The government has declined a loan from the World Bank because it found the terms of the loan incompatible with the national interest, Egyptian Minister of Planning and International Cooperation Fayza Abul Naga said. The minister added that the government would not accept conditions dictated by the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund, especially since the 18-day uprising that toppled former President Hosni Mubarak.

Judges at the UN court for Rwanda have sentenced a former Rwandan minister for women's affairs, to life in prison for genocide and incitement to rape. The ruling by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) means that Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, 65, is the first women to be ever convicted of genocide. She was found guilty on seven of the 11 genocide charges she faced for atrocities committed in Rwanda's southern Butare region in 1994.

The UNHCR says it is alarmed by a dramatic rise in the number of new refugee arrivals from Somalia into Kenya. Over the past two weeks the Dadaab refugee complex in northern Kenya has received more than 20,000 Somali refugees. The new arrivals are mostly farmers and animal herders from Lower Juba and the city of Dhobley. During 2010, Dadaab received an average of 6,000 to 8,000 Somalis every month. This year the monthly average has increased to 10,000 refugees.

In order to meet the intensifying climate challenge, the global energy system must undergo a fundamental transformation, with a rapid increase of renewable energy worldwide, states this working paper. 'Developing countries are at the forefront of this challenge, since they are expected to add around 80 per cent of all new electric generation capacity worldwide in the next two decades...This working paper seeks to assist in this process, by identifying key components of smart renewable energy policy in developing countries, focusing on the power sector.'

The Sengalese president has dropped a controversial electoral law amid opposition protests in the capital, Dakar. The current law requires that a candidate be elected with a 50 per cent majority in the first round of voting to avoid facing a run-off. The draft law would reduce that number to only 25 per cent and create a position of vice-president, leaving Wade's rivals concerned that he has plans to bring his 42-year-old son, Karim, into power.

Egypt has initiated a proposal in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to ban export restrictions on farm products to poor countries that are net food importers. The Group of 20 has also exhorted the upcoming WTO ministerial conference to adopt a specific resolution on export restrictions. After Egypt’s democratic uprising earlier this year, food security has become a main aim in its quest to achieve social justice. Therefore, Cairo has initiated a proposal at the WTO to ban export restrictions of agricultural products to net food importing developing countries (NFIDC).

The African National Congress (ANC) bowed to pressure on the Protection of Information Bill and promised major concessions to bring the legislation in line with the Constitution. The ruling party agreed to restrict the power to classify, which it had previously sought to extend to all organs of state, to bodies dealing directly with security and to scrap mandatory prison sentences for leaking secret information.

Reporters Without Borders says it is relieved to learn that six contributors to opposition radio station La Voix de Djibouti – Farah Abadid Hildid, Houssein Ahmed Farah, Houssein Robleh Dabar, Abdillahi Aden Ali, Moustapha Abdourahman Houssein and Mohamed Ibrahim Waïss – have been released after more than four months in Djibouti’s Gabode prison. After several appeals to Djibouti’s supreme court, an appeal court ruled on 22 June that they should be released conditionally and placed under judicial control pending trial.

In what is being hailed as a victory for conservationists and the wildlife of the Serengeti, the Tanzanian government has cancelled plans for a controversial highway that would have dissected the Serengeti National Park. According to scientists, the road would have severed the migration route of 1.5 million wildebeest and a half million other antelope and zebra, with indirect impacts, such as poaching and new development, exacerbating the situation.

Mohamed Kai, acting editor of The Satellite, a privately-owned Freetown-based newspaper, was on the night of 13 June 2011 violently assaulted and injured by armed assailants believed to be militants of the ruling All People’s Congress (APC) Party. Kai sustained bruises all over his body especially his chest and arms. His face was also swollen. Kai was treated and discharged from hospital.

The nurse at Najembe Health Centre in Buikwe district says the centre’s supply of malaria drugs will be finished in two days. A malaria epidemic has hit the area and the demand for the drugs is high. But the centre, which serves the entire sub-county, will have to wait up to six weeks before their supply will be replenished. The Ugandan government changed the policy of distributing drugs to parish and sub-county health centres in 2009 by implementing a policy where the National Medical Stores decides what drugs to supply and in what quantities. (A parish health centre is a clinic that provides medical treatment for up to 12 villages.) Previously heads of these health centres requisitioned the drugs, depending on their needs. The National Medical Stores supply 70 per cent of the drugs in public health centres and district health officials locally procure the remaining 30 per cent.

