A coalition of civil society organisations is calling on member states of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region to implement a 2006 Pact on Security, Stability and Development in the Great Lakes Region to avert not only post?election violence in member states but also any other form of violence.

In 2009, the Forced Migration Studies Programme at the University of the Witwatersrand (now the African Centre for Migration & Society) undertook an analysis of the costs of policing immigration on the SAPS in the Gauteng Province. Their finding was that it cost the Gauteng SAPS Province some R362.5 million annually to detect, detain and transfer migrants to Lindela Holding Facility. The Forced Migration Studies Programme research demonstrated that the consequence of policing immigration undermines the ability of the police to tackle serious violent and organised crime.

The Arabic Network of Human Rights Information has rejected the ongoing detention of Fatima Al-Zahra and Sally Hassan, journalists from the newspaper Al-Fajr. Agouza Misdemeanor Court sentenced Al-Zahra and Hassan to two months and one month of imprisonment, respectively, on charges of libel, slander, and violation of private life brought forward by Yusuf Al-Badri.

The 'Global Information Society Watch 2011' report investigates how governments and internet and mobile phone companies are trying to restrict freedom online - and how citizens are responding to this using the very same technologies. 'Written by internationally-renowned experts, the report brings its readers easy-to-read and yet comprehensive articles, many with policy proposals, on the most important challenges protecting human rights on the internet is facing today,' says lawyer Matthias C. Kettemann, co-chair of the Internet Rights and Principles Coalition.

Average temperatures across the Sahel have risen by around one degree Celsius over the past 40 years, according to a study identifying potential climate 'hotspots' in the region. The report, published by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), analysed historical climate trends across the Sahel, and aimed to identify potential hotspots and the impact on livelihoods in the region. Half of the 17 West African nations mapped experienced a temperature increase of 0.5–1 degree Celsius between 1970 and 2006, while 15 per cent of the region - in far eastern Chad and northern Mali and Mauritania - saw a rise of more than one degree Celsius.

A letter has been sent to shareholders and potential investors of Coal of Africa (CoAL) demanding that they reconsider their plans to support the company and it's project in Limpopo, South Africa.

The faith community is among key stakeholders calling for the establishment of a permanent International People’s Tribunal on Ecological Debt. Such a tribunal would hold environmental violators accountable for the climate change they are causing in local communities, particularly in developing nations. This was the main message that came out of a parallel session held by the Economic Justice Network (EJN), the World Council of Churches, Jubilee South, Observatorio de la Deuda en la Globalisation, Accion Ecologica, Oilwatch and the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance on 7 December 2011 on the sidelines of COP17. EJN coordinates Councils of Churches from 12 Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) member states.

As Libya’s liberators come to terms with how to rebuild the country, three paths are emerging for the riches held in its sovereign wealth fund, according to a new report from international political consulting firm GeoEconomica GmbH. The question becomes what’s next for the nearly $56 billion that was invested under the Gadhafi regime. In the report GeoEconomica analysts Sven Behrendt and Deen Sharp predicts that the fund will either: evolve into a strategic investment vehicle, carry on with its traditional mandate as a savings fund for future generations, or (perhaps most likely) be liquidated as competing interest groups battle over Libya’s political and economic future.

Five separate retrospective mortality surveys, carried out by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and other researchers in prefectures accounting for the majority of the population, show excess mortality above what is considered to be the 'emergency threshold', says Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in a new report. 'And yet the commitment of the country’s government and of the international community is going in the wrong direction. The government has been decreasing its investments in health, as have international donors, while humanitarian assistance has failed to reduce the widespread medical crisis.'

Mozambique's dependence on foreign aid is declining, Finance Minister Manuel Chang told the country's parliament, the Assembly of the Republic. Introducing the state budget for 2012, Chang said that only 39.6 per cent of public expenditure will be covered by foreign grants and loans, with 60.4 per cent of the budget met by domestic resources. In the 2011 budget, 44.6 per cent of expenditure was to be covered by foreign aid, and in the 2010 budget the figure was 51.4 per cent.

