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GUINEA: State of suspended development after 50 years of independence
CONAKRY Thursday, October 02, 2008 (IRIN) - As regional leaders gathered in Conakry on 2 October to celebrate Guinea’s 50 years of independence from France, on the other side of the capital, doctors emerging from a ten-day strike said when it comes to healthcare, there is little to celebrate.

GLOBAL: "Hot topic" - special journal issue on climate and migration reviewed
JOHANNESBURG Monday, September 29, 2008 (IRIN) - The October issue of the Forced Migration Review (FMR), a journal published three times a year by Oxford University's Refugee Studies Centre, is a 38-article buffet on climate change and displacement, a “hot topic” according to Jean-Francois Durieux, a lecturer at the centre.

AFRICA: Call to ban cluster bombs
KAMPALA Monday, September 29, 2008 (IRIN) - Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu called cluster munitions "an abomination whose manufacture and use should not be tolerated by any government", amid calls for African countries to do more to ensure the weapons are banned.

GLOBAL: Leadership determines AIDS performance
JOHANNESBURG Thursday, September 25, 2008 (IRIN) - As South Africa prepared to swear in a new president on 25 September after the dramatic ousting of Thabo Mbeki four days before, attempts by commentators to summarise the former president's mixed legacy have not failed to mention his controversial stance on AIDS.

GUINEA: Reputation for corruption worsens
CONAKRY Wednesday, September 24, 2008 (IRIN) - Guinea fell five spots in the 2008 ranking of perceptions of corruption released by the watchdog non-profit Transparency International (TI). Officials say Guinea’s deteriorating reputation for corruption can threaten city services, choke economic growth and increase drug trafficking.

GLOBAL: Govts urged to recognise the right to affordable food
JOHANNESBURG Tuesday, September 23, 2008 (IRIN) - The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food has called on governments to draw up national laws obliging them to take action when there is a threat of famine or food insecurity.

WEST AFRICA: Mixed report card in 2008 corruption index
DAKAR Tuesday, September 23, 2008 (IRIN) - Nine West African countries shot up while nine others sank lower in the 2008 Transparency International (TI) ranking of perceptions of corruption in 180 countries.

AFRICA: Humanitarian Air
JOHANNESBURG Friday, September 19, 2008 (IRIN) - Often the forgotten heroes of humanitarian assistance, pilots play a critical role in making sure that aid gets to where it is needed most around the world - and sometimes they pay the ultimate price.

GUINEA: Strike suspended, health workers back on job
CONAKRY Thursday, September 18, 2008 (IRIN) - Some government health employees returned to work on 18 September after the Federation of Health Workers Union announced the temporary suspension of its most recent 10-day strike.

GUINEA-SIERRA LEONE: Refugee status ends but many opt to stay
CONAKRY Wednesday, September 17, 2008 (IRIN) - Some 6,300 Sierra Leonean refugees who have been living in Guinea for 20 years will lose their refugee status as of 1 January 2009 according to the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), leaving them with a choice to stay legally in Guinea as Sierra Leonean citizens, or to return home.

GUINEA: Youths pledge continued demonstrations until lights come on
CONAKRY Wednesday, September 10, 2008 (IRIN) - Sporadic youth-led demonstrations have rocked blacked-out neighbourhoods on the outskirts of Guinea’s capital Conakry during the past week. Altogether, hundreds of youths have demonstrated in near-darkness, lit only by dozens of burning vehicles, against the state-run Electricity of Guinea (EDG), the country’s sole electricity source.

GUINEA: Medical services paralysed for day two of health strike
CONAKRY Tuesday, September 09, 2008 (IRIN) - Entering a second day of a near-total work stoppage in and around the capital Conakry, almost all the city’s government health care workers continued to refuse to perform most medical services as they hold out for back pay, a salary increase and promotions

WEST AFRICA: Forced mass deportations, violence against migrants on rise
DAKAR Friday, September 05, 2008 (IRIN) - Participants wrapping up the two-day "Stakeholders in Migration" conference on migration in West Africa organised by non-profit Open Society Institute (OSI) said clandestine migration from sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa and Europe has prompted increased border crackdowns, abuses and killings of migrants.

GLOBAL: Food wasted is water lost
JOHANNESBURG Friday, August 29, 2008 (IRIN) - To meet growing food demand, in another 40 years the world would need enough water to fill at least three lakes the size of Victoria, Africa's largest body of water, according to a projection in a new policy brief. Lake Victoria's estimated volume is 2,750 km3.

GUINEA: Elections delay again
CONAKRY Friday, August 29, 2008 (IRIN) - Lack of funding and a June shift in government mean landmark legislative elections scheduled for November 2008 will be pushed back, Ben Sekou Sylla, president of Guinea’s independent national electoral commission (CENI), told IRIN.

WEST AFRICA: Coastline to be submerged by 2099
ACCRA Monday, August 25, 2008 (IRIN) - Swathes of West Africa’s coastline extending from the orange dunes in Mauritania to the dense tropical forests in Cameroon will be underwater by the end of the century as a direct consequence of climate change, environmental experts warn.

GLOBAL: Pressure on to reach emissions agreement
ACCRA Friday, August 22, 2008 (IRIN) - Industrialised and developing countries will be under intense pressure to agree on greenhouse gas emission reduction targets during week-long negotiations over future greenhouse gas emission targets which kicked off in the Ghana capital Accra on 21 August.

GLOBAL: Cyclones, storms and hurricanes
JOHANNESBURG Thursday, August 21, 2008 (IRIN) - One symptom of climate change is more severe tropical cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons, featuring in the headlines more often.

WEST AFRICA: Flood relief efforts continue
DAKAR Friday, August 15, 2008 (IRIN) - Disaster relief teams have fanned out across West Africa to assess how badly the region was hit during the past month of heavy rains. Tens of thousands were affected in Togo, Burkina Faso, Niger, Liberia and Mauritania according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA).

GLOBAL: What we are doing about climate change
JOHANNESBURG Tuesday, August 05, 2008 (IRIN) - In developing countries, where survival is often a daily struggle, people cannot afford to wait for their government to bail them out. Many are living in the grip of climate change, coping with frequent droughts, heavy flooding, intense cyclones and other extreme weather events, and have found ways to adapt:

GLOBAL: Food aid on the back burner as WTO talks collapse
JOHANNESBURG Monday, August 04, 2008 (IRIN) - As countries grapple with high food prices, attempts to draw attention to an inefficient food aid delivery system have been pushed to the back burner after the World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks collapsed last week.

GLOBAL: What climate change does - The 2nd in a three-part series
JOHANNESBURG Thursday, July 31, 2008 (IRIN) - The world can expect to become about 0.2°C warmer per decade for the next two decades, according to several scenarios prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC). Even if the concentrations of all greenhouse gases and aerosols were kept constant at the levels they were in 2000, further warming of about 0.1°C per decade would still be expected.

GLOBAL: How climate change works
JOHANNESBURG Tuesday, July 29, 2008 (IRIN) - Climate change is complicated, but it doesn't have to be:

GLOBAL: Calls to reduce taxes and controls on food aid
JOHANNESBURG Monday, July 28, 2008 (IRIN) - The World Food Programme (WFP) has welcomed a call by the World Bank for a UN resolution to scrap taxes and export controls on food aid purchases, but experts say there is little chance of such a resolution being effected.

GLOBAL: Humanitarian futures (part 2) - "the crisis of humanitarianism"
NEW YORK Friday, July 25, 2008 (IRIN) - The global humanitarian enterprise could lose touch with the needs of its beneficiaries because of political and security priorities, especially the “war on terror”, according to a new report.