The Coalition of African Lesbians (CAL) is mobilising against the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009, which has been re-tabled in the Ugandan Parliament.

Senegal's police on Tuesday 14 February blocked youths from settling in a square in Dakar where they planned a permanent sit-in to protest President Abdoulaye Wade's bid to run for a third term in February polls. Scores of police were deployed on and around Obelisk Square, preventing members of rapper-led youth movement 'Fed Up' from gathering for their protest.

The ECOWAS Community Court in Abuja, Nigeria, on 6 February 2012 ordered the Gambian government to comply with its ruling on Musa Saidykahn, a former editor-in-chief of the banned The Independent newspaper, by compensating him for violating his human rights in 2006. On 16 December 2010, the regional court confirmed that Saidykhan was tortured by President Yahya Jammeh's security agents while in detention in 2006. It also ruled that Saidykhan’s arrest and subsequent detention were illegal and violated his right to personal liberty and a fair hearing as guaranteed by Articles 6 and 7 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights. The ECOWAS court, therefore, awarded Saidykhan damages of US$200,000.

Eleven people have died from meningitis out of 40 reported cases in four departments across Côte d’Ivoire as of 31 January, leaving people scrambling to access the vaccine for their families. The Ministry of Health has declared the outbreaks in the departments of Kouto and Tengrela in the north as epidemics, and is providing free vaccinations in both locations through mobile health teams, with the help of the World Health Organization and UNICEF.

The International Detention Coalition (IDC) has made a submission to the UN Special Rapporteur concerning a report on the issue of immigration detention. The report draws from global research and consultations undertaken by the IDC and focuses on the international trends emerging in the use and impact of immigration detention, the legal standards relating to the detention of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants, as well as alternatives to immigration detention.

The South Centre organised a workshop at the beginning of February on the state of the global economy, and reflection on recent and future multilateral negotiations. The workshop provided a forum at the beginning of 2012 for policy makers, diplomats and experts of developing countries to reflect on the state of the global economy and prospects for developing countries, and on the implications of important multilateral negotiations that have recent taken place, and that will take place this year. Documents presented at the workshop and available from the South Centre website include:
- The Staggering Rise of the South By Y?lmaz Akyüz, Special Economic Advisor, South Centre
- Instability and Downturn in the World Economy and the Prospects of the South", Statement by Petko Draganov, the Deputy Secretary-General, UNCTAD
- EPA Negotiations between EU and Africa, by Aileen Kwa, Coordinator, Trade and Development Programe, South Centre.

This video recording of two speeches by Ralph Nader and Bruce Fein, made to Harvard Law School students, details the constitutional violations of successive US presidents in perpetrating war, with the speakers arguing that this has essentially resulted in an authoritarian and expanded security state. Violations include assassinations, indefinite detentions, war crimes, secret courts, immunity from judiciary review, monitoring of citizens and extraordinary renditions.

Findings of a recent survey do not provide evidence for mass-immigration of foreign sex workers advertising online and in local newspapers, nor a spike in sex work or risk of HIV transmission during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. 'Public health programmes focusing on sex work and HIV prevention during international sporting events should be based on evidence, not media-driven sensationalism that further heightens discrimination against sex workers and increases their vulnerability.'

Nigeria has set aside $5 million for diaspora activities and prescribed a stipend of $2,500 to be paid to any member of its experts based abroad who decides to return home in a bid to turn 'brain drain into brain gain’. All over Africa, reports Africa Review, there are already similar attempts. In Kenya, a Draft Sessional Paper on the Diaspora was already being circulated and a web site was in place to identify the skills and expertise of citizens operating abroad.

Hundreds of people have been displaced and six killed in a fresh wave of ethnic clashes in the central Kenyan region of Isiolo where a spate of attacks and counter-attacks since late 2011 have left dozens dead. In the first attack on 13 February in Gambella, near Isiolo town [but in neighbouring Meru County], three farmers were killed on their farms 'as they harvested tomatoes'; three more were killed on [14 February] at Kampi ya juu, Isaiah Nakoru, the provincial commissioner told IRIN.

reports on the history of the unmanned drone in US assassinations. 'It was ten years ago this month, on February 4, 2002, that the CIA first used an unmanned Predator drone in a targeted killing. The strike was in Paktia province in Afghanistan, near the city of Khost. The intended target was Osama bin Laden, or at least someone in the CIA had thought so. Donald Rumsfeld later explained, using the passive voice of government: “A decision was made to fire the Hellfire missile. It was fired.” The Pentagon media pool began asking questions, and so the long decade of the drone began.'

