A deadly spate of sectarian violence in Nigeria's central Plateau State since 24 December 2010, has killed more than 200 people, Human Rights Watch has said. The victims, including children, have been hacked to death, burned alive, 'disappeared', or dragged off buses and murdered in tit-for-tat killings. The Nigerian government should act swiftly to protect civilians of all ethnicities at risk of further attacks or reprisal killings, and allow the United Nations secretary-general's special adviser on the prevention of genocide, Francis Deng, to visit the state, Human Rights Watch said.

The World Development Movement has criticised the findings of the Beddington report in the United Kingdom, which promotes the introduction of genetically modified (GM) crops as a key solution to global hunger. The focus on GM in the chief scientist's report is a red herring and does not correctly identify the real causes of hunger. The World Development Movement's director, Deborah Doane said: 'The Beddington report does not accurately reflect the real cause of hunger in developing countries. The current record food prices are down to banks and hedge funds betting on food. The hot speculative inflows of money into commodity markets are dramatically pushing up the price of foods like bread, sugar and corn.'

Francois Bozize has been re-elected president of the Central African Republic, according to provisional results released by the electoral commission last Tuesday. The commission said Bozize received 66.08 per cent of the vote in the January 23 poll, the outcome of which has already been rejected by three of the five candidates.

The Government of Liberia, with support from United Nations agencies, will launch a week-long measles vaccination campaign on Wednesday targeting all children in Nimba County, which hosts over 30,000 refugees who fled the political turmoil in neighbouring Côte d’Ivoire. As of the end of January, five Liberian children between one and five years old had died of measles, two cases had been confirmed by the UN World Health Organisation (WHO), and just over 100 suspected cases had been reported.

Police in Uganda should urgently and impartially investigate the killing of the prominent human rights activist David Kato, Human Rights Watch has said. Kato had dedicated his life to fighting for the rights of lesbians, gays, bisexual, and transgender persons (LGBT) in Uganda, facing threats and risks to his personal safety. The government should ensure that members of Uganda's LGBT community have adequate protection from violence and take prompt action against all threats or hate speech likely to incite violence, discrimination, or hostility toward them, Human Rights Watch said.

Samir Amin

Jean Paul Dias

Sidy Diop

School enrolment has drastically dropped in Turkana County due to famine and insufficient learning materials, reports the Daily Nation. Most children have been forced to drop out of school and migrate with their parents in search of food and water due to the ongoing drought. 'The acute food shortage is impacting negatively on learning in the area. Some children have moved with their parents to areas far away from school in search of food,' said Turkana South district commissioner Joseph Kanyiri.

In a letter to the Ad Hoc Committee for the Protection of Information Bill, Idasa, the African Democracy Centre has questioned the applicability of the controversial legislation to various organs of state. 'It appears that the ad hoc committee’s view is that it is in fact too time-consuming to do an audit of the organs of state which exist. We are of the view that it is crucial that every consideration be given to the scope/applicability of the proposed legislation. Given the extensive number of organs of state, we submit that Parliament needs to be mindful of legislating without fully considering the impact of the draft legislation.'

Sometimes the teachers make it to school but the children do not - when the fighting is too intense for them to venture outdoors. Sometimes teachers make it to school only to find it has been moved - to enable displaced children to continue learning. This is the nature of teaching in war-torn Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, considered one of the world's most dangerous cities. In the midst of the chaos and violence, teachers, students and their parents are confronted with a choice of obtaining a semblance of education or giving up altogether.

To allow least developed countries (LDCs) to protect nascent industries, they are not required to cut tariffs for industrial goods and fisheries in the Doha Development Round. However, tariffs cuts will affect them if they are members of customs unions where some of their neighbours are larger developing countries without LDC status. For example, 'Nigeria is not an LDC but the nine LDCs in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) may also be bound by the commitments that their more powerful neighbour agrees to in the Doha Round,' explains Aileen Kwa in response to questions from IPS about what lies ahead for LDCs at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) during 2011.

