The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) concluded its first review of the human rights situation in Egypt under the new Universal Periodic Review (UPR) mechanism. The Geneva meeting on 11 June, in which the Egyptian government pledged to implement 140 recommendations presented by other state delegations, took place only a month after the government renewed the 29 year State of Emergency for another two years, in effect suspending most civil rights throughout the country.

The Prize Committee met to discuss the award of the 2010 Mo Ibrahim Prize. Following its deliberations, the Prize Committee informed the Board of the Foundation that it had not selected a winner. Last year the Prize Committee announced that it had considered some credible candidates, but after in depth review could not select a winner. This year the Prize Committee told the Board that there had been no new candidates or new developments and that therefore no selection of a winner had been made.

The Human Security Report Project (HSRP) has launched its new website. It can be accessed at . The new website, which replaces four separate sites, is easy-to-navigate and provides access to all HSRP publications, research and data, as well as the eNewletter archive. The new site delivers improved usability, additional features, and significantly more content than the previous sites.

The result of the recent elections in Ethiopia might have come as a shock to many. What lies behind the near total defeat of opposition parties in the recent elections is the combination of reduced trust in and decimated opposition at the political landscape. It is a logical extension of political developments since 2005

The Labor Council has condemned the May 31st Israeli commando attack on the Gaza Aid Flotilla, which killed at least nine unarmed people and seized and detained some 700 passengers and crew. Many of these labor organizations, as well as the U.N. and Amnesty International, have also called for an independent international investigation of the attack and for a permanent opening of the Gaza border in accordance with international law.

The impact HIV/AIDS has on the lives of the victims and the society as a whole brings in to question the significant factors responsible for the transmission of the epidemic, writes Nyiko Maluleke. The increased spread of HIV/AIDS has been identified to be due to a variety of physical, economic and socio-cultural factors. While the impact of these factors has been widely studied, the impact conflict has on the transmission of HIV/AIDS has not been given much attention; therefore the brief seeks to highlight the plight of HIV transmission through sexual violence during conflict time.

The Second Refugee Film Festival will be held in June 17-20, 2010 at the open air Cinema in Darb 1718 for Contemporary Art and Culture in commemoration of World Refugee Day. The festival will include screenings of 11 documentary and fiction films portraying the resilience of refugees. It will also include a two-day Bazaar of Eritrean, Iraqi, Sudanese and Palestinian food and handicrafts.The festival will end on June 20th with a closing concert by talented Sudanese artists featuring Reggae, blues and folk music.

About 3 600 security stewards - half in Durban and the rest in Cape Town - have lost their jobs at the World Cup stadiums after a wage dispute escalated. Now police have taken over the stewards' duties at the Moses Mabhida and Cape Town stadiums at the request of the Local Organising Committee, spokesman Rich Mkhondo said.

Operation Amani Leo, launched jointly by MONUC (the United Nations Mission in Congo) and FARDC (the
Congolese army) in January to regain control of mining territories in the eastern provinces of North and South Kivu from rebels, while ensuring security for the local population has been extended to September. But Congolese women are arguing for changes in the conduct of military operations.

"Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it's much more serious than that," former Liverpool manager Bill Shankly once said. Uncomfortably close to a bald statement of fact for fans of the beautiful game in Somalia, who risk their lives to watch the World Cup unfolding in South Africa. In the final weeks before the tournament kicked off on Jun. 11, demand for satellite dishes was high. But the Islamist groups that control much of the country have declared the World Cup un-Islamic, threatening dire consequences for anyone found watching.

What’s the best way of investing in the developing world? One organization is empowering families by investing in mothers. Hands to Hearts International (HHI) is a non-profit organization that seeks to provide simple and cost-effective programs with tools for women, caregivers, and organizations to improve the early development of children surviving in orphanages, refugee camps, and severely impoverished or conflict-ridden communities.

The Southern Africa Resource Watch organized a five day training workshop for SADC journalists at Fatmols Executive Lodge in Ndola, Zambia, from 9-14 May 2010. The training focused on reporting extractive industries and tackled a wide range of issues relating to this subject: policy and regulatory issues on SADC’s mining industry, SADC’s economic development debates, media and development in SADC, understanding corporate social responsibility in SADC mining, issues and debates on African forestry, reporting and writing stories on extractive industries, and promoting purpose-driven journalism in African media.

