Pambazuka News is produced by a pan-African community of some 2,600 citizens and organisations - academics, policy makers, social activists, women's organisations, civil society organisations, writers, artists, poets, bloggers, and commentators who together produce insightful, sharp and thoughtful analyses and make it one of the largest and most innovative and influential web forums for social justice in Africa. 
religion
Boko Haram: Nigeria’s new national crisis?
Sokari Ekine
2011-06-23, Issue 536
cc Amnesty Intl.Nigeria’s Boko Haram bombings, militants in the Niger Delta, attitudes towards homosexuality in Ghana, the censorship of internet pornography in Tunisia and a Canadian couple’s decision not to gender their child all feature in this week’s review of African blogs, compiled by Sokari Ekine.
Posada Carriles: ‘The bin Laden of the Americas’
Horace Campbell
2011-05-05, Issue 527
cc B L‘As quiet as it is kept, international terrorism did not begin on 11 September 2001.’ Before Osama bin Laden, there was Luis Posada Carriles, writes Horace Campbell.
Separating religion from public life
Nawal El Saadawi
The Global Solidarity Movement For Secular Society
2009-09-24, Issue 449
cc Tom MarukoIn this week’s issue of Pambazuka News, activist Nawal El Saadawi writes about the inter-relationship between the power of the military, the police, capitalist markets and media, and religion, both at a global and local level. El Saadawi recently founded the Global Solidarity Movement for Secular Society, ‘to save women and men, globally and locally, from unjust laws forced on them under the name of God or religion.’ Religion is ‘a very personal individual private matter’, argues El Saadawi, and should be ‘totally separated from public life.'
Global: Are instruments of human rights law incompatible with Islam?
2009-07-17, Issue 442
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and subsequent instruments of international human rights law and international humanitarian law play a vital role in providing protection for refugees and IDPs. Yet the claim to universality has been d...
Global: Is the G8 fit for purpose?
2009-07-17, Issue 442
Many commentators and development professionals echoed this refrain during the G8 2009 summit held in Italy from July 8 - 10. The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, added his voice to the veritable cascade of dissension by declaring that the G8 “will...
Obama in Cairo: Equivalences and silences
Paul T Zeleza
2009-06-11, Issue 437
cc Soldiers Media CenterPresident Obama’s speech to the Muslim world delivered on 4 June was ‘powerful’ and ‘smart’, but PT Zeleza finds himself most interested in its ‘equivalences and silences’. With reference to media reactions and commentary from different parts of the world, Zeleza looks at Obama’s framing of the relationship between the US and Islam, the parallels Obama draws between the civil rights movement in the United States and Palestinian resistance, and Obama’s failure to ‘fully address one of the fundamental reasons for the estrangement of the so-called Muslim world from the United States: The latter's support for authoritarian regimes’. The United States ‘would do itself a lot of good if it curtailed its propensities for destructive interventions around the world’, says Zeleza, while ‘the so-called Muslim world’ would benefit from building ‘truly democratic developmental states’.
Calling on the Kenyan leadership to be counted
Wangari Maathai
2009-06-04, Issue 436
cc Amber B CReflecting on Kenyan society's unquestioning acceptance of the police's right to intimidate and even kill those labelled as 'Mungiki', Wangari Maathai considers the dubious culture of impunity around harassing those supposedly in league with the Mungiki sect. With the pervasive demonisation of the Mungiki militia group providing an effective cover for the killing of members of the Kikuyu community – Mungiki and non-Mungiki alike – ordinary citizens are reluctant to speak out, both for fear of being accused of supporting the sect and of the reactions of Mungiki militia to criticism. Calling on the political and religious leadership of the Kikuyu community to face up to the challenge in its midst, Maathai urges the country to heal the growing rift between the community and other Kenyans.
Somalia: Time to pay attention
Frankie Martin
2008-08-05, Issue 392
While the world looks elsewhere, Somalia is in flames. The nation just topped a list of the world’s most unstable countries by Foreign Policy magazine, and the United Nations has declared the humanitarian situation there “worse than Darfur.”...
Obama's Speech and the Black Man's Burden
Paul T Zeleza
2008-03-20, Issue 355
Paul T. Zeleza while recognizing the historic nature and importance of the Obama speech argues that the circumstances that made the speech necessary reveal the extent to which the United States remains an arrogantly racist society
Demanding implementation, challenging obstacles
Irene Sithole
2007-11-29, Issue 330
Irene Sithole writes that Zimbabwe's women suffer violence in all environments including work place, the home and the political arena
Gender approach to violence, labour rights and discrimination
Aboubacry Mbodji
2007-11-29, Issue 330
Aboubacry Mbodji proposes a gender approach in regard to violence, labour rights and discriminations against women in Senegalese working environment.
Government leaders passive in the face of lesbian murders
Melanie Judge
2007-11-29, Issue 330
Melanie Judge writes about the apparent passivity of government leaders in the face of lesbian attacks and murders in South Africa.
The raging debate over women's reproductive autonomy
Salma Maoulidi
2007-11-29, Issue 330
Salma Maoulidi examines the link between abortion and women's reproductive autonomy
The 'lost protocol' in Uganda: tears, struggles and hope
Solome Nakaweesi-Kimbugwe
2007-11-21, Issue 329
Today, as many across the continent celebrate the 2nd Anniversary of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, the women’s movement in Uganda is struggling to ‘find the protocol’, says Solome Nakaweesi-Kimbugwe