In January, a Nouakchott court sentenced Oumoulmoumnine Mint Bakar Vall to six months in prison for enslaving two girls, ages 10 and 14, in the city's Arafat neighbourhood. Last month, two men and three women were arrested for keeping three young female slaves in Nouakchott. The arrests came after anti-slavery NGO chiefs Boubacar Ould Messoud, Biram Ould Dah Abeid and Aminetou Mint El Moctar launched a hunger strike to compel authorities to press charges in the case.

Using a unique dataset from Uganda, which collected individual-level asset ownership data and women’s life histories regarding assets, this paper examines the relationships between inheritance, marriage and asset ownership. Land is the most important asset in rural Uganda. The majority of couples (both married and those in consensual unions) report owning land jointly. Men who report owning a parcel of land are much more likely than women to say they inherited the land. Inheritance is not an important means of acquisition of other assets, including livestock, business assets, financial assets and consumer durables. These items are acquired through purchase, for both men and women.

In many parts of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a rape victim has to walk for days or travel more than eight hours by car to get to the nearest court. In response, the Open Society Justice Initiative and the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa partnered with the International Bar Association’s Rule of Law Initiative to establish a mobile court program focused on gender crimes. In its first six months of operation, the mobile gender justice court tried 115 cases in five different remote locales. Of the 68 people charged with gender-based violence, 51 people were convicted, receiving sentences ranging from three to twenty years.

At least 31 people were killed in a clash between south Sudan's army and rebel militia fighters, the army said on Wednesday (20 April), the latest violence to unsettle the region ahead of its independence in July. Twenty southern army soldiers were killed on Tuesday in a clash in the oil-producing Unity state with fighters loyal to Peter Gadet, a former senior southern army (SPLA) officer who rebelled this month, the military said.

A gay asylum seeker, Uche Nnabuife, which the UK plans to return to Nigeria, has been directly threatened with death according to an article in a Nigerian newspaper. The newspaper 'National Times' is published in Makurdi, capital of Benue State in North-central Nigeria, but circulates nationally. According to Rev Rowland Jide Macauley, a gay Nigerian priest and activist based in London but who travels to Nigeria, the threat 'will circulate'. The article said that Nnabuife would be subjected to 'jungle justice' if returned and 'his body would not be found'.

The Women PeaceMakers Program documents the stories and best practices of international women leaders who are involved in human rights and peacemaking efforts in their home countries. The program offers an opportunity for women leaders who want to document, share and build upon their unique peacemaking stories.

The 20 articles in the feature section of the latest FMR look at a variety of actors defined as armed and ‘non-state’, their behaviours and efforts to bring them into frameworks of responsibility and accountability. Contents include:

- 'Catch me if you can!' The Lord's Resistance Army, written by
Heloise Ruaudel at the Refugee Studies Centre

- Community-led stabilization in Somalia
http://www.fmreview.org/non-state/Hartkorn.html
- Al-Shabaab's responsibility to protect civilians in Somalia
http://www.fmreview.org/non-state/Abebe.html
- The Kampala Convention and obligations armed groups
http://www.fmreview.org/non-state/Ridderbos.html
- Militia in DRC speak about sexual violence
http://www.fmreview.org/non-state/KellyVanrooyen.html

APO distributes thousands of press releases related to Africa. Their mailing list and RSS feeds allows you to receive information about the country(ies), topic(s), and institution(s) of interest - whether your area of interest is South Africa, Agriculture, Women-related news, or the African Union Commission. Visit

Tunisian activists were unanimous in calling for the abolition of the Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD). However, last week's decision to bar representatives of the former ruling party from political life altogether is raising doubts among some activists and politicians. The High Commission for the Realisation of Revolutionary Goals on 11 April prohibited senior RCD members from participating in July's constituent assembly elections.

Early April saw the launch of the new World Bank Group strategy for engagement in the palm oil sector, which failed to resolve civil society concerns over several issues, including the rights of indigenous peoples and how performance standards will be applied across supply chains. The strategy outlines the conditions and standards under which the Bank will invest in the controversial palm oil sector, and brings to an end the moratorium on investments in palm oil announced by Bank president Robert Zoellick in September 2009. The original suspension followed years of pressure from civil society and indigenous peoples groups over the negative social and environmental impacts of palm oil plantations.

