On Friday 25 March, several Kenyan bloggers held a meeting in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, under the newly formed BAKE (Bloggers Association KEnya). The meeting was the 4th in an initiative by some of Kenyas veteran bloggers. Part of the background, reports Global Voices, is tension between the blogger community and the mainstream media, who bloggers feel have a lack of appreciation for blogging as a tool for the generation and delivery of news and information.

Tunisian private clinics relied heavily on patients from Libya in recent years, but the ongoing Libya turmoil makes doctors and nurses wonder whether they will have a job. Libyans made up nearly 80 per cent of patients at Tunisian clinics before the recent tumult. Other foreign patients represented fewer than 1 per cent of admittances. Three clinics in the south were already forced to close.

ARTICLE 19 has released its analysis of the Draft Law Relating to the Protection of Whistleblowers of Rwanda. The analysis highlights the weaknesses of the Draft Law and calls for its revision in the light of international standards. ARTICLE 19 says the protections offered to whistleblowers against retribution by their bosses are not wholly convincing, and the range of subjects on which a disclosure may be made is limited.

Nigerian authorities have arrested scores of opposition members in the southeastern state of Akwa Ibom in a campaign of intimidation ahead of elections, opposition lawyers and rights activists said on Thursday (7 April). More than 40 supporters of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), including governorship candidate James Akpanudoedehe, have been arrested.

The Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) has issued its third annual report on the state of human rights in the Arab world in 2010, with a special focus on 12 countries: Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Iraq, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Yemen. The report is entitled 'Roots of Unrest and reveals that one of the primary roots of unrest in the Arab world is a large-scale deterioration in the state of human rights, even in those countries that were, or still are, characterised by a level of ostensible political 'stability'.

High Court Judge Justice Nicholas Ndou on Thursday 31 March 2011 quashed Magistrate Gideon Ruwetsa’s ruling denying bail to Bulawayo resident Vikas Mavhudzi, who is charged with subverting a government by unconstitutional means. Ruwetsa had on Wednesday 16 March 2011 denied bail to the 39 year-old Magwegwe resident, who is facing charges of subverting a government by unconstitutional means over a comment he allegedly made on Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s facebook page.

An Egyptian panel formed to uncover illicit gains acquired during the rule of deposed President Hosni Mubarak, will question his younger son about corruption, the state news agency said on Tuesday. Gamal Mubarak held a leading post in Egypt's former ruling party. A widely-held belief that he was being groomed for the presidency helped galvanise opposition that toppled him.

A search is under way for 150 migrants missing in the Mediterranean after their boat capsized in rough seas near the Italian isle of Lampedusa. Italian rescue vessels and a helicopter have saved 48 refugees from the boat, which had been carrying about 200.

Seventy six countries around the world criminalize homosexuality, maintaining severe punishments for consensual sexual activity between adults of the same sex, says this abstract from the Journal for International Law. While political asylum may offer hope of refuge and protection, the asylum process has many problems, especially for those individuals applying for refugee status on the basis of sexual orientation.

About 34,000 southern Sudanese have fled their homes after tribal clashes over land, water and cattle in recent weeks, a humanitarian official said, adding to southern troubles before independence in July. The oil-rich south voted overwhelmingly to separate from the north in a January referendum, promised as part of a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war in Sudan. At least two million died in the war, which destabilised much of the region.

Around 800 farmers protested Friday (1 April) against a government decision to seize land from a village in Gezira state, Sudan's agricultural heartland, without compensating the owners, witnesses said. After Friday prayers in the village of Fudasi, around 160 kilometres south of Khartoum, 800 demonstrators marched to the land that was appropriated by the government to build a university college.

A row has broken out about the infant mortality rate in Cape Town, following claims from the Democratic Alliance that they are responsible for a decrease. But critics from the Treatment Action Campaign and Social Justice Coalition have slammed the claims. 'The Democratic Alliance claims that it is responsible for a significant drop in infant deaths. It also makes much of the fact that the City of Cape Town has a much lower infant death rate than the rest of South Africa. This is both misleading and false,' say the blog Writing Rights. 'It is misleading because even under apartheid, the City of Cape Town had lower infant mortality than the homeland of KwaZulu and most other cities in the country. Historically health care is better in Johannesburg and Cape Town than elsewhere because of apartheid. It is false because any significant drop in infant mortality in Cape Town in the last decade, took place before the DA came to power.'

Hendrik Hesselman is a small-scale farmer and picks the wild indigenous rooibos plant or cultivates it in small fields. They sell it overseas as a fair trade organic product. But as local and international markets for rooibos continue to grow, climate change is a growing threat. Mr. Hesselman explains: 'In 2003 the winter rains arrived three months late. After [the rain] in August that year did not provide enough rain to replenish the groundwater, drought set in and held this area in its grip for three years.'

A majority of Kenyans want the six suspected sponsors of 2007/2008 post election violence to stand trial at the International Criminal Court, a new opinion poll shows. Of those polled, 61 per cent said they prefer the Ocampo Six (as the suspects are popularly known) to answer charges at The Hague-based court, the survey by research firm Synovate showed.

By limiting access to internet, claiming to avoid obscenity and preserve gender and sexual norms, governments are actually preventing communities from exercising their rights and freedoms. The growing practice of regulation may have an impact in how people learn about sexuality and express it – especially the most affected by regulation, women and people of diverse sexualities. The Association for Progressive Communication's EroTICs project conducted research in five countries: Brazil, India, Lebanon, South Africa and the United States. The EroTICs issue paper contains executive summaries for each country.

'This edition of the journal is produced within the context of the 2015 deadline set by the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development, which calls for gender parity within the media, as well as equal voice and fair treatment of women and men in editorial content.'

South African families are in crisis according to a new report released by the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR). Titled ‘The First Steps to Healing the South African Family’, the report documents the extent of family breakdown in South Africa and the effect this is having on children and the youth. The research includes often under-acknowledged influences on children and young people that affect many issues in South Africa - from violent crime, through to entrenching a cycle of poverty, as well as the values and norms South Africans hold.

The British Government’s efforts to cover up one of the darkest episodes in colonial history have been revealed by the discovery of a vast cache of documents relating to the bloody Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya. The papers, documenting efforts to put down insurgency, were spirited out of Kenya on the eve of independence and have been held in secret British government archives for half a century.

After a month and a half of conflict in Libya, the situation of political prisoners and prisoners of war on both sides is uncertain, and their fundamental rights are at risk. More than 400 people in eastern Libya have gone missing since the revolt against Muammar Gaddafi began on 15 February, according to Human Rights Watch and the Libyan Red Crescent in Benghazi.

Two factors may shape the coming transition period in Sudan more than any other, says a new briefing from the International Crisis Group. '...first, the degree to which the South’s ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) allows an opening of political space in which a vibrant multi-party system can grow; secondly, the will to undertake democratic reform within the SPLM, as intra-party politics continue to dominate the political arena in the near term.'