Voting is under way across the Democratic Republic of Congo where presidential and legislative elections are expected to provide a stern challenge to President Joseph Kabila's leadership. More than 31 million people are eligible to vote on Monday in the country's second elections since the end of the conflict-stricken country's devastating war in 2002, with some 19,000 candidates competing for 500 legislative seats, while 11 candidates are vying for the presidency.

Torture has been widely viewed in the past in terms of pain and suffering inflicted on a person – usually assumed to be male – in the custody of the state. However, this narrow understanding excludes many forms of severe pain and suffering deliberately inflicted on women and girls. This report summarizes a two-day conference on the gender dimensions of the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

'As a movement we are struggling to build a society in which there is an economic system where human beings come before profit and a political system in which leaders take direction from below. We are struggling to build a society in which there will be a fair distribution of land and decent housing for all. But we are alive now, our children are growing now. We are living in the rain and with shack fires now. Therefore it is clear that we also have to take direct action to struggle for what land and housing we can get right now even as we continue the long struggle for a more democratic and just world.'

Corporations have colluded with governments to capture climate change negotiations for their own interest. At the start of the ‘Dirty Energy Week’ in South Africa, participants called for real commitment to heal the Earth. More than 100 community, union and NGO representatives gathered on 23 November to kick of the ‘The Dirty Energy Week’ gathering, organised by the South African based environment justice NGO groundWork, together with 14 national and international NGOs and community organisations. On the eve of the UN negotiations, they gathered to discuss climate proofing communities and cleaner energy solutions.

The facts in much of Uganda and Sub-Saharan Africa present a harsh reality: only 28 per cent of all health centres have the required supplies and equipment to offer basic emergency obstetric care, while 32 per cent of hospitals in the districts have the supplies, equipment and staff to offer patients caesarean sections. Challenges for midwives with transportation, improper or non-functional medical equipment and lack of doctors and supporting medical staff are ongoing, says this article, which profiles a dedicated Ugandan midwife.

The Executive Director of the Roll Back Malaria partnership, Awa-Marie Coll-Seck, has expressed fears that the current international financial crisis could shift the commitments of donors from malaria control in Africa.'The international community strongly mobilized to increase its commitments from 100 million dollars in 2000 to almost 1.5 billion dollars now. Today we have fears to see this dynamics called into question as a result of the financial crisis which can lead to a change in national priorities,' she told PANA in Paris.

Women whose names do not appear on title deeds face hardships in Zimbabwe. The legal situation is such that husbands whose names appear on the title deeds can sell the immovable property to the detriment of the wife. The law only 'intervenes' at death in terms of the inheritance laws that state that the immovable property goes to the surviving spouse. Upon divorce, the immovable property is shared equitably using the provisions of the Matrimonial Causes Act. Women and Law in Southern Africa and the Property and Inheritance Rights Network of Zimbabwe has prepared a position paper for submission to the Law Development Commission.

Climate change will exacerbate the existing vulnerabilities of children in South Africa, unless mitigation and adaptation strategies are child-sensitive and implemented in a timely manner, UNICEF said. ‘Exploring the Impact of Climate Change on Children in South Africa’ was commissioned by UNICEF in partnership with the Department of Women, Children and People with Disabilities, and the Department of Environmental Affairs and highlights the likely impact of climate change on children’s health, education, nutrition, safety and access to adequate housing and sanitation in South Africa - both directly and indirectly.

In the China Overseas Dams List, International Rivers Network documents 289 overseas dam projects in which China is involved. For the large part, most of these projects have been proposed and/or built in the past 10 years. Forty-two per cent of the projects are in South-east Asia, 30 per cent in Africa, and growing steadily in number are the number of projects in Latin America.

