One day after being sworn in on 2 April, Senegal’s new President Macky Sall reversed months of public denial of the hunger affecting over 800,000 of his people - part of the Sahel-wide crisis affecting 16 million inhabitants - by calling on partners to help the country get food to those in need. UN agencies and NGOs are struggling to raise enough money to get programmes working so they can catch up with the steadily rising number of hungry people.

The faltering economies and tighter budgets of Europe and America, the traditional providers of development financing, have left organizations and communities wondering where the continued funding of their development projects will come from. In this special report on the Peace and Conflict Monitor website, veteran fundraiser and development guru Jürgen Carls reviews the remaining instruments and possibilities for north-south financing, and argues that the solution may be in a completely new approach to fundraising - an approach based on longer term relationships between funders and recipients, characterized by trust, openness, honesty, commitment, and international cooperation.

'We want to make it clear that we want to have good working relationship with all progressive or potentially progressive forces. However, this does not mean that we can accept being oppressed within our own struggle.'

Malawi's NGO Gender Coordination Network has expressed concern over low female representation in President Joyce Banda's cabinet, in which out of 30 ministers and deputies, only eight are female. The organisation’s chairperson, Emma Kalia, has been quoted as saying that the low representation of female ministers in the new cabinet is contrary to the Southern African Development Community and Africa Union regulations that call for equal opportunities between men and women.

Sudanese war planes have launched renewed air strikes against South Sudan, violating a UN resolution to end weeks of a bitter border conflict. 'The Republic of Sudan has been randomly bombarding civilian areas,' said Southern army spokesperson Kella Kueth, who said the air strikes hit the border states of Upper Nile, Unity and Western Bahr el-Ghazal on Monday and Tuesday (7 and 8 May). It was not possible to independently confirm the reports of bombing and Sudan has repeatedly denied it has bombed the South.

Members of the clergy and some human rights activists in Kenya have raised their objections to recommendations that homosexuality be de-criminalised in the East African country. The recommendations are proposed in a report on safeguarding sexual and reproductive health rights. The report is as a result of a public inquiry that had been set up by the commission to examine the extent and nature of violations of the two rights.

The UN refugee agency has launched a repatriation programme for tens of thousands of refugees who want to return to the Democratic Republic of the Congo from neighbouring Republic of the Congo. In a low-key start to the operation, a small convoy of boats took 79 refugees down the Oubangui River from the town of Betou in Republic of the Congo (ROC) to Dongo in northern Democratic Republic of the Congo's Equateur province. UNHCR and senior officials of the two countries are expected to take part in a formal ceremony later.

Ghana’s health authorities officially declared a cholera outbreak in the country April. According to the country’s health service, as of 24 April 2012, over 1,570 cases and 21 deaths have been recorded in the Greater Accra and Eastern regions. This outbreak is linked to poor sanitation conditions and migration from affected regions to other regions.

A drought is threatening Angola's already modest food production, in a setback for efforts to revive once-vibrant farmlands abandoned during decades of war. The dry season that normally lasts only about three weeks in December has stretched to three months in parts of the southern African country where most regions are used to abundant rainfall almost year-round. 'Production has collapsed throughout the central and southern regions,' said Belarmino Jelembi, national coordinator of the Association for Rural and Environmental Development.

An international human rights group has written to Zimbabwe’s three main political party leaders urging them to scrap the death penalty from the new constitution. Amnesty International says in a letter to Zanu PF leader Robert Mugabe and the two leaders of the MDC Morgan Tsvangirai and Welshman Ncube that the death penalty’s deterrent effect is negligible. Zimbabwe’s new constitution which is being steered by the three parties is currently at drafting stage. A draft released last week shows the death penalty will be retained, but only for aggravated murder.

In the dusty courtyard of a crowded clinic in Old Fangak, in South Sudan’s Jonglei state, throngs of people, some of them under mosquito nets strung between trees, wait to get tested for kala-azar, amid the worst continuous outbreak in three decades. Last year, this clinic – which lacks electricity or running water - handled around half the 11,000 total recorded cases of the parasitical disease, also known as visceral leishmaniasis. Spread by the bite of the sand-fly, it can cause fever, weight loss, enlarged spleen, rash, anaemeia, diarrhoea, fatigue and, left untreated, death.

La Via Campesina calls on all the peasant organizations of the world and their allies to organize actions in the month of June.

An assault on the Libyan interim government headquarters has left one guard dead and several others wounded, according to reports. Fighters attacked and surrounded the building on Tuesday 8 May, demanding stipends that the government promised to pay to those who helped oust former leader Muammar Gaddafi. Nasser al-Manaa, an interim government spokesperson, said the armed protesters, some of them carrying mortars, tried to push their way into the building.

The 21-member Civil Society Constitution Coalition (CSCC) has welcomed the Draft Constitution released recently, saying some clauses provided for in the document were progressive. CSCC spokesperson, Leonard Chiti, said the coalition had noted some progressive clauses provided for in the document and that it would protect them so that other interest groups would not take advantage of their numbers or influence to water down or remove them.

The International Campaign to Stop Rape and Gender Violence in Conflict unites organisations and individuals into a powerful and coordinated effort for change. 'Together we will demand bold political leadership to prevent rape in conflict, to protect civilians and rape survivors, and call for justice for all - including effective prosecution of those responsible.'

Website Africa Focus has a feature on HIV/AIDS and health as a human right. 'In the last 15 years, AIDS activists and medical professionals, in Africa and around the world, have won the recognition that the fight against AIDS, which disproportionately affects the African continent, is a shared global responsibility. Millions of lives have been saved. But the fight against AIDS and the wider commitment to health as a universal human right is now threatened by AIDS fatigue and austerity politics.'

Rebels in Sudan's western Darfur region said on Tuesday (8 May) they had seized control of a town from Sudanese government troops, part of their campaign to topple President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's government. 'Our forces entered Girayda, south of Nyala, and took over the garrison completely,' Abdullah Mursal, spokesman for the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) faction led by Minni Minnawi, said.

The new Constitution of Egypt is on the verge of being drafted. In order to support the forthcoming work of the drafters, ARTICLE 19 has produced a comprehensive policy brief outlining how the new Constitution should protect the right to freedom of expression and freedom of information. The brief is based on international legal standards on freedom of expression, including the decisions of international and regional human rights courts as well as the authoritative interpretation of international human rights law by the UN Human Rights Committee, regional mechanisms and other bodies, such as the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression.

A young person is three times more likely to be unemployed than an adult globally and if the disparity is not dealt with urgently economic protest will worsen. The International Labour Organisation revealed this and other shocking statistics at the Youth Employment Summit, hosted by the National Youth Development Agency, in Boksburg, East Rand. Unemployment remains high at 23.9 per cent in South Africa, and 70 per cent of the jobless are between the ages of 15 and 34.

Shoppers in Malawi have been scrambling to buy basic goods, fearing huge price rises after the currency was devalued by 33 per cent. The BBC's Raphael Tenthani in Blantyre says that many shops had run out of staple foods such as sugar, cooking oil and bread by the end of Monday. The kwacha was devalued as part of moves by the new government to restore donor funding. The central bank announced that one dollar would now be worth 250 kwacha, up from 168, while the peg to the US currency would be scrapped.