In Africa’s Sahel region, even in years of adequate rainfall food insecurity is usually high. Now, as the region enters the precarious “lean season” (the period between harvests that lasts from May to August), the problem is expected to get worse. In recent months, rains have been erratic and scarce, in turn significantly diminishing the crops produced by farmers. Entire communities are without sufficient food reserves to survive until the next harvests in September.

Kenyan Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta presented the national budget for the 2010-2011 financial year to parliament on 10 June. The budget sees a near doubling of past allocations for HIV treatment, earmarking Ksh. 900 million (US$ 11.25 million) for antiretroviral treatment. Earlier this year UNAIDS Executive Director, Michel Sidibé jointly launched the country’s National AIDS Strategic Plan (2010- 2013) with the Prime Minister, Right Honorable Raila Odinga.

The Burkinabe president, Blaise Compaore, has called for the acceleration of the establishment of electronic communication infrastructure in Africa, saying this would open up new tech n ology-related opportunities and cope with the digital divide that threatens to further marginalise developing countries. The Burkinabe head of state was speaking during the opening ceremony of the Third Panafrican Forum on Best Practices in the Field of New Information and Communication Technology.

Over 50 million people in Africa and elsewhere in target countries benefited from loans of the Food Facility, a special instrument with a budget of 1 billion euros, established a year ago by the European Union (EU) to face the food crisis in developing countries, official sources said. According to a document, made available to the media, 65,000 children received supplemental nutrition care through the loans of the Food Facility, managed by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

A non-governmental relief agency, Refugee International, has criticised humanitarian organisations in the Horn of Africa for ignoring the plight of Somali refugees living in camps and urban settings in neighbouring countries, according to a report published here Thursday. The report said humanitarian actors overlook thousands of Somali refugees that have sought asylum in cities in neighbouring countries, thus exacerbating their already grave humanitarian situation.

A new report by UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said that global prices of food could climb by as much as 40 per cent in the coming decade. FAO said that the rise would be caused by the growth in global population, which would increase the demand for more food. The report, entitled: "The Agriculture Outlook 2010-19", which was made available to the Pan African News Agency (PANA) on Wednesday, anticipated that wheat and coarse grain prices could jump to levels of between 15 and 40 per cent higher than they were between 1997 and 2006.

Two Sudan rebel leaders appeared before the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges on Thursday over a 2007 attack that killed 12 African Union peacekeepers in war-torn Darfur. Describing themselves as revolutionaries, Mr Abdallah Banda Abakaer Nourain and Mr Saleh Mohammed Jerbo Jamus said they welcomed the chance to clear their names and urged other war crimes suspects to also hand themselves over.

The United States has welcomed the release by a Rwandan court of Peter Erlinder, an American lawyer who had been detained since May on charges of denying the 1994 genocide. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said US embassy officials were at the court hearing and immediately shared the news with Mr Erlinder's family.

A Dutch court has sentenced five Somali men to five years in prison for attacking a cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden last year, in the first such case to come to trial in Europe. The men were convicted in Rotterdam of attacking a Dutch Antilles-flagged ship, the Samanyolu. They were arrested last year when their high-speed boat was intercepted by a Danish frigate.

The World Cup has rightly captured the country’s imagination, writes Leonard Gentle. Despite Bafana’s anaemic performance against the Uruguayans, there is still a clear sense of relief amongst opinion makers that we’re pulling off hosting the event. The dominant voice proclaims that we’ve proven everyone – meaning the prophets of doom – wrong.

UNESCO's decision to delay awarding a controversial prize named after and funded by the dictator of Equatorial Guinea is a positive initial step, civil society groups said. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) announced June 15, 2010, that its executive board, consisting of 58 countries, approved Director-General Irina Bokova's proposal to postpone the award and instead engage in consultations to consider the prize's future.

People look for refuge in other countries because they have no other option- they are being persecuted at home because of who they are, their beliefs or their opinions. Sadly, all too often, instead of finding safety in other countries, many find closed borders, xenophobia, detention and terrible living conditions. Some are denied a fair hearing of their asylum claims and could be forced to return home, where their lives are in danger. On World Refugee Day, 20 June 2010, Amnesty International calls on states to reaffirm everyone's right to seek and to enjoy asylum, as recognized in article 14 of the UDHR.

A persistent budget shortfall means that more than 120 million people in Nigeria and Ghana could remain at risk of contacting yellow fever if not reached with vaccinations, United Nations agencies and their partners cautioned. Funding shortages are threatening the global supply of the immunization, which means the two West African nations could be left off the list for upcoming campaigns, according to the International Coordinating Group (ICG) on Yellow Fever Vaccine Provision, of which the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and World Health Organization (WHO) are members.

