Sudanese President Omer Hassan Al-Bashir officially accepted the final results of Southern Sudan Referendum paving the way for the proclamation of an independent state in the region. President Al-Bashir on Monday (07 February) issued a Republican Decree accepting the final result of the referendum which supports the separation of the South, after the official promulgation of the results in Khartoum on Monday.

Finance minister Uhuru Kenyatta has termed his pending case at The Hague as a 'political strategy' by his detractors to lock him out of the 2012 General Election. Kenyatta also dismissed International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo’s application that the six Kenyans he suspects to be the key perpetrators should not meet with each other.

Party of National Unity affiliated parties will consult on how to pull out of the grand coalition its deputy secretary general Jeremiah Kioni said on Sunday, reports the Daily Nation. PNU, which is a key party in President Kibaki’s alliance of parties that brought him to power and which is in the coalition with ODM, had last week indicated that it would want its top decision-making organ to call a conference to discuss withdrawal from the grand coalition.

The Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation is in the process of popularising the highly subsidised malaria drugs now available in the country, reports the Daily Nation. Through the programme, the ministry and the private sector are offering treatments for less than Sh40, effectively bringing down the cost of malaria medicine from a high average of Sh500 per dose. Although these medicines have been around for several months now, many pharmacies have been selling them at prices far above those that have been recommended. This has prompted the current campaign to inform Kenyans that the medicines are available and that they need not buy them at the previous high prices.

The UN-backed Global Fund Against Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria has announced it is strengthening financial safeguards following corruption claims. The fund, with a budget of almost $22bn (£13.6bn), said the new measures would include a panel of independent experts to review financial procedures.

Algeria's 19-year state of emergency will be lifted in the 'very near future', state media has quoted Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the president, as saying. During a meeting with ministers on Thursday, the president also said Algerian television and radio, which are controlled by the state, should give airtime to all political parties.

'We, the undersigned civil society organisations working to promote freedom of expression around the world, condemn the serious violations of human rights taking place at this critical moment in Egypt. Since pro-democracy activists first began popular protest across Egypt on 25 January, there have been at least three hundred deaths, incidents of physical attacks and brutality, often involving live fire, and
arbitrary arrests and detentions of protestors and journalists. The government has also restricted access to the internet, withdrawn mobile phone services and placed restrictions on independent media.'

Around 09h30 yesterday (4 February), the MEC for Housing Bonginkosi Madikizela, came with police and the Anti-Land Invasions Unit. No one consulted with anyone in the community. They came without warning, without the necessary court documents, and destroyed brick houses and shacks in section 20-21 of Mandela Park. At around 18h00, the Mandela Park community gathered at Andile Nhose community hall to discuss the illegal demolition earlier in the day. Community members decided to take to the streets in a spontaneous demonstration protesting against the actions by Madikizela and the government.

The African Union commission chairman Jean Ping has been unhappy about Sudan’s lack of progress on handing justice for victims of alleged war crimes committed in Darfur, according to a classified U.S. document obtained by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks. Ping’s views came at a meeting he held in January 2009 with representatives of the P-3 group (United States, United Kingdom and France) in London.

Without access to sanitary towels, a girl child in the SADC region may be excluded from her right to education. The Commonwealth Education Fund (CEF) and the Girl Child Network (GCN) have discovered that despite the provision of free schooling by the Kenyan government, more than 800,000 children (mostly girls) continue to forgo the opportunity of education. The CGE and the GCN found that during menstruation, some girls refused to go to school because they cannot access sanitary towels and the school toilets are unsafe or unusable. The high cost of sanitary towels also results in the use of unhygienic sponges, tissue paper and even foliage during menstruation.

The Committee to Protect Journalists said on 7 February that it was concerned about the well-being of two Ivorian journalists who have been detained without charge for 10 days amid reports that they have been tortured in custody. Aboubacar Sanogo and Yayoro Charles Lopez Kangbé have been held by the Ivorian military police in Abidjan since 28 January, according to local journalists and news reports. The journalists have been described as 'rebels' by newspapers supporting Laurent Gbagbo.

