United Nations officials in Liberia have welcomed the launch of a new national strategy to combat HIV/AIDS, stressing the importance of tackling the disease before infection rates become high in the West African country. Liberia’s National AIDS Commission yesterday launched a strategic framework for 2010 to 2014 in the capital, Monrovia, with the target of containing the spread of HIV at its current rate of 1.5 per cent among the general population.

Indications emerged that erstwhile number two man in Nigeria, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, would on Sunday formally declare his presidential ambition for the 2011 presidential elections in the country. An invitation supposedly signed Atiku's spokesperson, Shehu Garba states that the former vice president under Chief Olusegun Obasanjo administration would make public, his plans to return to the government house, but this time around, as the President.

The Minister of Media, Information and Publicity, Webster Shamu, on Wednesday threatened to arrest any government ministers who disclose information on cabinet meetings and proceedings to the media, plus the journalists who use such information. Minister Shamu reportedly said ministers were using confidential information from cabinet proceedings to “further their political agendas” and that some even “distort or misinterpret” the information in order to “promote their narrow party political interests”.

Every 17 seconds a woman is raped in South Africa. According to the South African Police Services’ 2006 rape statistics, close to 55 000 women reported being raped that year. But how many more rapes go unreported, and why? Put yourself in a rape survivor’s shoes just for a minute. After experiencing an extremely traumatic ordeal, what would you do? Would you go to the police station, seek medical attention or do nothing and hope to forget about it? Often, these are some of the questions that linger in the mind of a rape survivor. Every 17 seconds a woman is raped in South Africa. It is also estimated that 1 in 9 adult women report being raped.

Maude Barlow, former UN advisor on water, ‘Alternative Nobel’ prize winner and founder of the Blue Planet Project, has condemned the Botswana government’s failure to allow Bushmen to access water. Barlow’s remarks come a week after the United Nations declared water a fundamental human right, and two weeks after a Botswana High Court judge ruled that the Kalahari Bushmen cannot access a water borehole on their lands.

Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) with tenofovir (found in Viread, Truvada and Atripla) is safe for men who have sex with men (MSM), according to a U.S. study presented Friday, July 23, at the XVIII International AIDS Conference (IAC) in Vienna. PrEP is one of the most promising prevention tools on the immediate horizon. With PrEP, HIV-negative individuals take antiretroviral drugs to prevent becoming infected with the virus.

Since March 2008, Beatrice Tamaska Kae has lived under a tarpaulin with her seven children in a camp after their eviction from a government forest in Trans Nzoia West district in western Kenya. "It is hard to get used to life in a camp when you had a lot of space before; during the dry season life is slightly better because it is not cold but now with the heavy rains and the cold, it is pure misery, however closely we sit or sleep, we cannot get warm in this weather," Kae said on 29 July at Teldet primary school, in Kissawai location of Saboti Division.

South Africa has recalled its ambassador to Rwanda following a diplomatic row over the shooting of an exiled Rwandan general in Johannesburg. Gen Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, a critic of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, was shot and wounded in June. South Africa said it had not broken diplomatic ties and no connection was being made between the ambassador's withdrawal and the shooting.

Rwanda's presidential elections will take place on August 9, 2010, in a context marked by increasing political repression and a crackdown on free speech. Over the last six months, Human Rights Watch has documented a worrying pattern of intimidation, harassment and other abuses - ranging from killings and arrests to restrictive administrative measures - against opposition parties, journalists, members of civil society and other critics.

The Angolan government should annul the convictions of three prominent rights advocates and a former policeman after a politically motivated trial in the oil-rich Cabinda province, Human Rights Watch has said. The government should revoke the overbroad and vague provisions of the state security law brought against the four men, Human Rights Watch said.

More than 10 years on, global poverty reduction strategies introduced by multilateral organisations including the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), have failed to remove many of the poorest communities, especially minority and indigenous communities, out of poverty, Minority Rights Group International says. Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) were initiated in 1999 by the IMF and World Bank to help low income and highly indebted countries to reduce their poverty levels. At the time, the move was widely supported by the UN and big donor countries. Currently, about 140 countries around the world are at some stage of a PRSP process, including implementing development projects based on the papers.

An uneasy calm has returned to a displaced persons’ camp in the restive region of Darfur in western Sudan where clashes broke out last week over tensions related to the current state of the peace process, the joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping mission (UNAMID) there reported. Mohammed Yonis, UNAMID’s Deputy Joint Special Representative and acting chief of mission, visited South Darfur, where the troubled Kalma camp is situated, and discussed the security situation with the state governor and camp leaders.

The French government through the French Development Agency is sponsoring the execution of development projects totalling 200 million Euros throughout the West African Nation of Ghana. The projects, which are mainly on the provision of potable water, electricity and sanitation, are currently being executed in the Brong Ahafo, Ashanti, Northern and Volta Regions.

A court in Gambia has rejected the appeal of an opposition politician who was jailed for using a megaphone at a rally without permission, a case that has drawn harsh criticism from foreign donors. The jailing of Femi Peters, campaign manager of the main opposition UDP party, led to the United States and former colonial power Britain speaking out over concerns about human rights in Gambia, moves which drew an angry rebuke from President Yahya Jammeh who accused them of backing the opposition.

South Africa's draft climate change policy, known as the green paper, would be submitted to Cabinet by the end of August, after which it would be gazetted for public comment, the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA). DEA communications chief director Albi Modise further explained that following engagement on the comments received, a widely-consulted white paper would be submitted into the Parliamentary process by the end of the year, for promulgation which was expected in the first quarter of 201

"Virtually every author concludes that violence against African migrants will continue and increase unless some profound socio-economic and attitudinal changes occur. This text thus sounds a loud warning bell to South Africa about our future. And it does so not merely based on the opinions of the authors, but because of the views of ordinary South African citizens that informed the research. ... survey after survey, focus group after focus group, have shown deeply xenophobic attitudes rising steadily over time." - David Everatt in introduction to report on South African Civil Society and Xenophobia, July 2010

Uganda hopes to become the region's leader in rice research with the opening later this year of a US$6 million centre at its crop research institute. The National Crop Resources Research Institute (NACRRI) received the money from Japan in September last year for the construction of a training and research centre for rice farmers and scientists, which is now nearing completion.

After months of non-payment, lay counsellors vital to government's ambitious target of testing 15 million South Africans for HIV by April 2011, are threatening to walk out of voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) clinics. Lay counsellors in at least two of South Africa's nine provinces - Eastern Cape and Gauteng - said they had gone for as long as five months without receiving their government stipends for providing pre- and post-test counselling as part of the national testing drive.

The Africa Peace & Conflict Journal, published by the UN Mandated University for Peace, is now accepting abstracts and full length articles for its upcoming December 2010 publication. Submissions on all topics related to African peace and conflict studies are welcome. The deadline for receipt of full-articles is September 1st 2010. The Africa Peace & Conflict Journal is a biannual publication.

The Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) is a pan-African non-governmental organisation headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya with a network of 33 National Chapters throughout Africa. FAWE is the pioneer and leading NGO on the promotion of girls’ and women’s education in Africa. FAWE is seeking to recruit a bilingual, results-oriented individual to join its dynamic, professional team as Deputy Director.