For the first time and more than twenty years after the official recognition of their rights, children are provided with the possibility to access justice at the international level through a newly adopted complaints procedure. For this procedure to become a tangible reality for child victims, States need to sign and ratify the new Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child before it can enter into force and display its effects. The official UN signing ceremony opening the Protocol for signature and ratification took place 28 February 2012, during the UN Human Rights Council session in Geneva.

After decades of producing sharply worded critiques of the former regime, Om Zied isn't quieting down in the new Tunisia, or even dulling her verbal blade. 'Cavemen' is the word she used on the radio a couple of months ago to describe the ultra-conservative Salafists at the University of Manouba, in a suburb of Tunis. Salafists were pressuring administrators to permit women to wear the niqab, a full face veil, to classes. During the same radio interview the self-avowed secularist argued that few Islamists had ever tried to defend the rights of veiled women under the regime of the ousted president, Ben Ali.

A Zimbabwean minister launched a verbal attack on Impala Platinum Chief Executive David Brown, saying he was 'sick and tired' of the mining group's failure to comply with local black ownership laws. Implats is the biggest foreign investor in Zimbabwe's mining sector and has become the prime target of a government drive to get all outside companies to hand over majority stakes in their local operations to black Zimbabwean investors.

South Sudan’s plan to start collecting some 20,000 weapons from civilians in Jonglei state in March, by force if necessary, is likely to worsen the volatile security situation there and complicate efforts to deliver essential humanitarian aid, the UN and several analysts have warned. 'Disarmament efforts could contribute to increasing tensions in an already tense environment,' the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a 23 February bulletin. 'Jonglei’s rival communities are wary of relinquishing their weapons, regardless of government promises to carry out disarmament simultaneously in each area,' it added.

Shortly after Michel Sidibe became executive director of the United Nations’ AIDS prevention agency, a court in Senegal sentenced nine gay men, all AIDS educators, to eight years in prison for 'unnatural acts'. Sidibe flew to Senegal to ask its aging president, Abdoulaye Wade, to pardon the men. Sidibe, the son of a Muslim politician from Mali and a white French Catholic, asked the president – who is married to a white Frenchwoman – if he had ever suffered discrimination. 'Oh, Sidibe, you have no idea,' came the reply. 'And for not marrying a Muslim.' 'Then, Uncle,' Sidibe said, 'why do you accept that men here are put in jail for eight years just for being gay?'

An influx of refugees fleeing a mix of increased post-election related violence and continued militia activity in parts of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is stretching the capacity of refugee camps in western Uganda to host them, say officials. 'We are kind of overwhelmed; there are many Congolese pouring and crossing into Uganda daily,' Stephen Malinga, Uganda’s Minister for Relief, Disaster Preparedness and Refugees, told IRIN. 'So far, we have received about 3,700 new arrivals into the country through three western Uganda border points; we expect many more to come.'

Mothers, babies and newly diagnosed HIV patients are receiving more of the services they need but progress comes at a cost, according to a new report that predicts a funding shortfall for HIV treatment in South Africa. On 23 February, the Health Systems Trust released the latest versions of its annual District Health Barometer and South African Health Review. Although in its sixth year of publication, this year's barometer is the first to include data on early infant HIV testing for babies born to HIV-positive mothers and shows that about half of all babies born to HIV-positive mothers are now being tested for the virus at six weeks of age, an important step to ensuring they access the early HIV treatment recommended for all children younger than one under national guidelines.

Environmental groups in Côte d’Ivoire say the illegal logging and sale of wood from the African gum tree is exposing the north of the country to the encroaching desert. The NGOs are calling on the authorities to take firmer action against the illicit timber traders – who allegedly include government officials. The warning comes as a scandal centring on the seizure of 30 containers of wood sized at two of the country’s ports rocks the Ministry of Water and Forestry.