The Tanzanian government has embarked on a large-scale voluntary male circumcision programme aimed at reducing the HIV risk of men and boys in areas of the country with low levels of male circumcision. 'We have already completed a pilot project and we are now scaling up male circumcision,' said Bennet Fimbo, HIV/AIDS adviser to the Tanzania Ministry of Health. 'The target group in the campaign will be men and boys aged 10-34.'

Egypt's new vice-president, Omar Suleiman, has long sought to demonise the opposition Muslim Brotherhood in his contacts with skeptical US officials, leaked diplomatic cables show, raising questions whether he can act as an honest broker in the country's political crisis. US Embassy messages from the anti-secrecy WikiLeaks cache of 250 000 State Department documents, which Reuters independently reviewed, also report that the former intelligence chief accused the Brotherhood of spawning armed extremists and warned in 2008 that if Iran ever backed the banned Islamist group, Tehran would become 'our enemy'.

Six people were remanded at Buwama police prison in the outskirts of Ugandan capital Kampala for booing President Yoweri Museveni, police spokesperson Judith Nabakooba said. Speaking to the local Daily Monitor Monday (07 February), Ms Nabakooba said the matter was before court. Early reports, however, published by allege that 20 people were arrested for booing the President while on a campaign trail at Buwama market.

The Black Sash has accepted a settlement offer after taking the government to court on behalf of tens of thousands of people waiting to have their social grant appeals heard. The human rights organisation and 24 disabled people from the Eastern Cape launched a legal application in June last year following persistent attempts to persuade the Department of Social Development to clear the huge appeals backlog and deal with excessive delays. According to the Department's own figures, more than 65,000 people across the country are trapped in a systemic appeals backlog in the office of its Minister and at the tribunal appointed to hear the appeals of those who've had their grant applications rejected.

Compiled on the Towards Freedom website is a collection of recommended reports and resources on current events unfolding in Egypt and across the region.

The regional agencies of eight non-governmental organisations under a platform Inter-Agency for Education on Friday decided to take advantage of the World Social Forum (FSM) to be hosted in Senegal from 6 to 11 February 2011 to join their forces to attain the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the domain of education. The Inter-Agency for Education, which brings together ActionAid, Ancefa, Fawe, Oneworld UK, Oxfam, Plan, UNICEF and Word Vision, is a framework of synergy and knowledge sharing aimed at strengthening the voice of the civil society for quality and free public education.

Burundi's decision to restore legal status to a prominent activist group banned in 2009 is a positive step and should prompt further government actions to engage with civil society, Human Rights Watch has said. On 28 January, Interior Minister Edouard Nduwimana reversed a November 2009 order that had banned the Forum for the Strengthening of Civil Society (Forum pour le Renforcement de la Société Civile, FORSC). FORSC is an umbrella organisation that coordinates initiatives by Burundian civil society groups and has often criticised human rights violations by the government.

Tens of thousands of people marched through the streets of Dakar on Sunday to mark the start of the annual World Social Forum. Activists carried colorful banners denouncing land grabs, restrictive immigration laws, agricultural subsidies in Europe and the US and many other issues. Others sang freedom songs and played drums whilst marching peacefully through the streets along a route that began near the offices of Senegal's public broadcaster, RTS, and ended at the Cheikh Anta Diop University, the main venue for the weeklong gathering.

This paper outlines the World Bank’s involvement in the carbon market and reviews concerns about its impacts on greenhouse gas emission reductions and development. First, it introduces the role and aims of the Bank’s Carbon Finance Unit and the various funds and facilities that it manages. The Bank has worked to shape the carbon market by reducing risk for other investors, setting social and environmental standards, and developing new types of projects. It is now focusing on promoting national programmes', reducing emissions from deforestation; and large-scale, long-term carbon finance.