Several years ago, Lakes Kamnarok and Ol Bollosat in Kenya were vibrant water bodies that supported and shaped the ecosystems around them. But today they are shells of their former selves, due to heavy siltation caused by human activities. 'Siltation is still happening, the lake is drying up and this is threatening Lake Kamnarok and the wildlife with extinction, besides affecting the lives of people around it,' Elijah Chemitei, senior warden in Baringo County, in the Rift Valley Province, told IPS. 'Much of it is caused by upstream activities like tree-felling and charcoal-burning, agricultural activities, grazing and sand collection.'

A philosopher accused of inciting mass murder in Rwanda will remain in detention until a hearing that may put an end to his 19 years in Canada – or may keep him here for months. The order by the Immigration and Refugee Board keeping Léon Mugesera in custody cleared up a long weekend of confusion about the next steps in the long-running case.

The deaths of tens of thousands of people during the drought in east Africa could have been avoided if the international community, donor governments and humanitarian agencies had responded earlier and more swiftly to clear warning signs that a disaster was in the making, according to a new report.

A security guard employed at the late General Solomon Mujuru’s farm, Clemence Runhare, stunned a court when he said he heard what sounded like gunfire two hours before he was alerted to a fire that killed the former army commander in August last year. Runhare was testifying at the Harare Magistrates’ Court on the first day of the inquest into the death of Zimbabwe’s most decorated commander. He also told the inquest, presided over by regional magistrate Walter Chikwanha, Gen Mujuru was in the company of an unidentified male passenger when he arrived at his Alamein Farm in Beatrice around 8pm on 15 August. No other human remains were found at the house when Gen Mujuru’s remains were retrieved.

A partnership of humanitarian organizations working with community volunteers in South Kivu, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), has helped demobilize thousands of children formerly associated with armed groups in the province, says the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF). At least 33,000 children have been demobilized across the country with UNICEF's assistance since 2004, according to Alessandra Dentice, UNICEF's chief of child protection in the DRC.

Digital migration offers many benefits. However, it should be understood that these benefits will not be uniformly distributed without government intervention and civil society participation in the process. 'The challenges of the digital transition are both cultural and social,' said one stakeholder. 'Consideration should be given to the danger of privatisation and the audiovisual content of telecommunications on the national level, as this falls under national sovereignty. The digital dividends garnered by the digital transition are a common good, an important resource, the destination and use of which require vigilance.'

Often, victims of corruption find it difficult to step forward and report, particularly citizens in countries where infrastructure, public transport or uneasy internet access means they have to travel far from their home towns to make a report. Transparency International’s Legal Advice Centres are trying to bridge this gap by creating district and mobile centres to support citizens in rural areas and remote regions to make people aware of their rights and step forward to complain about corruption. District centres offer citizens a more accessible and confidential access to support, legal advice and follow-up on the corruption issues that affect their communities, with a supportive staff and in a trustworthy environment.

Within the past two weeks, two independent and opposition newspapers, Alwan and Rai al-Shaab, have been closed by security forces without explanation. 'These latest two newspaper closures show the government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has yet to overcome his chronically repressive instincts aimed at silencing the media,” Reporters Without Borders said.'

Security forces in Kenya are on high alert ahead of a decision by the International Criminal Court on whether to try senior government officials for masterminding violence in 2007-8 which killed 1,200 people, the Daily Nation reports. The ICC’s verdict is likely to have a significant political impact in Kenya as both men plan to vie for the presidency in the next election, which could be as soon as August. The so-called Ocampo Six are accused of murder, forceful displacement of people, torture and rape. The ICC will deliver its ruling on 23 January.

Over the last 20 years, there has been a radical shift in public perceptions of and political reactions to asylum seekers in democratic states across the world. As numbers of asylum seekers have risen, at times dramatically, governments of all political persuasions have implemented restrictionist policies designed to prevent and deter individuals from seeking asylum. This political and conceptual transformation has been particularly marked in the United Kingdom. This paper seeks to examine the development of this restrictionist trend by exploring the conceptual foundations of New Labour’s asylum policies.

