The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has strongly condemns the killing of four journalists in twenty-four hours. 'This is definitely a war against journalists. The authorities must stop it so as not to become partners of the authors of these terrible acts,' said Gabriel Baglo, IFJ Africa Director. According to the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ), an IFJ affiliate, three journalists were killed on Thursday 20 September in a horrifying suicide attack in Mogadishu restaurant frequented by journalists.

With the Bangkok round of UN sponsored climate negotiations just through, the BASIC quartet - Brazil, South Africa, India and China - came together in Brasilia to discuss their common negotiating position for the year end talks in Doha, Qatar. While there are differences within the quartet over the legal nature of the new climate regime talks on which will be held in Doha, and the controversial European Union Emission Trading Scheme, there is enough common ground between these countries. The one issue of clear agreement was the quartet's commitment to the extension of the Kyoto Protocol, the iconic 1997 treaty, which legally required developed countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Workers at several Anglo Platinum mines have decided to continue their strike, despite management threats to dismiss all those who didn't show up to work by Monday evening. The strikers, who hope to meet with management on Tuesday, are pushing for at least the 11-22 per cent raises that Lonmin miners at the nearby Marikana mine received after a deadly strike that left 46 dead.

The practice of men marrying underage girls - which has been an accepted social norm for centuries but has been linked in recent years to the spread of HIV - was recently declared illegal in Swaziland. Known in SiSwati as ‘kwendizisa’, the marriage of an adult man to an underage girl was considered a legal 'grey area' prior to the promulgation of the Children’s Protection and Welfare Act of 2012. According to the 2005 Swaziland constitution, some customary practices are allowed unless they conflict with constitutional clauses.

As Côte d’Ivoire gears up for a long-awaited disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programme, to be conducted in concert with broader reforms to the security sector, thousands of young men are worried that they may have their weapons taken from them. Analysts say these anxieties could have partly fuelled a recent spate of attacks on military positions that killed at least 12 soldiers in August, marking some of the most significant violence since the conflict ended more than a year ago.

Tens of thousands of people on Saturday protested in Nigeria's second city of Kano, burning images of Barack Obama and stomping on the American flag to denounce an anti-Islam film made in the US. A crowd that included men, children and veiled women stretched for several kilometres (miles) through the city, the largest in Nigeria's mainly Muslim north, condemning the film that has stirred outrage across the Muslim world.

An editorial published by the Ethiopian Press Agency has called on the government to implement new strategies to protect women in the country from human trafficking. 'Thousands of Ethiopian women particularity girls are leaving for abroad due to a number of pushing and pulling factors,' began the editorial published on Friday.

Public, forceful international pressure on Gambian President Yahya Jammeh to halt ongoing executions of death row prisoners was successful - at least temporarily - leading activists to call for governments, multinationals and human rights groups to exert more sustained pressure on the government to clean up its human rights act. 'For far too long the international and regional community has been far too quiet [on Gambia] - we haven’t been able to test if pressure does indeed work,' said Sherman Nikolaus, an Amnesty International Gambia researcher, who noted that the about-turn shows the president does care about his reputation, internationally and regionally.

A Libyan army crackdown on lawless militias spread to the capital on Sunday after armed groups that have not been integrated into state institutions were ordered to disband and evacuate their bases. Commander in chief Yussef al-Mangush said on his Facebook page that the armed forces had dislodged a militia from a military complex on the highway to Tripoli International Airport, arresting militiamen and confiscating their weapons.

The final quarter of the year is the main time of harvest and profit for workers in the cocoa industry, which employs full villages in southwestern Cameroon. But many cite low pay, with women, who are involved in the beginning stages of the process, saying they have no idea what products their labor yields in 'white man’s country'.

Free healthcare is, in theory, available to everyone in Uganda but in practice, the state system, where thousands of doctors’ and nurses’ positions are unfilled, is so run-down that patients are increasingly turning to private facilities. The crisis in the public health sector has led to threats by members of parliament to block next year’s budget unless the government finds an additional 260 billion Uganda shillings (US$103 million) to recruit staff and upgrade dilapidated health centres.

Kyapaloni village is deserted. The crowds in the once bustling marketplace are no more. Some homes are shut up, bushes have besieged others, and the gardens are empty of the crops they once boasted. “The government has told us to begin packing our property and not to grow crops that take more than three months to mature. They said we shall be re-located from this place anytime soon to pave way for the refinery,” says Geoffrey Kiwedde, a Local Councillor II for Kabaale Parish in Buseruka sub-county of Hoima District. Kiwedde still doesn’t know when he will have to move or when he will receive compensation for the 18 acres of land that he will give up.

Despite a Wikileaks report that claimed Egypt was looking to attack Ethiopia’s Renaissance Dam project along the Nile River, with Sudan approval, there is still hope that the two countries can rebuild a relationship based on compromise on Nile water issues. With the Nile comes a new set of issues, and with Egypt holding onto a lion’s share of water from the world’s largest river, upstream countries such as Ethiopia have taken it on their own to begin building dams and other water related endeavors, much to the anger of Cairo.

In Uganda, a new smartphone application is helping motorists hunt for the best deal on fuel, by showing users the price at different petrol stations. The application, called Mafuta Go, was created by local information-technology students and has already won an international award.

Striking doctors have accused the government of failing to seek an end to their salary demands, saying it had not responded to their proposal on a return-to-work deal. The chairman of the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacist and Dentists Union Dr Victor Ng’ani said their mediator, the Kenya Medical Association had sent the recommendations on Friday, but the government did not respond. In the document, the striking doctor’s recommended the forming of a sub-committee to convert a task force report on improvement of health infrastructure, into a policy paper and the absorption of self-sponsored registrars into government.

Ethiopian migrants, stranded in Yemen, are being flown home by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), with the last flight scheduled for Tuesday in an effort to help the Ethiopians leave what has become an abusive situation. According to an IOM statement, the first chartered flights occurred last week and carried over 600 migrants back to their home country in order to remove them from what officials said was riddled with human rights and human trafficking violations.

The restoration of term limits will return citizens' authority in the constitution as stated in article 1 of the 1995 constitution

A suspected cholera outbreak has killed about a dozen people in the southern Somali village of Hoosingo, in the district of Badade in Lower Juba, say government and health officials. 'One of the biggest problems we have is that we do not what this disease is,' Adan Ibrahim Dhaqane, the Hoosingo Village commissioner, told IRIN by telephone. Dhaqane said that at least 19 people had died since the outbreak started on 5 September, with 12 others sick.

This study analyses the political, economic and social impacts of the land and ‘virtual water’ grab in Southern Sudan. The ‘virtual water’ concept, which explains the absence of water wars through water embedded in agricultural imports, has been a major breakthrough in the study of the Middle Eastern water question. This paper shows how agricultural commodities in the form of virtual water are at the heart of Middle Eastern investors’ interests.

This International Organisation of Migration (IOM) research newsletter provides a comprehensive update on IOM’s migration research activities, institutional partnerships and research events for IOM colleagues and interested external readers. This edition focuses on 'The Arab Spring: Reflections on the international response one year later'.