In this week's edition of the Emerging Powers News Round-Up, read a comprehensive list of news stories and opinion pieces related to China, India and other emerging powers...

Make Every Woman Count (MEWC) is a newly established African women's organisation. The organisation has launched a website, which provides timely and accurate information regarding the African women's movement. Please visit the website for more information

While in New York to celebrate the launch of UN Women's flagship biennium publication, 'Progress of the World's Women: In Pursuit of Justice', Botswana's Unity Dow sat down with IPS to discuss the United Nations' newest entity, its landmark report, and the road ahead for women. Dow is a lawyer, human rights activist, and formerly Botswana's first female judge. She has studied both within Africa and abroad, and has authoured five books. She is serving her second term as commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists, and is chairperson of their Executive Committee.

Cameroon has opened its first landfill gas recovery plant, which aims to reduce methane emissions from waste and earn the country emissions reduction credits under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism. The plant will trap methane generated by decaying household waste at the Nkolfoulou waste disposal site, on the outskirts of the capital, Yaounde. The gas will be stored in wells and burned off, releasing carbon dioxide, a gas that contributes substantially less to climate change per volume released than methane.

A new report from the Global Campaign for Education shows that millions of girls are being forced out of school because of poverty, child labour, early child marriage, the threat of sexual violence, inadequate and poor-quality schools. The report examines 80 poor countries in terms of the gains they have made in girls’ education. The report shows that the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, India, Iraq, Nigeria and Pakistan are among those countries failing to respect the rights of girls to an education.

In May, Decree No. 2011-41 was promulgated in Tunisia relating to administrative documents held or produced by public authorities. In its comment on the Decree, Article 19 notes that the exceptions to the right to information outlined in the Decree should be amended in order to comply with international standards. 'According to international law in this area, information should never be withheld unless it affects a legitimate interest protected by law, release of the information would cause actual harm to that interest and this harm would be greater than the harm caused to the public interest by non-disclosure. The provisions of the Decree on exceptions (Articles 16 to 18) should be replaced by a
single provision clearly laying down this three-part test.'

The Somalia Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit (FSNAU) estimates that 2.85 million people - a third of the population - are now in humanitarian crisis and in need of urgent assistance, an increase of 42.5 per cent over the figure in December 2010. 'We are no longer on the verge of a humanitarian disaster; we are in the middle of it now,' Isaq Ahmed, the chairman of the Mubarak Relief and Development Organisation, a local NGO working in the south of the country, told IRIN on June 28. 'It is happening and no one is helping.'

In two new reports 'What has Tax got to do with Development: A critical look at Mozambique's Tax System' and 'What has Tax got to do with Development: A Critical look at Zimbabwe’s Tax System', AFRODAD analyses the role played by taxation in the development of the two countries. The link between development and taxation has come up in various fora as development practitioners and activists discussed methods of mobilisation of domestic resources for financing development in the South. The reports reveal that mobilising domestic resources as a means to financing development has become an important development issue, a shift from the past emphasis on financing development from aid and external borrowing.

Only two in every five people in the Southern African Development Community has access to safe water for drinking and household use. Three quarters of those lacking access, live in rural areas and the majority of these are women and children. Chrispin Sedeke, head of the Transboundary Water Management Division of the Ministry for the Environment of the Democratic Republic of Congo, believes that even these discouraging figures are likely understated. According to a report published in March 2011 by the United Nations Environment Programme, the DRC possesses half of the water resources in Africa, but more than 50 million Congolese do not have access to water.

Staff at a public university have threatened to boycott work in protest against the dissolution of the institution’s governing council. The Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology workers gave the government one week to appoint a new council or face industrial action. The council, which is charged with the university’s administrative duties, was dissolved through a Kenya Gazette notice published on 3 June.

'The profiteering of SA’s businesses (enabled by lax compliance with labour law and weak regulation of trade and capital flows) stand in the way of creating decent jobs that can offer the majority of South Africa’s the dignity prescribed in our Constitution. In this context the Alternative Information Development Centre (AIDC) supports the struggle of NUMSA and other unions for a living wage. A victory for them will set a better standard for the whole labour market.'

