Gender Links, a Southern African NGO based in Johannesburg specialising in gender, media, women’s rights and governance, seeks the services of an experienced individual to serve as a field officer for its gender justice and local government programme in South Africa. The main task of the incumbent, who will be based in Johannesburg, will be to work with local councils, partners and stakeholders to develop gender and gender violence (GBV) action plans for local councils as well as providing backstopping and support to these councils.

Medhine is an Ethiopian Asylum seeker; she spent more than a year in the Egyptian Prison for illegal entry to Egypt. During her one year of detention, she lost her young daughter, who was suffering from severe diarrhea and vomiting. EFRR handled this case and tried to release her through submitting several cases to the office of the High General Prosecutor and National Council for Human Rights asking for her release.

Women and Men of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) has launched a report on the state of education in Zimbabwe entitled ‘Looking back to look forward - education in Zimbabwe: a WOZA perspective’. The recommendations contained in the report form the basis of WOZA’s current campaign on education.

This latest report from the International Crisis Group, examines violent conflict that has claimed several thousand lives in 2009. Inter-tribal fighting, while not a new phenomenon, has taken on a new and dangerously politicised character, with the worst violence in and around the vast, often impassable state of Jonglei.

The acting chairman of the Guinea's junta, the National Council for the Defence of Democracy (CNDD), General Sékouba Konaté, has vowed to create 'a new peaceful transition authority' that will soon set dates for elections.

Zimbabwe has halted a controversial sale of 300 000 carats of diamonds, but blamed bureaucratic hold-ups rather than a scandal over rights abuses by the military in the diamond fields.

Samir Amin

Pierrette Herzberger-Fofana

It was not the three days of labour that caused Fatimata Guido the most pain, her urine-stained sheets or the five operations she has had to repair an obstetric fistula. “It is the fear of having sex again, since that is what got me into this situation in the first place.”

The US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has pledged US$2.7 billion over the next five years to advance HIV programmes in Kenya - a 112 percent increase.

The Security Council has extended for another year the United Nations political mission in Burundi, calling for full support for next year’s elections in the war-scarred African country while voicing concern at continuing human rights violations, sexual and gender-based violence, restrictions on civil liberties and political violence.

Egypt has obtained $5 billion from international and regional financers to fund and complete its 2007-2012 five year plan to boost energy output, the state news agency MENA quoted the electricity minister as saying on Friday.

A trial of pre-exposure prophylaxis to prevent HIV infection in Botswana is highly unlikely to show whether giving antiretroviral drugs to block infection is effective, due to a lower-than-expected rate of new infections and low retention rates, the US Centers for Disease Control announced on December 17th.

When 18-year-old Tsitsi Makwiyena looks down at her son Desmond in her arms, she sees not just a one-week-old perfect baby boy, but also the high price she paid to escape her home country of Zimbabwe and start a new life in urban South Africa

The number of successful applications for gay asylum seekers in France is about 15% above average of successful applications in the general population but, an organisation in the country that helps persecuted people with asylum, says it processes about 30 application per year without absolute certitude.

Just in time for Christmas, a new low-cost, low-power netbook is hitting the scenes that actually retails for only $99. Cherrypal, the company behind it, has dubbed it “Africa”, as they’re focusing the little computer on developing countries.

The Republic of Congo’s civil war may have ended in 2003, but violence against women continues, according to civil society activists and aid workers.

Uncertainty surrounding the impasse in Guinea Conakry is forcing Guineans to flee their country. Reports say that about 200 Guineans have been registered to have entered Senegal through its borders with the troubled West African nation.

The search for an effective microbicide has been dealt another blow with disappointing study results from PRO 2000, an early generation microbicide gel that was tested to prevent HIV in women.

While changes in antiretroviral regimens are often impelled by side-effects, a considerable proportion of first-line changes in a west African cohort were found to be due to other issues, according to a forthcoming article in the journal AIDS.

A new police force plan to recruit youths in each community, to help fight the country-wide spate of armed robbery, has provoked controversy and sparked a nationwide debate. Communities are concerned that some area volunteers are known to be ex-child combatants, who may have participated in committing horrific atrocities against civilians.