many problems