Despite the provisions of the Family Code, child marriages are on the rise in Morocco. The Moudawana raised the minimum marriage age from 14 to 18 and required a judge's approval for nuptials with a minor. Still, five years after the Family Code became law, 33,253 females below the age of 18 tied the knot.

The Socio-Economic Rights Institute (SERI) of South Africa is representing 71 people facing eviction from a temporary refugee shelter in Randfontein. The occupiers are all people displaced from their communities during the xenophobic attacks of May 2008. They were taken to the Reit Shelter and promised they would receive assistance to re-integrate into South African society or to resettle outside South Africa. The shelter failed to provide the assistance promised, despite being contractually obliged to do so. SERI is defending the occupiers against eviction and has brought a counter-application seeking an order compelling the shelter to comply with its contractual obligations.

Esperança Chidzinga lives in the rural town of Chicualacuala in Mozambique's Gaza province. Accessible only by a train that comes twice a week, the town is isolated and under-serviced. When Chidzinga was nine years old she went into the forest with school friends to gather wood for a party and she stepped on a landmine and lost a leg. Her life has never been the same. 'I was at the hospital and my father came to see me,' she said. 'When he left I tried to follow him but when I got off the bed I fell down. That's when I realised I had lost my leg.' Chicualacuala is a typical example of the many areas in Mozambique still affected by landmines laid during the country's civil war.

The extrajudicial killings that were carried out along Lang'ata Road by the Kenya Police indicates to all Kenyans that the death squads are now completely out of control. It is now clear to all that the Kenya Police have abandoned all pretext of any reform and are now operating totally outside the law.

'The Southern Sudan referendum allowed the free expression of the will of the people for self determination. Turnout was massive, in a peaceful environment, and administrative procedures met national legal requirements in an atmosphere of respect and cooperation. Though the counting and tabulation stages of the referendum have yet to be completed and the final results are still awaited, our observation showed that voter participation far exceeded the required 60 per cent threshold and indicated that the final official referendum results will show that people chose a peaceful secession.'

The Rotary Foundation is now accepting applications for the world-competitive Rotary Peace Fellowship. The fellowship provides academic and practical training to prepare scholars for leadership roles in solving conflicts around the world.

Many Malian farmers are boycotting cotton this year, instead planting cereals. Cotton isn’t edible, but observers say that the shift could weaken food security. Discouraged by falling prices for cotton, and poor administration at the state-owned Malian Textile Company (known by its French acronym, CDMT), many Malian farmers are reducing the area planted with cotton on their farms – or abandoning growing it altogether.

Campaign Against Arms Trade and The Corner House are challenging the blanket immunity from prosecution given by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) to BAE Systems as part of its February 2010 plea bargain settlement with the company. In exchange for securing this immunity, BAE pleaded guilty to a relatively minor accounting offence in its complex scheme of offshore companies used to pass and make payments relating to its supply of a radar system to Tanzania.

On 14 January 2011, Tunisian strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was forced from office, and by some accounts he thereby became the first political casualty of the age of Wikileaks and social media, states this article.

Cross-border illicit financial flows from developing countries are estimated to range from US $850 billion to US $1 trillion each year. Two thirds of these illicit flows are related to tax evasion and avoidance by multinational companies operating in the South. As a result of tax dodging, poor countries lose massive financial resources which, according to the OECD, are larger than the amount received from Official Development Assistance (ODA).

Such is the concern about the role the Ivoirian media are playing in ramping up the tension in Côte d’Ivoire that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recently warned that International Criminal Court (ICC) indictments could eventually be handed down on those inciting violence. Most of the Ivoirian media is deeply polarised. The state-run Radiotélévision Ivoirienne (RTI), the most widely accessed source of news in the country, is an unwavering champion of Laurent Gbagbo and a persistent vilifier of his internationally-backed rival claimant to the presidency, Alassane Ouattara.

After living abroad as refugees for years – in some cases decades – many of the half-million people who have returned to Burundi since 2002 are having to cope with a severe shortage of one of the tiny country’s most precious commodities: land. 'The issue of access and entitlement to arable land on which to undertake subsistence farming and of securing shelter [for the returnees] ... are among the most acute hurdles which continue to confront returnees,' Hugues van Brabandt, associate external affairs officer for the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, told IRIN.

A new campaign on the theme, 'Socially Responsible African Media' has been launched in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, by a group of trade unions fighting for the rights of journalists and other media workers in Africa. The group consisting of Federation of African Journalists, (FAJ), Uni Africa and their partners like the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and media-related groups across the continent are leading the campaign over a three-year period.

This paper, from the just-concluded Conference of the Democratic Left, presents a perspective and argument for organising the democratic left initiative as an anti-capitalist political front. It is anchored in the premise of maximising the unity of social and ideological forces against post-apartheid and global capitalism. To stimulate debate, discussion and resolution on the political form question for the democratic left initiative this document covers the following themes:
- A strategic approach to fronts;
- Learning lessons from the history of political fronts;
- The case for a United Democratic Left Front for South Africa;
- Key issues for a Democratic Left approach to building a political front through struggle.

Digital stories are powerful narratives combining images with first hand accounts of people most affected by the topic at hand, in this case the ongoing impact of landmines in post-conflict Mozambique. Since many of the most affected areas are away from urban centres, these views and voices are sometimes forgotten. Community Media for Development did four workshops in which participants from the community recorded and produced a series of personal narratives that were distributed widely to demonstrate the ongoing human impact of landmines.

The IIE Scholar Rescue Fund (SRF) is pleased to announce a call for applications for threatened academics whose lives and work are in danger in their home countries. Fellowships support temporary academic positions at safe universities and colleges anywhere in the world. Professors, researchers, and lecturers from any country or field may apply.

Within the framework of its strategy for building comparative knowledge on Africa produced from within the African continent, the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) invites proposals from researchers based in African universities and centres of research for the constitution of Comparative Research Networks (CRNs) to undertake studies on or around any of the themes identified as priority research themes within the framework of the CODESRIA strategic plan for the period 2007 – 2011.

Rwanda has made the protection of its remaining forests a priority, and set a target of increasing forest cover to 30 per cent by 2020 – a goal it seems set to achieve well ahead of schedule.
The country is still losing precious primary forest – the almost complete destruction of the Gishwati Forest in the northwest between by people displaced by the genocide is an example – but this is offset by the aggressive campaign against unsustainable use of forests while promoting tree-planting across the country.

In renewed demonstrations against Tunisia's government, thousands marched from Sidi Bouzid to downtown Tunis on Sunday (23 January), seeking the removal of Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi's interim administration. The 'Caravan of Liberation', which left Sidi Bouzid on Saturday, was just the latest in a wave of demonstrations protesting the continued presence of members of former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's regime.

Cameroon continues to arrest and prosecute individuals under a law that criminalizes same-sex sexual activity. This law has consequences for LGBT people beyond their unacceptable arrests and imprisonment. It drives inequality within the justice system and promotes violence within families and communities. To combat these violations, in November IGLHRC launched the report, 'Criminalizing Identities: Rights Abuses in Cameroon based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.' The report was a collaborative effort with Human Rights Watch and the Cameroonian LGBT organisations Alternatives-Cameroun and l’Association pour la Défense des Droits des Homosexuels.