Women make up just 12 per cent of the roughly 18,000 candidates who will stand for election to parliament in the Democratic Republic of Congo's 28 November elections. According to the Permanent Framework for Dialogue for Congolese Women, a gender equality pressure group, only 42, or 8.4 per cent, of the 500 members of the current National Assembly – the lower house of parliament – are women.

More than a quarter of countries represented at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Perth have failed to allow basic industrial rights for workers, the ACTU said. ACTU President Ged Kearney said a survey by the Commonwealth Trade Union Group showed workers’ rights were being ignored across the Commonwealth, with the worst abuses currently occurring in Fiji and Swaziland. The CTUG, representing over 30 million workers in 50 countries, is calling on the CHOGM to suspend Swaziland for wholesale violations of democratic rights.

Two Al-Shabaab suicide bombers blew themselves up yesterday at an Amisom base in Mogadishu and conflicting accounts indicate anywhere between three and 80 Ugandan soldiers were killed. Late on Saturday, the militant group, which withdrew from the Somali capital in August, leaving a queasy security situation, claimed in a press statement that 'the Mujahideen stormed an Amisom compound, killing 80 Ugandan soldiers'. Uganda army Commander, Lt Gen Katumba Wamala, last night confirmed that a lunch-hour suicide attack on AU troops took place but but said only three soldiers perished and two were seriously injured.

Three years after her husband’s disappearance, Phyllis Chamnai Kipkeyo from Mount Elgon, Kenya cannot stop thinking about him. She does not know if he is dead or alive. All she knows is that he was one of the over 300 people said to have disappeared during an insurgency in the region between 2006 and 2008. The insecurity in the area began in 2005 after the militia group, Sabaot Land Defence Force (SLDF), was formed to seek redress for alleged injustices that occurred during a land distribution exercise in the Chebyuk settlement area. But by 2008 the SLDF had been accused of killing several hundred people, and committing offences such as torture, rape and theft.

A public call for proposals is underway to encourage individuals and organisations to apply for grants that provide innovative and critical analysis of South Africa’s foreign policy behaviour and impact. OSF-SA wishes to award grants to suitably qualified organisations and individuals that undertake empirically focused research projects on South Africa’s global role as it relates to the following issues:
- Deliberating South Africa’s 2nd year on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC)
- Understanding South Africa’s Role in Development Cooperation and the Implementation of
the Development Partnership Agency
- South Africa’s identity in IBSA and BRICS
- Comparing South Africa’s corporate footprint in Africa with BRIC partners:
Complementarities and Competition
- South Africa’s Foreign Policy after 2014: Continuity and/or Change?

This month’s newsletter contains news of how, for the first time, an Israeli court has ordered the Government of Israel to grant asylum. Also in the issue are articles on resettlement in exchange for local asylum; UNHCR's incentive salary policy; human rights in Rwanda; child custody rights and UNHCR resettlement; resettlement, divorce and visitation rights and a profile of the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project. The edition also includes opportunities, publications, announcements, news of petitions and resources.

This rabble.ca page contains the latest news on the global Occupy Movement. 'From Wall Street to Bay Street, and hundreds of cities and towns around the world, a movement is underway to reclaim the commons and to challenge corporate power.'

Tunisian women activists accused Ennahda party of giving false promises during its election campaign and reneging on them after winning a majority in the National Constituent Council in the first election the country witnessed after the ouster of President Zine Elabidine ben Ali’s regime. Those activists were particularly concerned about recent statements by Ennahda leader Rashid Ghannouchi on making some changes to the personal status law, particularly concerning the legalization of adoption and the ban on polygamy.

Commonwealth leaders have ignored warnings that their decaying association will die without urgent reforms and have failed to reach significant agreement on how to ensure its member nations abide by human rights principles and the rule of law. The development came Saturday, as the leaders spent the second day of their biennial gathering - known as the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) - debating the merits of a report delivered by an advisory group established two years ago. But instead of endorsing the report, the leaders adopted a distrustful view about its contents - even deciding that it should be kept secret and not be published.

South Africa’s National Intelligence Agency (NIA) gave the green light to the 2004 Equatorial Guinea coup attempt, along with the intelligence agencies of America, Britain, China and Spain, mercenary Simon Mann has claimed. Mann told London’s Daily Mail on Saturday night: 'I believe Britain and America had full visibility on what we were doing. The South Africans passed on intelligence to the UK and the USA, who had vested interests.'

