People in the Swaziland lowveld have died of hunger, a member of the Swazi Parliament has reported. Nkululeko Mbhamali, Matsanjeni North MP, said hunger was rife in his constituency and some people had died at Tikhuba. Crops have failed this year due to poor rains. Mbhamali said a ‘food-for-work’ scheme organised by World Vision that was supposed to distribute food supplied by overseas’ donors had not been implemented properly and many people were not receiving food.

A vibrant and cutting edge Cape Town-based NGO seeks an Advocacy and Human Rights Defence Manager to manage its Advocacy Programme. The position is available from the 1st August 2012. The organisation promotes the health and human rights of sex workers within the existing legal system in which sex work is criminalised, by providing and facilitating access to health care services for sex workers in several provinces in South Africa; facilitating the defence of sex workers’ human rights in and outside of court; providing safe spaces for sex worker empowerment and organising, and conducting action-oriented research and monitoring of sex worker human rights issues.

For the second time Kenyan fighter jets have targeted districts in southern Somalia, Radio Garowe reports. According to military sources, there are also contradicting reports saying that the strikes led to many civilian casualties, with a few Al Shabaab agents being killed in the strikes.

The World Bank undermined the rights of indigenous peoples and the environment with its approval on 12 July 2012, of a US$684 million loan, Human Rights Watch, Friends of Lake Turkana, International Rivers, Survival International, and the Bank Information Center said. The loan is for a 1,000-kilometer transmission line that would supply power to Kenya from Ethiopia’s controversial Gibe III dam. The World Bank’s board of directors approved the loan without applying the Bank’s social and environmental standards to the Gibe III dam, a power source for the transmission line.

In the context of the current rush for land in which the flows of land based wealth and power are being increasingly concentrated in the hands of dominant social classes and groups, an urgent debate on the future of farming is needed. Rather than accepting and seeking to regulate land grabs as if they were inevitable, this paper from the Transnational Institute proposes alternative investment opportunities which challenge the normative assumptions of the model of large-scale, industrial agriculture that these land appropriations promote.

South African Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma was elected on Sunday to become the first female head of the African Union (AU) Commission, ending a bruising leadership battle that had threatened to divide and weaken the organisation. Cheers broke out at the AU's soaring, Chinese-built steel and glass headquarters in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa as supporters of President Jacob Zuma's ex-wife celebrated her victory over incumbent Jean Ping of Gabon.

This page on the Child Rights Information Network highlights violations of child rights in Kenya. 'The violations highlighted are those issues raised with the State by more than one international mechanism. This is done with the intention of identifying children's rights which have been repeatedly violated, as well as gaps in the issues covered by NGOs in their alternative reports to the various human rights monitoring bodies.'

Reporters Without Borders has unreservedly condemned the abduction and continuing detention of Libyan cameraman Abdelqader Fosouk and Youssuf Badi in Bani Walid (150 km southeast of Tripoli), one of the last pro-Gaddafi strongholds to fall to the rebels during last year’s war. They have been held since 7 July, the day of nationwide parliamentary elections which they had gone to cover in Bani Walid for Tobacts TV, a station based in Misrata, 100 km north of Bani Walid.

The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) has started a new project 'End violence: women’s rights and safety online' based on the experience and knowledge gathered in the past years. 'What this experience has shown, and what organisations providing support services to victims of violence have indicated, is that for evidence-building to be effective, a more systematic system for documenting technology-related violations is needed. While trends show that women around the world experience similar kinds of online violence, the lack of systematised data collection and analysis weakens responses to it.'

The Africa Union Commission (AUC), an administrative branch of the African Union (AU), will push leaders at the bloc's summit in Addis Ababa this week to adopt the final implementation of the development Strategy Plan (SP) for the continent. This is because the AUC three-year Strategic Plan developed in 2009 expires this year and a new one needs to be implemented. The AU has had two plans since it was transformed from the Organization of African Union 10 years ago.

The World Bank should ensure that the rights of indigenous peoples and the environment are rigorously protected before funding a power transmission line connecting Kenya to a controversial dam in Ethiopia, Human Rights Watch said in a letter to World Bank President Jim Yong Kim. The World Bank's board of directors was scheduled to meet on 12 July to consider the project. The World Bank project has the important goal of improving electrical service to people in Kenya, where more than 80 per cent of the population does not have access to electricity. However, the bank has been unwilling to apply the institution's social and environmental safeguard policies.