Attending Santiago de Cuba’s Festival of Fire to deliver a lecture on CLR James at a colloquium on Pan-Africanism in the Caribbean, Norman Girvan finds that ‘culture is to Cubans what shopping is to Americans’.

Recent developments at national and international levels with regards to anti-counterfeiting legislation and actions have raised debate about such laws not undermining access to affordable generic drugs. This policy brief produced by EQUINET, SEATINI and TARSC points to the separate measures and mandates needed to combat firstly fraudulent trade mark and intellectual property (IP) infringement in counterfeit medicines by IP authorities, secondly to ensure that any anti-counterfeit measures protect TRIPS flexibilities, including for access to generic medicines.

Groups from 13 developing countries have slammed UK climate loans to be given through the World Bank. Community leaders in countries including Nepal, Bangladesh, Mozambique and Yemen have written to British cabinet ministers Chris Huhne and Andrew Mitchell rejecting the loans the UK is providing to their countries to help them cope with climate change. In their letter they say the UK and other rich industrialised countries, who have done the most to cause climate change, owe a ‘climate debt’ to poor countries who are worst affected by the phenomenon. ‘Climate loans will only lock our countries into further debt, and further impoverish our people,’ reads the letter.

The Kenyan government is taking steps to incorporate screening for cervical cancer - one of the biggest killers of women of child-bearing age - into HIV care, but health workers say low awareness means the uptake of this vital service is low. Studies show that HIV infection increases women's risk of human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, a leading cause of cervical cancer. Cervical cancer screening is included as part of routine care for HIV-positive women under the country's national guidelines for HIV care. However, screening levels remain low; according to the UN World Health Organisation, just 3.2 per cent of Kenyan women aged 18-69 are screened for cervical cancer every three years, compared with 70 per cent of women in the developed world.

In its on-going efforts to provide support and assistance to the long-suffering people of Palestine, the South African Relief Agency (S.A.R.A) in conjunction with communities and other organisations has embarked on another humanitarian relief mission to Gaza. The mission is scheduled to depart from Durban and will travel overland through Africa to Gaza. The primary objective of the mission is to answer the call of the Palestinian people to conscientise the African continent and to break the immoral and illegal siege of Gaza and show solidarity with the beleaguered people in Occupied Palestine.

More details are available from the website.

Following years of discussion, representatives from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) are now testing joint disaster responses in light of increased flooding and more severe droughts in West Africa over the past decade, according to the African Centre of Meteorological Application for Development (ACMAD). 'Major efforts' are under way for 'south-south cooperation between member states', according to Andrea Diop, disaster focal point at ECOWAS, including setting up an Emergency Flood Fund for disaster response which individual countries can tap into; a natural disaster reduction task force; and an Emergency Response team.

Kenya has launched an Open Data portal, the first African country to make government data accessible to the ordinary citizen on an Internet-based platform. The portal will allow users to compare information at national, province and county levels. Users will also create maps and other visualisations and directly download data on their computer or mobile phone.

AIDS drugs designed to treat HIV can also be used to reduce dramatically the risk of infection among heterosexual couples, two studies conducted in Africa have shown for the first time. The findings add to growing evidence that the type of medicines prescribed since the mid-1990s to treat people who are already sick may also hold the key to slowing or even halting the spread of the disease. The research involving couples in Kenya, Uganda and Botswana found that daily Aids drugs reduced infection rates by an average of at least 62 per cent when compared with a placebo.

On 9 July 2011 the world witnessed the birth of a nation - South Sudan, Africa’s 54th country. In an interview with UN Women, South Sudan’s Minister of Gender, Child and Social Welfare Agnes Lasuba weighs in on the country’s independence and what it means for women. 'The women of South Sudan played various roles to achieve independence. During war they picked up arms. Others were mobilisers and others were taking care of the wounded, the sick and the elderly. And others were yearning for peace and they took it upon themselves to lobby other people and other countries, so that there could be peace for them and for their children,' says Lasuba in the interview.