Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF party has accused South Africa of gross interference in the country’s internal affairs. This comes after President Jacob Zuma’s government insisted that its troubled neighbour must institute serious reforms before holding fresh elections. South Africa’s Foreign Affairs minister, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, told her country’s parliament on Monday that 'our government expects that there would be no deviation from the provisions' of Zimbabwe’s power-sharing agreement. A member of Zanu PF’s top decision-making body, the politburo, Jonathan Moyo, said Nkoana-Mashabane had no mandate to comment on political developments in Zimbabwe.

Following the killing of yet another Somali journalist, Ali Ahmed Abdi, the global media rights body - International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) - on Monday expressed 'total dismay over the serial killing of Journalists' in Somalia, PANA reports. The latest killing followed the 'brutal murder' of another Somali media executive, Abukar Hassan Mahamoud, barely a week ago. According to IFJ, three Somali journalists have been killed since the start of this year and Abdi becomes the 30th journalist murdered in Somalia since 2007.

A campaign by US activists to capture alleged Ugandan war criminal Joseph Kony has gone viral on the web. Invisible Children's half-hour film on the use of child soldiers by Kony's Lord's Resistance Army has been viewed nearly 10m times on YouTube. But an article in Foreign Affairs accused Invisible Children and other non-profits of having 'manipulated facts for strategic purposes' was circulated on the web.

Following advocacy by the Refugee Law Project, the Attorney General of Uganda exercised his powers under section 24 of the Births and Deaths Registration Act and has waived the registration fees payable by refugees in order to register a birth or death in Uganda. Previously, refugees were treated as foreigners and were therefore required to pay $40 in order to obtain a birth or death certificate.

Tanzanian ports may soon become idle if plans to build new and competitive facilities are not implemented now.This comes in the wake of plans by Kenya to construct a 23 billion US dollar transshipment port at Lamu. Experts say that in today's business every port in the world keeps pace with fewer but much larger shipping lines and concentration of cargo into bigger vessels able to utilise just a few key hub ports.

Brazil is supporting the controversial UNESCO-Obiang prize in an attempt to improve relations with President Obiang, but this puts Brazil's own international reputation at stake. Brazil is showing questionable judgment by actively supporting the UNESCO-Obiang prize in an apparent effort to strengthen its relations with the regime of President Obiang, which has accumulated a long list of human rights violations in the course of its 32 years in power, says this article on the EG Justice website.

The Law Society of SA has written to the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) raising a concern about South African judges serving on the bench in Swaziland, saying that the Swazi judiciary appeared to be compromising the rule of law. There is a long tradition of southern African judges, especially when retired, serving on the benches of each other’s courts, However, the Swazi judiciary has come in for increasing criticism over the past couple of years, reaching crisis point last year when Judge Thomas Masuku was fired by King Mswati on what were believed to be trumped-up charges.

A fire that killed two workers and destroyed a gas exploration rig off Nigeria's south-east coast has gone out after 46 days, Chevron has said. Friends of the Earth, which said this was the world's worst such accident in recent years, welcomed the news. The environmental group has urged Chevron to compensate local Nigerian fishermen for income lost while the fire burned.

The Council of Canadians, Food and Water Watch, and Focus on the Global South invite you to virtually Occupy the World Water Forum – a corporate trade show aimed at giving the world’s largest water multinationals privileged access to high-level policy making behind closed doors. Many social justice and environmental groups will be in Marseille to denounce the World Water Forum and promote an alternative vision at the Forum Alternatif Mondial de l’Eau (FAME). You can support our protests virtually from anywhere in the world by occupying the World Water Forum online.

Nigerian NGO Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has filed a request before the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights in Arusha, Tanzania, asking the court to 'consider the effects of corruption on the poverty level in Nigeria, and whether rising and systemic poverty violates specific human rights under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.' According to a statement made available to PANA in Lagos on Sunday, the organization told the court that Nigeria has ratified both the African Charter and the African Court Protocol.