A climate of non-disclosure pervades the sharing of basic school related information despite policies and pronouncements to the contrary. In a research brief titled 'Funding of Dar es Salaam Primary Schools: How accessible is school level information?', Uwazi at Twaweza shows that because of a climate of non disclosure, 80 per cent of the teachers interviewed could not correctly state the capitation grant amount entitlement per pupil, which is pegged at US$10 per year according to the Primary Education Development Programme.

At least 32 people have died and 800 others have been infected following an outbreak of measles in the southern Pointe Noire and Kouilou regions of the Republic of Congo, say health officials. 'The total of 32 deaths and 800 cases of measles has not changed,' said Hermann Boris Didi-Ngossaki, head of the World Health Organisation’s Expanded Programme on Vaccination. At least 3,000 cases of measles were recorded in a 2006-2007 outbreak.

Equatorial Guinea's government has spent lavishly on diplomatic accommodations while neglecting the rights of the country's poor in the lead-up to hosting the African Union summit, Human Rights Watch and EG Justice said. The government has also sharply limited public dissent and critical reporting. While most citizens of Equatorial Guinea languish in poverty, President Teodoro Obiang's government, which holds the revolving AU chairmanship, spent more than US$830 million to construct a luxury complex for the summit outside the nation's capital, Malabo.

Girl soldiers, who are often forced to marry militia commanders, tend to have difficulties leaving and reintegrating into civilian life. In 2004, the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF launched a national programme to help former child soldiers adjust to their new circumstances. But since it started, only two per cent of those it has assisted have been women. Juvénal Munubo, head of a child soldiers reintegration programme for the NGO Caritas in Goma, eastern DRC, argues that this is disproportionally low, compared to the number of women that are estimated to be members armed units.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay has publicly condemned the scourge of corrective rapes in South Africa saying they are 'a serious crime that should never be tolerated nor condoned.' In an article published on 14 June by The Star newspaper in South Africa, Pillay asserted that South Africa had 'given the world some powerful ideas, among them the concept of the Rainbow Nation, where diversity is a source of strength and everyone is entitled to equal rights and respect.' She added, 'However it is saddening that the country reborn under Nelson Mandela’s watchful eye should now be the setting for corrective rape, a far more sinister phenomenon that undermines everything the Rainbow Nation stands for.'

Hundreds of civil society organisations, including farmers' movements, women's groups and non-governmental organisations, will launch a global appeal against farmland grabbing during the G20 meeting on agriculture in Paris on 22 and 23 June. Over 500 organisations from around the world have joined the 'Dakar Appeal Against Land Grabbing' that was originally drawn up at the World Social Forum in Dakar last February. While agriculture ministers from the world's 20 richest countries are discussing what to do about food price volatility and the growing hunger crisis, millions of hectares of fertile land, along with their water resources, are being grabbed from peasants, pastoralists, herders, fisherfolk and indigenous peoples to be converted into massive agribusiness operations by private investors who want to produce food supplies or agro-fuels for international markets. As a consequence, millions of peasant families and other rural and indigenous folk are being thrown off their lands and deprived of their livelihoods.

Cote d’Ivoire authorities have released 17 associates of deposed president Laurent Gbagbo who had been detained inside an Abidjan hotel. Gbagbo and his wife Simone and about 50 of their relatives and associates, remain under house arrest in five cities across the country. According to the Justice ministry, they could be charged as early as this week. They face charges of economic mismanagement, and involvement in post-election violence or collaboration with an 'illegitimate' regime.

Commercial sex work, dominated by a focus on women, could be redefined as new research launched in Nairobi, Kenya, sheds light on the complicated HIV prevention needs of what may be Africa’s most deeply underground group at high risk of HIV - male sex workers. The report co-authored by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and South Africa's Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT) seeks to better understand the social contexts, sexual practices and risks, including that of HIV, among these men. The professional debut of many of the 70 male sex workers surveyed in Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe was often prompted by the family rejecting the men’s sexual orientation; for others, it was a way to survive in a foreign country.

It will no longer be business as usual for those who have been discriminating against Aids patients, reports The Daily Nation. That was the message by the seven-member HIV and Aids Tribunal after they were sworn in at the High Court by deputy registrar Rose Ougo. Lawyer Ambrose Otieno Rachier, who will chair the tribunal, said it was a great occasion and a new dawn for those who have been victimised as a result of their HIV status, adding, the time for silent suffering was over. 'The tribunal is going to address fundamental human rights abuses as a result of an individual’s HIV status and come with remedies to redress the injustices,' Mr Rachier said.