Highly sensitive documents revealing the torture of Mau Mau Kenyans at the hands of the British authorities were a 'sort of guilty secret' for the UK Government, a report has found. Foreign Secretary William Hague said the documents, which detail how detainees were castrated, beaten and sexually abused while in British camps, should now be made public. His announcement comes as a High Court judge is set to decide whether the UK Government, which sanctioned 'systematic violence' in the detention camps, is liable for the torture of the Mau Mau people between 1952 and 1961.

Thousands of frustrated Ethiopian and Somali asylum seekers trying to make their way to South Africa have been marooned in overcrowded camps in northern Mozambique since the government introduced measures limiting their movements. The Maratane Refugee Camp in Nampula Province, which normally accommodates around 5,500 long-term residents from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and Rwanda, now has a population of over 10,000, while an additional 1,000 asylum seekers are staying at a temporary site in the coastal town of Palma, near the border with Tanzania.

Seventy per cent of those living in absolute poverty in our world – starving or on the edge of starvation – are female. All over the world, women and children are the mass of the poor and the poorest of the poor. In Nigeria, as in many other developing countries, the new face of poverty is woman. This has become an economic phenomenon as the gap between women and men caught in the cycle of poverty has continued to widen in the past decade, a phenomenon commonly referred to as ‘the feminisation of poverty’. This underscores the fact that where an issue affects (negatively) both men and women, in most cases women suffer more than men. In the situation of single parenting for instance, families headed by women are poorer compared with those headed by men.

Over 100 Somali refugees stranded at Zimbabwe’s border with South Africa have been hit by a malaria outbreak, authorities have said. They have warned of a worse disease outbreak if the situation was not addressed urgently. The Somalis were denied entry into South Africa where they wanted to apply for asylum and were now stranded at Zimbabwe’s border town of Beitbridge.

'The future for least developed countries lies in trade, productive capacity and governance more than in aid,' said Cheick Sidi Diarra, United Nations High representative for the Least Developed Countries, responding to criticism of the plan of action put forward as the UN conference on the world’s poorest nations drew to a close in Istanbul. Representatives of governments said they were optimistic that the Istanbul Programme of Action for the decade 2011 to 2020 will prove instrumental in seeing at least half of the 48 countries now classed as least developed leave that category in the next ten years. The civil society forum swiftly rejected the plan of action as inadequate. The NGO group said donors and development partners had avoided committing themselves to delivering on long-standing pledges to provide substantial financial support for LDCs.

Political parties have ratcheted up the rhetoric ahead of the local government elections on Wednesday. Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille told a crowd in Lebogang, Mpumalanga, that they could choose five more years of poor service delivery and toyi-toying, or they could choose five years of steadily increasing access to housing and basic services by choosing the DA. ANC Youth League president Julius Malema was on the warpath taking swipes at Zille and Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) president Mangosuthu Buthelezi. He referred to Zille as the 'madam' who 'moves around doing a monkey dance looking for votes'.

In this week's edition of the Emerging Powers News Round-Up, read a comprehensive list of news stories and opinion pieces related to China, India and other emerging powers...

Employment wise, in sub-Saharan Africa women occupy just one in three paid jobs outside agriculture, and it comes as no surprise that women are typically paid less than their male counterparts and have less secure employment. Despite this, there is an increase in women entering the labour force throughout their child-bearing years, finding ways to juggle the pressures of their unpaid family work and paid employment.

In the context of the International Year for People of African Descent, the Anti-Discrimination Section of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights is launching a Fellowship Programme for People of African Descent from 10 October to 4 November 2011.

Government will pay out millions of rands to compensate victims of apartheid era atrocities, the Sunday Times reported. Those who qualify for financial assistance include victims and their children, even if they were born in or out of wedlock or were adopted. People with parental responsibilities over victims and their children will also be eligible for compensation.