Ighsaan Schroeder of the Casual Workers Advice Office explains why Cosatu called for a general strike against the practice of labour broking. However, he argues that the trade union federation’s call for a ban on labour brokers is highly problematic for a number of reasons, not least of which is Cosatu's inability to respond to the changing nature of the South African work force.

The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on authorities in Togo to investigate a report that police assaulted a photojournalist after he took photos of officers seizing a motorcycle during a protest, according to media reports and local journalists. Koffi Djidonou Frédéric Attipou, a photojournalist with the weekly Le Canard Indépendant and the biweekly magazine Sika, told CPJ he was covering a protest over government human rights violations when he turned his camera to police confiscating a demonstrator's motorcycle nearby. Togolese police, facing numerous allegations of heavy-handed and abusive tactics, have had a number of recent confrontations with journalists covering their activities, according to news accounts and CPJ research.

Both the troops loyal to the former ruler Muammar Gaddafi and the forces that fought to oust him committed crimes against humanity and war crimes, reports the United Nations-mandated commission of inquiry that probed human rights abuses in Libya. A summary of the findings of the International Commission of Inquiry on Libya says: 'Acts of murder, enforced disappearance and torture were perpetrated within the context of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population.'

With 8 March being International Women's Day, March 8 is International Women’s Day, Farm Radio Weekly has stories about four remarkable women. The first story comes from Congo-Brazzaville and follows the achievements of Ms. Yvonne Nsayi. In an isolated village, Ms. Nsayi responded to the need for fresh bread by re-opening a local bakery and turning it into a roaring success. On top of that, she bakes donuts for sale, is a farmer, and a mother of four. She is described as an inspiration for both men and women.

Some 1,000 Chadian migrants - most of them children separated from their families - are waiting for aid in the village of N’Gbouboua in the Lac region of western Chad having fled Boko Haram-related violence in Nigeria, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). With more arriving each day - some 100 have arrived in the last 48 hours according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) - the food situation is getting desperate, say aid workers.

Pa Sando, the town chief of Konja, in Grand Cape Mount county in Liberia, looks out across the farmland. 'I used to pick cocoa on this farm for more than 30 years. My grandfather planted it for us,' he says. 'All this area here was mine, and now it's all gone.' The land has been leased by Sime Darby Plantation (Liberia) Inc, owned by the Malaysian-based multinational Sime Darby, to grow trees for palm oil. Sando said he was never asked whether he wanted to give up his land – only that he saw the bulldozers in the bush and then his land was taken.

Seven Gambian opposition parties have asked the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) to create a level playing field for the 29 March 2012 National Assembly election. The opposition is also urging the IEC to postpone the election for a meeting between them to discuss how to put the right conditions in place for a genuine vote. The demand follows a series meetings of the opposition parties which cited the preamble of the 1997 Constitution that guarantees participatory democracy reflecting the undiluted choice of the people.

In this letter to Members of the Executive Board of The United Nations Education, Science and Culture Organization (UNESCO), James McFadden of the Fulbright Commission highlights the detention of a medical doctor in Equatorial Guinea as a reason for why the UNESCO-Obiang Nguema Mbasogo International Prize for Research in the Life Sciences should be scrapped.

At the battered terminal of Tripoli’s tiny Mitiga airport, over 150 young men and women jostle to be repatriated home to Nigeria on Libya’s Buraq airlines. This journey to Lagos is one of hundreds the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has facilitated since the start of the uprising against Gaddafi’s regime over a year ago. IOM estimates that one million migrant workers were in Libya sending remittances home before the crisis, a heavy footprint for a Libyan population of under seven million.

The development of the new constitution must follow a participatory approach: the government must provide and implement clear mechanisms for the participation of the Tunisian people in this historical process, which go beyond simple monitoring of and via the media. This was one of the recommendations made by participants of the seminar 'guarantying freedom of expression in the Constitution' organised by ARTICLE 19, Alpha Steppa, the development league of Kasserine, and Moulahedh at Sbeitla from 25 to 26 February.