Tunis judge Faouzi Jebali has granted Nasreddine Ben Saida, the publisher of the daily Attounissia, a provisional release and postponed his trial until 8 March. Ben Saida, who went on hunger strike, was held for more than a week for publishing a photo of a football player embracing a naked model.

Sudan has threatened military action against the neighbouring state of South Sudan, accusing its troops of involvement in rebel attacks along the border. The Sudanese foreign ministry, in a statement, said the government would file a complaint with the UN Security Council and the African Union after attacks on Sunday in which Sudanese rebels said they killed 150 government soldiers along the disputed border.

Ten women have been arrested in Cameroon on suspicion of being lesbians. They have been detained in Ambam, some 190 miles south of the capital of Yaounde, until they go on trial, Cameroon Radio Television reported. Consensual same-gender sex is considered criminal in the West African nation and punishable by a jail sentence from six months to five years and a fine.

Farmers’ organisations in the Democratic Republic of Congo say the country’s new Agriculture Law - enacted last December - could lead to many smallholder farmers losing their land. 'We have launched a major appeal to the government to modify the law,' Paluku Mivimba, president of FOPAC, the Congo Federation of Smallholder Farmer Organisations, told IPS. 'Several articles of this law create insecurity of tenure for peasant farmers because they eliminate the possibility of peasant farmers becoming owners of land they have been cultivating for many years,' said Mivimba, who is also the head of the federation’s lobbying unit.

Last year alone, 376,000 people with HIV started antiretroviral medication - over 100 000 more than the previous year. Sadly, during that same year up to 450 000 people were infected with HIV, mostly due to 'the lack of a co-ordinated and effective prevention response'. These are some of the issues raised by the Health Systems Trust’s SA Health Review 2011, which was launched recently in Pretoria.

The Kenyan government's recent failure to adequately treat a patient with extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) has some civil society organizations questioning whether the country's TB programme is equipped to diagnose and treat such patients. In October 2011, an HIV-positive Nairobi woman was diagnosed with XDR-TB while receiving her treatment at the Kenyatta National Hospital for multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB). Treatment was provided by the hospital; however, she was prescribed three additional medicines that she had to buy herself, to supplement the regimen.

Mass incarceration has created an underclass of Black US citizens with fewer rights and more bitter futures than the rest of America.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is calling for a global coalition against censorship at a time when repressive governments, 'militants' and criminal groups around the world are controlling information to maintain their grip on power. 'There is a collective interest in ensuring that information flows freely...An attack on an Egyptian, Pakistani, or Mexican journalist inhibits the ability of people around the world to receive the information that journalist would have provided,' CPJ executive director Joel Simon said in CPJ's annual report, Attacks on the Press, launched on 21 February.

The London Conference on Somalia ended with a seven-point plan aimed at boosting humanitarian aid and support for African Union troops, and tougher action on piracy, but 'fell short on the measures required to address the risks faced by civilians', said Amnesty International. 'The recent surge in military operations increases civilians’ vulnerability to attacks and displacement, and brings more arms into a country already awash with weapons,' said Benedicte Goderiaux, Amnesty International’s Somalia researcher.

The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) has joined dozens of sites and organisations in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect-IP Act (PIPA). These two US bills, if passed, represent an unprecedented threat to the open internet as we know it, with impacts felt far beyond the borders of the United States. APC believes the internet is a global public good and is joining today’s protest in solidarity with those who fight to uphold internet-related human rights.

Officials say they will not rule out using force to regain control of Bani Walid after it was recently taken over by forces loyal to the deposed Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi. Bani Walid, south of the capital Tripoli, was considered a Gaddafi stronghold during the revolution and was supposedly 'liberated' by revolutionary fighters four months ago. But now they say their families have been forced out.

In this article from the Peace and Conflict Monitor, Vital Nshimirimana discusses the transitional justice process as planned by the government of Burundi for 2012. He argues that issues including ongoing insecurity, human rights abuses, lack of dialogue and trust among social partners, as well as lack of rule of law will undermine the process.