For years now, women’s groups in Southern Africa have campaigned tirelessly to ensure that the Southern African Development Community adopt the Protocol on Gender and Development. Yesterday, the SADC finally took that historic step. Member states will be obliged to amend their laws to ensure equal rights for women across a wide range of issues, from provisions that require member states to enshrine equality in their constitutions, to firm commitments to reduce maternal mortality by 75 per cent. But while that’s a cause for celebration, the Protocol still does not refer explicitly to domestic violence, and it still doesn’t oblige states to introduce legal provisions that criminalise marital rape.

Southern African leaders should adopt the proposed Gender and Development Protocol at their upcoming summit after amending it to include crucial provisions deleted in 2007. One of the most important provisions that should be put back in to the protocol would commit states to criminalize marital rape.

President George W. Bush’s praise for US efforts against HIV/AIDS in Africa should not obscure how his administration’s policies continue to undermine HIV prevention on the continent and globally, Human Rights Watch said today.

The transitional Somali government’s decision to close three leading radio stations in Mogadishu is a serious blow to freedom of expression and the right to impart and receive information in Somalia, Human Rights Watch said today.

In the most comprehensive accounting to date, six leading human rights organizations today published the names and details of 39 people who are believed to have been held in secret US custody and whose current whereabouts remain unknown. The briefing paper also names relatives of suspects who were themselves detained in secret prisons, including children as young as seven.

We write to voice concern over the expulsion of persons of Rwandan and Burundian origin from Tanzania in recent months. According to testimony received by Human Rights Watch researchers, some expelled persons were threatened, beaten, and saw their property looted by Tanzanian officials, soldiers, and police officers or by militia groups acting with the apparent compliance of government officials. The expelled persons—including some who were recognized as refugees and others who were naturalized Tanzanian citizens—were driven from their homes without any semblance of legal procedure.

Tanzania should immediately suspend its program to expel people of Rwandan and Burundian origin from Tanzania, and end the abuses that its security forces are committing against these people, Human Rights Watch said today in a letter to Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete.