Full Coverage: Governance

16.04.2012 LILONGWE, Apr 15 (IPS) - She has been in office for less than a week but Malawi’s, and the region’s, first female president, Joyce Banda, has given many people in this poor southern African country hope that its social and economic woes will soon end.

05.04.2012 BERLIN, Apr 4 (IPS) - European civil society organisations continue to demand that international financial institutions (IFIs) such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund apply the same standards of transparency and accountability to their internal affairs that they demand for governments across the world.

05.03.2012 KATHMANDU, 2 March (IRIN) - Political infighting, a stalled drafting of the country's constitution and armed violence nationwide have increased insecurity in Nepal, culminating this past week in a bombing in Kathmandu which killed three and injured about 10.

05.01.2012 UK parliamentarians have instructed Andrew Mitchell to impose conditions on foreign aid to fragile or conflict-related countries such as Rwanda and Malawi. Have they given thought to what happens to the poor when aid is withdrawn as a punishment for bad government?

25.10.2011 A new US ambassador to Malawi has arrived in the middle of a diplomatic tussle between the two countries over the suspended Millennium Challenge Corporation grant for vital energy development. Will President Mutharika back down on his repression of civil liberties?

01.08.2011 "With better governance, I have no doubt that Africa holds the promise of a broader base for prosperity." The words of Barack Obama in his groundbreaking speech in Ghana back in the heady days of July 2009. How tempting it must be for African ministers, long tormented by accusations of dysfunctional government, to bounce this message with United States inserted as the subject. As Congress staggers towards its latest Punch and Judy show on raising the debt ceiling, I've tried and failed to find a single sniping comment from the African continent. Is this a silence of prudence, dignity or just indifference to a fading power? I don't think the restraint will last long, not least because most of the aid promises announced in that 2009 speech are about to be extinguished in the bonfire of US discretionary spending cuts.

07.06.2011 BUKAVU, Jun 7 (IRIN) - Five years after the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) revised its laws against sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), these crimes continue to go unpunished because of judicial inaction and a legal culture at odds with the changes. The laws, ignored and misinterpreted, have left escalating numbers of sexual violence survivors unprotected, and perpetrators free to violate again.

26.04.2011 COLOMBO, Apr 26 (IRIN) - The government of Sri Lanka has criticized the UN for releasing a report alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by both sides during the country's decades-long civil war.

22.04.2011 SAN FRANCISCO, Apr 21 (New America Media) - This past weekend the Communist Party in Cuba approved a set of reforms that will increase the ease by which Cubans can engage in private business and looks at ways to attract foreign investment to boost the nation's nascent tourist industry.

15.04.2011 KAMPALA, Apr 15 (IPS) - The Ugandan opposition has announced it will continue protests against rising prices for fuel, food and other essential commodities, undeterred by violent police repression of the previous two days of action.

12.04.2011 ABIDJAN, Apr 11 (IRIN) - As news of Laurent Gbagbo's fall from Cote d'Ivoire's presidency spread around Abidjan, residents of the economic capital expressed a mixture of relief, anger and apprehension.

01.04.2011 LONDON, Apr 1 (OneWorld.net) - Months of political stalemate and violent clashes in Cote d'Ivoire appear to be coming to a dramatic head as the forces of Alassane Ouattara, the internationally recognized president of the country since elections in November, have reached the main city Abidjan and are working their way toward the presidential residence.

29.03.2011 HARARE, Mar 29 (IRIN) - A mother of four in Zimbabwe’s rural Midlands Province gave her husband custody of her children, after divorcing him three years ago, because the failing crops on her two-acre plot meant she would be unable to feed them.

18.03.2011 ANTANANARIVO, Mar 18 (IRIN) - The burden of paying for education in Madagascar has shifted to the poor after donor funding was frozen in the wake of a coup on 17 March 2009.

08.03.2011 ADEN, Mar 8 (IRIN) - Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh has been facing popular protests demanding an end to his 32 years in power since the beginning of February. The anti-government movement, emulating the tactics used in Tunisia and Egypt to depose their long-serving leaders has won political concessions, but Saleh has refused to step down before the end of his presidential term in 2013. At least 20 people have so far lost their lives in clashes with the security forces.

03.03.2011 DAKAR, Mar 2 (IRIN) - In northern Côte d’Ivoire vaccines are going bad, taps are dry and the families of women in labour are ferrying buckets of water to hospital, three days after the government of Laurent Gbagbo ordered power cut in the region.

26.02.2011 NAIROBI, Feb 25 (IRIN) - Anti-government protesters, who have taken to the streets of Khartoum and other Sudanese cities over recent weeks, run the risk of sexual assault, torture and detention, say human rights workers and demonstrators.

11.02.2011 CAIRO, Feb 9 (IPS) - Over recent years, Egypt has witnessed mounting tension between its Muslim majority and its sizeable Coptic Christian minority. But in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the site of ongoing mass protests against the ruling regime, members of both faiths chant in unison: "Muslim, Christian, doesn't matter; We're all in this boat together!"

30.01.2011 SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 29 (New America Media) - NAM Contributor Jalal Ghazi spoke with Dina Ibrahim, an Egyptian-born assistant professor of journalism at San Francisco State University whose area of expertise is Middle Eastern politics and media.

11.07.2009 Professor Paul Collier's ideas about prioritising aid for governance and security in post-conflict states have strongly influenced the latest UK government proposals. US commentators are less convinced. Boston Review