While the Senegalese government wishes to ‘disengage financially from the water sector’, it is precisely the previous public management of water that has begun to improve infrastructure and people’s access to the resource.

Senegalese opposition leaders are protesting a delay in issuing identification cards to youth, a move they say was calculated to deny them votes in the forthcoming elections. In the election to be held in February next year, President Abdoulaye Wade will face three former prime ministers and other veteran politicians in what promises to be the hottest political contest in Senegal since independence. On Tuesday, the opposition accused the ruling party of instituting technical delays in issuing the new identification cards, saying it was intended to sideline thousands of youths from registering.

The Great Green Wall project aims to plant a line of trees nearly 8,000 kilometres long and 15 kilometres wide. This green belt would pass through 11 countries in the Sahel, from Senegal to Djibouti. It hopes to stop the desert from expanding and swallowing farmland. Many are happy with what is being achieved, but others are not, reports Farm Radio Weekly. Aliou Sow is a farmer in Senegal. He complains bitterly that the authorities planted trees in his community without consultation. While farmers travel miles on foot or by donkey to fetch water for the villages of Tessekeré, Amaly and Widou, wells are being dug specifically to irrigate nurseries for the Wall.

'We no longer need to go to Hanène, three kilometres away, for vaccinations or for a check-up for our children,' said Maguette Niang, a 40-year-old mother from Keur Madaro, a village in the west of Senegal. Keur Madaro is one of many Senegalese communities that now has staff watching over the health of the village from a community health post – a simple two-roomed building right in the heart of the village. This is thanks to a five-year project launched in 2006 under the title Wër (meaning 'good health' in Wolof) being carried out jointly by the Senegalese Ministry of Health, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the non-governmental organisations Plan International, Child Fund, World Vision and Africare.

A Dakar court has given Abdou Latif Coulibaly, the editor of the weekly La Gazette, a three-month suspended jail sentenced and fined him 10 million CFA francs (15,267 euros) for allegedly defaming a Senegalese businessman close to President Wade by accusing him of acting fraudulently in his dealings with the government. Reporters Without Borders condemns the way the Senegalese authorities and several leading figures close to the government are hounding Coulibaly, one of Dakar’s most respected journalists. The lawsuits that keep being brought against him constitute an unacceptable form of harassment

Thousands of Senegalese fishermen and boatowners have demonstrated against the presence of foreign ships, which they said were authorised by the government and pillaging natural resources. Small scale fishermen and boatowners condemned the issuing of 'illegal' licences to some 20 boats that have been in Senegalese waters for several months.

Senegal should accept an African Union (AU) plan for the trial of Hissène Habré during discussions set for 23 and 24 March in Addis Ababa, a coalition of human rights organisations said today in a letter to Senegal's president. The African Union, which called at its summit in January for an 'expeditious' start to a long-delayed trial, invited Senegal to the Ethiopian capital to discuss an AU proposal to try the former Chadian dictator before a special court within the Senegalese justice system whose president and appeals chamber president would be appointed by the AU. The Senegalese delegation to the talks will be led by Justice Minister Cheikh Tidiane Sy.

Amy Niang

Claude Ribbe

Michel Hunault

Jean-Marc Ayrault

Jean-Paul Lecoq

Jacques Remiller

Axel Poniatowski

Attending the World Assembly of Migrants at WSF Dakar, Colin Rajah is disappointed by the emphasis on ‘individual migrants, rather than movements and organizations’, the lack of global representation among participants, and the exclusion of key issues from the assembly’s final charter.

The independent news magazine Kontext TV, supported by Noam Chomsky and others, was at the World Social Forum in Dakar, Senegal in February and has produced a series of broadcasts on the occasion of the Forum's 10th anniversary. The first programme is now online in English and German versions under The programme reports about some of the key issues at the Forum such as the impacts of the revolutions in North Africa and the formation of a worldwide movement for climate justice and land grabbing. Another broadcast focussing on Africa is going to follow.

