Aiming to enhance the quality of the environment and ensure sustainable utilisation of shared natural resources in the five-nation East African Community (EAC), the East African Legislative Assembly has moved a step closer to enacting a regional law on the management of trans-boundary ecosystems. Currently holding its session in Kampala, Uganda, the Assembly has passed the East African Community Trans-boundary Ecosystems Bill 2010 after its third reading.

Cases of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), as well as domestic violence, are increasing in camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Hargeisa, capital of the self-declared independent Republic of Somaliland, with social workers attributing the trend to hard economic times made worse by recent drought in the region.

Human-rights groups in Senegal, including the local branch of the UK-based Amnesty International, have condemned police violence during an opposition rally in which one person was killed. Officers used tear gas and water cannons to break up the protest in the capital, Dakar, on Tuesday night, attended by an estimated 10,000 people in what until now had been one of Africa's most stable countries.

While the quality of education available in refugee camps varies, the difficulties of accessing education in urban settings are generally greater. In addition to legal and policy barriers and the often prohibitive costs of sending a child to a local school, a UNHCR report has noted that: 'Refugee children often have less support than in a camp-based school in adjusting to a new curriculum, learning a new language, accessing psychosocial support, and addressing discrimination, harassment, and bullying from teachers and peers. They may also encounter a lack of familiarity by local school authorities for the processes of admitting refugee children and recognizing prior learning.' A year-long, yet-to-be published study by the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation at the University of Johannesburg into the rights of refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants to education in South Africa found that schools often demanded documents to enrol a child which are not legally required.

On 3 February 2012, the Cassation Bench of the Federal Supreme Court of Ethiopia will hear a petition by the Human Rights Council (HRCO), Ethiopia’s oldest human rights organisation, to admit an appeal against the freezing of its bank accounts. Amnesty International, ARTICLE 19, CIVICUS, East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project and Human Rights Watch have expressed deep concern at the obstacles and restrictions to which HRCO and other human rights organizations in Ethiopia are now subjected, as illustrated by this case. The decision of the Supreme Court will be of great significance for the future of HRCO's vital work and for the wider promotion and protection of human rights in Ethiopia.

The UNAIDS Reference Group on HIV and Human Rights has released an independent statement in response to the crisis facing the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. It states: 'The November 2011 announcement of the cancellation of the 11th round of funding of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria because of the Fund’s financial difficulties presents the international community with both a health and a human rights crisis. Since its first round of funding in 2002, the Global Fund has played an indispensable role in advancing the health and human rights goals of the global HIV response. The Global Fund’s financial difficulties are part of a broader global HIV funding crisis.'

The President of Ghana, John Evans Atta Mills, has stated that as a responsible leader he will ensure that gay marriages are never legalised in the country and on the African continent as a whole. President Mills’ comments come after the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon addressing the Heads of States at the African Union Summit at Addis Ababa in Ethiopia called on African leaders to respect gay rights in their respective countries.

Senegalese riot police fired tear gas to break up a tense, thousands-strong rally 31 January in Dakar demanding that President Abdoulaye Wade drop plans to seek a third term in office. Opposition groups united under the June 23 Movement (M23), had called for mass resistance after a decision last Friday by the country's top judges allowing 85-year-old Wade to seek a third mandate in the February 26 polls. Thousands had gathered by late afternoon in a square in the working class suburb of Colobane, where tension rose and angry youths hurled rocks at scores of riot police keeping watch from afar.

Bargain prices on Ethiopia's prime farmland! Who's down for some land grabbing?! Anybody? This spoof commercial follows a Human Rights Watch report stating that the Ethiopian government under its 'villagization' program is forcibly relocating approximately 70,000 indigenous people from the western Gambella region to new villages that lack adequate food, farmland, healthcare, and educational facilities.

Meet the Davos Man in this article and hear about the same old song being played at the recent World Economic Forum. With global retrenchments and a Eurozone in crisis, was system change a subject for debate. '...the system, as we know by now, is one designed so very carefully for the benefit of the 1 per cent. So things like, for example, prosecuting financial fraud, redesigning incentives for corporate predation, and, well, reining in a capitalist system that is sucking the world's real economy dry, are just not on the table.'

