United Nations agencies in Burkina Faso have provided the government with 1,000 tents to house victims of flooding from seasonal heavy rains. Some 11,170 people have sought shelter in schools and government buildings. Officials had feared that school would be disrupted because classes are set to resume in early October.

On August 9, 2006, Burkina Faso deposited its instruments of ratification with African Union. We can now count 20 ratifications and 42 signatures of the protocol to the African Charter of Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (ACHPR).

Rights groups in Burkina Faso say they are outraged over the dismissal of charges against the former head of the presidential guard in connection with the 1998 murder of prominent journalist Norbert Zongo. Prosecutors said they were dropping charges against warrant officer Marcel Kafando for lack of evidence. The prosecutor said a key witness failed to recall details of a meeting with Kafando days before Zongo’s murder.

The objective of ANAS is to improve the living conditions of art and crafts people in the Sanmatenga provide, through developing the technical, organisational and management skills of its members, and by facilitating access to credit and to markets.

For Burkina Faso, as with its neighbors in the region, migration has been a way of life for over 1,000 years as people followed livestock and crops on a seasonal basis. In the last 50 years, more traditional migration patterns have been reestablished, though these have retained important colonial characteristics. Overall, one Burkinabè in five now lives abroad. Yet, between 1990 and 2000, the percentage of people living in Burkina Faso who were born outside the country tripled, from 438,000 in 1990 to over a million a decade later, almost 10 percent of the population. Thus, while a net exporter of people, Burkina Faso itself is rapidly becoming a country of migrants.

How to manage a hairdressing salon or a welding shop? What are the basic rights of a worker in the informal economy? Armed only with their teaching materials, the educators trained by the Programme for the Reinforcement of Trade Union Action in the Informal Economy (PRASEI) have reached a total of over 70,000 workers in Burkina Faso. The fact that in Ouagadougou, Bobo Dioulasso, Koudougou and Tenkodogo, the workers within the informal economy can now take part in May Day celebrations or convene collective action is the result of successful trade union awareness-raising. All this is the fruit of an intensive grassroots campaign carried out in 14 provinces of the country and led by the 554 resource persons trained by PRASEI.

Burkina Faso health workers are out in force nationwide to distribute medicine and information in a bid to combat elephantiasis, an often debilitating disorder the health ministry says strikes about one million people in the West African country. Health Minister Alain Bedouma Yoda said in launching the campaign that the country must wipe out the disease “to shield future generations from the socio-economic impact of this scourge.”

After 18 years at the helm of Burkina Faso, President Blaise Compaore has won a new five-year term, garnering a massive 80.3 percent of the vote in the country’s first multiparty presidential race. Releasing the results of the 13 November poll, the head of the Independent National Election Commission, Moussa Michel Tapsoba, said that the closest runner-up, opposition leader Benewende Stanislas Sankara, won 4.94 percent of the vote.

For Zenabo Nikieme, a Burkinabé woman who has been HIV-positive since 2000, the future once again offers a glimmer of hope. Last year it was a very different story -- something that prompted her to pen an open letter to Burkina Faso's Minister of Health. "I'm an HIV-positive widow and I have three children," wrote the 35-year-old fruit vendor from the capital of Ouagadougou, who was advised to begin taking anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs).

Burkina Faso’s Constitutional Court has thrown out an opposition bid to stop President Blaise Compaore running for a third term in elections which are less than a month away. Five opposition candidates in the 13 November poll had appealed to the court to declare Compaore’s bid for re-election null and void on the basis of Artcle 37 of the constitution, which sets a two-term ceiling on the office of president. In 1997, the clause was amended by a stacked parliament, which lifted the ceiling to enable heads of state to remain in office for life. But in 2000 parliament re-introduced the two-term limit and reduced the presidential term from seven to five years in office.

In 1990, Burkinabe linguist Benoit Ouoba used his own funds to set up a teaching programme with a difference: it focused on using local languages to develop literacy, rather than the customary French. Fifteen years later, the 'Tin Tua' method of teaching has significantly improved literacy in the eastern Gulmu region where it was introduced, attracting the attention of international donors in the process. Tin Tua, meaning 'Let's Develop Ourselves by Ourselves', is drawn from Gulmancema - one of the most widely spoken languages in Burkina Faso.

