UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres has pledged a renewed commitment to address the continuing problems faced by refugee women and girls around the world. 'Clearly, many challenges remain,' Guterres said in a special message to staff to mark the start of the annual 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence, an international campaign originating from the first Women's Global Leadership Institute in 1991.

A thousand babies are infected with HIV every day - in pregnancy, during birth and through breastfeeding. Close to 400,000 African children are infected with HIV every year. The situation points back to the high HIV prevalence amongst women of reproductive age, especially in Southern Africa. Zambia is one of the countries recognised for making progress in addressing the problem.?? Seventy thousand Zambian women between the ages of 15 and 40 have HIV; the health ministry says 85 thousand children are living with the virus.

Two Congolese student leaders in Harare were last week allegedly abducted by suspected state security agents, and grilled about their relationship with Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) opposition leader Sapard Tshimanginda Kalala. The students claim they were held for over 24 hours. Kalala, a renowned academic who heads the National People’s Patriotic Party of the Congo will be challenging DRC President Joseph Kabila, who has very close ties with President Robert Mugabe, in next year’s elections.

At least 1,500 south Sudanese civilians have fled areas along the north–south border fearing aerial attack on Bahr al-Ghazal by the Sudan Armed Forces, the UN and southern officials said. Northern government officials were unavailable for comment on the reports. The SPLA says northern forces are still flying fighter planes along the border to scare southern villagers.

Clinical officer Silverius Kesanta uses his mobile phone to take pictures and notes of patients in remote areas of Tanzania and shares this information online with specialists from Dar es Salaam and abroad. Specialists view the information and provide advice so Kesanta can treat these patients himself. By using his mobile phone for distance diagnosis, Silverius Kesanta was able to treat a cheek infection of a young boy in the isolated Iringa region. Kesanta works at the Ilembula Lutheran Hospital and frequently visits people on location in the isolated Iringa region. As a clinical officer he treats patients, but for complex medical cases he needs specialist advice.

Gender Based Violence (GBV) is a distressing reality effecting millions of women and girls in almost all societies around the world. The continuous violation of women’s basic human rights through GBV hinders not only their development, but also the progress of the communities and countries they live in. In Africa and in most parts of the world, the root cause of GBV is the unequal power relations that exist between females and males and the low status of women. FEMNET’s involvement in the Men to Men Project started with a men to men consultation held in December 2001. The consultation brought together men from Kenya, Malawi, Namibia and South Africa, representing community organisations, human rights and legal groups, religious organisations, universities and the police. Visit their site to find out more.

The International Federation of Human Rights has compiled a Q&A about the trial of Jean-Pierre Bemba, the leader of the Mouvement de Libération du Congo (MLC), which is taking place before the International Criminal Court. 'This case is very important because, for the first time, the ICC focuses primarily on the prosecution of crimes of sexual violence, thus acknowledging that such crimes were widespread and systematic,' one of the answers says.

Baptista Macule is sitting on a sack of groundnuts in a dusty side-alley near the sprawling, makeshift Malanga market on the outskirts of Maputo. He squints into the sun as he tries to explain the extent of poverty in his country. 'People do not have enough food in their house,' he says. 'There are not enough jobs, and even when people have jobs, the salaries are very low. Salaries have not increased, but prices have.'

The majority of the world's child soldiers are involved in a variety of armed political groups. These include government-backed paramilitary groups, militias and self-defence units operating in many conflict zones. Others include armed groups opposed to central government rule, groups composed of ethnic religious and other minorities and clan-based or factional groups fighting governments and each other to defend territory and resources. This document from the Child Soldiers Initiative provides key facts and figures about child soldiers.

Namibia's ruling party overwhelmingly won last weekend's local and regional elections, claiming 92 per cent of constituencies in regional voting, officials announced late last Monday. The South West Africa People's Organisation (Swapo), which has ruled Namibia since independence in 1990, won 98 out of 107 constituencies in the regional vote, state broadcaster Namibia Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) said.

Researchers are working on nanotechnology cures for age-old diseases, but is it affordable, what are the risks and what policies would ensure the best use of an expensive technology? SciDev.net looks at whether developing countries can use nanotechnology for heath care, the relationship between nanotechnology and health equity and how it is already being used.