A spokesman for Ghana’s Education Ministry has told the Accra Mail he is confident a programme in which teachers warn students of the 'adverse consequences' of being gay will make it 'a thing of the past'. LGBT Asylum News points out that the deputy director general of the country’s education service said in an interview this year that homosexuality 'started with single-sex schools'.

A powerful bomb blast targeting soldiers followed by gunfire rocked the troubled Nigerian city of Maiduguri on Tuesday 13 December, with at least 10 people killed, an official and a hospital source said. Residents claimed soldiers reacted to the bombing by shooting indiscriminately and burning homes, with troops having been accused of such abuses following previous attacks after alleging residents were complicit.

The 30,000 people living in a town in northern Libya have been driven out of their homes, in what appears to have been an act of revenge for their role in the three-month siege of the city of Misrata. So what really happened in the town of Tawergha, are the accusations of brutality against the town's residents fair and what does it say about hopes for national unity? In the middle of August, between the end of the siege and the killing of Gaddafi, Misratan forces drove out everyone living in Tawergha, a town of 30,000 people. Human rights groups have described this as an act of revenge and collective punishment possibly amounting to a crime against humanity.

With just two cholera cases reported in 2011, Guinea escaped an epidemic in West and Central Africa that infected 85,000 people and killed 2,500 in the first 10 months of 2011. Luck, as well as targeted prevention efforts on the part of aid agencies and the government brought this about, specialists told IRIN, but a far deeper countrywide overhaul of the water and sanitation system is needed to diminish the likelihood of future outbreaks.

An Italian man has killed two African street sellers and wounded three others in an apparent racist shooting rampage in the city of Florence before committing suicide, police said. Gianluca Casseri, 50, who Italian officials described as a right-wing extremist, parked his car in the crowded Dalmazia square at lunch time on Tuesday 13 December, got out and started shooting with a large pistol, witnesses said.

On the heels of a decision by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis (TB) and Malaria to cancel its next round of funding, the Swazi government is calling on donors to come to the impoverished country's aid. However, there are fears that the result of a recent Global Fund audit may dissuade donors even as HIV organisations contest its findings. The country is also contesting a recently released Global Fund audit that alleges nearly US$6 million in aid was misused. With an HIV prevalence of about 26 per cent, Swaziland cannot afford to fund HIV treatment domestically - an estimated 90,000 Swazis are in need of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, according to international medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières.

The ragtag though powerful Islamist terror group, Al Shabaab, is taking on the Kenyan army on the battlefields of...Twitter, writes Simon Allison in this Daily Maverick article. And they're winning.

This Washington Post article notes that there will soon be more US troops based in Djibouti than in Iraq. Since 2002, Djibouti – a former French colony – has played host to the only permanent US military base on the African continent. Camp Lemonnier has grown steadily from a small outpost to an operation with more than 3,500 military personnel.

The United States Ambassador to Uganda, Mr Jerry Lanier, and the UK High Commissioner, Mr Martin Shearman, have snubbed calls to appear before the parliamentary ad hoc committee investigating the oil sector, the Daily Monitor has learnt. In October, MPs mentioned Mr Lanier’s reports in Wikileaks, an online whistle-blower, where he accused Premier Amama Mbabazi and Internal Affairs minister Hilary Onek as having received bribes from oil companies.

At any given time, an estimated 130,000 people in sub-Saharan Africa are engaged in forced labour as a result of trafficking. It is a fraction of the global figure, which the International Labour Organisation (ILO) puts at 2.5 million, but this highly lucrative and concealed crime is on the rise in Africa and traffickers usually operate with impunity. Southern Africa has many of the conditions traffickers capitalise on: endemic poverty and unemployment that create a demand for better opportunities, and high rates of regular and irregular migration that mask the movements of traffickers and their victims.