The UN Security Council has called for the holding of credible presidential elections in Côte d’Ivoire at the earliest date possible, after the much-delayed polls were recently postponed again.

WOZA leaders, Jenni Williams and Magodonga Mahlangu, appeared in the Bulawayo Magistrate's Court this week as instructed only to be informed that their court record file, which apparently is kept separate for security reasons, was not accessible.

South African health care professionals are endangering the health of the country's large foreign population by routinely denying health care and treatment to thousands of asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants, Human Rights Watch has said in a report.

A reform programme designed to formalise customary land rights in Côte d’Ivoire may compromise durable solutions for internally displaced persons (IDPs) if their specific needs are not taken into account, according to a new report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC.

Amnesty International exposed the shocking level of unlawful police killings in Nigeria in a new report. “The Nigerian police are responsible for hundreds of unlawful killings every year,” said Erwin van der Borght, Director of Amnesty International’s Africa Programme.

There has been renewed outrage over the unity government’s expenditure after it was revealed last week that it is spending more of the country’s money on travel than on healthcare.

On the 30th anniversary of the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the regional Coalition for 'Equality without reservation' launched a call to heads of state of Arab countries to promote the equality and citizenship of Arab women.

Nigerian anti-corruption officials have raided a meeting of opposition leaders and arrested Attahiru Bafarawa, who ran for president in 2007. The EFCC accuses him of involvement in a 6bn naira ($40m) fraud from his time as governor of Sokoto State.

This paper summarises the key issues that need to be resolved if the Copenhagen Climate Conference is to succeed. They include the future of the Kyoto Protocol, the global climate regime, the emission cuts of developed countries, the attempts to shift responsibiity to developing countries, finance and technology for developing countries, and the danger of climate trade protectionism.

Some 4.8 million Ethiopians will require emergency food and related aid costing $270 million for the first six months of 2010 in a country already plagued by prolonged drought and crop failure, according to newly released United Nations estimates.

The United Nations official leading efforts to tackle malaria is visiting Nigeria and Kenya, the two nations which together account for one third of the estimated 1 million deaths worldwide from the deadly disease.

President Jose Eduardo dos Santos was re-elected head of Angola's ruling MPLA party on Wednesday, a move that signals the 67-year old leader plans to extend his three-decade long rule of one of Africa's top oil producers.

The battle over who will eventually succeed 85-year-old President Robert Mugabe as party leader threatens the future of his long-ruling Zanu PF but analysts say an immediate split is unlikely at a congress which began this week.

Alleged plotters who tried to kill Guinea's junta leader Capt Moussa Dadis Camara are being "hunted down" and arrested, the military government says. Junta spokesman Idrissa Cherif told the BBC more than 60 people had been held over last week's assassination attempt.

A landmark UN treaty on women’s rights, which will be 30 years old next week, is in danger of being politically undermined by a slew of reservations by 22 countries seeking exemptions from some of the convention’s legal obligations.

Global food prices are on the ascent again with the FAO Food Price Index – a food basket composed of cereals, oilseeds, dairy, meat and sugar – registering four straight monthly rises.

Progress in bringing stability to the war-wracked east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is mixed, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says in a new report, noting the heavy humanitarian toll wrought by a military operation to flush out a notorious ethnic Hutu militia.

Following this year’s theme for Worlds Aids day which calls for Universal Access and Human Rights, Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) has demanded non discriminatory HIVand Aids approaches to health care for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) people in Uganda.

In the year since the start of the first trial at the international war crimes court involving an alleged Congolese warlord, rape on a mass scale has continued unabated in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The UN has warned that the recent kidnapping of two aid workers in the northeastern town of Birao in Central African Republic will have a highly damaging impact on humanitarian activities in the remote, impoverished Vakaga region.