This Atlas is a visual account of Africa's endowment and use of water resources, revealed through 224 maps and 104 satellite images as well as some 500 graphics and hundreds of compelling photos. However the Atlas is more than a collection of static maps and images accompanied by informative facts and figures: its visual elements vividly illustrate a succinct narrative describing and analysing Africa's water issues and exemplifying them through the judicious use of case studies.

Olivier Mushiete sees himself as a pioneer: His ever-expanding acacia forest on the Bateké plateau, 120km east of Kinshasa, is central Africa’s first carbon sink plantation. 'Each hectare of acacia trees can capture 25-30 tons of CO2. They grow quickly and have no known predators, parasites or viruses. What’s more, they are leguminous so their leaves fertilize the soil. They’re great,' he enthused. Every day the plantation traps several tons of CO2. Mushiete, an agricultural engineer, has sold some of this sequestered greenhouse gas, in the form of carbon credits, for US$4 million, with the first payments due in 2012, once the first trees reach maturity.

Two Egyptian opposition pages on the social network site Facebook were deleted ahead of Egypt's parliamentary election on Sunday then restored after discussions with the site's administrators, web activists who run the pages said on Friday. The activists said they suspected the Egyptian government had played a role in the disappearance of the pages, possibly by covertly bombarding Facebook with complaints about the pages that resulted in their removal, but offered no evidence to support the allegation.

This case study describes some of the methods and activities developed by the Relay programme, which provides training and facilitates relationship-building among key stakeholders to support more in-depth, research-informed media coverage of complex, under-reported or misreported development. It describes how the methods and activities were applied in Kenya to the issue of tax and governance. Ultimately, the case study aims to inform the work of a broad group of actors, including researchers, communication specialists, media development practitioners, infomediaries, editors and media managers, as well as organisations interested in funding initiatives to improve research-informed development.

Every year thousands of Kenyans go without essential medicines because of poor supply chain management, corruption and insufficient funding of the health service, say civil society members. 'The health system lacks the capacity to run effectively - many health workers are not skilled enough, for example, to request for drugs before they run out,' said Christa Cepuch, programmes director for Health Action International (HAI) Africa. She noted that according to a 2008 government survey, 42 per cent of people administering drugs in the public health system are untrained.

Foreign aids inflow from donor countries are drying up and in the next 15 years, many poor African countries may not be able to access the window, Chief Economist of the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) Professor Mthuli Ncube has alerted. He attributed the new trend to several economic factors that are redefining economic relations around the world, some of which include the economic recession in Europe and America, and Africa's new economic partner - China.

On 16 November 2010, Morocco and Mali, on behalf of African and Islamic (OIC) states, introduced an amendment to the General Assembly resolution condemning extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions and other killings deleting specific reference to killings due to sexual orientation.  This is a retrogressive step following the inclusion of this reference in the 2008 resolution.  While continuing to specify killings for racial, national, ethnic, religious or linguistic reasons and of refugees, indigenous people and other groups, the amendment to the 2010 resolution has replaced mention of sexual orientation with 'discriminatory reasons on any basis'.  The amendment passed 79-70 and is expected to be formally adopted by the General Assembly next month.

A coalition of Mozambican non-governmental organisations has reported mining giant BHP Billiton to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange's Socially Responsible Investment Index (SRI) for 'intolerable conduct' in planned pollution at its aluminium smelter in Mozambique, a spokesperson said on Tuesday. The coalition of environmental and human rights NGOs sent a formal complaint to the JSE at the end of October, Vanessa Cabanelas, spokesperson for the environmental organisation Justica Ambiental, told the South African Press Association (Sapa).

South Africa is Africa's largest economy and the continent's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. But at the just opened climate negotiations, South Africa most likely will try to avoid reducing emissions. South Africa's CO2 emissions per capita are on par with those of the United Kingdom, and more than twice as high as China's emissions by the same measure. The country is presently responsible for about half of Africa's emissions, with 80 per cent of its estimated 400 million metric tonnes of CO2 coming from the energy sector alone.