What role do young women play in contemporary African wars? Mainstream thinking on war and conflict sees women as passive and peaceful and men as active and aggressive. This report from the Nordic Africa Institute calls for a broader understanding of women’s roles and participation in armed conflict in Africa. Programmes to disarm, demobilise and re-integrate former fighters need to be adapted to local contexts and designed to meet the needs of female ex-fighters.

Guinean security forces should immediately cease violent attacks on demonstrators protesting against the military government, Human Rights Watch has said. Human Rights Watch called upon the government to hold accountable security forces responsible for firing upon and killing dozens of generally peaceful demonstrators in the Guinean capital, Conakry, on September 28, 2009.

The Ugandan government should immediately order an independent investigation into the killing of unarmed persons during and after riots in Kampala on September 10 and 11, 2009, Human Rights Watch has said. A Human Rights Watch investigation found that at least 13 people were shot by government forces in situations where lethal force was unnecessary.

It wasn't an oil spill that made Nnimmo Bassey an environmentalist. It was a massacre — the 1990 assault by Nigeria's armed forces on the village of Umuechem, where residents of the oil-rich Niger Delta had accused the Shell Petroleum Development Company of environmental degradation and economic neglect.

Opposition parties in Gabon have rejected the terms of a re-count of votes from last month's controversial presidential poll. Activists, who alleged widespread vote rigging, were angered after a court ruled that opposition observers would not be allowed to oversee the re-count.

Sudanese women who escaped the Darfur conflict to eastern Chad are facing high levels of sexual violence, an Amnesty International report says. Despite the presence of a UN force, women and girls are being attacked when they leave 12 designated camps in search of water, the report says. It also documents cases of refugees being attacked inside the camps by Chadian aid workers.

Kenya's much-criticised anti-corruption chief has resigned just weeks after he was reappointed by the president. Aaron Ringera said he was stepping down in the best interests of the country and the anti-corruption commission. President Mwai Kibaki had unilaterally reappointed him for a second five-year term as head of the commission without consulting parliament.

Residents of the Somali port of Kismayo are burying the dead and tending to the injured after a day of fierce clashes between rival Islamist groups. Al-Shabab has gained control of the city and the Hizbul-Islam fighters have withdrawn to villages to the west.

Nine Zimbabwean human rights activists and others tortured in custody are suing government officials for $500m (£314m), their lawyers have said. Jestina Mukoko and eight others are suing the police commissioner, a cabinet minister and police officers.