The UN Millennium Campaign, Femnet and Oxfam GB have announced the commencement of a series of global conversations to discuss the status of the promises world leaders have made to women in the Millennium Development Goals.

Progress in sustaining high-level and job-creating growth in Africa will remain unsatisfactory unless bold country specific growth and employment strategies are adopted and implemented with the support of committed political leaders, according to a paper jointly prepared by the Africa Union Commission (AUC) and the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).

On 1 March 2010, the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) expressed extreme shock at the decision of the military prosecutor to try blogger and student Ahmed Mostafa, 20, in a military court for allegedly publishing false information about the military establishment, after an unusually quick investigation, according to ANHRI lawyers of the Legal Aid Unit who attended the interrogation sessions.

Dialo Diop

Marcio Luis Paim

The Center for Media Studies & Peace Building (CEMESP) has launched the 3rd edition of its account of threats to freedom of expression with calls for the government and authorities to recognize and support the inalienable rights of others to dissent.

Joséphine Ouedraogo

Youssou Gningue

Me Jean Claude Katende

The United Nations says it will evaluate and refer to a competent authority, which includes the International Criminal Court, any claims of enforced disappearances if there are legitimate grounds for concern. This is contained in the new report released by the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances.

ARTICLE 19 has released its analysis of the Kenya Communications (Broadcasting) Regulations, which came into force in January 2010, and recommends several changes to bring the Law in line with international standards.

With the death of both Rashid Kawawa of Tanzania and Akena Adoko of Uganda in January this year, Kintu Nyago compares their legacies. Of Kawawa he says: ' If Nyerere… was the grand architect of Tanzanian nation building, regional liberation and security, then Kawawa was his trusted, skilled, implementing mason.' Of Adoko, however, Nyago is not so praiseworthy. He argues that Adoko's actions were 'selfishly and politically calculated:… intended to retain power… against the wishes of the people of Uganda.'

8. ( a ) Men and women shall so far as possible be detained in separate institutions; in an institution which receives both men and women the whole of the premises allocated to women shall be entirely separate;
23. (1) In women's institutions there shall be special accommodation for all necessary pre-natal and post-natal care and treatment. Arrangements shall be made wherever practicable for children to be born in a hospital outside the institution. If a child is born in prison, this fact shall not be mentioned in the birth certificate.
(2) Where nursing infants are allowed to remain in the institution with their mothers, provision shall be made for a nursery staffed by qualified persons, where the infants shall be placed when they are not in the care of their mothers.

The Government of Botswana has forcibly returned at 4 of the 10 families of the 41 Congolese refugees who fled Namibia last July, a reliable government source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said.

"While much of Africa has avoided the worst effects of the recession, we face significant risks and uncertainty”, writes Dr Donald Kaberuka, President of the African Development Bank (AfDB). “The impact of the global turbulence, though varying from region to region, has been a major setback and a threat to our common achievement to date.” However, “at the same time, much of Africa has demonstrated remarkable resilience,” he says.

Poor governance and management are jeopardising efforts to provide quality basic education in seven African countries according to a new report published today by Transparency International (TI). The report, Africa Education Watch: Good governance lessons for primary education, shows that despite ten years of efforts to increase school enrolment through the Education for All initiative and the Millennium Development Goals, deficient or non-existent governance systems and practices are limiting progress.

Hanevy Ould Dehah, the editor of the website Taqadoumy, was finally freed along with around 100 ordinary offenders under a presidential pardon issued in honour of Mawlid (the Prophet Mohammed’s birthday). “We welcome Dehah’s release after eight months of unjustified detention,” Reporters Without Borders said. “The president seems to have heard the appeals from Mauritanian journalists and the international community. We thank them for interceding.”

The Democratic Republic of Congo could see half of its debt to the Paris Club of creditors written off, according to an agreement announced today by the members. The agreement follows on the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) approval in December of a loan arrangement for the DRC, making the country eligible for an IMF debt relief programme.

Tensions between street traders and the city authorities in Madagascar's capital, Antananarivo, are mounting as hundreds of recently unemployed textile industry workers compete with established informal traders; textile factories have been closing since the country was suspended from a preferential trade agreement with the US.

Four years after an innovative slum-upgrading project was launched in Huruma, to the northeast of the Kenyan capital, at least 200 households are now living in improved homes, complete with infrastructure such as running water, sewage connection, electricity, drainage, paving and renovated toilet blocks.

New national treatment guidelines are set to make the world's largest antiretroviral (ARV) programme even bigger as South Africa extends treatment to more HIV-positive infants, pregnant women and people battling HIV-tuberculosis (TB) co-infection.

It's now more than a month since the earthquake that laid waste to Port-au-Prince, killing more than 200,000 people and thrusting millions of people into the most desperate conditions. But according to the U.S. government, Haitians have a lot to be thankful for.

Let the rains fail, even for several successive seasons, and Malawi should still be able to produce enough to feed itself.? This is the motivation for the country's green belt concept. It is strengthened by painful memories of the severe drought beginning early 2002 which triggered three years of hunger.