As the euphoria of last spring has receded, new political forces have emerged and old ones beaten back. Little has changed for refugees in the region, states this article. 'The battle between repressive regimes, regional rebel groups, and urban opposition movements continues to displace and exile thousands in Sudan and the Horn of Africa. Countries like Egypt or Libya, themselves engaged in conflicts over national and religious identities, tribal or class power structures, economic resources and long-held privileges - are of their own accord unlikely to champion the cause of refugees any time soon. Rather, despite the European Court for Human Rights’ ruling earlier this year against the expulsion by sea of 24 migrants by the Italian navy back to Libya, Italy has been busy drafting new anti-immigrant agreements with the newly elected Libyan government.'

Living conditions in the camps have worsened over the years and Saharawis believe this is part of the strategy by Morocco to push the people in the illegally occupied territory into submission.

The quality of South Africa's maths and science education has been ranked last in a survey of 62 countries by the World Economic Forum. The report ranked South Africa 54th when it came to gross tertiary enrolment - behind India, but ahead of Morocco, Ghana, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Pakistan, Kenya, and Tanzania. The country placed 28th overall, and was the top-ranked sub-Saharan African country.

The cost of electricity in Uganda remains unaffordable to most citizens, yet the government has kept on using taxpayers’ money in power projects that hardly bring any relieve to consumers.

Fears are growing over an emerging form of intestinal disease in Africa, to which HIV positive people are particularly vulnerable. Medical experts have expressed concerns that health infrastructures across the continent lack the capacity to detect or cope with the dangerous bacterium. The scientists say that invasive non-Typhoidal Salmonella (iNTS) thrives in the blood systems of people in Sub-Saharan Africa whose body immunity is weakened by HIV/AIDS.

Increased agricultural development in Zambia will actually compromise the country’s food security as peasant farmers continue to be driven off their customary land to pave the way for large-scale local and foreign agribusiness, according to the University of Zambia’s dean of the school of agriculture, Dr. Mickey Mwala. 'Smallholder farmers are the people responsible for food security in Zambia. So, evicting them could have a long-term effect on the country’s food security situation, if prolonged and extended,' he told IPS.

This report explores the development from privatisation to corporatisation within neoliberal policy on urban water services in developing countries. The findings call for the water justice movement to update and adjust its strategy, in order to counter the neoliberal tactical shift towards corporatisation.

Human rights abuses committed by Nigeria's security forces in their fight against Islamist sect Boko Haram are fuelling the very insurgency they are meant to quell, Amnesty International said. The Amnesty report said Nigeria's security forces acted outside the rule of law and their brutal tactics could build support for Boko Haram outside its extremist core.

Young South African women who engage in sex or have relationships partially motivated by economic gain are more likely to become infected with HIV, Rachel Jewkes and colleagues report in the Journal of AIDS & Clinical Research. These data add to previous findings from this cohort showing that women who had a violent partner or who were relatively powerless in a relationship were more likely subsequently to acquire HIV.

Dozens of men and boys from Maiduguri in northern Nigeria have been reportedly shot by security forces as Amnesty International published a report condemning human rights violations by the security forces in response to the Boko Haram campaign of violence. 'We urge the government to act on its commitment to bring to justice all those responsible for human violations. A vital first step is to introduce a witness protection programme that makes those who are victims of human rights violations feel safe when they call on the police for protection.'

A large number of clinics and hospitals in the Eastern Cape are experiencing critical medicine shortages and stock outs while surgery and other procedures have virtually grind to a halt due to a wildcat strike by staff at the Mthatha Health Complex (MHC). The strike is affecting over 100 rural clinics and a number of hospitals, with some using their own vehicles to drive to Mthatha in the hope of getting drugs from the medicines depot. Regional hospitals have also reported that referrals for anything from x-rays to surgery has virtually stopped.

The US$2 billion pledged by donors on 30 October to support Burundi’s development sounds like a ringing endorsement of the central African country’s progress from civil war to peace and democracy. But memories are still fresh of the 1993-2005 conflict that killed more than 200,000 people, and analysts, human rights experts, and civil society and political opposition members - while they agree significant gains have been made - worry about a range of security and governance issues that could derail them ahead of the 2015 elections.