Egypt’s new leadership has promised to open the Rafah crossing into Gaza permanently after more than five years of partial and occasionally full closure, but observers wonder how far this will go to ease the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). 'Our intention is to alleviate the human problems and living conditions for the people in Gaza,' Ambassador Mahna Bakhoum, spokesman for the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told IRIN. 'It is under study now - how, when and what [the opening of Rafah crossing will involve]. This is all being discussed by the government and by the whole country, not just the Foreign Ministry.'

This World Health Organisation fact file contains 10 facts on how smoking impacts on women. 'Women who smoke are more likely than those who do not to experience infertility and delays in conceiving,' it says, 'Smoking during pregnancy increases risks of premature delivery, stillbirth and newborn death, and may cause a reduction in breast milk. Smoking increases women's risk for cancer of the cervix.'

The Kenyan government and rights groups have expressed outrage at a project in western Kenya that is paying HIV-positive women to undergo long-term contraception. Project Prevention, a US-based NGO, offers cash to drug addicts in the US and the UK to undergo long-term contraception or permanent sterilisation. In 2010, the project started offering HIV-positive women in western Kenya US$40 to be fitted with intrauterine devices (IUDs), which can prevent pregnancy for over a decade. The project uses a medical practitioner in the western Kenyan town of Kakamega to insert the IUDs for $7 per woman; so far, 22 women have undergone the procedure.

Up to five people were killed when Ugandan police clashed with opposition supporters who attacked cars carrying African leaders at the inauguration of President Yoweri Museveni. A government spokesman confirmed at least one death in the capital, Kampala, on Thursday. But local independent TV station WBS reported that five had died when police opened fire on opposition supporters who threw stones at the cars. At the same time as the inauguration, a crowd of thousands supporting Besigye had gathered in the capital to welcome him back to Uganda from Kenya.

An open field in Tafelsig turned into a war zone at the weekend as a group of land invaders pelted police and city law enforcers with rocks and bottles. The officers retaliated by firing rubber bullets and blasting the invaders with a water cannon to bring them under control. The group, who call themselves the Mitchell’s Plain Backyarders’ Association, moved on to the Swartklip Sports Field on Saturday.

Global Civilians for Peace in Libya is embarking on its second fact-finding mission into the war-torn country. The delegation is comprised of academics, professionals, journalists and ex-military personnel from Europe, North America, England, Middle East and Africa. The delegates are independent and not allied to any government or official body. An Italian camera crew will be embedded with the group, a TV producer from Britain and a French journalist.

New Readers Publishers (NRP) is a nonprofit publishing project based in the Centre for Adult Education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban. NRP supplies readers with adult content and simplified language in Afrikaans, English, isiNdebele, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sesotho sa Leboa, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, TshiVenda and Xitsonga. NRP is conducting an intensive residential workshop for writers and editors from 24-27 July 2011 in East London.

In preparation for the upcoming 2011 International Labour Conference (ILC), the International Domestic Workers' Network (IDWN) has prepared a pamphlet to rebut common arguments against passing the ILO Convention enabling rights and protections for domestic workers. Visit their website to read the full document.

As the world focuses its attention on oil rich North Africa and the Middle East, a wave of police brutality within sub-Saharan African states of the Commonwealth has gone largely unnoticed and unpunished. Uganda, Swaziland and Mozambique have seen a wave of protests. But little attention has been paid to the uniformly brutal way in which they are being dealt with. These are all Commonwealth countries. The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) strongly condemns the routine use of intimidation, beatings, illegal detention, torture and excessive use of force being used within these countries to curb legitimate expressions of dissent and the right to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly.

Africa is generally not a safe place to have a same-sex relationship - you can be shunned by society, beaten up, thrown in jail, or worse. In Malawi you can get 14 years in prison with hard labour. In a bold move, Malawi’s Centre for the Development of People (CEDEP) and South Africa’s Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action (GALA) have collected the stories of 12 lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) women and men and published them in a book, Queer Malawi.