The Peace Council, a club at the Kenya Methodist University, helped launch the organisation known as "Sisi ni Amani" (We are Peace) at the Baba Ndogo slum estate in Nairobi, Kenya. Sisi ni Amani organisation is focused on interviewing and peace mapping, a concept where any individual sends a message about any peaceful, violent or volatile activity in their area to a number and analysts are able to gather this information, map it and send it to the relevant authorities for support. The launch involved many youths and children. It also aimed at promoting local talent such as music, dance, poetry and acting in the slum area. Contact: Njoroge Caleb, [email][email protected]

Much of an MDG discussion hosted by Al Jazeera's Inside Story focuses on increasing global food security and eradicating hunger. Vandana Shiva, Indian environmental activist and author, argues in this article and video that Brazil's programme is amazing because it has been an initiative of government to allow communities to become 'food self reliant' and 'food self secure'.

Five months after Islamist militia took over a hospital and camp hosting thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Somalia's Afgoye corridor, living conditions have deteriorated, with malnutrition, food shortages and shelter emerging as the key concerns. 'I live in the Hawa Abdi area; in my camp alone, there are 550 families [3,300 people] with little or no food, no medical help and almost non-existent shelter,' Hussein Abi, an elder, told IRIN.

In the semi-arid Laikipia district of Kenya’s Rift Valley province, research scientist Sarah Ogalleh Ayeri travels from one village to another, documenting methods used by peasant farmers as they attempt to adapt to changing climatic conditions. She is a research scientist at the Centre for Training and Integrated Research for Arid and Semi-Arid Lands Development and her study is titled 'Lessons from Farmers: localised adaptations in agriculture as building blocks to climate change adaptation in Laikipia district'.

In recent decades, the rate at which humans worldwide are pumping dry the vast underground stores of water that billions depend on has more than doubled, say scientists who have conducted an unusual, global assessment of groundwater use. These fast-shrinking subterranean reservoirs are essential to daily life and agriculture in many regions, while also sustaining streams, wetlands, and ecosystems and resisting land subsidence and salt water intrusion into fresh water supplies. Today, people are drawing so much water from below that they are adding enough of it to the oceans (mainly by evaporation, then precipitation) to account for about 25 per cent of the annual sea level rise across the planet, the researchers find.

The ANC's discussion document on a national health insurance (NHI), unveiled at the party's national general council last week, contains few details on how to fix the embattled public health system and little in the way of innovation, experts complained last week. To ensure that an NHI brought better access to healthcare, there would need to be a concurrent improvement in the reach and quality of healthcare services and an increase in the number of facilities and staff in the sector.

Historically the tool that has been used to counter Gender Based Violence (GBV) has been the law. Following various gender protocols the governments of the SADC countries have readily developed legislation criminalising GBV to varying degrees. Yet, legislative solutions to the problem of GBV and rape in the SADC region can be likened to covering one’s eyes in order to see no evil, says this blog post.

On the eve of an emergency FAO-meeting devoted to instability in agricultural markets, the UN Special Rapporteur has published a study analysing the impact of speculation on food price volatility. The study shows that a significant portion of the increases in price and volatility of essential food commodities can only be explained by the emergence of a speculative bubble. In particular, there is a reason to believe that a significant role is played by the entry into markets for derivatives based on food commodities of large, powerful institutional investors such as hedge funds, pension funds and investment banks, all of which are generally unconcerned with agricultural market fundamentals.

Over the past decade there has been rapid growth in mobile phone penetration worldwide, making the mobile phone the most ubiquitous communications device in the world. This commercial growth has also opened up a tremendous opportunity for organisations seeking to provide life-changing services and provide useful information to citizens even in low-income and remote communities. One particular area that has seen a number of innovations, specifically in leveraging mobile social media, is HIV/AIDS awareness, public education and counseling.

Although 70 per cent of Madagascar’s 20 million people are peasants, the country depends on imports for 20 per cent of its staple food, rice. Also, 30 percent of Madagascar’s land can be used for agriculture, but only 4 percent of the land is actually farmed. The government has neither the budget nor any effective strategies to address these problems. “All we do is hope for investments and technology transfers from overseas,” says Rakotoson Philibert, secretary-general of the Ministry of Agriculture.

Four months ago, Google unveiled a tool that allows users to monitor the requests received from governments to take down material or report data on the users of their search engine and other services. This month, it released another tool that will expose less overt attempts by governments to curtail its various services, including YouTube and Gmail.

The Google Public Data Explorer makes large datasets easy to explore, visualize and communicate. Students, journalists, policy makers and everyone else can play with the tool to create visualizations of public data, link to them, or embed them in their own webpages.

Zimbabwe must show greater respect for human rights and political freedoms before the US sanctions on the impoverished African nation can be removed, the U.S. State Department said on Sunday. The State Department said its top diplomat for Africa and other US officials met three Zimbabwean ministers and had praised the economic advances but raised concerns 'that political progress has not been as successful'.

The Optional protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (OP-ICESCR) adopted by the General Assembly of the UN on 10 December of 2008 and opened to signatures and ratifications on 24 September 2009 enables new channels for the justiciability of the right to food at international level. The OP will enter in to force three months after its 10th ratification. On the first anniversary of the opening to signature and ratification, the NGO Coalition working for the ratification of the OP has launched a statement promoting the 10 first ratifications until 10 December.

Big investment banks are making a killing out of reckless speculation, with disastrous consequences for the lives of poor people around the world. Come and find out how, and what we’re going to do to stop them.

The Mutambara Peace Village is a unique effort to reconcile Hutus and Tutsis by giving them homes to live together in the same village. Today, some 1,600 Hutus and Tutsis live as neighbours in 300 identical two-room homes constructed of concrete with tin roofs.

Forced expulsions, violent recriminations, mass exodus, peaceful co-existence - just some of the possible outcomes for hundreds of thousands of Southern Sudanese living in the North, and to a lesser extent, vice versa, after a January referendum when the South is likely to vote to transform its semi-autonomy into full independence. 'We are worried for the future, of what happens after the referendum,' said James Jok, a vegetable seller who has lived in the Northern capital Khartoum since fleeing violence in the Southern state of Jonglei over two decades ago. 'I am frightened that if there is independence, we will just be told, "go home",' he added.

Uganda joined the rest of the world to celebrate Access to Information Day with a call on the government to show commitment and implement the Access to Information Act, passed by Parliament five years ago. The activists were also asking the government to either repeal or amend existing laws that are a draw-back on the right of access to information. The say the negative laws include the Oath of Secrecy Act and the Official Secrets Act, whose provisions are at variance with the Access to Information Act and Article 41 of the Constitution.

For many millions in the developing world, land is central to livelihoods, food security, even identity. It is not surprising, then, that a recent wave of large - scale land acquisitions in poorer countries has sparked a major debate. This brief from the International Institute for Environment and Development lays out key trends, drivers and main features of the deal, with a focus on Africa.

One year after the massacre of 157 people in Conakry, no army official suspected of taking part in the killings has been brought before a court in Guinea, which is still riven by political divisions. On September 28 2009, a peaceful rally organised by the opposition in Conakry's biggest stadium, was bloodily suppressed by junta troops, leaving 157 dead, hundreds of women victims of sexual violence and over a thousand injured.