A Women for Women International report being released on international Stop Violence Against Women Day (25 November) finds ‘violence against women is the single biggest threat to peace’ and countries are falling strikingly short on UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s) and UN (SCR) 1325 development and security goals. The report found that at the ten year mark, goals signed up to by UN members to eliminate poverty and empower women, have fallen strikingly short of expectations. While many countries are behind on their promises to meet the MDGs, particularly those goals in which gender is explicit, conflict-affected countries, are further behind.

Looking ahead to the United Nations climate change conference beginning in Cancún next week, a senior official with the world body said that talks could yield real results but was cautious to keep expectations realistic. Assistant Secretary-General for Policy Planning Robert Orr told journalists at UN Headquarters in New York that he did not expect the conference of parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to deliver a 'final answer' on solving climate change but remained positive about the possibilities.

The regional SADC bloc says an independent investigation in Zimbabwe, to verify reports of violence and intimidation before a general election can be held, is needed. Civic society leaders from Zimbabwe on Monday met with the SADC executive secretary, Tomaz Salamao, in Gaborone to appraise him and his secretariat on what needs to be done before parties in the Global Political Agreement call for a poll.

The US Government has finally given the names of the four top Government officials and a prominent businessman banned from setting foot in the US over drug trafficking. At the same time, US ambassador to Kenya Michael Ranneberger handed over 'crucial information' to the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission on the closed Charterhouse Bank. Ranneberger said his government's decision was in response to demands that the names of those banned be disclosed.

Prosecutions have gotten underway to put behind bars eight members of an illegal kidney transplant syndicate operating in South Africa. The accused, who were exposed earlier this month after reports of unlawful transplant procedures surfaced, appeared in a Kwazulu Natal court. They face charges of illegally harvesting and selling kidneys between 2001 and 2003 at the St. Augustine's Hospital in Durban.

Scores of women's organisations from Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia joined forces last week for a sensational campaign led by the Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies (CSBR). As part of the 'One Day, One Struggle' simultaneous event on 9 November, public demonstrations, film screenings, theatre performances and workshops were held in Bangladesh, Egypt, Ghana, Indonesia, Iran, Lebanon, Malaysia, Pakistan, Palestine, Sudan, Turkey and Tunisia.

The economies of Africa, the world’s poorest region, are under severe threat from free trade agreements that they are under pressure to sign with the European Union, the world’s richest region. Under these economic partnership agreements (EPAs), Europe wants Africa to open up its economies to European goods, services and companies. But the African countries are understandably worried their small industries and service operators will not be able to survive free competition from giant European companies, banks and commercial firms, writes Martin Khor in The China Post.

luminium giant BHP Billiton’s Mozal smelter has begun bypassing its fume treatment centres, emitting potentially dangerous fumes into the air without treating them first – despite a pending court case on the matter. There has been strong opposition from civil society and community groups. A coalition established to fight the bypass, led by local groups Livaningo and Justica Ambiental (Environmental Justice), says that the community has still not been presented with adequate evidence that the bypass will not be harmful to their health.

Home to over half of Ethiopia’s remaining afromontane forest and the centre of origin for the wild coffee arabica, Kafa is a dense tangle of forest, bamboo thickets and wetlands 475 kilometres southwest of the capital, Addis Ababa. Decades of deforestation by smallholder farmers as well as large state and privately-owned farms destroyed 43 per cent of the Kafa rainforest. But the forest is now a model of sustainable forest management.

The trial of the two women's rights defenders, Dr. Isatou Touray and Amie Bojang-Sissoho, has been adjourned to 1 December. State prosecution officer Sainey Joof told the court that the case against GAMCOTRAP was not a civil case but that it was the state that had brought the case against the two senior officers of the organisation.

On 12 November 2010, over 150 people marched from the Angolan Embassy to the Home Office in London in protest at the death of Jimmy Mubenga during a deportation. Campaigners from the Angolan community first delivered a letter to the Angolan Embassy to call on the authorities to intervene. The march, led by the family and friends of Jimmy Mubenga, then marched to the Home Office. Although marchers had only been given permission to use the pavements, the sheer volume of people meant that very soon they took to the roads and were eventually given a police escort on a circuitous route to the Home Office.

The Moroccan government is stepping up efforts to check the rising maternal mortality rate in the country by implementing a variety of measures to help women who give birth without medical supervision, particularly in rural areas. Experts say about 132 deaths per 100,000 live births occur each year. At a meeting organised by Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP) - a Moroccan political party founded in 1975 – a number of factors were listed as the main causes of maternal mortality in the North African country.

Key African countries are allegedly planning to subvert a ban on sales of Zimbabwe’s controversial Chiadzwa diamonds, as a decision on the country’s trade future remains unclear. South Africa, Angola and Namibia are said to be preparing to pass off Zimbabwe’s diamonds as their own, in an effort to subvert the ban still in place by the trade watchdog, the Kimberly Process (KP). Sources quoted by the Standard newspaper revealed that the African countries, with the support of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), India and China are frustrated by the stalemate reached by the KP over whether to allow full exports of Chiadzwa diamonds.

The number of new HIV infections is almost one-fifth lower than it was a decade ago, indicating that the world has 'turned the corner in the fight against HIV/AIDS', according to the UNAIDS Global Report on HIV/AIDS. 'The biggest epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa - Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe - have either stabilised or are showing signs of decline,' according to the report.

As Haiti gears up for its forthcoming elections, Jean William Jeanty decries the complete absence of transparency in the country around post-earthquake reconstruction and the ability of foreign companies to usurp Haitian law. With the country gripped by cholera (the ‘natural indicator of underdevelopment’), Jeanty stresses that Haiti’s leaders ‘are trying to rush the elections so that they can perpetuate things the way they are’.

From football rows to images of love and affection, a variety of messages find embodiment on Tunisian walls. People of various ages and social classes dedicate effort and money to turn the walls of Tunis into a random mosaic of letters and figures, understandable only to their peers. 'I find a space where I can move around with my black lines, away from the eyes of censors, to write whatever I want,' said Semer Idoudi, a 20-year-old student.

The Security Council has renewed for another 12 months the authorisations granted to states and regional organisations cooperating with Somalia’s transitional government to fight piracy off the country’s coast. As set out in previous resolutions, this includes the authorisation for States and regional organisations to enter Somalia’s territorial waters and use 'all necessary means' - such as deploying naval vessels and military aircraft, as well as seizing and disposing of boats, vessels, arms and related equipment used for piracy.

The Autonomous Port of Pointe-Noire has evicted 8,000 residents of a fishing village to make way for expanded facilities. The move is a blow to the community’s livelihoods, as well as closing down the market that supplied the city’s poor with affordable protein. 'I have fished here since my youth, and I don’t know where we can go,' said Joseph Takpo, an elderly fisherman.

The International Development Law Organisation has carried out research to compile comprehensive, accurate and strategic information on how best to enhance the protection of girls through legal empowerment approaches in four target countries, Bangladesh, India, Kenya and Liberia. The research focused on: access to birth registration, access to education, access to property rights, protection from child labour, protection from trafficking, protection from commercial sexual exploitation and protection from underage marriage.

Land Value Capture is a public revenue policy recommended for national action by consensus of all UN member states in both the UN Habitat II Agenda in 1996 and The Vancouver Action Plan, the 1976 founding document for UN Habitat. Land value capture can provide a substantial and practical means to raise the revenue needed to implement Local Agenda 21 sustainable community plans, meet the Millennium Development Goals, and provide needed community services.