'The 39 members of the Solidarity for African Women’s Rights Coalition based in 18 African countries vehemently condemn the stripping of women wearing trousers and short skirts by male vendors in three major cities in Malawi, namely Lilongwe, Mzuzu and Blantyre.'

Power tariffs will remain high despite the anticipated commissioning of Bujagali Hydro Electricity Dam in July, State Minister for Energy Simon D’Ujanga said. The Electricity Regulatory Authority (ERA) last month increased consumer tariffs by 36 per cent and commercial dues by 69.7 per cent.

The incumbent chairman of the opposition umbrella in Mauritania, Mamadou Alassane Ba, has called for an end to military rule in the country. Ba, who leads the Mauritanian Coordination of Democratic Opposition (COD), an umbrella of 12 political parties, called “for the withdrawal of the military system in power in Mauritania for 30 years to end the misery and suffering of the people.

This handbook from the African Centre for Biosafety will enable readers to:
1. Know the field and articulate your position;
2. Familiarise yourself with the regulatory issues;
3. Identify your allies;
4. Interact with the process;
5. Keep the pressure on.

New studies released in London 1 February suggest that the frenzied sell-off of forests and other prime lands to buyers hungry for the developing world's natural resources risk sparking widespread civil unrest - unless national leaders and investors recognize the customary rights of millions of poor people who have lived on and worked these lands for centuries. 'Controversial land acquisitions were a key factor triggering the civil wars in Sudan, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and there is every reason to be concerned that conditions are ripe for new conflicts to occur in many other places,' said Jeffrey Hatcher, director of global programs for the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), which sponsored an expert panel today at the Royal Society on the trends shaping rural lands and rights worldwide.

Cape Town has been awarded the right to host the World Design Capital 2014 (WDC2014), but the City of Cape Town’s recent announcement that it will lead the management and coordination of WDC2014 threatens this vision, writes Gavin Silber of the Social Justice Coalition. 'The City is one of the main providers of Cape Town's basic services including sanitation, water, electricity, roads, safety and (increasingly) housing. It also approves most design plans. As a service provider, whose leadership will always have re-election as a foremost concern, it should not be leading this process; it is a plain conflict of interest. The city has too much vested in promoting its own way of doing things to the exclusion of critics.'

Ethiopia joined the APRM in 2003. However, in this AfriMAP publication authors Tigist Fisseha and Medhane Tadesse, whilst acknowledging the government of Ethiopia’s leadership within the APRM at continental level, argue that the mere fact that the APRM process itself, is little known by the Ethiopian citizenry, and that those that are aware of the process, are reluctant to engage with it, points to the total control of the process by executive power. They also argue that the only way the Ethiopia’s APRM process can be meaningful is if its participatory processes are opened to all citizens, especially civil society, who ultimately have a say as how they wish to be governed.

Egypt’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, which controls a near majority of seats in the Egyptian Parliament, won more than half of the committees of the Lower House on 31 January. The Speaker of the Parliament Mohammed Saad el–Katatni, also a member of the FJP, announced the results of the internal elections of the parliament’s sub-committees, where 9 out of 19 committees are to be headed by senior members of the FJP bloc.

The 18th African Union summit ended 31 January in the Ethiopian capital with adoption of a series of agreements concerning Africa's economic, political and security issues. Africa will speed up its infrastructure development and put related policies and laws in place to boost the integration process, according to the 'Declaration on the Program for Infrastructure Development in Africa.' The declaration said the summit recognises 'the vital role of infrastructure and related services in the political and social-economic development, and physical integration of the continent', especially given the population growth and economic demand.

A wave of fresh attacks by suspected gunmen of the Boko Haram sect has claimed the lives of a soldier, two policemen and two civilians. Two other policemen and a soldier have also been injured. The sect attacked the Gambouru/Ngala Police Station, Joint Task Force (JTF) checkpoint and the Nigeria Air Force Barracks, Maiduguri on Monday 30 January.