For the first time and more than twenty years after the official recognition of their rights, children are provided with the possibility to access justice at the international level through a newly adopted complaints procedure. For this procedure to become a tangible reality for child victims, States need to sign and ratify the new Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child before it can enter into force and display its effects. The official UN signing ceremony opening the Protocol for signature and ratification took place 28 February 2012, during the UN Human Rights Council session in Geneva.

After decades of producing sharply worded critiques of the former regime, Om Zied isn't quieting down in the new Tunisia, or even dulling her verbal blade. 'Cavemen' is the word she used on the radio a couple of months ago to describe the ultra-conservative Salafists at the University of Manouba, in a suburb of Tunis. Salafists were pressuring administrators to permit women to wear the niqab, a full face veil, to classes. During the same radio interview the self-avowed secularist argued that few Islamists had ever tried to defend the rights of veiled women under the regime of the ousted president, Ben Ali.

A Zimbabwean minister launched a verbal attack on Impala Platinum Chief Executive David Brown, saying he was 'sick and tired' of the mining group's failure to comply with local black ownership laws. Implats is the biggest foreign investor in Zimbabwe's mining sector and has become the prime target of a government drive to get all outside companies to hand over majority stakes in their local operations to black Zimbabwean investors.

South Sudan’s plan to start collecting some 20,000 weapons from civilians in Jonglei state in March, by force if necessary, is likely to worsen the volatile security situation there and complicate efforts to deliver essential humanitarian aid, the UN and several analysts have warned. 'Disarmament efforts could contribute to increasing tensions in an already tense environment,' the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a 23 February bulletin. 'Jonglei’s rival communities are wary of relinquishing their weapons, regardless of government promises to carry out disarmament simultaneously in each area,' it added.

Shortly after Michel Sidibe became executive director of the United Nations’ AIDS prevention agency, a court in Senegal sentenced nine gay men, all AIDS educators, to eight years in prison for 'unnatural acts'. Sidibe flew to Senegal to ask its aging president, Abdoulaye Wade, to pardon the men. Sidibe, the son of a Muslim politician from Mali and a white French Catholic, asked the president – who is married to a white Frenchwoman – if he had ever suffered discrimination. 'Oh, Sidibe, you have no idea,' came the reply. 'And for not marrying a Muslim.' 'Then, Uncle,' Sidibe said, 'why do you accept that men here are put in jail for eight years just for being gay?'

Authorities in and around Misrata are preventing thousands of people from returning to the villages of Tomina and Kararim and have failed to stop local militias from looting and burning homes there, Human Rights Watch has said. The abuse mirrors the treatment of roughly 30,000 displaced people from the nearby town of Tawergha, who have also been blocked from returning home for at least five months, Human Rights Watch said.

Are you a civil society actor? Staff of an African NGO or coalition? Do you work on the African Union? Do you want to advocate at the Conti-nental level? If you answered yes to any of these, then this Secondment opportunity from Oxfam is for you.

Recently, the Federal Government of Nigeria signed a Joint Venture Agreement on commercial rice farming with Calvin Burgess, owner and principal promoter of the Oklahoma-based Dominion Farms Limited. Dominion Farms Kenya Limited has consistently been accused by the locals of the Yala swamp basin of land grabbing and have consistently resisted attempts by Calvin Burgess to evict them from their naturally rich, ancestral land.

The annual UN report documenting conflict-related sexual violence around the world for the first time on Thursday named some of the military forces, militia and other armed groups that are suspected of being among the worst offenders. It stated that the report provided examples of how sexual violence had threatened security and impeded peacebuilding in post-conflict situations, such as in Chad, CAR, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Timor-Leste, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Bosnia and Herzegovina. It also revealed how it has been used in the context of elections, political strife and civil unrest in Egypt, Guinea, Kenya and Syria, among others.

Three women in Cameroon have been charged with practising homosexuality, in what is believed to be the first such case in the country, a local reporter tells the BBC. The case, allegedly involving a lesbian love triangle, came to court on Monday, but has only been reported nationally now due to the remoteness of the area. Homosexual acts are punishable by up to five years in prison.

