Oil bearing and hosting communities of the Niger Delta, Nigeria's main oil and gas basin, and Environmental Rights Action (ERA) concluded a meeting in Effurun, Delta State, resolving to mount pressure on the Federal Government to urgently regulate oil activities in the country. In a communique, the two parties explained why government should regulate the extractive industry. According to them, 'the Nigerian Government should exercise its statutory powers to regulate oil and other extractive industry activities to bring an end to impunity and environmental degradation in the Niger Delta and other parts of the country.'

When violence broke out in the western Libyan town of Zawiyah, Bangladeshi migrant worker Mohammed Nienn, 28, was doing a shift as a steelworker. In a hurry to leave, he persuaded his Libyan supervisor to hand back his passport, but not the wages he was due. Then he jumped into a taxi with four other Bangladeshis and headed for the Tunisian border, where a bus eventually took him to Choucha transit camp, 25km from the frontier town of Ras Ajdir. Ten days later, he was still there, waiting for a flight to Dhaka.

The government of Swaziland has banned the daily live transmission of BBC Focus on Africa programme after one of the news clips, broadcast through the English channel of the state radio, Swaziland Broadcasting and Information Services (SBIS), was critical of government. The programme broadcast daily in the mornings, mid-day and evenings has been off air for the past week. The state radio has been running apologies to listeners of the programme for its absence, stating that it was due to technical problems.

As the deadline to register candidates for Djibouti's 8 April presidential election has passed, no opposition candidates have registered. The boycott comes as further anti-government protests are planned. Sources confirmed that there will be only two names on the ballot paper: the incumbent President Ismaël Omar Guelleh and Mohammed Warsama, the former President of the Constitutional Court and an ally of President Guelleh.

Southern Sudan has suspended talks on independence with the north's National Congress Party, accusing the north of planning to overthrow the south's administration. Pagan Amum, the secretary-general of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), reiterated the accusation on Sunday (13 March), saying that the northern government was arming local tribes to use as proxy forces.

Rights activists are speaking out against rapes targeting lesbians in South Africa. About 25 demonstrators rallied outside Parliament on Monday while their leaders met with government representatives. Luleki Sizwe - which means guide a nation - is a small group of lesbian activists in the townships of Cape Town who also circulated an online petition calling on Justice Minister Jeff Radebe 'to address 'corrective rape'.

With the number of protests happening in the Middle East and North Africa, it's sometimes hard to keep track of what is happening. This page from National Public Radio looks at which countries have seen protests and provides details on the state of each country.

Since the unveiling of the 2011 political campaigns, the Nigerian media landscape has been very busy. Nigeria comprises 36 states and Abuja, and there is at least one television station each, as well as a handful of privately owned television houses. Lagos State, being home to almost every ethnicity in Nigeria, has the biggest share of these stations, more so considering its status as the former capital. To avoid political conflicts in campaign strategies, most politicians prefer to go to the private television stations for their television commercials, otherwise known as TVCs, says this article from Free African Media.

EG Justice has released a policy paper titled 'Transparency and Accountability in Equatorial Guinea: Policy Recommendations for the Obama Administration'. The paper outlines the ongoing political and economic challenges confronting Equatorial Guinea, including corruption, a lack of respect for civil liberties, democratic procedures, and the rule of law, and the inability of civil society organisations to operate freely without government intervention.

This policy series paper from the Southern African Migration Project looks at remittances in Lesotho. 'Lesotho is one of the most migration dependent countries in the world. Migrant remittances are the country’s major source of foreign exchange, accounting for 25 per cent of GDP in 2006. The majority of households and rural communities are dependent on remittances for their livelihood. Households without access to migrant remittances are significantly worse off than those that do have such access.'

Italy has prevented a ferry carrying 1,800 people, mainly Moroccans fleeing the fighting in Libya, from docking in Sicily. The ship had sailed from Tripoli and asked for permission to refuel on the island after being refused entry to Malta, Italian media said. Meanwhile, 41 people are feared drowned after a boat carrying migrants capsized off Tunisia, UN officials say.

On 10 March 2011, in the case of Kiyutin v Russia, the European Court of Human Rights held that refusing a residence permit to a foreign national solely on the basis of their HIV-positive status amounted to unlawful discrimination, says this Interights statement. 'This landmark case is a significant boost to the rights of persons living with HIV/AIDS (PLHIV) in Europe, as the judgment contains two important "firsts": not only has it explicitly recognised that PLHIV are protected as a distinct group against discrimination in relation to their fundamental rights; but it has also recognised that PLHIV are a "vulnerable group" and any restriction of their rights attracts a higher degree of scrutiny on the part of the European Court.'

In this episode of Palestine Studies TV, Dr. Leila Farsakh discussed the implications of the protest movements in the Arab world on Palestinian politics and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Dr. Farsakh is a professor of political science at the University of Massachussetts, Boston, and a member of the editorial committee of the Journal of Palestine Studies.

The promotion, protection and realisation of human rights still do not regularly factor into the behaviour of Commonwealth members of the UN Human Rights Council, both domestically and at the Council, says a new report from the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative called 'Easier said than done'. The findings of the report said there was an alarming lack of adherence by Commonwealth countries to the domestic human rights commitments.

Up to one million foreign workers and others trapped in Libya are expected to need emergency aid because of fighting in the North African nation, aid officials said as they sought $160 million to deal with the crisis. UN officials say that amount is only for the next three months - and they expect the crisis to go on longer than that. The UN is also effectively frozen out of sections controlled by leader Moammar Gadhafi's forces and is only seeking humanitarian aid for opposition-controlled areas.

Djibouti has told the United States that an independent election observer mission is 'illegal' and suspended its partnership with the US-funded mission. Djibouti’s foreign ministry sent a diplomatic note to the US Embassy dated 2 March requesting the end of the partnership, alleging it had participated in and supported a violent 18 February opposition rally in which at least one person was killed, accusations the group denies.

Unidentified gunmen killed an Al-Jazeera cameraman and wounded his colleague near the eastern rebel-held city of Benghazi in an ambush on Saturday, according to the Qatar-based satellite station. This is the first confirmed death reported in the Libyan conflict, the Committee to Protect Journalists has said.

Under an overcast sky, nearly 200 members of the Djiboutian Army’s elite 1st Rapid Action Regiment honed their infantry skills, mentored by members of the US Army National Guard’s 2nd Combined Arms Battalion, 137th Infantry Regiment. The training included instruction on squad movements, convoy operations, contact drills, camp security and marksmanship.

Libya said on Sunday it welcomed an African Union panel formed to try to end the Libyan crisis and said it would facilitate its work, while condemning an Arab League resolution calling for a no-fly zone over the country. The African Union announced on Friday the leaders of South Africa, Uganda, Mauritania, Congo and Mali would form a panel that will travel to Libya shortly.

While the South African Department of Trade and Industry has stepped up criminalisation of pirated books, movies, and music, consumer patterns show that obtaining pirated media is widely accepted. In fact, a case study in Hanover Park, a poor neighbourhood outside Cape Town where the Association of Progressive Communication investigated CD piracy, most residents made no distinction between pirated and legal goods. Some people interviewed found the concept of piracy completely foreign, and all respondents felt that their use of pirated goods was legitimate, given their economic situation. Average consumers feel they have no choice but to turn to cheaper alternatives because the price of original goods is simply too high for them to afford.