In an Italian city a room full of people rose to their feet and applauded for five long minutes. No, it wasn’t the opening of the “La Scala” operatic season. It was the closing session of the heretofore unremarkable Committee on World Food Security (CFS) of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO)

Eleven years ago, Raloke Odetoyinbo had been married for two years and a month when she found out she was HIV positive. In that moment she thought she had lost her chance of ever having children because, she said, she believed that her child would be born HIV positive.

African women’s organizations at the national level have been mobilized to form National Working Groups to review their country’s progress in implementing the Beijing Platform for Action. We hope that in preparing for the Africa Regional meeting on Beijing +15 for Member States in November 2009, and for the NGO Forum and CSW 54 in 2010, each National Working Group will have a document identifying 12 key accomplishments that have been made since Beijing + 10 Review process in 2004, and 12 key areas where critical gaps remain that governments must commit to address.

Returning from a country mission in Brazil, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Prof. Olivier De Schutter, presented in New York his report on the relationships between intellectual property (IP) rights and the right to food. Summarizing his analysis and recommendations, he called Members of the U.N. General Assembly to go towards seed policies that encourage innovation, promote food security and enhance agrobiodiversity at the same time.

The rift between Zimbabwe’s coalition parties has spilled into the country’s polarised parliament after legislators from President Robert Mugabe’s party walked out protesting against critics of the veteran leader. Zimbabwe was plunged into a fresh crisis last week after Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change started boycotting cabinet and council of ministers meetings.

On 08 October 2009, the Constitutional Court handed down its first water rights judgment. The case – Mazibuko & Others v City of Johannesburg & Others – was brought by five impoverished residents in Phiri, Soweto, on behalf of themselves, all similarly-situated residents and everyone in the public interest. The applicants challenged the City’s free basic water policy for being insufficient to meet the basic needs of large, poor, multi-dwelling households. T

The Poverty Related Diseases College coordinated by the University of Yaounde I is pleased to announce its first call for the International advanced Training Programme in Biomedicine and Development. The programme bridges the gap between the biological sciences, health and development in Africa by training scientists to perform research on diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis and applying it to sustainable development. The deadline for applications is November 15th, 2009.

The security situation in Burundi improved markedly after the last rebel group in the country laid down its arms at the end of 2008, and no new conflict-induced displacement was reported in 2009. However, up to 100,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) remain in sites in northern and central Burundi.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has pledged full United Nations support to help Africa address the needs of some 14 million refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) driven from their homes by fighting and prevent the conflicts that caused their plight.

Religious leaders have softened up their decision against general condom use in Malawi. Government officials see it as positive news in the fight against HIV/AID. Media reports say condom use in the southern African country remains below the levels needed to halt the spread of the disease.

The priority for AIDS virologists in coming months is to find out exactly how the Thailand vaccine, which gave 30 percent protection against HIV, worked. This was the urging of one of the world’s greatest AIDS researchers, Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), at the close of the Paris AIDS Vaccine Conference.

More than 30,000 Angolans are stranded in transit camps after being abruptly deported from the Democratic Republic of Congo and there are growing fears of a cholera outbreak as the rainy season begins.?? The families - around two thirds of whom had official refugee status in DRC - were booted out earlier this month in retaliation for Angola expelling thousands of Congolese migrants in recent years.

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The Ethiopian government has asked the international community for emergency food aid for 6.2 million people. The request came at a meeting of donors to discuss the impact of a prolonged drought affecting parts of East Africa.

The number of Ethiopians needing emergency food aid has climbed by over one million from last year's figure, the government has announced. According to the revised 2009 humanitarian appeal for October and December, issued by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MoARD), the number of people in need of emergency assistance has now reached 6.2 million from 4.9 million last year.

While U.S. attention is fixed on Afghanistan’s contested elections and the need to insure a democratic process, in another part of the world, democracy has been under siege at the ballot box with terrible consequences. African elections have devolved into rituals of absurdity. In the last five years we have witnessed attacks on democracy in Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria and Zimbabwe.

Climate change will lead to ever greater numbers of people being uprooted in Africa, the top United Nations humanitarian official said today, calling for enhanced and swift actions to reduce disaster risk and step up mitigation.

Children in the Central African Republic (CAR) are paying a heavy price for the troubles faced by the country, and their plight could worsen without urgent international support, said a senior official with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

The international community is failing over 1.5 million internally displaced persons in Somalia at a time when the humanitarian crisis is deepening, Walter Kaelin, the Representative of the UN Secretary General on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons, said at the end of his mission to Somalia in Nairobi, Kenya.

Reports that China is financing investments to the tune of $7bn in military-ruled Guinea in exchange for access to its resources have re-ignited western fears about Chinese activities in Africa. Portrayed as a callous grab for resources that ignores the recent killing of Guinean opposition protesters by government troops, closer analysis of the situation reveals as much about foreign perceptions of China in Africa as its does about one of the continent's most significant economic relationships.