You are invited to sign the following petition, which was drafted by farmers’ organisations, NGOs, religious organisations, unions and other social movements gathered in Dakar for the World Social Forum 2011.

Senegal Saturday (27 Feb) lost three more soldiers in Casamance (southern region), during violent clashes against fighters of the Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC) in northern Sindian near the Gambian border, PANA learnt here from military sources. According to the sources, the clashes also left seven other soldiers wounded, including one whose legs were cut off by an anti-personnel mine.

A Senegalese journalist, Basile Niane and his three compatriot students have been selected among the 20 best bloggers of the Mondoblog competition, organized by Radio France International, a press release from RFI, made available to PANA said. In all, 100 francophone bloggers participated in the competition and the 20 best bloggers designated through a week-long training session in Dakar, the Senegalese capital, or Yaoundé, Cameroon.

The Accra-based media rights body, Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), is pushing for the inclusion of issues of freedom of expression and media rights in UN Human Rights Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of West African states. Sources told PANA on Saturday in Dakar that MFWA is at an advanced stage of working on 'stakeholders’ reports and recommendations' to State delegates on the 'free expression situation' in West Africa.

'NGOs don't mobilise people, desperation mobilises people,' said a Cambodian land activist as he related the experience of Boeung Kak villagers who were driven off their land by their own government to make way for corporate profiteering. Such stories were abundant from all corners of the world this week at the World Social Forum in Dakar, Senegal. The forum, which celebrated its 10th anniversary this year, attracted representatives from civil society organisations, social movements and unions from more than 123 countries. Present among them were land rights activists and small farmers, who came to relate and decry the unfettered grabbing of their land.

'Despite the many challenges, the chaos, the gathering of some 70,000 (WSF estimates) in one location with constant motion, sounds, music and drumming, talk and laughter is such joy.' Follow Priority Africa Network’s experiences in Dakar on .

Days after the global elite's jamboree at the Swiss resort of Davos, a week-long carnival of the oppressed and the marginalised, and those speaking for them, has begun in the capital of this western African nation, with thousands of left-leaning activists declaiming against globalisation and its discontents. The debates will revolve around resistance and struggles of the peoples of Africa for sustainable development as the continent zooms back into global focus, with some of African economies doing better than the developed world. 'The marginalisation of Africa is an important theme at the forum. Land grabs have put the focus back on issues of social justice,' Sanusha Naidu, a South African of Indian origin, who heads Emerging Powers in Africa programme at Fahamu, a global NGO, told IANS.

The world is in financial crisis thanks to the reckless behaviour of bankers, say campaigners, yet ordinary people are picking up the tab. Debt activists fear the recession will provide cover for a fresh round of toxic debt to countries in the South. Nick Dearden, director of the Jubilee Debt Campaign, an international coalition of about 200 organisations, says there has never been a more important time for activists to meet to discuss collaboration and strategies to bring about real change to the world's economy than now.

Tens of thousands of people marched through the streets of Dakar on Sunday to mark the start of the annual World Social Forum. Activists carried colorful banners denouncing land grabs, restrictive immigration laws, agricultural subsidies in Europe and the US and many other issues. Others sang freedom songs and played drums whilst marching peacefully through the streets along a route that began near the offices of Senegal's public broadcaster, RTS, and ended at the Cheikh Anta Diop University, the main venue for the weeklong gathering.

The regional agencies of eight non-governmental organisations under a platform Inter-Agency for Education on Friday decided to take advantage of the World Social Forum (FSM) to be hosted in Senegal from 6 to 11 February 2011 to join their forces to attain the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the domain of education. The Inter-Agency for Education, which brings together ActionAid, Ancefa, Fawe, Oneworld UK, Oxfam, Plan, UNICEF and Word Vision, is a framework of synergy and knowledge sharing aimed at strengthening the voice of the civil society for quality and free public education.