Rival Libyan militias fired guns and rocket-propelled grenades at each other in Tripoli on Sunday and set fire to a former intelligence building, one of the worst breakdowns in security in the capital since Muammar Gaddafi's fall. At least five people were wounded and a stray bullet entered a hospital in the heart of the city, where residents rushed to arm themselves, saying calls to police had gone unheeded. After more than 12 hours, the army moved in to restore order.

A significant increase in salaries for Ghana's president, ministers and other top officials has been criticised by anti-corruption campaigners. Parliament agreed to the pay rise earlier this week in a session that was not televised. Last month President John Dramani Mahama authorised an increase in MPs' pay.

Kenya’s Ogiek community, the indigenous group of hunter-gatherers who were evicted from the Mau Forest three years ago, say they will no longer sit by and watch logging companies profit from the resources of their traditional home while they live in poverty in tented camps around the forest without even the most basic of services, like sanitation. Currently 100 saw millers are licensed to log 50,000 hectares of mature exotic and indigenous trees in the forest reserve – the largest in the country stretching across 400,000 hectares.

The series of prostitute murders that occurred this past summer in Rwanda’s capital has revived debate on the world’s oldest profession. On the whole, the country’s very modest population opposes the legalisation of prostitution. However, some young people, not to mention the sex workers themselves, are promoting more pragmatic solutions for safety in the industry.

The Ethiopian authorities are committing human rights violations in response to the ongoing Muslim protest movement in the country. Large numbers of protestors have been arrested, many of whom remain in detention. There are also numerous reports of police using excessive force against peaceful demonstrators. Key figures within the movement have been charged with terrorism offences. Most of those arrested and charged appear to have been targeted solely because of their participation in a peaceful protest movement.

Tens of thousands of Ethiopian migrants and refugees have entered Yemen since the end of July, according to a new report published by the Danish Refugee Council (DRC). The report said that some 51,000 Ethiopians have illegally crossed into Yemen after the short boat trip. It comes as Yemen continues to witness an increase of refugees from different embattled countries, including Ethiopia.

A Magistrates’ Court in Ouagadougou, the capital, on October 29, 2012 sentenced Roland Ouédraogo and Issa Lohé Konaté, both editors of privately-owned L’Ouragan newspaper to 12 months in prison on charges of defaming Placide Nikieme, the State Prosecutor. According to the Media Foundation for West Africa’s (MFWA) correspondent the sentence followed a complaint lodged by Nikiema at the Court accusing the newspaper and its editors of defaming him in a published article, which cited corrupt practices in the State Prosecutor’s office.

The United States expects Uganda to keep its peacekeeping forces in Somalia, despite a threat to withdraw in protest at a UN report accusing Kampala of aiding rebels in eastern Congo, a senior State Department official said. The government in Kampala said it would pull out of peacekeeping missions in Africa unless the United Nations amends a report accusing it of supporting rebels in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.

A new book finds that the Nile river, together with its associated tributaries and rainfall, could provide 11 countries - including a new country, South Sudan, and the drought-plagued countries of the Horn of Africa - with enough water to support a vibrant agriculture sector, but that the poor in the region who rely on the river for their food and incomes risk missing out on these benefits without effective and inclusive water management policies. 'The Nile River Basin: Water, Agriculture, Governance and Livelihoods', published by the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF), incorporates new research and analysis to provide the most comprehensive analysis yet of the water, agriculture, governance and poverty challenges facing policymakers.

Uganda has suspended the issuance of new mining licences and put on notice those with non-performing ones following revelations that a number were handed out irregularly. Officials from the Ministry of Energy said most of the illegal licences had ended up in the hands of speculators who lacked the financial or technical ability to deliver. The department of geological survey and mines in the Ministry of Energy - Uganda’s licensing authority - has asked the speculators to justify why their licences should not be revoked.

The Mozambiqan government has marked the northern Niassa province to promote commercial, large-scale tree plantations. Currently, the single biggest plantation in the region comprises of 13,000 hectares of eucalyptus and pine, owned by a company called ‘Chikweti Forests of Niassa.’ A government-led investigation in 2010 reported that the company had acquired over 32,000 hectares illegally. The big losers were small farmers, vulnerable due to lack of awareness and complicity of corrupt government officials.

On October 21, a violent incident occurred at an airbase outside Bissau, the capital of the small west African nation of Guinea-Bissau. Six people were reported killed, and gruesome images of bodies of accused assailants circulated on the internet. The day after two politicians critical of the country's transitional government and military were kidnapped and beaten. The violence took place against a backdrop of simmering doubts about the transition negotiated by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), reports Global Voices Online.