The Association for Political Prisoners has demanded that Egypt’s incoming parliament push for the release of all 46 political prisoners still languishing in jail from the days of the ousted Mubarak regime. The first session of Egypt’s first post-Mubarak parliament is scheduled to convene on 23 January. Under the Mubarak regime, which was overthrown in the wake of last year’s Tahrir Square uprising, tens of thousands of Egyptians were detained for political reasons.

A group of vendors in Malawi's capital Lilongwe on Tuesday 17 January went berserk and started stripping naked women wearing trousers and miniskirts claiming they had President Bingu wa Mutharika’s consent to do so. It is said that President Bingu wa Mutharika on 15 January raised concerns on the way women were dressing singling those wearing miniskirts and trousers.

Brazil, for decades a source of migrants to the United States and Europe, is now facing its own humanitarian challenge: applying the international solidarity it trumpets to the Haitians who are arriving in the thousands, in search of a better life. Drawn by the economic boom in Brazil, now the world's sixth largest economy, and the major infrastructure works in preparation for the 2014 football World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games to be hosted by Rio de Janeiro, some 5,000 Haitians have flocked to this country since the earthquake, according to the Institute of Migration and Human Rights.

A group of young scientists meeting on the sidelines of COP17, held in Durban, South Africa last year, has resolved to mobilise African young scientists and youth within and outside Africa to promote the role of African indigenous knowledge systems in climate change adaptation and mitigation through
research and community engagement.

This report from the Hunger Safety Net Programme Secretariat (HNSP) defines the behavior of HNSP beneficiaries receiving cash transfers in coping with and overcoming the challenges of extreme poverty magnified by shocks of environmental extremities of drought, famine, floods and socio-economic marginalisation. Further, it documents how some beneficiaries have been able to build some form of stable livelihoods (a desired knock on effect) using the cash transfers and in the context of the three year prolonged drought.

In January 2011, Abyei’s residents were supposed to vote in a referendum to determine whether they wanted Abyei to remain in Sudan, or join what is now the independent nation of South Sudan. The Government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) failed to organise the referendum due to a dispute over who was eligible to vote. The past year has seen the worst violence in Abyei since the second civil war, with a series of attacks by militias, backed by the Government of Sudan, culminating in a full-scale invasion of the territory by Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) in May 2011. Around 110, 000 Ngok Dinka residents fled the area, and have yet to return. It is now just over a year since Abyei’s aborted referendum, and there is little prospect of a resolution in the near future, says a report from the Small Arms Survey.

Kenya's High Court has ruled that the country's next presidential and parliamentary elections should be held in March 2013 and not in August, unless the ruling coalition collapses. The east African country's next election will come under intense scrutiny because it will be the first under a new constitution, and the first since the 2007 poll that gave rise to fighting in which more than 1,220 people were killed. The government had proposed amending the constitution to delay the vote to December because of logistical problems, prompting petitioners to ask the High Court for a ruling.

The African Union (AU) has unveiled an ambitious wish-list of priorities for Africa that would give the continent a stronger global voice, boost democracy and encourage peace and security. AU Ambassador to the United States, Amina Ali of Tanzania, presented the list of top priorities at a conference on 11 January held at Washington think-tank, the Brookings Institution. Among them were the regulars - peace and security, enhanced democracy and good governance – as well as improved regional trade and greater involvement of the continent’s large diaspora in African affairs.

A number of South African social movements issued statements following the arrest of Ayanda Kota from the Unemployed People's Movement (UPM) and reports that he had been assaulted while in police custody. Kota has now been released, but statements about his arrest made by the UPM, the Democratic Left Front and the Mandela Park Backyarder's can be read from the Abahlali baseMjondolo website.

Some 17 erstwhile public firms that were privatised under a plan initiated in 1993 in a bid to revamp production have so far been shut down after failing to deliver, a report released recently by a technical committee has revealed. The government had at that time decided to sell the wobbling public companies to private investors who, it was presumed, could revive them following the State’s lack of capacity to run them. According to the report which has been submitted to the Parliamentary Public Organisations Accounts Committee (POAC), 17 firms out of 74 which were privatised have since stopped operations altogether.