Key stakeholders meeting on 14 June to discuss the future of Dadaab refugee camp in eastern Kenya acknowledge that there are tough choices ahead, but no agreed way forward. The panel discussion, entitled 'Dadaab 20 years on: what next?', was organized by NGO Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Nairobi, and included government officials, UN agencies, NGOs and representatives from Dadaab's refugee community. Dadaab, originally built to house 90,000 refugees, currently hosts close to 500,000.

Libya's government has sent troops to put an end to six days of clashes between rival armed groups in the west of the country. The fighting, which left least 16 people killed and scores of others injured, is the latest episode of instability eight months since the collapse of Muammar Gaddafi's regime after a months-long conflict. As it seeks to impose its authority on a fractious country, Libya's new leadership on Saturday called for an immediate ceasefire in the fighting south of the capital Tripoli.

The public debt crisis that has crippled the abilities of the Eurozone states is evolving into a banking crisis with negative ramifications worldwide, states this article from 'In such a case, the political turmoil that would ensue - along with the proliferation of conflicts, ethnic animosities and revolts - would potentially bring about the most radical transformation of the established political order that the world has seen since the 1940s. In the case of such a critical circumstances, policy makers would seek out desperate solutions, sacrificing less valuable parts of the system for the survival of the rest, implementing massive debt relief programs and considerable changes in political management practices in the Eurozone as well as globally.'

Mauritanian salafists cannot agree on whether to follow their Maghreb neighbours into the political arena or reject democracy as an invention of infidels. The issue has led to cracks in the movement, with extreme adherents of the salafist current vowing to mobilise against the proposal from their more moderate peers.

The Worldwatch Institute has announced the launch of the much anticipated 2012 REN21 Renewables Global Status Report (GSR). GSR 2012 details worldwide developments in the renewable energy sector through 2011. The report highlights a number of key developments, including market and industry trends, investment flows, the shifting policy landscape, advancements in rural renewable energy deployment, and the evolving synergy between renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Israel launched a high-profile deportation drive against African migrants on Sunday 17 June with an airlift of South Sudanese whose government said they would be welcomed back as economic assets. The planned weekly repatriation flights from Tel Aviv to Juba have been played up by the Israeli government amid uncertainty as to how it might deal with much greater migrant influxes from Sudan, a hostile country, and war-ravaged Eritrea.

The global financial crisis of 2008/09 has not sent migrant workers streaming back home, despite worsening employment prospects and anti-immigration rhetoric in some destination countries, says a new book on migration and remittances, published by the World Bank. In fact, migrants may have mitigated some of the pain of the crisis as they tend to work for lower wages, receive fewer benefits and rely relatively little on the state, says the ‘Migration and Remittances during the Global Financial Crisis and Beyond’ book.

Negotiations for Rio+20 have been fraught with attempts to take 'people' and social development out of the equation and lay the solutions at the altar of market driven forces through the 'green economy.' For women and young people, this means that fundamental issues affecting them, such as their right to health and education, are in danger of being sidelined, says this article.

A petition backed by over 50 NGOs and charging Uganda's government with failing to prevent the deaths of expectant mothers was thrown out by the constitutional court on 5 June, but the petition’s supporters plan to appeal. The constitutional court argued that upholding the petition, which urges the government to boost health services, would have forced judges to wade into a political issue that was outside their jurisdiction. However, the petitioners said the court relied on outdated international law in making its decision and overlooked its constitutional obligation to protect Uganda’s mothers.

The United States military is expanding a secret network of air bases across Africa in order to spy on al-Qaeda and other such groups, a US newspaper said. The surveillance is carried out by small, unmarked turboprop planes with hidden state-of-the-art sensors that fly thousands of kilometres between air bases and bush landing strips across the vast continent, the Washington Post reported.

To what extent is China investing in experimental research? Which African countries have the most out-of-school children? How have graduation rates for girls in Latin America changed over time? The new UNESCO eAtlas series provides users with a powerful new tool to visualize data on critical policymaking issues in the field of education as well as science and technology. The three subjects covered are research and experimental development, out-of-school children and gender equality in education - an online companion to the print edition of the World Atlas of Gender Equality in Education.

