Human rights activists and journalists in Ghana on August 3, 2009 converged at the Ghana International Press Centre in Accra for a public forum to expose the Ghanaian public to the political situation in Niger which has brought in its wake dire consequences for democratic institutions in the country including the media. The forum on the theme “Niger-Democracy Under Threat” was aimed at reminding the public of the need to prevent another violent conflict in West Africa, which has in the last decade experienced a number of civil wars with devastating humanitarian consequences.

From 13 to 17 November 2009 hundreds of representatives from civil society, nongovernmental and people’s movements of small scale food providers, Indigenous
Peoples, food and rural workers, youth, women and food insecure city dwellers will meet in Rome to share and articulate their findings, proposals and actions at local, regional and global levels. The timing and location are designed to facilitate interaction with the 2009 FAO World Food Summit and to bring the voices and the lessons of people’s organizations to the ears of the Heads of State and Governments and to the international institutions gathered to discuss how to deal with an increasingly hungry world.

Justice Emmanuel Fagbenle, sitting at Gambia's High Court, has pronounced heavy fines and imprisonment against six journalists, including executive members of the Gambian Press Union (GPU), who were charged with criminal libel and defamation of President Yahya Jammeh.

Police have arrested four student leaders after a foiled protest at Zimbabwe's main university over new tuition fees, a human rights group said Thursday. "Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) confirm the arrest and detention of four representatives of the Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU) at the University of Zimbabwe," the group said in a statement.

Six Botswana bushmen found guilty of hunting without a permit on their ancestral land have been set free with a caution, a lobby group says. Survival International said the "attempt by the Botswana government to punish Bushmen for hunting to feed their families has backfired". The San bushmen of the Kalahari have faced years of legal rows for the right to live on their ancestral lands.

Zimbabwe has failed to remove its armed forces from the diamond fields in Marange and to end related human rights abuses there, Human Rights Watch has said. As a result, the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) should suspend Zimbabwe immediately. The KPCS, an international group governing the global diamond industry, sent a review mission to Marange in late June 2009 to assess Zimbabwe's compliance with the group's standards, which require diamonds to be lawfully mined, documented, and exported by participant countries.

Access to food for the people of Madagascar remains unreliable because of the impact of natural disasters, which routinely strike the island State, and continuing political tensions, a United Nations report has warned. The joint Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) mission tasked with assessing crop and food security in Madagascar underscored the effect a run of cyclones on the east coast in 2008-2009 and several years of drought in the south has had on the country’s crops.

The Director is a part of a three-person team with the Legal Director and the Administrative Coordinator to ensure that all functions of the Project are met. The Director coordinates the work of a Community Coordinator, two psychosocial workers, 10 legal interns, and 5 translators. The responsibilities are heavy, the environment dynamic, and attentive service requires a commitment to the project. The ideal candidate would be both capable and enthusiastic about the potential for high impact in the formation of a new refugee service-providing organization.

Africa’s position at climate change negotiations is unified and strong, and in fact, as a region, Africa is “probably the most unified”, Department of Environmental Affairs International Cooperation DDG Alf Wills has said. Wills said that developing countries, in general, are unified on the science of climate change. He agrees that the historical responsibility of climate change lies with the developed world, but in terms of the finer details and priority areas of focus, developing countries remain divided.

Crouched on a low wooden stool in front of his mud hut in the village of Pangar, Alain Selembe puffs away at his clay pipe, his gaze lost in the surrounding forest, quite oblivious to the noise made by his two playing daughters. All he hears is the rumbling of bulldozers opening up a 30 kilometre road from Deng Deng village to the confluence of the Lom and Pangar rivers, where the government plans to construct a new dam.

Homosexuals in Burundi say that their lives have been marked with increased discrimination and fear following the East African country’s move to ban homosexual practices. Burundi officially passed the law criminalizing homosexuality in April this year. The interviews conducted by the advocacy group Human Rights Watch documents the difficulties of being a gay or lesbian in Burundi, including instances of sexual violence, family rejection, police intimidation, and now the daily possibility of imprisonment.

Laboratories from 13 African countries have joined a scheme to improve diagnostic capacity on the continent. The scheme, to be overseen by the WHO Regional Office for Africa and the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, was announced in Kigali, Rwanda on 27 July.

Thousands of people took to the streets of Maputo, capital of Mozambique, and the country's second city, Beira this week, to protest the government's closure of day care hospitals for HIV-positive patients. In Maputo, activists handed Health Minister Paulo Ivo Garrido a memorandum slamming the decision, which they said was a setback in the national response to the epidemic. An estimated 16 percent of Mozambique's 21 million people are living with the virus.

Women are underrepresented in Southern Africa media houses; they hit the ‘glass ceiling’ at senior management and their representation wanes in top decision-making positions. Media women are more likely to be assigned to “soft beats”; to be on non-permanent contracts and to earn less, on average, than men. These are just but some of the findings of the Glass Ceilings: Women and men in Southern African media.

The Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) is seeking to recruit a high calibre, results-oriented and dedicated professional to join its dynamic team at its Headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya. Reporting to the Executive Director, the Senior Finance & Administration Officer will be in charge of the financial management, human resource, and administration functions of FAWE’s Regional Secretariat. S/he is expected to develop and maintain functional and efficient systems, processes, and procedures in the three areas of responsibility.

Health care practitioners are now performing Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in a process known as medicalization, which tends to reinforce and legitimize FGM, hence hindering the global effort towards its abandonment, a recent study claims. The joint research study by United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and United Nations Children's Fund {UNICEF} has however elicited diverse reactions from Kenyan medical professionals, with some stating that they were yet to catch any medical personnel carrying out FGM.

Niger's President Mamadou Tandja, 71, is claiming victory in a referendum he called to change the constitution and run for a third term in office. Correspondents in the capital, Niamey, say giant posters have gone up in the city bearing a message of thanks to voters from Mr Tandja.

Madagascar's army-backed leader is in Mozambique for emergency talks with three of his predecessors. The Indian Ocean island has been in a state of crisis since Andry Rajoelina forced the elected president, Marc Ravalomanana, to flee in March. The African Union called the takeover a coup and foreign aid has been frozen.

More than 4,000 prisoners facing execution in Kenya had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment on Monday in the largest commutation in history, news sources reported. There have been no executions carried out in Kenya for 22 years. In a statement broadcast on the state-owned radio Kenya Broadcasting Corporation, President Mwai Kibaki said that an “extended stay on death row causes undue mental anguish and suffering, psychological trauma, anxiety, while it may as well constitute inhuman treatment.”

With reports of widespread rape and other atrocities pouring in from the eastern Kivu provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the United Nations mission there has sent some 40 teams to the region over the past six months to bolster the protection of civilians. By identifying early warning signs of potential threats to civilians the joint UN teams, which include child protection, civil affairs and public information officers, allow peacekeepers to react rapidly to counter them, the mission known as MONUC has said.