Full Coverage: West Africa

18.11.2009 A group of NGOs has lodged a legal complaint claiming that one of the world's leading timber wholesalers bought timber from Liberian companies that provided support to Charles Taylor's brutal regime.

10.11.2009 A catastrophe is unfolding in the Niger Delta. Entire communities are devastated. The land they have lived on for generations is poisoned. Behind this catastrophe is a UK company – Shell. But they’re hiding behind a smokescreen of denials and excuses. It’s time this stopped – it’s time Shell was called to account.

26.10.2009 Lasting respite seems to have returned to Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta with the declaration of an "indefinite ceasefire" by the main militant group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta.

19.10.2009 Climate Camp protesters at Ratcliffe have a clear message. No more coal. Does this attribute of simplicity compromise the bigger picture of developing countries which lack electricity?

16.10.2009 The prosector of the International Criminal Court is looking into last month’s events in Guinea, where at least 150 people were killed when security forces opened fire on an opposition rally.

14.10.2009 Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Eritrea, Sierra Leone Chad, and Ethiopia score worst in a Global Hunger Index, which links the problem to gender inequalities.

02.10.2009 Four actual or potential conflict situations around the world deteriorated - Afghanistan, Bosnia, Guinea and Uganda - in September and none improved, according to the International Crisis Group.

30.09.2009 Details of attacks committed by Guinean security forces while suppressing a mass rally in Conakry - and the extent to which the violence was organised by the army - are revealed by an international rights group.
+ Reporters for foreign media go into hiding after death threats

29.09.2009 Guinean security forces should immediately cease violent attacks on demonstrators protesting against the military government, a leading rights group said today.

09.09.2009 The number of people hit by floods across West Africa has now topped 600,000, and the heavy rains have also destroyed crops and infrastructure, says the UN.

07.09.2009 Sierra Leone struggles to combat child labour through legislation. IRIN News

01.09.2009 A major setback for gender campaigners as protests in Mali persuade the president to reject a new law improving the rights of women. BBC News

28.08.2009 The credibility of Liberia’s forestry reform programme - one of the most comprehensive ever undertaken in the tropics - has been brought to the point of collapse, claims an international environmental lobby group.

06.08.2009 Photographer Tim Hetherington’s exploration of Liberia between 2003 and 2007 brings an extraordinary range of characters to life: warlords and presidents, environmental activists and traditional
hunters, political hustlers and democratic visionaries.

03.08.2009 Conflicts in Afghanistan, China, Chechnya and Nigeria deteriorated in July 2009 and the situation in Guinea-Bissau improved, according to the International Crisis Group.

02.08.2009 Weather forecasting should play a much bigger role in the delivery of emergency aid, especially as climate change takes hold. Efforts are under way in West Africa. IRIN News

29.07.2009 Nigerian troops are hunting for the remnants of Boko Haram, an Islamist group that has been on a killing spree in the country's north.

19.07.2009 An unusual Twitter campaign to persuade the Nigerian government to remedy the lack of electricity. Global Dashboard

13.07.2009 A new transparency law in Liberia covering natural resource industries sets an impressive benchmark for global efforts to fight the natural resource curse and should be emulated by other countries, says an international which campaigns to prevent natural resourced-related conflict and corruption.

30.06.2009 The situation in the Niger Delta is a “human rights tragedy,” warns an international rights group, which says that the people of the region have seen their human rights abused by oil companies that their government cannot or will not hold to account.