At least 11 people were killed on Friday and dozen others wounded after rebel militias attacked the barracks of Somali government forces in Hosh, southern Mogadishu. "Insurgents, supported by foreign terrorists, attacked our base in the Hosh area early this morning," government security official Ahmed Warsame said.

The Ugandan government will compensate about 10,000 people in the country's northern region, who were maimed by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels over two decades, ahead of elections next year. One of the most ruthless rebel groups, the LRA waged a brutal but futile insurgency from their bases in northern Ugandan and southern Sudan to dislodge President Yoweri Museveni and establish a theocracy in the east African country.

The world's oceans are virtually choking on rising greenhouse gases, destroying marine ecosystems and breaking down the food chain -- irreversible changes that have not occurred for several million years, a new study says. The changes could have dire consequences for hundreds of millions of people around the globe who rely on oceans for their livelihoods.

HIV activists have accused the United States and European governments of betraying their commitments to assist poorer nations fund treatment for those needing HIV treatment. “2010 is meant to be the year when we achieve universal access to antiretroviral treatment (ART) as set out in the Millennium Development Goals. But across Africa less than half of people in need of ART are accessing it. Despite this, the United States and Europe are retreating on their commitments to support HIV/AIDS treatment, prevention and care. Their failure to honour these commitments will result in millions of avoidable deaths across sub-Saharan Africa,” the activists said.

The historic meeting at the Kennedy Road settlement on Sunday went well despite the intimidation from the local ANC. The background to this meeting, and its importance, is that in September last year Abahlali baseMjondolo(AbM) and the Kennedy Road Development Committee (KRDC), the openly and freely elected committee in the settlement, were expelled in violent attacks organised through the local ANC and supported by the police and the criminal justice system.

The seven states comprising the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) group are meeting in Gaborone, Botswana this week following negotiations with the European Union (EU) in Belgium last month. The meeting, which will run from Thursday to Friday, stems from a decision made at the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) Heads of State meeting in Namibia on April 22.

Only two years after its last revision, the Swiss Asylum Act is about to be 'reformed' again. The changes include a gag order on political activism for asylum-seekers and a modification of the concept of a refugee. Ever since Switzerland adopted the Asylum Act in 1981, it has constantly been tightened, largely at the expense of the refugees, as in most European countries.

Discussing poverty with a Washington Post reporter last month, 5th graders at a Southeast Washington school (the poverty rate for Washington, DC is 32 percent) came up with an obvious solution. "Why not just give them money?" (Washington Post, May 11). Experts and policy-makers have found it easy to dismiss this common-sense suggestion, in favor of magical belief in trickle-down economics or of elaborate poverty-reduction plans. But a new book brings together weighty evidence that in fact the children are likely to be right.

The number of refugees voluntarily returning home has plunged to its lowest rate in two decades, partly due to chronic insecurity in war-torn nations, according to the UN refugee agency. Only 251,000 of the world's 15 million refugees returned to their home countries last year, the lowest rate in two decades, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Despite international conventions prohibiting the export of dangerous waste to developing countries, enormous quantities of outdated and destroyed electronic equipment from Europe end up in Ghana's Agbogbloshie dump each week.

Comoros President Ahmed Abdallah Sambi has signed an African Union-brokered deal, allowing him to stay on power as "interim president" until November. Then, late elections are to be held. According to a statement by the Comoran Union presidency, the agreement that ends the archipelago's constitutional crisis was signed in Moroni, the capital, today. An election timetable is key to the agreement.

Progress in reducing maternal mortality and morbidity is still "tragically slow". Now, the United Nations has unveiled a global initiative based on government, civil society and private sector cooperation that could save the lives of up to one million women during pregnancy and childbirth. A US$20 billion funding gap in maternal and child health in the world's least developed countries means that between 350,000 and 500,000 women die each year from preventable pregnancy-related causes and complications, and another 15 million suffer from equally preventable long-term disabilities.

The government of Kenya is running an ambitious programme that aims to have 80 percent of all uncircumcised men - an estimated 1.1 million - circumcised by 2013. Most uncircumcised men live in the western province of Nyanza, where so far more than 100,000 have had the procedure, and the drive is seen as hugely successful. IRIN/PlusNews visited Nyanza's capital city, Kisumu, and spoke to several men about why they refused to be circumcised.