At least seven children have died from a suspected diarrhoea outbreak which has affected over 6,000 children in two towns in Zimbabwe over the past week, a state newspaper said. 'Seven children died in Masvingo and Kadoma last week following a diarrhoea outbreak which has seen a total of 6,472 cases being recorded in the two towns,' The Sunday Mail reported. 'The main problem has always been unclean water and poor sanitation,' the newspaper quoted Portia Manangazira, director for disease control in the health ministry, as saying.

Zambia’s former president Rupiah Banda has spoken out for the first time since leaving office three weeks ago, denying links to a gold scam and purchase of luxury vehicles.

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information says it has filed a lawsuit against the military council, prime minister, and minister of information for the misinformation and incitement against the protesters by the state TV during the events at Maspero. 'A group of Egyptians organized a peaceful March on 9 October that started from some areas in Cairo, heading to the area of Maspero. Once they had arrived there, violence erupted and nobody knows who instigated it. On the other hand, the Egyptian TV deployed all its vast potentials to outrage and incite the public opinion against the peaceful protesters.'

Libyans of Malian origin who had taken Libyan citizenship have started returning following the crumbling of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's regime. Mali was this week reported to have made preparations for the returnees including some thought to have fought for the on-the-run former Libyan leader. Among those expected to return are mercenaries recruited by Col Gaddafi in his fight against the National Transitional Council fighters.

The US has denied that its renewed interest in Uganda is a strategy to get hold of the newly found oil in the country. The US government has announced that it will deploy troops to help Uganda fight the rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) who are currently in the Central African Republic. Critics have said that the only reason that America seems to be coming up strongly to offer troops to help in fighting Kony when they did not when he was killing people here was because of the oil.

Gunmen attacked a ship supplying an Exxon Mobil oil platform off the Nigerian coast, the company said on Tuesday, less than three weeks after someone was kidnapped from a vessel at one of its facilities in the same waters. The incident was the latest in a string of attacks on ships in the Gulf of Guinea that experts say is threatening an emerging trade hub and growing source of oil, metals and agricultural products to world markets.

Genetically modified (GM) food aid bound for Africa has long been a bone of contention among governments, scientists, activists, consumers and aid workers. On 18 August a drought-affected Kenyan government fired the head of its National Biosafety Authority for expediting the process to import milled food aid which might have contained genetically modified organisms (GMO). In the weeks preceding and after the incident, public debate on the issue was distorted by extreme positions either for or against GM food, say this IRIN report.

Making some simple, basic changes in education policy can result in many more girls attending school, experts said at a meeting here this week on Gender Equality in Education. Take the case of Kenya. The United Nations says that the country has made huge strides towards the goal of education for all by incorporating gender awareness in school administration. 'We offered free lunches, but not only that, we make sure that sanitary towels were available in schools, and that decreased absenteeism enormously,' Kenya’s minister of education, Prof. Sam Ongeri, told IPS.

A on World Food Sovereignty Day

As a British journalist based in London, Lara Pawson says she feels increasingly uneasy about media representations of the politics and people of southern Africa. She even wonders whether international journalism serves any purpose any more.

Despite a media blackout and a ban on visits to the occupied Western Sahara, there is evidence of Moroccan authorities torturing many of the Saharawis they have detained, reports Peter Kenworthy. The commonest methods include beatings, electric shocks and threats of rape.

The return of skulls of Namibians by Germany rekindled painful memories of European colonialism in Africa and the continuing struggle to make the continent really free, writes Saunders Jumah. Africa must now support Namibia to demand apologies and reparations from Germany.

A new vaccine against malaria will help reduce African children's risk of acquiring the disease by about half, according to the first results of an ongoing phase III trial. The vaccine has been developed by the British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline's lab in Belgium. Known as RTS, the vaccine is the first of its kind to attempt to block a parasite, rather than bacteria or viruses.

On 28 September, French authorities seized 11 luxury cars belonging to the family of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema as part of an ongoing corruption investigation, reports 'The seizures are part of an ongoing criminal investigation into the “ill-gotten gains” of African leaders Dennis Sassou Nguesso of Congo, the late Omar Bongo of Gabon, and Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea. A judicial inquiry began after the NGOs Transparency International France, Sherpa, and the Arab Commission for Human Rights filed a complaint in 2007. In 2009, France’s Supreme Court ruled to admit the case, a landmark decision in the anti-corruption battle.'

Gambia's opposition will go into the 14 November presidential election as fractured parties after talks to field a single candidate to unseat incumbent Yahya Jammeh failed. President Jammeh, the favourite, has been in power since 1994 when he took power in a coup before holding a civilian election two years later. He has won three subsequent elections since then and will be seeking a fourth five-year term.