The Egyptian government's attacks on journalists and unprecedented blackout of the nation's Internet and mobile phone services have crushed the rights of free expression, assembly and association and should be reversed immediately, say the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR), the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) and a growing chorus of IFEX members.

Pambazuka News is pleased to announce the call for submissions for the first annual Pambazuka Samir Amin Award. This award, launched to mark Samir Amin’s 80th birthday in 2011, pays tribute to the extraordinary contribution Samir Amin has made to our understanding of the exploitation of the peoples of Africa and the global South.

Over the past few years, agribusiness, investment funds and government agencies have been acquiring long-term rights over large areas of land in Africa. Together with applicable national and international law, contracts define the terms of an investment project, and the way risks, costs and benefits are distributed. Who has the authority to sign the contract and through what process greatly influences the extent to which people can have their voices heard. Yet very little is known about the exact terms of the land deals. Drawing on the legal analysis of twelve land deals from different parts of Africa, this report discusses the contractual issues for which public scrutiny is most needed, and aims to promote informed public debate about them.

Obama’s aim is all too clear: to keep Mubarak in office for as long as possible while fashioning a regime to prop up bourgeois rule and uphold US strategic and economic interests in the region, says this article from the World Socialist Web Site.

South Africa landed a coveted membership with the Brazil, Russia, India and China bloc (BRIC) by marketing itself as a gateway to Africa but analysts doubt whether this development holds real benefits for poor countries on the rest of the continent. Sanusha Naidu, research director of communication network Fahamu’s 'emerging powers in Africa' programme, says: 'What most people fail to realise is that by joining BRIC, South Africa offers a strategic partnership for investors from these countries. These investors do not necessarily have the savvy to do business on the continent, nor do they want to take all the risks associated with it. Linking up with South African capital can provide the commercial spin they are looking for.'

The Governor of the Bank of Mozambique, Ernesto Gove, has claimed that the economic and social conditions now exist in Mozambique for the government to renegotiate contracts signed with some of the mega-projects that have come to dominate the economy. Speaking on Friday at the closing session of a meeting of the Bank's Consultative Council in Mozambique, Gove said, 'In investment everybody has to win, otherwise social tensions are created.'

Egyptian air force fighter planes buzzed low over Cairo, helicopters hovered above and extra troop trucks appeared in a central square where protesters were demanding an end to President Hosni Mubarak's rule. State television said that a curfew has been imposed in the capital and the military urged the protesters to go home. But the thousands of protesters in Tahrir Square chose to stay on Sunday. The show of defiance came as Egypt entered another turbulent day following a night of deadly unrest.

Orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) comprise a fifth of Swaziland's roughly one million people, 80,000 more than predicted in a doomsday scenario back in 2004, but a social meltdown feared by some, has not happened. In 2004 the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) projected a grim future for the landlocked country as a consequence of the world's highest HIV prevalence rates - 26.1 per cent of people aged 15-49 are living with the virus - but although the nation is struggling, it is managing to cope.

Parliament threw MPs debating the contentious Protection of Information Bill a lifeline on Friday with a last-minute extension of their deadline. The mandate of the ad hoc committee set up in March last year to process the bill was due to expire on Friday. But the chairman, ANC MP Cecil Burgess, said at the last scheduled sitting that though he could not cite the rule making it possible, he had been assured that the speaker, Max Sisulu, would announce an extension before the current mandate ran out. He told reporters later the deadline had been extended to March 31.

A report on the management of acid mine drainage in Gauteng has been put to the cabinet but details of its recommendations will not be released until Water and Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa approves it. The report, driven by her department but drawn up by a team of experts, apparently seeks ways to draw private sector mining companies that are still operating in Gauteng into the process of extracting the acid mine water and cleansing it. The level of the underground acid water is now 500m below the surface, 50m higher than in the middle of 2010.