Volunteer Interns are needed to work for the Fahamu Refugee Programme (FRP), hosted by Fahamu Trust (www.fahamu.org), to undertake extremely varied work associated with completing the website, contributing to the FRP's monthly legal aid eNewletter and assisting in responding to requests from our listserv. The FRP is directed by Dr. Harrell-Bond, the founder/director of the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford (1982/96).

Potential interns must have knowledge of, or a very strong interest in learning about refugee issues, refugee law and statelessness, developing research or fundraising skills; live in or be able to work in
Oxford; and have good English writing and computing skills. Individual projects within this work include family reunion, deportation, and providing instruction for writing shadow reports. Send cover letter and curriculum vitae to ([email protected]).

A clinical trial aimed at investigating whether an antiretroviral pill a day could prevent women from getting HIV was abandoned on 18 April. There were high hopes for the trial. But after the women had been on the pill for a year, there were no differences in HIV infection between women getting it and those getting a placebo, so the trial’s review panel recommended that it be abandoned.

The International Federation of Journalists says it is mourning the tragic death of photojournalists Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, killed by a mortar attack in the besieged Libyan city of Misrata, on Wednesday 20 April. Two other photojournalists, Guy Martin and Michael Christopher Brown, were both seriously injured by the same mortar fire along Tripoli Street at the heart of the fight between pro-Gaddafi forces and the rebels for control of Misrata.

The re-establishment of local councils in Sierra Leone in 2004 was intended to give people a greater voice in their government, reversing long years of marginalisation for rural districts in particular. But nearly seven years later, it has still not been fully implemented. A local NGO, Campaign for the Voiceless, is working to strengthen the performance of this most accessible tier of government. The campaign is working on a project intended to improve social accountability in local government.

Joaquim Miranda Maloa

The death of Andries Tatane at the hands of police officers has forced South Africans to question the direction in which the nation's law-enforcement body is moving. Tatane, a teacher, activist, husband and father of two young sons, was among a group of about 4 000 Meqheleng township residents who marched on the Ficksburg municipal offices. Observers have noted the increasing brutality of the police force over the past few years. In 2009, the police chief raised eyebrows when he called for a change to legislation that would allow police offers greater freedom to shoot at suspects.

Zambia has frozen LAP Green Network’s 75 per cent shares in Zamtel in conformity with the international community’s decision to freeze all assets belonging to Libya following the unrest in the Arab country, Zamtel managing director Hans Paulsen said in Lusaka on 15 April. The international community has been freezing some Libyan assets dotted across the globe. Mr Paulsen said Zamtel will not be affected by the new development and there is no need for customers to worry.

Jacob Zuma is facing pressure to clarify the situation of a close ally, Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Sicelo Shiceka, against whom there have been serious allegations of wasteful and possibly fraudulent use of state resources. The public protector has been asked to probe Shiceka’s spending of R335,000 on a trip to Switzerland, R640,000 in one year to stay at the One&Only Hotel, and R160,000 in eight months flying his extended family round the country. The Sunday Times has reported that there is deep unhappiness in Shiceka’s home village of Ingquza Hill in the Eastern Cape, where water has been laid on for the building of a house for the minister and a R32m tarred road is being routed past this house, which would be among the first in the area to be electrified.

Civilians evacuated from the war-ravaged western Libyan city of Misrata have described the humanitarian situation there as grim, saying families are barely able to find enough food and water, that medical treatment is hard to come by, and corpses are lying in the streets. 'We could hear the snipers picking people off in the street outside,' said Mariam Doua, a teacher in the city. 'Eventually some [rebel fighters] came to lead us to safety in the middle of the night when the militia were dozing. We covered the mouths of the children and ran out into the street, barefoot.'

A new policy on education will be in place before the end of next year, the Ministry of Education has pledged. The number of those in need of basic education, both young and old, has ballooned. The new policy is expected to tackle ways of improving access of education to this number (about 10 million children), fight cultural barriers to education such as female genital mutilation and how to keep children in school even in the worst climatic conditions like drought.