The United Nations Security Council should make sure that its existing commitments to protect civilians during armed conflict are actually carried out, Human Rights Watch has said in a letter to council member states. On June 26, 2009, the Security Council will hold a debate to discuss its work on civilian protection, in which all UN members can participate.

Djibo Hamani

Hanevy Ould Dahah, managing editor of the online newspaper Taqadoumy was on June 18, 2009 arrested and detained by gendarmeries in Nouakchott. The paper reported on its website that Ould Dahah was handcuffed and led to a police station in Nouakchott, the capital.

Africa in Motion 2009 aims to incorporate a number of screenings and events that confront issues of trauma, conflict and reconciliation. This symposium aims to foster discussion and understanding of old and new research dealing with the various realities and representations of reconciliation in Africa.

The Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ) has announced that it would on July 13, 2009 march through the streets of Freetown, as part of its long-sustained pressure to get the country’s Supreme Court to give a ruling on the case it filed in February 2008 challenging the constitutionality of provisions of the Public Order Act of 1960.

A new case of the swine flu, confirmed by the Institut Pasteur laboratory, has brought to two the number of people infected by the AH1N1 virus in the Cote d'Ivoire, health sources told PANA here Thursday. The latest case involves a 20-year-old girl who was in close contact with the first case, confirmed on Monday. They were among the 57 passengers on board the Brussels Airlines aircraft which flew in from Brussels via Monrovia, Liberia, on 19 June.

Nigeria's President Umaru Yar'Adua has unveiled details of a 60-day amnesty for militants in the Niger Delta. Ministers of Nigeria's Council of State have approved the proposal - an effort to end years of attacks on the region's beleaguered oil industry. A presidential pardon, rehabilitation programme, education and training are being offered to militants taking part.

The Ugandan minister of justice should immediately inform 17 individuals who have languished in prison for years of their legal status, Human Rights Watch has said in a letter to the minister of justice. The individuals have long awaited "minister's orders" from the minister of justice to determine whether they should be imprisoned, released, or placed in the appropriate custodial care.

With the snow-capped peak of Mount Kilimanjaro providing a backdrop under simmering tropical sunshine, a group of women in Mijongweni village break into song. The song, in Swahili, praises the benefits of protecting the environment and living in harmony with nature for the survival of generations; values vital to the survival of one of the rarest hardwood trees in the world, the African blackwood. Known to locals as mpingo, the African blackwood (dalbergia melanoxylon) is a tree that has been exploited to extinction in southern Ethiopia and Kenya and is currently only found in Tanzania and northern Mozambique. Tanzania boasts large tracts of natural forest and woodlands

It is prayer time at the Nur madrassa (Islamic religious school) in Pemba, capital of Cabo Delgado Province, on the northern coast of Mozambique. At this school, education does not stop at religious studies; on Saturdays, the malimo (teacher), Mitilage Rashid, talks to the 120 students about HIV and AIDS. In 2008 Rashid attended a course on HIV run by the Islamic Council of Mozambique, in partnership with other organizations, where he and 30 other teachers learned about the epidemic and how to conduct education campaigns at their schools.

Caroline Mbewe, 14, would prefer to be in school, but instead is a domestic worker for an affluent family in Malawi's capital, Lilongwe. "My bosses treat me well but I don't want to continue working. I want to be like their daughters; I want to go to school," she told IRIN. As in the rest of the developing world, poor families in Malawi are often forced to send their children out to earn a wage rather than complete their education.

In a letter to president Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Committee to Protect Journalists urged the Congolese government to lift its ban of RFI in the eastern cities of Bunia and Bukavu.

About 5,000 new automatic weather stations are set to be deployed across Africa, under a climate change initiative announced today by the United Nations World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the Global Humanitarian Forum, the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and mobile telecommunications companies Ericsson and Zain. Sub-Saharan Africa is the region facing the most immediate risk of droughts and floods due to climate change, according to a recent Global Humanitarian Forum report. Agricultural yields in some areas are expected to fall by 50 per cent as early as 2020.

Healthcare workers in Yambio, capital of Sudan's Western Equatoria State, have warned that the number of HIV-positive people receiving treatment has risen, and they cannot keep up with the demand for medication. About 700 HIV-positive people are being treated by a local faith-based group, the Christian Brothers. "The issue of HIV in Yambio is getting bigger and bigger every day; we even find difficulty to provide services due the big numbers of people who are infected with HIV and AIDS," said Brother Daniel Pius.

The South African health system is in deep crisis. We need a major transformation of our health system and we need it now. Problems in the public health sector are splashed across the front pages of our newspapers on a weekly basis: patients being turned away from public clinics and hospitals and some dying as a result, some provinces running out of antiretroviral drugs, the doctors’ strike, and so on.

Africa’s poor and vulnerable communities rarely have the opportunity to share their valuable experience and learn from others in broader or more formal exchanges of knowledge on climate change adaptation. The AfricaAdapt network, which is funded by the joint UK Department for International Development (DFID)/International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Climate Change Adaptation in Africa Programme , is launching its new Knowledge Sharing Innovation Fund promoting new ways of sharing knowledge that can help address this problem.

Kenya, South Africa and Tunisia have emerged as the top innovators of Africa in a report on the continent's competitiveness launched last week. The three countries — which scored highly on ratings of their scientific capacity — are on a par with such innovative countries as Brazil and India, according to The Africa Competitiveness Report 2009, produced by the World Economic Forum, the African Development Bank and the World Bank Africa.

MPs in Uganda have demanded an explanation on the fluctuating rainfall pattern, which they said had become difficult for farmers to understand. Discussing the looming famine in many parts of the country, several MPs said farmers could not tell when to plant the crops due to the erratic rainfall patterns. Samuel Odonga Otto (FDC) said Pader district had experienced drought in the last two months which weather experts had said would be a rainy season.

Nearly 20 percent of Mozambique's civil servants are HIV positive, but given that several government ministries lack reliable data, this number could even be higher, a study has warned. According to a Demographic Impact Study by the government, around 19.2 percent of 167,420 public employees were found to be HIV positive, which is higher than the national prevalence rate of 16 percent.

Nine cleaners from the School of Oriental and African Studies were taken into detention after a dawn raid by immigration police on Friday 12th June. Five have already been deported, and the others could face deportation within days. One has had a suspected heart attack and was denied access to medical assistance and even water. One was over 6 months pregnant. Many have families who have no idea of their whereabouts. This is an expression of solidarity, and well as a call for a halt to the deportations.