The economic and social prosperity of 130 million people in the East African region - minus those of Burundi - would be affected by how four countries, namely Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda, implement their combined $34 billion budget. The three main East African economies raised their spending plans for the 2012/13 fiscal year to fund key infrastructure sectors, but analysts faulted their Finance ministers' sunny dispositions on growth outlook and borrowing proposals. Officials in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania face the challenge of maintaining their recent economic growth rates - among the fastest in Africa - amid global economic uncertainties as well as high inflation and weak currencies at home.

GSec (Grey Security), a hacking crew associated with the international hacktivist collective known as Anonymous, is claiming responsibility for hacking and defacing multiple Ugandan websites, including websites belonging to the Ugandan parliament, PayUganda.com, and pepsi-cola.co.ug. The Anonymous hacktivists claim they have access to Uganda’s official Bank, official news websites, and department of defence.

Members of the African Union Peace and Security Council meeting in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, Saturday warned the Islamists, including al-Qaida, are intent on creating a new sanctuary for their activities. AU Chairman Jean Ping called the situation one of the 'most serious crises to confront the continent'. And AU Commissioner for Peace and Security Ramtane Lamamra said 'the strengthening of the grip of armed terrorist and criminal groups in the area' also poses a serious threat to international peace.

Doctors working in Tanzania government hospitals are leaving the country for greener pastures in other African countries after the government terminated their services over a strike. The Tanzania Medical Association says the exodus of medical specialists has peaked over the past week in response to what the professionals see as the arrogance and vindictiveness of senior state officials.

In a decision outraging campaigners for food sovereignty and agroecological approaches, the Gates Foundation has awarded a $10 million grant to develop genetically modified (GM) crops for use in sub-Saharan Africa. The grant is for the John Innes Centre in Norwich, which hopes to engineer seeds for corn, wheat and rice that will fix nitrogen (take nitrogen from the air) so that the crops would not need fertilizers. But GM Freeze, which campaigns against GM food, crops and patents, says that 'nitrogen fixing wheat and other cereals have been promised by the GM industry for several decades' and that other, non-GM methods are the solution. Pete Riley, campaign director GM Freeze, adds that 'GM is failing to deliver'.

A new supply of African blood diamonds is threatening to entrench the rule of Zimbabwean despot Robert Mugabe, just as Britain and other European countries plan to lift sanctions against the regime, it has been claimed. Human rights charity Global Witness says money is being siphoned from diamond mines to finance a 'parallel government' and its secret police force in Zimbabwe, helped by a Chinese businessman. It comes as a row brews over plans to lift travel restrictions and partial asset freezes imposed on some of President Mugabe's ministers by the EU.

Abdramane Keita, managing editor of privately-owned bi-weekly L’Aurore newspaper was on the night of 2 July 2012 violently attacked by unknown armed men in the capital Bamako, accusing him of causing confusion in the country. The Media Foundation for West Africa’s (MFWA) correspondent reported that Keita’s assailants abducted him the same night and abandoned him at Senou, a town located in Bamako after seizing all his possessions including an unspecified amount of money.

A Ugandan legislator has proposed to penalise Ugandans who give birth to many children, saying the unchecked population growth was outstripping the country's resources. Uganda has an annual growth rate of 3.1 per cent, but legislators say this is too high and should be slowed down. Parliamentarian, Peter Claver Mutuluuza called for enactment of a policy that would limit the number of children produced by Ugandans.??

With the expiration of the seven-day ultimatum given to Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan and the country's Code of Conduct Bureau to provide information on the President's assets declaration, the Nigerian NGO Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) is heading to court to compel the bureau to comply with its request. 'Since the Bureau has so far failed to respond to our request after the mandatory period of 7 days; we have prepared the necessary court papers which will be filed before the court this week to compel the Bureau to discharge its constitutional responsibility,' SERAP said in a statement made available to PANA. SERAP had earlier sent a request to both the President and the Code of Conduct Bureau, arguing that the disclosure of the information requested will give SERAP and the general public a true picture of the assets of the President from May 2007 to May 2012, and will demonstrate the President’s oft-expressed commitment to transparency and accountability.