| MAURITANIA: Force-feeding on decline, but more dangerous |
 NOUAKCHOTT, 26 June 2009 (IRIN) - As perceptions of beauty change and obesity-related diseases rise, more women in Mauritania are fighting back against force-feeding, according to the government. But even as some women refuse to fatten up, up to one-third of the country’s women are still risking their lives to put on weight to conform to a longstanding aesthetic standard.
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| COTE D'IVOIRE: Children selling sex, having babies |
 ABIDJAN, 25 June 2009 (IRIN) - The baby was born and 12 days later died on a dilapidated upper floor of the Adjamé market in Côte d’Ivoire’s commercial capital Abidjan. The mother, Aminata *, is barely 15. She does not know who the father is. Aminata exchanges sex for money – so she can eat, she said.
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| UGANDA: Health facilities stretched to breaking point |
 KAYUNGA, 25 June 2009 (IRIN) - Jennifer Nankinga fed her ailing child from a hospital bed in Kayunga, north of Kampala, despite a strong stench from dirty toilets that filled the air in the paediatric ward.
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| NIGER: On alert for a constitutional coup? - analysis |
 NIAMEY, 25 June 2009 (IRIN) - Niger’s national bar association has warned that the ruling party’s proposed constitutional referendum to allow President Mamadou Tandja to stay on beyond the 10-year limit – deemed unlawful by the country’s highest court – amounts to an illegal takeover of power.
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| GLOBAL: Geneva Conventions and 21st-century combatants |
 DAKAR, 24 June 2009 (IRIN) - To mark the 150th anniversary of the International Red Cross Movement IRIN spoke with humanitarian and legal experts about how conflict has changed in the 21st century and to what degree the Geneva Conventions and their additional protocols stand up when it comes to protecting civilians in conflict.
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