Burkina Faso's parliament has voted to change the country's electoral code, which the opposition fears will clear the way for another term in office for President Blaise Compaore in elections scheduled for November 2005. These changes, which were passed through parliament late Tuesday, will see the electoral unit of Burkina Faso changed from the region of which there are 15, to the province, which number 45.

Traditional chiefs travelled more than 1,000 kilometres recently through Burkina Faso's northern Sahel in a caravan, organized in cooperation with UNDP, to help stop the spread of HIV/AIDS, which has spread dramatically in the west African country. The three-day car caravan visited the region's two main provinces, Seno and Soum, holding meetings in six towns and villages to alert residents about the epidemic and encourage local HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention activities.

The government of Burkina Faso has outlined a new strategy for working with NGO’s and local communities to cope with the rising number of orphans and abandoned children in this poor and semi-arid West African country. According to government statistics, there were 2.1 million orphans and abandoned children in Burkina Faso last year. They accounted for nearly 18 percent of the country’s 11.8 million population.

The trial began in a military court in the Burkina Faso capital on Tuesday of 11 soldiers and two civilians accused of plotting to topple President Blaise Compaore. All 13 are charged with plotting to undermine state security, while the alleged mastermind of the putsch, Captain Luther Ouali, also faces charges of treason and of colluding with a foreign power to destabilise the Burkinabe government.

In impoverished Burkina Faso, girls as young as eight are married off to men often older than their own fathers. But the government is now trying to eradicate this practice, alarmed by the continuing emergence of pregnancy complications in very young mothers. Typical of this phenomenon is the case of 22-year-old Christine. When she was 16, Christine ran away from home after realising that her family was preparing to marry her off to a polygamous old man.