Opposition parties in Gabon have rejected the terms of a re-count of votes from last month's controversial presidential poll. Activists, who alleged widespread vote rigging, were angered after a court ruled that opposition observers would not be allowed to oversee the re-count.

What role do young women play in contemporary African wars? Mainstream thinking on war and conflict sees women as passive and peaceful and men as active and aggressive. This report from the Nordic Africa Institute calls for a broader understanding of women’s roles and participation in armed conflict in Africa. Programmes to disarm, demobilise and re-integrate former fighters need to be adapted to local contexts and designed to meet the needs of female ex-fighters.

Angelina Silva doesn’t remember the exact dates when her sons died. She just remembers their ages. "One was one year old, the other was one year and nine months," she said. "They had an illness. We think it was malaria, but we don’t know for sure." The 30-year-old, who has five other children and lives in a shantytown on the outskirts of Angola’s capital Luanda, is unsentimental.

Nigerian militants said on Tuesday they opposed a bid by a Chinese energy group to secure 6bn barrels of crude reserves, comparing the potential new investors to “locusts”. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta told the Financial Times that the record of Chinese companies in other African counties suggested “an entry into the oil industry in Nigeria will be a disaster for the oil-bearing communities”.

On behalf of the Inter African Committee on Traditional practices Affecting the Health of Women and Girls as well as the members of the NGO Committee on the Status of Women, I would like to congratulate the President on his appointment, as well as wish him a successful tenure. We would also like to take this opportunity to commend the Council for holding this annual discussion on the integration of gender into its work of promotion and protection all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.

Libya deported an additional 740 Nigerians Thursday, bringing the total number of Nigerians repatriated from the north African nation in recent days to 1,064, the local press reported. Last month, Libya also brought back about 330 Nigerians. Most of the deportees did not have the required papers to stay in Libya, which many use as a transit point to Europe.

After four years of giving each other a cold shoulder, Uganda President Yoweri Museveni and the King Ronald Muweanda Mutebu II of the Buganda held an hour-long private discussion at the State House in Entebbe on Wednesday, government officials said. The meeting is aimed at easing tension between the dominant Buganda ethnic group - with an estimated 12 million population out of the country's 30 million " and the President Museveni -led central government, after riots 11-14 September 2009 level several people dead.

Residents of the Somali port of Kismayo are burying the dead and tending to the injured after a day of fierce clashes between rival Islamist groups. Al-Shabab has gained control of the city and the Hizbul-Islam fighters have withdrawn to villages to the west.

It wasn't an oil spill that made Nnimmo Bassey an environmentalist. It was a massacre — the 1990 assault by Nigeria's armed forces on the village of Umuechem, where residents of the oil-rich Niger Delta had accused the Shell Petroleum Development Company of environmental degradation and economic neglect.

Damage to wetlands high in Lesotho's Maluti mountains has impacts on the health of the whole of the Orange-Senqu river system. The wetlands in this mountainous region stabilise soil, retain sediment and contribute to river flow from this area of high rainfall. In so doing, they indirectly support the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP), which captures water in dams and supplies it to water-thirsty South African industry and agriculture. The water Lesotho sells to South Africa is the mountain kingdom's largest source of foreign income.

A group non-governmental organizations (NGOs) involved in the work of the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights have written to The Commission of the African Union chariperson, Jean Ping, to request the African Union to remove the Headquarters of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights from the Gambia. The basis for this request is the personally communicated threat by the President of The Gambia, Col. A.J.J Jammeh (Rtd), to kill all human rights defenders who enter The Gambia.

The Leadership and Advocacy for Women in Africa (LAWA) Fellowship Program was founded in 1993 at the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., in order to train women's human rights lawyers from Africa who are committed to returning home to their countries in order to advance the status of women and girls in their own countries throughout their careers. Over 50 women's human rights advocates from Botswana, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe have participated in the LAWA Program. The application deadline for the LAWA Program, is Wednesday, September 30, 2009.

The shoe industry is one of the most globalised industries in the world. Shoes, and in particular plastic shoes that have been analysed in this study, have become a throwaway item for many people the world over. This study has been conducted in collaboration with six of the Swedish Society for Nature Conservtion's (SSNC) co-operation organisations in the Philippines, India, South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania and Indonesia.

Amid the chaos and lawlessness of Eastern Congo, a local organization has developed an innovative approach to settling disputes and promoting justice, one community at a time. , a partner of The Advocacy Project (AP) in Uvira, has created Comites de Mediation et Conciliation (CMCs), or conflict resolution committees, in 24 communities across South Kivu.

New York University Wagner announces a call for applications for the African Women Public Service Fellowship, a fellowship program made possible by a donation from the Oprah Winfrey Foundation, which expands the opportunity for African women to prepare for public service in their home countries. As fellows at NYU Wagner, African women study in one of two graduate programs: the two-year Master of Public Administration or the one-year Executive MPA: Concentration on International Public Service Organizations.

On 30 September 2009 Kontax – an m-novel created for the Shuttleworth Foundation’s m4Lit project– launches in South Africa, making world history as the first of its kind to be offered in both English and isiXhosa. The m4Lit project, led by Steve Vosloo, 21st Century Learning Fellow for the Shuttleworth Foundation, aims to not only explore the potential for increased reading and writing for 21st century teens through mobile phones, but also to introduce a more interactive style of story writing and publishing that holds appeal to the participatory culture of youth.

When is a government guilty of mass murder? If a government knowingly allows hundreds of thousands of people to die unnecessarily, what is its responsibility? Is indirect guilt, or guilt by omission, less culpable than direct guilt or guilt by commission? All these fraught questions now arise because Apotex, the Canadian generic drug giant, has sent its final shipment of inexpensive AIDS medication to Africa. The company says that the five-year-old federal legislation meant to facilitate this process is impossible to work with, and the Harper government refuses to fix it, writes Gerald Caplan.

The Portuguese Political Science Association (APCP) is inviting submissions for panels and papers for presentation at its Fifth Conference, which will take place at the University of Aveiro during 4-6 March 2010. Proposals should be sent by email to congressos(at)apcp.pt no later than 31 October 2009.

Namibia’s National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) and the Namibian Chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA-Namibia) have registered a strong protest at the Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) for the reported exclusion of certain media houses and, by extension, for withholding voter vital information from a large number of potential voters.

Slum Dwellers International (SDI) echoes the outrage that has been widely expressed in response to the violent attacks perpetrated against AbM in Kennedy Road over the weekend. These attacks come as no surprise. They mirror similar acts of violence that are regularly perpetrated against slum dwellers throughout the world. Only last month shack dwellers in Old Fadama, Accra, Ghana, also had to deal with an outward manifestation of ethnic violence, which was in fact an attack launched by vested political and property interests against organized communities of the urban poor. Almost two years ago SDI members were seriously affected by the violence against the urban poor that ripped through Kenya's informal settlements. At this very moment SDI linked groups in Gauteng and Cape Town face similar threats. SDI groups in Zimbabwe had to deal with devastating evictions in 2005. The list goes on and on.