Reporters Without Borders has condemned the arrests and disappearances of bloggers and online activists across a number of Tunisian cities. The worldwide press freedom organisation has monitored at least five such cases but the list could well be longer. Police arrested the bloggers to question them about hacking into government websites by the militant group Anonymous, several sources told the organisation.

There are no technology shortcuts to good education. For primary and secondary schools that are underperforming or limited in resources, efforts to improve education should focus almost exclusively on better teachers and stronger administrations. Information technology, if used at all, should be targeted for certain, specific uses or limited to well-funded schools whose fundamentals are not in question, argues this article.

IRIN has produced a series of briefings exploring the crisis in Côte d’Ivoire triggered by contested elections in November 2010. Both Laurent Gbagbo and Alassane Ouattara are laying claim to the presidency, with Gbagbo refusing to yield to international pressure to step down. The series takes a look at the UN’s position, issues of human rights, as well as the stances of the African Union, ECOWAS, western governments and the EU and World Bank.

Guest editor David Anderson Hooker, Director of Research and Training for 'Coming to the Table: Taking America (USA) Beyond the Legacy of Enslavement', and the editorial staff of Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts, invite submissions for the first issue of its fifth volume, entitled '500 Years Later: Reverberations of the Transatlantic Slave Trade'.

This course is an intensive introduction to System Dynamics, a unique framework for understanding and managing complex development problems. Through case studies and practical exercises, the course will equip participants with the knowledge and skills required to effectively understand, map, and analyze complex national and global development challenges using a systemic perspective, and to determine the best approaches to mitigate them. The course is designed for professionals working in the field of development planning, especially policy advisors/analysts, and implementation and evaluation specialists from government institutions, research institutes, advocacy and civil society groups, private foundations, and international development agencies.

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.

With the growing dominance of the Internet, blog, chat and mobile telephony, the great 'big bang' of the new media has begun. Communication is rapidly changing and becoming mobile, interactive, personalized and multi-channel. This extraordinary revolution is affecting the basic structure of Mediterranean societies, especially those in the south.

Twenty years after independence, representation of women in senior government structures and in Parliament is declining in Namibia. According to the latest demographic survey results of August 2010, out of a population of around two million, women outnumber men 10:9. In 2001, the ratio was 94 males per 100 females. In 2010 Namibia reformed its national gender policy in line with the United Nation’s millennium development goals (MDGs) and its own Vision 2030, a national development policy dissected into five-yearly development plans. It includes the increase of women in decision-making positions in government, the private sector, religious groups and community institutions.

The United Nations and the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) will hold a meeting to discuss ways of better protecting five sites from the vast African nation that are inscribed on the List of World Heritage in Danger. The five sites in danger are Virunga, Garamba, Kahuzi-Biega, and Salonga National Parks, and the Okapi Wildlife Reserve, which are home to a unique range of flora and fauna including the Mountain Gorilla and the Okapi – a forest giraffe only found in DRC.

An editor of an independent newspaper Agnes Uwimana is at the mercy of a Rwandan prosecutor who is pushing for a 33-year prison sentence, according to state radio on Thursday. She has been accused of denying the 1994 genocide and would know her fate on 4 February at the High Court. Uwimana appeared before the country's High Court on charges of negating the 1994 genocide, defaming senior officials - including President Paul Kagame - and disturbing the peace, all through articles published last year, Radio Rwanda reported.

In February, Ugandans will be going to the polls for presidential and parliamentary elections. It is an interesting time for a changing of the guard in Parliament, as Uganda will soon be the latest oil-producing country on the continent. Already there are concerns over a lack of transparency and government accountability related to oil agreements and revenues. This article from the South African Institute of International Affairs asks what role is Parliament expected to play in holding the Executive to account and ensuring greater transparency in the oil sector?

A new International Council on Human Rights Policy report looks into the human rights implications of contemporary patterns of social control: how laws and policies construct and respond to people, behaviour or status defined as 'undesirable', 'dangerous', criminal or socially problematic. The report explores how changing ideas of crime, criminality and risk are shaping social policy, why incarceration continues to be a preferred sanction and how contemporary policing and surveillance practices order and organise social relations.

‘If the AU and ECOWAS intervene in Cote d’Ivoire on behalf of France and imperialism, it could be a dangerous example, threatening the sovereignty of other African countries, writes Asad Ali.

When darkness descends in the ubiquitous slums and ‘informal settlements’ surrounding Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, women who visit and use communal toilets unwittingly become sitting ducks. The dangers are high, for women living in the slums, that they may become targets of youth gangs and individual male rapists. 'I had heard that it was unsafe to visit the (community) toilet alone,' said forty-two year old, Rebecca Nduku, a single mother of three, when she challenged her friend’s ‘I-told-you-so’ warning. Acting against advice, Rebecca suffered irrevocably for throwing caution to the wind.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the Federation of African Journalists (FAJ) and the West African Journalists Association (WAJA) have expressed concerns over the political crisis in the West African country of Ivory Coast. According to agency reports, the distribution and publication of newspapers in Ivory Coast have been blocked. Newspapers ideologically allied with the opposition leader, now internationally recognised Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara, are not allowed to publish. Two reporters working for Le Mandat newspaper were briefly arrested, at least eight foreign journalists were arrested in different periods, and the safety and security of local journalists have been compromised by the armed forces of both political camps.

Food riots, geopolitical tensions, global inflation and increasing hunger among the planet's poorest people are the likely effects of a new surge in world food prices, which have hit an all-time high according to the United Nations. London's Independent newspaper reports that the UN's index of food prices – an international basket comprising wheat, corn, dairy produce, meat and sugar – stands at its highest since the index started in 1990, surpassing even the peaks seen during the 2008 food crisis, which prompted civil disturbances from Mexico to Indonesia.

Egyptian activists are calling on the government to take action to save African asylum-seekers from what they call the 'systematic torture' they are being subjected to by their Bedouin captors in the Sinai peninsula who demand thousands of dollars in ransom. 'The government says it does not have information [on this],' said Magda Botrous, a violence and physical safety specialist at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a local NGO. 'But the problem is that the government doesn't try to get the information,' she told IRIN.

This program will provide a unique opportunity to explore shifting security dynamics in the Asia Pacific region and to discuss the future of the US role. Visits to Okinawa and Tokyo will provide insight into the sensitivities surrounding the physical presence of US troops and Japan’s renewed debates about its defense strategy given the perceived threat from North Korea and territorial disagreements with both China and Russia.

For centuries we have watched and we have listened. Listened to the wind; watched the flowering and shedding of leaf and shrub. Listened to birdsong; watched the movement of termite. Listened to the croak of frog, watched the movement of the river. Through listening and watching, we have been able to advise; to suggest the time for preparation and the sowing of seed. Our story of weather-telling is very long. My family has been given a crucial task: we are the guardians of sacred knowledge...

Sudanese activists Ali Agab and Abdel Monim Elgak were forced to flee their homes for defending human rights. Ahead of the referendum on the future of South Sudan, they spoke to Amnesty International about the challenges they face and what keeps them positive about the future.