Two initiatives aim at integrating the new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the educational system in Burkina, a country that figures at the bottom of the UNDP classification scale. Global Teenager Project (GTP) is a programme set up in 1999 by the International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD). The project brings the new information and communication technologies to the high and middle schools. Apart from this project, World Links, a World Bank programme, set up in Burkina in 1997, aims for better integration of the new ICTs in schools.

Health authorities in Burkina Faso have already admitted they will not be able to meet global goals for providing antiretroviral (ARV) drugs to people living with AIDS, but aid workers say even the government's scaled-down target will be under threat if grassroots groups are not drafted into the fight. Burkina Faso, one of the world's poorest countries, has pledged that 15,000 people will receive the life-prolonging ARV drugs by 2007. That would be a five-fold increase on the 2,700 patients that currently access treatment, but would fall short of the 27,000 people which the World Health Organisation said should receive medication by the end of 2005.

The good news about AIDS in Burkina Faso is that HIV prevalence in the West African country is on the decline. The bad news is that people who have already contracted the virus appear to be having difficulties in getting drugs to treat themselves. According to the most recent statistics from the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), HIV prevalence in Burkina Faso in 2003 was 4.2 percent – down from 7.17 percent in 1997.

Six years have passed since newspaper editor Norbert Zongo and three of his companions were found dead in their car on a southern Burkina Faso road, on 13 December 1998. The investigation remains stalled and one of the leading suspects in the case, François Compaoré, President Blaise Compaoré's brother, has never been detained or charged. On 28 November 2004, a Reporters sans frontières RSF representative questioned President Blaise Compaoré about the case during the closing press conference of the summit of French-speaking countries, held this year in Burkina Faso's capital, Ouagadougou. "Total impunity appears to be the rule in Burkina Faso," RSF's representative said. "The judge is free to interrogate whoever he wants. It is not the president's role to meddle in judicial proceedings," President Blaise Compaoré replied. (French version available)

After nearly a week since his arrest, N'Do Mathieu, chief editor of the weekly San Finna, is still being held in solitary confinement at the police barracks of the 'Compagnie Republicaine de Securitie (CRS)' in Ouagadougou, the capital. N'Do was picked up by security forces at the Ouagadougou International Airport on November 5, 2004 upon his return from an investigative trip to Cote d'Ivoire. The government has not given any reason for the arbitrary arrest and detention of the journalist but it is believed that his analysis on Burkina Faso's relations with its neighbors in the sub-region may have led to his ordeal. As chief editor of the San Finna, N'Do often writes about politics and institutions in Burkina Faso.

Local HIV/AIDS NGOs in Burkina Faso are planning to raise funds in the country rather than seek external sources of funding for antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, activists told PlusNews. About 43,000 HIV-positive people in the country need treatment, but in June this year only 2,000 people were receiving it. An estimated 300,000 people in Burkina Faso are living with HIV/AIDS.

The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned by the detention of Mathieu N'do, managing editor of the pro-opposition weekly San Finna. Local sources say N'do was arrested November 5 at the airport in the capital, Ouagadougou, as he was returning from Ivory Coast, where he had traveled to report on ongoing tensions between government and rebel forces. Local journalists believe N'do's detention may be linked to his journalistic work, which is often critical of the Burkina Faso government.

Scarcely after about 700 delegates gathered in Kenya last month to discuss ways of eradicating female genital mutilation (FGM) in Africa, a court case in Burkina Faso provided a striking illustration of the gulf between activism and reality in the matter of FGM. On Sep. 21, Adama Barry was sentenced to a maximum jail term of three years for having mutilated sixteen girls on Aug. 15 (FGM is banned in Burkina Faso). Prior to the trial, she had received four other prison sentences of between four and six months for carrying out circumcisions.

A court in Burkina Faso has sentenced a woman to the maximum term of three years in jail for carrying out genital mutilation on 16 girls aged between 2 and 10, court officials said on September 22nd. Campaigners trying to end female circumcision, which is widespread in many African countries, welcomed the sentence and said they hoped it would act as a deterrent to others.