The United Nations top envoy to the Côte d’Ivoire is slated to hold a series of meetings next week in a bid to jump-start a critical step threatening to disrupt the nation’s much-delayed presidential elections, scheduled for late next month. The initiative aims to give new impetus to efforts which would lead to the posting of the final voter list for the Côte d’Ivoire’s long-awaited polls, which were to have been held as far back as 2005 and are now scheduled for 29 November.

Africa in Democracy and Good Governance (ADG) gladly accepts interns interested in broadening their knowledge on a range of topics. Internship assignments vary in length according to the availability and academic requirements of the intern, as well as the needs of ADG and are available on a part-time and full-time basis throughout the year. Internship assignments also vary greatly in terms of content.

Applications are now open: The Ford Foundation International Fellowships Program2010- 2011. The Program is especially designed to support candidates from groups that have historically lacked access to higher education. Eligible candidates who belong to marginalized and excluded groups and communities such as scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, other backward classes, religious minorities, women, physically challenged and those with other kinds of socio-economic deprivation are encouraged to apply.

Forty years after the rights of Africa’s refugees were enshrined in a landmark convention, the continent’s leaders are due to make legal history again by adopting a new instrument to assist people displaced within the borders of their own country. The African Convention on the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa is the main agenda for the heads of state summit on refugees, returnees and IDPs in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, from 19-23 October.

Aggravated homosexuality will be punished by death, according to a new bill tabled in Uganda's Parliament. The private member's bill was tabled by Ndorwa West MP David Bahati (NRM). A person commits aggravated homosexuality when the victim is a person with disability or below the age of 18, or when the offender is HIV-positive.

Applications are now open for the 2010 STARS Impact Award. The STARS Impact Awards recognise outstanding organisations working in the areas of children's health, education and protection. Eligible Organisations working with children in Africa, the Middle East, Asia or Pacific are invited to apply.

The Chiadzwa diamond fields in Marange, Manicaland province are still off-limits for journalists working in the country. This was demonstrated by Friday's incident where freelance journalist Annie Mtalume was arrested on allegations of entering the ' protected' area without a pass. She was detained overnight in Chiadzwa and was only transferred to Mutare on Saturday.

The Government of Burundi should immediately evaluate the claims of up to 400 Rwandan asylum seekers and stop all efforts to coerce them to leave the country, Human Rights Watch has said. Human Rights Watch also called on Rwandan authorities to stop pressuring Burundi to force the asylum seekers to return to Rwanda.

Lake Chad, once one of the world’s largest water bodies, could disappear in 20 years due to climate change and population pressures, resulting in a humanitarian disaster in central Africa, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has warned. The lake – surrounded by Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria – has shrunk by 90 per cent, going from 25,000 square kilometers in 1963 to less than 1,500 square kilometers in 2001.

Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement of South Africa, an organisation representing thousands of people who live in informal settlements, and its President, Mr Sibusiso Zikode, approached the KwaZulu-Natal High Court, Durban, challenging the constitutionality of the KwaZulu-Natal Elimination and Prevention of Re-emergence of Slums Act. The High Court dismissed the challenge.

The Graduate Studies in International Affairs (GSIA) program in the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, in partnership with the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO) and Bjørknes College, offers one scholarship each year for full-time study in the Master of International Affairs specialising in Peace and Conflict Studies degree program. Tuition fees will be covered by The Australian National University and Bjørknes College; and students will receive some funding towards living costs as a stipend. Oslo Peace Scholarship Applicants Deadlines is April 30, 2010.

The Millennium Goals cannot be achieved at the United Nations. The U.N. can create a platform for governments to make commitments but cannot force compliance by member states. Only citizens and their elected representatives – at the national level – can hold governments to account for the promises to reduce poverty made in 2000 at the UN General Assembly in New York.

This latest policy briefing from the International Crisis Group, focuses on the events of 28 September – when security forces killed at least 160 people in a crackdown on opposition to the military regime – and their implications for the stability of the country and the sub-region. It discusses dangerous fractures within the military and signs that various members are raising ethnic militias, warns that Guineans will not accept an attempt by the army to remain in power and calls for the end of military rule and a re-opening of the democratic transition process.

Some 260 Sudanese refugees jailed for entering Lebanon illegally have been deproted, according to a Sudanese Embassy official. The refugees were sent back on a Sudan Airways flight, the official said. In a statement to the Sudan News Agency, head of Sudan’s Expatriates Affairs Amin Taha al-Girain said 2,871 Sudanese nationals had also been voluntarily returned from Libya.

Supporters of the slain military leader of Burkina Faso, Captain Thomas Isidore Noel Sankara, have denounced international support for the regime of President Blaise Compaore saying it was doing all it can for him "to rule for ever". Commemorating the 22nd anniversary of the assassination of Captain Sankara in the Burkinabe capital, Ouagadougou, they gathered at the Daghnoen cemetery, a district in Ouagadougou, around the tombs of their idol and his companions who were assassinated on 15 October, 1987 during a coup.

The Congolese government's military operation in eastern Congo, Kimia II, backed by United Nations peacekeepers and aimed at neutralizing the threat from a Rwandan Hutu militia group, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), has resulted in an unacceptable cost for the civilian population, said 84 humanitarian and human rights groups in the Congo Advocacy Coalition.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) sounded the alarm on the worsening humanitarian situation in the Horn of Africa today, noting that nearly five million children under the age of five in the region are now hungry. This marks an increase of 1 million since May, while the number of people in need of emergency assistance in the region has also risen, climbing from 20 million earlier this year to 24 million, the agency said.

Guinea’s military government, facing international sanctions and heavy strictures over a mass killing of unarmed demonstrators, is highlighting a recent agreement with a Chinese company that could provide it with billions of dollars.

RK Naik, who has died aged 81, was the only Indian to have served as a member of the central committee of the Zimbabwe African People's Union (Zapu), the resistance movement started in the then Southern Rhodesia in 1961. Ramanbhai Khandubhai Naik was born in Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia; his parents had migrated there from Gujarat, India. When RK was three, his father died during one of his visits to India. The family stayed on and RK completed his matriculation in India before returning to Southern Rhodesia at the age of 16.

Targets to cut the number of hungry people in the world will not be met without greater international effort, UN food agencies have warned. The UN's annual report on global food security confirms that more than one billion people - a sixth of the world's population - are undernourished. It says the number of hungry people was growing before the economic crisis, which has made the situation worse.