In the latest of the Economic Justice Network's campaign to sensitize Ghanaians to why the Economic Partnership Agreements are bad for Ghana, here are two recordings of interviews that took place on EPAs. One discusses EPAs and Ghana's fuel subsidy and the other a 'face-off' with EU Ambassador to Ghana Claude Maerten.

A High Court judge claims he is ‘a bit constrained for time’ to deal with an urgent bail application by 29 MDC-T activists facing charges of killing a policeman. Asked by defence lawyers when he was going to deal with the bail application Justice Bhunu claimed he had a heavy workload and had not got around to dealing with the matter. This is despite the fact that the majority of activists charged in the case have been in custody for more than a year without trial.

ARTICLE 19 has welcomed the tabling of a proposed law on Internal Displacement for discussion in the Kenyan parliament and calls for its swift adoption by the Parliament, at a time when Kenya is heading into another election period. The Internally Displaced Persons Bill 2012, tabled by the Chairperson of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Resettlement, Hon Ekwee Ethuro on 13th June 2012, was developed under the leadership of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Resettlement. It was reviewed for consistency with relevant instruments and standards during a meeting of all major stakeholders including ARTICLE 19, UNHCR, the Refugee Consortium of Kenya (RCK), the Kenya National Human Rights Commission (KNHCR) and the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) in Mombasa in November 2011.

The UN Web TV Channel is available 24 hours a day with selected live programming of United Nations meetings and events as well as with pre-recorded video features and documentaries on various global issues. Videos for the Rio+20 event are available from the site.

Transparency International, the anti-corruption organisation, calls for the government of Gabon to uphold civil society’s right to peaceful activism following the detention last week of more than 40 people, including Grégory Ngbwa Mintsa, the 2010 recipient of the Transparency International Integrity Award. The civil society activists, who were taken into custody on 8 June and later released, were planning an alternative forum to a government-sponsored New York Forum Africa, a regional event to promote Gabon. The activists wanted to highlight the challenges ordinary citizens face in Gabon. Freedom of expression and the space for a vibrant civil society are essential in any country to ensure a government is accountable to its people.

An al-Shabab suicide bomber has rammed a vehicle packed with explosives into the gate of a Somali government base in Afgoye, west of Mogadishu, the capital, causing casualties. Al-Shabab said its suicide bomber had 'killed dozens' in Saturday's attack, while the police said the blast had only wounded three soldiers. The figures could not be independently verified. Many parties in the Somalia conflict tend to exaggerate enemy losses and minimise their own.

The European Parliament sent a bold message to the world last week with its comprehensive and ambitious resolution to put an end to the illicit global arms trade. But analysts regret the new resolution ignores several key factors, such as the impact of the arms trade on the socio-economic development of recipient countries, and the involvement of civil society in future negotiations. Next month member states will gather at the United Nations headquarters in New York to negotiate the first binding Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), a potentially ground-breaking humanitarian treaty regulating international trade in conventional weapons. Currently, there is no universal set of rules controlling the global arms trade.

Amid continuing instability and bursts of fighting in eastern Congo, civilians keep crossing into Rwanda - where the number of arrivals since late April has passed 10,000 - and south-west Uganda. The 10,000 figure was reached last weekend and the number of Congolese refugees registered at the crowded Nkamira Transit Camp had risen to 11,339. In recent days a daily average of about 230 arrivals have been recorded at Nkamira, which lies some 20 kilometres from the Goma-Gisenyi crossing with Democratic Republic of the Congo's North Kivu province.

There was a dramatic turn this week in the ongoing row between Defence Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa and Finance Minister Tendai Biti, who revealed that the Public Service Commission had illegally recruited 10,000 new staff members and among them were 4,600 soldiers. The revelation was surprising because the defence ministry had recently demanded $2.5 million from the treasury, insisting the funds were needed to feed soldiers who are going hungry in the barracks and to pay for an additional 5,000 new recruits. Mnangagwa went as far as threatening violence, vowing to send army generals to Biti’s offices.