With attacks on journalists and media continuing in the final run-up to the 28 November presidential and parliamentary elections and an opposition parliamentarian’s murder in Kinshasa adding to the tension, Reporters Without Borders appeals again to all parties to do their best to ensure that the elections are not marred by violence and that media freedom is respected. 'The initial results of the media monitoring by Journalist in Danger, our local partner organization, are quite clear,' Reporters Without Borders said. 'They show beyond any doubt that, as well as attacks on journalists and repeated closures of news outlets, many media are being turned into propaganda tools, thereby heightening the tension in a climate that has already worsened dramatically in recent weeks.'

Unconfirmed reports about the Nigerian National Assembly claim that the Nigerian Senate may have already voted on the controversial prohibition of Same-sex Marriage Bill. However, Nigeria LGBT human rights activists are uncertain about information on the status of the bill, which many believe to still be at the Senate committee on human rights and judicial matters.

While it is known the famine is in the five countries of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti and Sudan in the Horn of Africa, the epicenter is Southern Somalia. The story of Somalia is not a simple one and cannot be told in the framework of famine alone. The protracted conflict in Southern Somalia, US foreign policy toward the region, lack of a national government and of course the presence of Al Shabab are all attributed to contributing to the worse famine in the country’s history. This Priority Africa Network document provides resources for understanding the famine.

In this week's edition of the Emerging Powers News Round-Up, read a comprehensive list of news stories and opinion pieces related to China, India and other emerging powers...

Sheltered from the fierce heat of the Namboomspruit sun, 16 Mokopane community members gathered for an Earth Forum in the cool shadows of an oasis of tall palm trees. These participants formed part of a community action group called Jubilee, which aims to address critical incidences of environmental injustice, particularly around the effect of mining on human and environmental well-being. According to Phillipos Dolo, co-ordinator of Jubilee, the mining has deprived these people of access to land. 'In rural areas we depend on the land for ploughing. The mining companies took all the land we worked on without any compensation.'

'La Voix de Djibouti' correspondents Farah Abadid Hildid and Houssein Robleh Dabar were released provisionally recently after being held by the gendarmerie for four days, during which time they were both reportedly tortured.

Nationally, Zimbabwe is more food secure at the end of 2011 than it has been for several years. However, parts of Zimbabwe suffered serious crop failure earlier this year and a million people are still predicted to need supplementary feeding. In Gwanda, Matabeleland South, the authors of this study by the Solidarity Peace Trust found that almost half of households indicated a day without food in the recent past.

Recent media reports have shown a rise in attacks against lesbian women in townships across South Africa. The nature of the violence includes assault, often with grievous bodily harm, rape, murder or any combination of these. The sexual violence perpetrated against these women has become a particular focal point in media coverage, crudely termed ‘corrective’ or ‘curative rape’. This Consultancy Africa Intelligence (CAI) brief argues that contemporary media and the public should rethink their understanding of ‘corrective rape’ and the discourse used to engage this notion. The paper problematises the language of ‘corrective rape’, arguing that it inadvertently further reinforces and re-inscribes patriarchal, heterosexist and racist power through its construction of the phenomenon as sexual violence inflicted by black township men against black lesbian women.

Churches, homes and the police headquarters in the small northeast Nigerian town of Geidam were set ablaze in a wave of night time gun and bomb attacks by a radical Islamist sect, the police said on Sunday. 'Four policemen were killed, 20 wounded, eight churches and 20 market stalls as well as Geidam council secretariat are completely destroyed,' a police spokesperson said.

The Cameroonian authorities must immediately release two men who have been sentenced to five years in prison by a court in Yaounde for homosexual acts, Amnesty International said. A third man was sentenced without being present after jumping bail. The men were arrested in July after police alleged they were caught in a sexual act in a car.

Libya's former rebels are holding some 7,000 detainees, many of them sub-Saharan Africans, without access to due legal process after the country's civil war, UN chief Ban Ki-moon said in a new report. Ban cited reports that some detainees had been tortured, that some people had been targeted because of their skin color, that women were held under male supervision without female guards and that children were being detained alongside adults.