Zimbabwe's president has threatened to seize foreign firms and boycott their products in retaliation for Western sanctions against him and senior members of his ruling ZANU-PF party. Robert Mugabe made special mention on Wednesday of British-controlled banks and businesses, saying they controlled 400 businesses in the former British colony in southern Africa.

Senegal Saturday (27 Feb) lost three more soldiers in Casamance (southern region), during violent clashes against fighters of the Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC) in northern Sindian near the Gambian border, PANA learnt here from military sources. According to the sources, the clashes also left seven other soldiers wounded, including one whose legs were cut off by an anti-personnel mine.

A competition has broken out between Government and civil society groups opposed to the deferral of International Criminal Court cases. Government functionaries have launched a bid to collect two million signatures from Kenyans to prove that the deferral bid has popular support. This is a direct response to civil society groups that announced they would collect a million signatures to oppose the deferral drive.

Mount Elgon in Western Kenya is one of the most marginalised regions in the country. It is so marginalised that it is the only area where not even an inch of tarmac road has been constructed. The area is characterised by violent conflicts over land, as well as retrogressive cultural practices such as female genital mutilation (FGM) and early child marriages. It is from these harsh conditions that Jennifer Masis has risen, against great odds, to be a formidable force in the fight for women’s empowerment.

The Mozambican Association for the Defence of Sexual Minorities (LAMBDA), the only organisation in the country working for gay, lesbian and transsexual citizens, has praised Justice Minister Benvinda Levi for her categorical statement that homosexuality is not illegal in Mozambique. Levi was speaking in Geneva on 1 February at the review of Mozambique’s human rights record under the Universal Periodic Mechanism of the UN Human Rights Council.

The uprisings sweeping the Arab world have been provoked by long injustice, low income, police brutality, and lack of social security. While the world looks at this, the suffering of up to three million maids across the Arab world remains wrapped in silence. Victims of abuse, confinement and rape, migrant domestic workers are often invisible because they suffer in places that remain hidden to the public eye, mostly private homes.

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The UN refugee agency said Tuesday (02 March) it was alarmed by an upsurge in violence against civilians by a rebel Ugandan group in north-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. A particularly worrying development is that the Lord's Resistance Army, or LRA, appears to be targeting more populated areas.

Afya Mtandao, Tanzania’s national ICT for Development (ICT4D) health network, is testing a new social health website. With the website, hospitals and health institutions using ICT tools can share their experiences and read news about ICT in the health sector. The website was set up together with Dutch IT company InterAccess by using the Ning platform (an online platform for people to create their own websites and social networks).

The signatory organisations to this statement have stressed that civilians are not to be prosecuted and tried for non-military crimes before military tribunals composed of military officers, which is contrary to the basic rights of citizens to a fair trial. This follows the conviction of Amr Abdallah Abd el-Rasoul el-Beheiry on 1 March on charges of assault of an officer and breaking curfew.

The government has outlined plans to stop direct development aid to 16 countries and freeze the level of assistance given to India. In a statement, a representative told the House of Commons: 'We have decided to focus British aid more tightly on countries where Britain is well-placed to have a significant long-term impact on poverty.'

At least 18 members of opposition political groups are still under detention by the government, weeks after the presidential elections. According to the opposition, several supporters were still under detention while others are missing. Inter-Party Cooperation (IPC) chairman Ken Lyukyamuzi said the government is especially harassing supporters of the Democratic Party and Forum for Democratic Change and other parties in the IPC in different parts of the country.

After decades of political violence, displacement and insecurity caused by clashes between rebel groups and government forces, as well as armed bandits, thousands of people in Central African Republic (CAR) are vulnerable to disease and have little access to health services, aid agencies say. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), many health centres in the north and southeast of CAR are either looted or not operational because medical workers are often compelled to leave the area.

Despite the signing of international peace agreements, a deadly 15 year war continues in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Women shoulder a disproportionate burden of the conflict. Women in Eastern DRC, face threats of violence and pervasive insecurity, lack of livelihoods, educational inequalities, and poor health and wellbeing. This document from Women for Women International captures the voices of women in North and South Kivu in Eastern DRC.

The United Nations agency tasked with promoting industrial development has published the first in a series of books focusing on 'green' economic growth, which entails a low-carbon, resource-efficient approach to sustainable development, while combating climate change and conserving biodiversity.
The volumes are intended to give practical expression to the concept of sustainable development adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said.

Violent clashes broke out in the early morning hours of Saturday (26 February) in the city of Dakhla. The unrest left two dead and 14 injured, according to Moroccan officials. While Moroccan authorities blamed supporters of the Polisario for the latest events, Sahrawi activists were just as quick to accuse Moroccans. 'Armed militias of Moroccan origins,' were behind the events, the Collective of Sahrawi Human Rights (CODESA) claimed.

The UN refugee agency has said it is 'increasingly concerned' about the dangers for civilians inadvertently caught up in the mounting violence in Libya, especially asylum-seekers and refugees. 'We have no access at this time to the refugee community. Over the past months we have been trying to regularise our presence in Libya, and this has constrained our work,' Melissa Fleming, UNHCR's chief spokesperson, told journalists in Geneva.

Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have arrested more than 30 people after an attempted coup in the country over the weekend. According to Lambert Mende, the country's information minister, seven people were killed in fighting that followed Sunday's attack on the Kinshasa residence of President Joseph Kabila.

Access to affordable medicine for millions of people in the South could be at risk if the production and distribution of generic medicine from India is restricted. Campaigners say both Kenyan legislation and a European Union-India trade agreement to be concluded this year will block access to affordable drugs.

The hidden costs of generating electricity from coal have been calculated in groundbreaking research by Harvard Medical School’s Centre for Health and Global Environment. The results of the study 'Full Cost Accounting for the Life Cycle of Coal' released by co-author Dr Paul Epstein in Boston reveal that the health, environmental and other costs of using coal costs the United States 500 billion dollars per year.