South African based refugee rights group, PASSOP, has accused the Zimbabwean government of robbing its citizens in South Africa, where more than a hundred thousand Zim nationals are still waiting for passports. Zimbabweans who have applied for permits to remain in South Africa legally are still waiting for their government to issue them passports so they can get the permits. But the Zim authorities have not made good on their promises to roll out the documents, even shunning meetings with civil society to explain the delay.

As the government prepares for round two of the shuttle diplomacy in its efforts to seek deferral of the ICC case, a debate is raging on the implications of the move, reports the Daily Nation. And in the raging debate, there is a view that the country is slowly reclaiming its sovereignty and a counter argument that the move is seriously hurting Kenya’s image in the international community.

Zimbabwe's main rival political parties on Saturday condemned a spate of violent clashes among their supporters, which Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai blames on President Robert Mugabe's youth brigades. In the last two weeks, Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has traded accusations with Mugabe's ZANU-PF party over attacks on some MDC members in townships around the capital Harare, including the burning down of a satellite party office.

To call the ongoing people’s revolts in Tunisia and Egypt Facebook revolutions is certainly overstating the case. In both countries, the time was ripe for revolution and social upheaval. Poverty, repression and hopelessness were enforced by greedy US-supported despots who were deaf to the needs of their people. But there is little doubt that the recent street-protest revolts in Tunis and Cairo were assisted by new social media: Facebookers, tweeters and a new generation of Internet bloggers.

Sonke's Policy, Advocacy and Research Unit and the WHO's Department of Women, Gender and Health invites applications for a 2-day training on Engaging men and boys to achieve gender equality and health equity, taking place from 24-25 February 2011 in Pretoria.

South Africa is preparing to take HIV testing into the classroom as part of its national voluntary HIV testing and counselling (VCT) campaign, but testing kids is controversial and implementing the programme is fraught with challenges – just ask those already doing it. Government departments, together with the South African National AIDS Council, are holding nationwide consultative meetings with members of the education, children's rights and HIV sectors to formulate a national policy for school-based HIV testing, as well as guidelines and recommendations for the country’s nine provinces.

The Nigerian government refused to discuss a prisoner transfer agreement with Britain unless the Crown Prosecution Service dropped corruption charges against a favoured member of the ruling party, leaked documents disclose. Britain is keen to secure an agreement allowing the transfer of more than 400 prisoners back to Nigeria. But talks over the agreement stalled after Britain refused to drop charges against James Ibori, a member of the ruling People's Democratic Party, who is accused of stealing more than £196m of state funds and channelling 'dirty money' to Britain, report the Daily Telegraph.

The true scale of the theft of overseas aid money by corrupt foreign regimes is disclosed in leaked documents obtained by The Daily Telegraph. Tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money has been pocketed by their ministers and officials, much of it used to buy luxury goods. In one of the worst cases, £1.2million given to Sierra Leone by the Department for International Development (DfID) to 'support peacekeeping' was stolen by the country’s 'top brass' and spent on plasma television sets, hunting rifles and other consumer items.

Female genital mutilation/cutting has been illegal in Senegal since 1999. But that didn’t stop Dialyma Cisse‘s paternal grandmother from having her cut, against the wishes of the young girl and her parents. Once a social norm is established, even if it is a harmful one, it can be hard for individuals to opt out. Parents fear their daughters may be socially marginalised or face reduced marriage prospects. But in Senegal, and in many countries across Africa and the Arab States, communities are questioning the traditional ways and taking collective action in response.

Two Rwandan journalists with the Umurabyo newspaper have been sentenced to long jail terms after being found guilty of stirring up ethnic divisions. Editor Agnes Nkusi was sentenced to 17 years, while reporter Saidath Mukakibibi was imprisoned for seven.

Pro-democracy protesters are continuing their sit-in in Cairo's Tahrir (Liberation) Square for the fourteenth consecutive day, showing no signs of being appeased by talks held a day earlier between the government and opposition groups. People were still camped out in the square on Monday while life was slowly getting back to normal in other parts of the Egyptian capital. An Al Jazeera correspondent said traffic in the streets was increasing while businesses were beginning to reopen.

As the final results of South Sudan's referendum for independence are confirmed, 22,000 southerners are stranded on the side of the road in and around Khartoum still waiting for transportation to the South. After Sudan splits, they are afraid they will become refugees in a foreign land and that their rights will not be protected.

Information released by the American Cancer Society (ACS) on the eve of World Cancer Day last Friday warns that lifestyle cancers of the lung, breast and colon – which are in turn related to economic development - will continue to rise in developing countries if preventative measures are not widely applied. The findings are contained in the ACS reports - Global Cancer Facts & Figures and Global Cancer Statistics - and include a special section on cancer in Africa, where according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) about 681,000 new cancer cases and 512,400 cancer deaths occurred in 2008.

This UNHCR paper examines the mixed movement of people that is currently taking place between the East and Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes region to the southern part of the continent. Stretching all the way from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia to South Africa?s Atlantic coast, growing numbers of people are travelling the whole or part of this complex 4,500 kilometre route, travelling overland, by sea and (much less commonly) by air.

Government has launched the Gender Responsive Budget Programme which seeks to ensure equality in the budgetary process. The project, which is in conjunction with the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) will incorporate four main areas of activities. The activities are gender citizen report cards, budget tracking from the gender perspective, budget statements and gender-aware policy appraisals.

Ayman Mohyeldin, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Cairo who was held by the military outside Tahrir (Liberation) Square, has spoken to the network about the experience following his release. Mohyeldin describes how he was taken to a separate holding area, where he was handcuffed with plastic strips, had his equipment taken off him and was interrogated.

Oxfam has added its voice to a growing chorus of concern about Britain’s system for deciding on asylum claims, and the suffering it causes, in a report on destitute asylum seekers, who are forbidden to work but cannot claim state benefits. These men and women, who told their stories anonymously in 'Coping with Destitution: Survival strategies of asylum seekers in the UK', live in the shadows, penniless and dependent on the charity of others.

Google executive Wael Ghonim said after his release that he was kept blindfolded for two weeks while being detained by Egyptian state security. Activists said Ghonim had been involved in founding 'We are all Khaled Said', an anti-torture Facebook group named after an activist who rights groups said was beaten to death by police in the port city of Alexandria.

Sudanese President Omer Hassan Al-Bashir officially accepted the final results of Southern Sudan Referendum paving the way for the proclamation of an independent state in the region. President Al-Bashir on Monday (07 February) issued a Republican Decree accepting the final result of the referendum which supports the separation of the South, after the official promulgation of the results in Khartoum on Monday.

Finance minister Uhuru Kenyatta has termed his pending case at The Hague as a 'political strategy' by his detractors to lock him out of the 2012 General Election. Kenyatta also dismissed International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo’s application that the six Kenyans he suspects to be the key perpetrators should not meet with each other.