There are an estimated two million disabled people in Ghana, who, according to the World Health Organisation, account for seven to 10 per cent of the population. Five years after its passage, the Persons with Disability Act has brought few changes to their lives. On paper its provisions promise plentiful employment opportunities, free education, accessible buildings and transportation, and societal acceptance. The reality is much different.

A firm call for African Union member states to impose sanctions against Morocco until it abides by the United Nations mandate that affirms the people of Western Sahara's right to self-determination was made at the Pan African Parliament proceedings. The Pan African Parliament (PAP), the legislative organ of the African Union (AU), is meeting from 3-14 October for the Fifth Ordinary Session of the Second Parliament in Midrand, South Africa. The call comes as PAP reviewed recommendations of a fact-finding mission to the region on Wednesday.

Freedom Now! host Dedon Kamathi interviews Mahdi Nazemroaya, one of the last independent journalists in Tripoli, and former Rep. Cynthia McKinney, about Nazemroaya's findings regarding the fabricated claims that led to the US war on Libya.

'On 25 May 2011, a Tripartite Commission comprised of the governments of Tanzania and Burundi and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) met in Dar es Salaam to discuss the future of repatriation efforts for Burundian refugees. The situation of approximately 38,000 refugees in Mtabila camp in the country’s Kigoma region was a particular focus of the talks, which ended with a decision to close the camp on 31 December 2011. The government of Tanzania has announced that they expect a renewed repatriation drive.' This report from the International Refugee Rights Initiative examines the situation.

IRIN News carries a feature on Moulid Iftin Hujale, who has spent 14 of his 24 years in the world’s largest refugee complex, Dadaab, in eastern Kenya, close to his home country, Somalia. As well as working with an NGO in the complex’s Ifo camp, Hujale is a writer and freelance journalist. In this installment of his account of life in Dadaab, he reflects further on the quotidian reality of camp life and the tantalizing opportunity of escape offered by a scholarship.

President Alassane Ouattara of Cote d’Ivoire is determined to apprehend compatriots he accuses of committing crimes during the country’s protracted post-election crisis. The position bumps against his other declared quest for national reconciliation. When he arrived in Accra on an official visit on 6 October, President Ouattara sought to proclaim national reconciliation but at the same time pushed for the arrest and repatriation to Cote d’Ivoire of persons who have been indicted for war crimes. Earlier, his foreign minister, Mr Daniel Kablan Duncan, had signed a tripartite agreement with Ghana and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to facilitate the voluntary repatriation of the approximately 18,000 Ivorian refugees.

‘I spent my whole childhood, or at least until I was six, thinking that living in refugee camps was all that existed for any person,’ writes Senia Bachir Abderahman, in an account that describes how her family came to live in the south-west Algerian desert, following the Morrocan occupation of Western Sahara in 1976. For Abderahman, ‘home is a far-fetched, ideal, dream-come-true state of mind’.

Thousands of people are held in immigration detention in the Middle East and North Africa on any given day. This practice is expensive, can harm the health and wellbeing of those detained and has been found to be ineffective at deterring irregular migrants. To address this growing human rights issue, the first-ever regional workshop on immigration detention was held in Beirut recently by the International Detention Coalition (IDC) with the assistance of the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC).

The New Age Online reports that human skulls taken from Namibia by German colonizers returned home after more than 100 years, but the reconciliatory gesture instead has ignited anger and renewed demands that Germany pay for its sins in this corner of Africa where more than 60,000 people were killed. The return of 20 skulls taken to Germany more than a century ago for racist experiments also has fueled anger about current injustices by a people decimated when they rebelled against German colonizers.

The decision by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation's executive board on 4 October 2011, to defer any action on a highly controversial life sciences prize named after and funded by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea blocked a move to reinstate the prize immediately, but the board should eliminate the prize permanently, six civil society organisations said.

The Kenya Justice Sector report, written by Dr Patricia Kameri Mbote and Migai Akech, comes at the time when the country is going through interesting times. The study looks at: justice sector and rule of law; legal and institutional framework; government track record in respect of rule of law; management of the justice system; independence of the bench and bar; criminal justice; access to justice and the role of donor agencies.

The

China, a major player in the oil industries of South Sudan and Sudan, could use its influence to stop the escalating violence between the two countries that has seen the displacement of thousands of people and a reduction in oil production, a United States State Department official says. China imports more than 60 per cent of Sudan’s oil and owns a 40 per cent share in Petrodar and the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Co., the largest oil giants in Sudan, according to the Chinese Academy of Social Science.

A bomb blast outside a government compound in Mogadishu has killed at least 70 people and left many others wounded, in one of Somalia's deadliest ever suicide attacks, officials and witnesses said. The attack was claimed by al-Shabab, the armed anti-government group, and came as the rebels launched attacks in the country's west and south.

An anxious three months lie ahead for Kenya as judges prepare to hand down verdicts on whether International Criminal Court (ICC) Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo will press crimes against humanity charges against the Ocampo Six. This article in the Daily Nation says there is consensus that the defence teams have put in a strong case to try and get their clients off the hook but that the prosecution may have a large mass of evidence which they have only disclosed to the judges and which they are holding on to in preparation for the full trial stage.

South Africa’s Home Affairs department has notified Zimbabwean authorities that it is resuming the removal of illegal immigrants after lifting a special moratorium which has been in place since May 2009. South Africa had given Zimbabwean immigrants, estimated in the millions, a 31 December 2010 deadline to regularise their stay but just 275,762 submitted work permit applications which were decided by 31 July.

President Jacob Zuma has said he would soon release further details on the arms deal commission of inquiry. Zuma recently announced he would set up a commission of inquiry into South Africa's controversial multi-million rand arms deal.

A new report by the London-based Amnesty International has slammed the European Union for 'shamefully' failing to help thousands of refugees stranded near Libya’s borders. In a report titled, 'Europe, Now It Is Your Turn to Act', Amnesty International has strongly criticised EU governments for failing to offer resettlement to an estimated 5,000 refugees – who would face persecution or conflict if returned to their own countries.

Abdul worked as a journalist in Somalia before death threats from Al-Shabab militia drove him to leave his native country and head for Mozambique where friends told him he would receive help at Maratane refugee camp in Nampula Province. The boat he boarded in Mombasa had 110 other passengers. Now Abdul and his fellow passengers are all being detained in the same prison in southern Tanzania. Neither the Mozambican police who arrested them in the northern town of Palma and then violently deported them to the Tanzanian border, nor the immigration officials who found them there attempted to determine which of the migrants were asylum-seekers entitled to receive protection and assistance, and which were economic migrants subject to immigration laws.

Shell fuelled human rights abuses in Nigeria by paying huge contracts to armed militants, according to a new report published by Platform and a coalition of NGOs. 'Counting the Cost' implicates Shell in cases of serious violence in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta region from 2000 to 2010. The report uncovers how Shell’s routine payments to armed militants exacerbated conflicts, in one case leading to the destruction of Rumuekpe town where it is estimated that at least 60 people were killed. According to Platform’s report, Shell continues to rely on Nigerian government forces who have perpetrated systematic human rights abuses against local residents, including unlawful killings, torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.