According to the Tanzania government, the three-day floods that hit Dar es Salaam from 20-23 December claimed 39 lives. However, the figure is disputed by eyewitnesses who are putting the death toll to over 100. The floods have left numerous questions over the government’s ability to deal with, among others, natural and other disasters. While the government treated the problem as a natural disaster, there is massive evidence that the floods could have been avoided if successive Tanzanian governments had played their part effectively.

Burkina Faso's Network for Access to Essential Medicines (RAME) has called on the Burkinabè government to increase the budget allocation to the health sector to avoid interruptions to AIDS treatment. Despite an emergency plan announced in January, which will see the government spend around one billion CFA francs - two million dollars - to procure AIDS drugs in this West African country, patients and civil society groups are demanding permanent measures to ensure the availability of anti- retrovirals and reagents.

'In an Open Letter to Kenneth Roth, we express our concern that the director of Human Rights Watch has used his introductory essay in the 2012 Human Rights Watch World Report to urge support for newly elected governments of the Islamic right in the Middle East and North Africa. Our letter points out that he does not need to urge engagement where there is no threat of a boycott; that he mirrors security discourses relating to Muslim contexts where the choice is between 'autocrats' or 'moderate Islamists'; and that he is dismissive of the threats to sexual rights and to religious minorities and silent on the struggles of labor, secularists and others who initiated and sustained the mobilizations and movements against oppressive regimes.'

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) is pleased to announce its Small Grants Programme for Thesis Writing for the year 2012. The grants serve as part of the Council’s contribution to the development of the social sciences in Africa, and the continuous renewal and strengthening of research capacities in African universities, through the funding of primary research conducted by postgraduate students and professionals.

At a waterlogged gold mine in western Kenya’s Migori District, 14-year-old Jacob*, one of 15,000 children toiling in the region’s pits, scours the water for glistering flakes, a job he says beats going to school on an empty stomach. An estimated 15,000 children are working in gold mines in the districts of Nyatike and Migori in western Kenya’s Nyanza province, either in actual extraction or in ancillary services such as selling food, according to the local Children’s Welfare Office. This number rises significantly at weekends and during school holidays.

Deadly clashes between police and youth in the Northeastern town of Taza suggest that, far from bringing change and stability, Morocco’s new government is simply repeating mistakes of the past, stoking tensions and fuelling a spate of protests against the regime. In an effort to keep its population in check during the Arab Spring, the regime launched a process of reforms last February and brandished what it called ‘the Moroccan exception’, boasting of relative calm during a period of intense regional turmoil.

Moscow has accused the west of stirring up tensions in the Arab world by calling for the overthrow of the Syrian regime. Russia says calls from certain states for the Syrian opposition to avoid dialogue with the government, are only provoking further violence. Author and journalist Webster Tarpley, who's in Damascus, says, it's very simple, western powers are behind the violence in Syria, according to this video and report from RT, the first Russian 24/7 English-language news channel which brings the Russian view on global news.

Malawi’s maize-growing central and southern regions have not had good rains, prompting concerns about possible shortages of the staple in the coming months. 'I think it could be one of the worst shortages we have seen in recent times,' said an early warning official who preferred anonymity. 'The rains have never been so erratic. In some parts of Malawi small farmers have gone in for a second round of planting after the crops failed; and the seed they have used is not of good quality so it will not give good yields.'

Sudan's armed forces said on Saturday 11 February they had seized an area held by rebels after a battle lasting two days in the border state of Blue Nile where fighting has been raging for five months. Clashes spread to Blue Nile in September after violence broke out in June in the nearby oil-producing state of South Kordofan between the army and rebels from the SPLM-North, which wants to topple the Khartoum government.