Johannesburg, South Africa, is home to more than 450,000 forced migrants, including 51,300 legally recognized refugees, 417,700 asylum seekers and others in refugee-like circumstances, says this report from the Women's Refugee Commission. 'A combination of high immigration and high unemployment means many forced migrants face xenophobia daily, resulting in discrimination, exploitation and abuse, often at the hands of the police and government. Women are particularly at risk of sexual harassment and violence every time they sell goods on the street or in flea markets, go to work or take public transportation. Denied access to proper employment, informal outdoor selling is the main occupation of urban forced migrants.'

Two people were killed on 17 October during clashes between security operatives and supporters of two LC5 contenders in Nebbi District. One of the victims, Henry Okwai, a trader, was shot as police and army fired live bullets in the air to disperse supporters of Mr Ezrom William Alenyo and Mr Robert Okumu. An eyewitness said Okwai, a resident of Pangero Village in Koch Parish, Nebbi Sub-county was shot in the ribs as he sold secondhand clothes at the Market Square.

International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo and victims’ lawyer Morris Anyah have asked judges to dismiss the challenge on jurisdiction lodged by two of the suspects in Kenya’s second post-election violence case. The two have told the Pre-Trial Chamber II that Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta and post-master general Maj Gen Hussein Ali erroneously applied the law when they presented their challenges at the beginning of their Confirmation of Charges Hearings.

Malaysian police say they have broken up a ring of human traffickers who forced Ugandan women into prostitution. Twenty-one women, mainly in their 20s, have been released in a sting operation by the police. They were lured with promises of lucrative jobs, before being sent to China and then Malaysia where they ended up as sex slaves.

The USA, Russia and European countries supplied large quantities of weapons to repressive governments in the Middle East and North Africa before this year’s uprisings despite having evidence of a substantial risk that they could be used to commit serious human rights violations, Amnesty International said in a new report. 'Arms Transfers To The Middle East And North Africa: Lessons For An Effective Arms Trade Treaty' examines arms transfers to Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen since 2005.

Despite a partial victory for Fahamu and others who have raised the? alarm over stripping tens of thousands of Rwandan refugees of ?protection, individuals and organisations are still encouraged to endorse an to halt the measure.

Sureta Chana, defence lawyer for victims of post-election violence in the ICC trials, helped prosecute scores of Kenyan’s for sedition under the Moi regime. Shouldn’t she make an apology to the people she herself harmed, asks Shailja Patel.

Following threats against S’bu Zikode, leader of South African shackdwellers movement Abahlali baseMjondolo, by the chair of a municipal housing committee, the group has called on democrats across the country to support Zikode and other activists ‘facing imtimidation and repression’.

WFP has conducted an 'aggressive fundraising campaign to cover the needs of south and central Somalia till the end of the year.' But what are those needs, and who is assessing them, asks Rasna Warah.

Sub-Saharan Africa's economy is expected to grow by 5.25 per cent in 2011, but if global growth slows, South Africa will be particularly hard hit, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Wednesday. The IMF predicted that the region's economy would grow 5.75 per cent in 2012. South Africa, a middle-income country with slower growth compared to the regional average, had yet to see its output and employment return to pre-crisis levels.

Women worldwide have been forced or coerced by medical personnel to submit to permanent and irreversible sterilisation procedures, says this report. 'Despite condemnation from the United Nations, cases of forced and coerced sterilization have been reported in North and South America, Africa, Asia, and Europe. Women who are poor or stigmatized are most likely to be deemed “unworthy” of reproduction. Perpetrators are seldomly held accountable and victims rarely obtain justice for this violent abuse of their rights.'

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has urged the authorities to drop accusations of terrorist activities leveled at five journalists including two Swedish reporters whose trial was due to start in Addis Ababa but was adjourned until 20 October 2011. The arrests of the journalists have sparked widespread criticism from the IFJ European and African groups, the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) and the Federation of African Journalists (FAJ) as well as the Eastern Africa Journalists Associations (EAJA) which have all accused the Ethiopian government of waging a campaign of intimidation against independent media under the cloak of anti-terror legislation.

Charles Nhamo Rupare discusses xenophobic attacks in South Africa and the concept of ubuntu. 'We are all children of Afrika and our future is in our actions and relations,' he writes.

Egypt's apparently crucial role in orchestrating the Palestinian prisoner swap with Israel leaves those who have observed the cooling relations between the two countries wondering what more the deal signals. Omar Ashour, the director of Middle East Studies at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter told Al Jazeera that, while many Egyptians view their government's involvement in the deal with pride, there was also a sense of 'bitterness and frustration'. Deals like this, he said, spell 'continuity rather than change in foreign policy.