The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is continuing to kill and kidnap civilians in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), according to the UN. In the first fortnight of July alone, the Ugandan rebel group carried out 33 attacks in the districts of Upper and Lower Uele, killing 26 civilians and abducting 144, according to a report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has announced plans to invest up to US$97 million over 10 years in improving antiretroviral (ARV) treatment for children and adults in sub-Saharan Africa. The world's second largest drug manufacturer has pledged $16 million in seed funding to a public-private partnership that will develop new paediatric formulations of ARV drugs, GSK said in a statement this week.

The United Nations agency tasked with promoting adequate shelter for all has committed to ensuring better protection of land and property rights for people uprooted from their homes in Africa, which hosts nearly half of the total number of displaced persons worldwide. UN-HABITAT and the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) signed a Memorandum of Understanding last week committing them to this common goal.

Finance Minister Tendai Biti used a budget presentation Thursday to announce that civil servants will now be paid salaries, in place of the current flat US$100 allowance. He also scrapped import duty on all Information Communication Technology (ICT) products like computers and cell phones. Duty on capital investment equipment will be scrapped while duty on basic commodities will be waived until November this year. Those importing passenger type motor vehicles of 15-20 passengers will pay duty of 15 percent beginning August.

With at least one election result annulled and several candidates arrested, Moroccans are seeing courts take a more active role in dealing with cases of electoral fraud. On Monday (July 13th), the Marrakech administrative court annulled election results in the Menara district, following an appeal by the Front of Democratic Forces (FFD) over irregularities. The ruling overturned the election of PAM candidate Fatima Zahra Mansouri as Marrakech mayor.

A public presentation of the "Progress of the World's Women" report by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) in Pretoria, South Africa this week suggests that one of the most powerful constraints on realising women's rights and achieving the Millennium Development Goals is a lack of accountability to women's needs.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and subsequent instruments of international human rights law and international humanitarian law play a vital role in providing protection for refugees and IDPs. Yet the claim to universality has been disputed and not all states have acceded to these legal instruments. It seems that a particular point of controversy or dispute in the Islamic world is their compatibility with sharia. This publication aims to enhance debate and understanding of the concepts and instruments of international human rights in the Islamic world.

Gay rights organisations in Cameroon have accused the country’s Catholic Church and the media of deliberately causing confusion about the Maputo Protocol with the intention to influence the public to have negative attitudes towards homosexuality. This comes after Cameroonian President Paul Biya ratified the Maputo Protocol, known in full as, the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights of Women in Africa, during the sixth anniversary of the Maputo Protocol on 11 July this year.

During the 1990s, the Republic of Congo, like most countries, experienced significant growth in the telecommunications sector. However, the liberalisation of the telecommunications market in 1997, when the monopoly held by the National Office of Posts and Telecommunications (ONPT) gave way to free competition among multiple operators, was not free of problems, and the country continues to suffer the effects today.

Amid mounting international opposition to a proposed referendum for President Mamadou Tandja to stay in power, the European Commission – one of Niger's largest donors – has warned of aid cuts if leaders do not respect constitutional order. “Any changes to the constitution, notably its fundamental articles, should not be made in the absence of consensual and inclusive dialogue,” European Commissioner for development and humanitarian aid, Louis Michel, said in a public statement.

Before the 15 July close of the consultation process on a controversial proposal by the African Union Commission (AUC) and the European Commission (EC) to create a Pan African Media Observatory, media freedom organisations mobilised to have their voices heard on the matter. A component of the "joint roadmap" proposed by the AUC and the EC this year is to create a Pan-African Media Observatory "composed of eminent figures", based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, that would have legal status to mediate disputes that arise with the media.

The United Nations-backed Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has signed a grant agreement with Togo worth $20 million over two years, the first part of a five-year grant that will allow the country to scale-up treatment and care for people living with HIV. “This agreement reflects Togo’s determination to continue its fight against the AIDS epidemic,” said Michel Kazatchkine, Executive Director of the Global Fund, who travelled to Lomé to sign the agreement.

MDC activist Patrick Danga, who was arrested by the police while restraining ZANU PF MP Patrick Zhuwawo from manhandling an MDC MP, is still detained at Harare Central police station. Zhuwawo is also Robert Mugabe’s nephew. The MDC MP for Mutare Central, Innocent Gonese, told us on Thursday that Danga has not been taken to court and is still detained, and yet the real criminals, who threw bottles and disrupted proceedings at the All-Stakeholders constitutional conference, remain free.

A group of Tunisian bloggers started a new campaign on Facebook last week to condemn censorship of the internet by the Tunisian Internet Agency and put pressure on the government to unblock the social websites YouTube and Dailymotion. Over the last few months, internet users have received "404: Page Not Found" errors when trying to surf the two websites. Observers say the motive behind the blockage might be political, coming as it does in the months before Tunisia's presidential and parliamentary elections.

Eight Malagasy women die per day while giving birth, either due to complications during the pregnancy or during delivery, according to a recently-published national Demographic and Health Survey (DHS).

Many commentators and development professionals echoed this refrain during the G8 2009 summit held in Italy from July 8 - 10. The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, added his voice to the veritable cascade of dissension by declaring that the G8 “will have to update their politics to grapple with problems that none of them can solve alone: financial panic, rising food and oil prices, climate shocks, a flu pandemic, and more. Political co-operation to address these problems is …a global necessity.”

While pressure mounts for the Zimbabwean government to draft an inclusive constitution, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community in that country remains uncertain about its future in the newly formed government of national unity. Following a public statement earlier this year that called for the drafting of the new constitution to be a people driven process, it now appears that the government is willing to engage.

More than 100 magistrates and judges in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been sacked as part of President Joseph Kabila’s campaign to clean the judiciary of greasy dealings. Making the announcement this week, the Minister of Justice, Luzolo Bambi Lessa said the move was only the beginning as other sectors, including the military, were also to feel the pinch of the anti-corruption whip.

Poor food security in Akobo, the main town in Southern Sudan's Jonglei state, is being exacerbated by a huge influx of displaced people, including 19,000 who fled attacks by cattle rustlers. “The gap analysis that we have done shows that the needs are greatest among the recent IDPs,” David Tolu Lemiso, health project manager at the NGO Nile Hope Development Foundation (NHDF), said. “Out of 3,442 households from Nyandit, 2,050 are still badly in need of help, and that is minus those from Wanding, Kuechar and Ogal payams [sub-divisions].”

This latest report from the International Crisis Group examines the root cause of the country’s many crises, namely the reluctance of the long-ruling National Congress Party (NCP) to enact policies that would bring justice to the victims of its many conflicts. To end Sudan’s centralised, exploitive and unaccountable governance, the NCP must accept judicial reforms and transitional justice mechanisms as key elements of a Darfur settlement and at the same time fulfil its side of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which halted decades of civil war.