An attempt to strike a pre-election agreement between leaders participating in the Senegalese elections has flopped. Opposition and civil rights groups rejected the African Union mediator’s proposed roadmap, which was intended to forestall likelihood of post election violence in the West country that goes to elections tomorrow. The roadmap proposed a two year term for President Abdoulaye Wade if he garnered an outright victory in the first round. Mr Wade, according to the rejected proposal, would then be succeeded by a government of national unity with a mandate to reform laws and institutions, plus establish an acceptable agenda for the country’s political future.

Government is going ahead with plans to build nuclear power stations - a scrap by local and international companies to get a slice of the staggering R300-billion tender. National Treasury this week revealed the rollout - which will see the construction of the plants along the country's coastline - would ensure a supply of an extra 9600 megawatts of electricity. The stations are expected to be fully operational by 2029 andsignalling will be the largest infrastructure programme undertaken by government.

More than seven months overdue, the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria grant will finally be released to key South African AIDS organizations that have been struggling to survive. Some were on the verge of shutting down. The Global Fund released US$7,106,426.91 to the South African National Treasury on 6 February, the same day seven of the grant's sub-recipients delivered an open letter to Minister of Health, Aaron Motsoaledi, pleading for intervention to bring the Fund's 'life-threatening delays' to an end.

A Facebook and Twitter campaign has been started to find Zimbabwean human rights activist Paul Chizuze who went missing on 8 February. According to a press release sent out by his colleagues and friends which has been posted on Facebook: 'Over the last three decades, Paul has been either employed by, or active with, the Legal Resources Foundation, Amani Trust Matabeleland, The Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, ZimRights, Churches in Bulawayo, CivNet, and Masakhaneni Trust. Paul has worked tirelessly as a paralegal to track activists in jail and offer them support.'

The consolidated Ballot Update is a creation of the findings from 210 long term observers deployed by the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) in 2011. The Update seeks to provide an analysis of the human rights situation in Zimbabwe and implications for free and fair elections. 'While the GNU has brought a semblance of normalcy to the country, on the political scene, it has been a mixed bag of successes and failures to implement its letter and spirit. This update is a synthesis of data from observers deployed from April to December 2011.'

Walter Turner, host of the show, Africa Today, a weekly radio program on Africa and the African Diaspora interviewed Onyango Oloo on 24 February 2012. The focus of the interview was on the political and historical developments in Kenya between 1963 with a special emphasis on the responses of Kenyans to the ICC process.

GRAIN has made available a new data set documenting 416 recent, large-scale land grabs by foreign investors for the production of food crops. The cases cover nearly 35 million hectares of land in 66 countries. The collection of deals provides a stark snapshot of how agribusiness has been rapidly expanding across the globe since the food and financial crises of 2008 and how this is taking food production out of the hands of farmers and local communities.

Senegalese Human Rights League (LSDH) and the Senegalese section of Amnesty International (AI) have again denounced the practice of torture in the country, following the death of another student. Both organisations accused the police of having 'inflicted cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment on the student Ousseynou Seck until death'. The statement said the student, who was reportedly arrested and taken to a police station, during protests against the candidacy of President Abdoulaye Wade ahead of Sunday's election, reportedly died a few hours after his release.

Nearly 130,000 people have been displaced by fighting between Tuareg rebels and government forces since mid-January in Mali, the UN has warned. The clashes had displaced an estimated 60,000 people inside Mali, and a further 69,000 had fled to neighbouring countries, a spokesman told the BBC.

Cameroonian women have called on the government to respect national and international conventions it signed by ensuring parity between men and women in appointments to top positions and elective offices. The call was made in Douala this week during a meeting of members and leaders of various women’s associations and civil society organisations in Cameroon. The women met under the auspices of a newly-formed women’s umbrella group — Ensemble Pour la Parité (Together For Parity).