At least 100 people have been charged with treason in south-eastern Nigeria after a march supporting independence for Biafra, their lawyer says. Members of the Biafran Zionist Movement declared independence, raised the Biafran flag and then marched through the region's main town, Enugu. More than one million people died during the 1967-70 Biafran conflict - mostly from hunger and disease.

A women's group in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo urged authorities Monday to guarantee the safety of a doctor who founded a rape victims clinic but fled the country after an attempt on his life. Denis Mukwege, an award-winning gynaecologist, narrowly escaped being killed along with two of his daughters on October 25 after armed men broke into his home in Bukavu. The assailants killed an employee who intervened, giving the doctor and his family time to flee.

During an interview at the Hilton Hotel in downtown Nairobi, David Kuria Mbote, Kenya’s first openly homosexual candidate for public office, stresses that his campaign will not be only about gay rights.It is, he said, about tearing down the structural barriers in healthcare, education, and the economy that harm all Kenyans. 'My county Kiambu is not the poorest county in Kenya, but those who are poor in Kiambu are really, really poor, and many times they cannot escape that cycle of poverty. What we want to do is create small projects, like rabbit farming for example, to help them break that cycle. Once they can do this they will be more able to work their way to a better life.'

Assembled in Bamako, the capital of Mali, approximately 40 female leaders together with officials from the Forum of Malian civil society organizations participated in discussions about Mali's crisis. Saran Keita Diakité, President of the Women’s Peace and Security Network for ECOWAS countries (REPSFECO/Mali), read out the recommendations to the UN Deputy Secretary-General: 'We, the women from civil society in Mali (…), demand the following at the decision-making level: at least 30 per cent female representation in all bodies for crisis management and post-crisis management; participation in political and institutional governance, security and the electoral process; capacity-building in terms of mediation, negotiation, prevention, conflict-management and peace-consolidation; advocacy by the UN Secretary-General in favour of reparation for the harm suffered by rape victims as well as their care; and immediate implementation of a support fund for the self-empowerment of the women of Mali.'

South Africa grants almost every patent application it receives, making its patent regime one of the world’s most lenient. While pharmaceutical companies cash in, patients face staggering healthcare costs, and medicines like cancer treatments, third-line antiretrovirals (ARVs) and treatments for drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) are often priced out of reach. According to activists from Médecins Sans Frontières’s (MSF) Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines and the South Africa AIDS lobby group the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), easy patents mean companies can extend their exclusive right to manufacture and sell certain drugs, a process known as evergreening.

Rights groups are calling for an end to the death penalty in South Sudan and for improvements to the squalid prison conditions where people languish for years, often without due process. A statement on 5 November and an accompanying letter to South Sudan's government, signed by Amnesty International (AI), Human Rights Watch (HRW) and local church and civil society groups, has called for a moratorium on executions, especially as 'South Sudan is currently not able to fully guarantee the minimum safeguards... on the use of the death penalty'.

Black people have not yet fully recovered from the immense psychological trauma caused by colonialism. A complete restoration of their destroyed dignity is essential for meaningful empowerment.

Reports of extra-judicial killings and injury of citizens by police officers point to the need for an independent body, like the one established in Kenya, to oversee the operations of the police service.

The case of a young Tunisian woman allegedly raped by two policemen has created outrage and anger among ordinary Tunisians and human rights’ defenders.

The Nigerian militant group Boko Haram has reached a state of total contempt even for universal norms. That means it is a war to the end. Yet there is too much pussyfooting and false intellectualisation of what is going on. President Jonathan should declare war on the group.

A recent Unesco report confirms that poor funding, inadequate facilities and outright criminal neglect of education take their toll on quality in one of Africa’s richest countries.

Beyond the limitations of his personal history in the new classic ‘There Was A Country’, Achebe calls on everyone to rebuild an Africa that accommodates all irrespective of race, class, gender or religion.

Apartheid may be officially dead, but its impact is still felt in South Africa. Worse, most Black people have not gained much from the coming to power of a non-racial government.

International human rights groups say the Supreme Court’s ruling is symptomatic of the wide and ever-increasing obstacles that human rights organisations face in attempting to continue their essential work.

‘The stations’ refusal to air the “Love and Respect” ad is totally arbitrary and reflects the growing dominance of the powerful fundamentalist religious right in dictating public discourse.’