The killing of Trayvon Martin serves as an inspiration for those who want to speak out against the demagoguery and hatred that has been spread in the United States in the midst of the capitalist depression.

Reporters Without Borders has written to the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, Juan E. Mendez, to inform him of its deep concern about the persecution of journalists in Djibouti. The press freedom organization asked the UN official to intervene urgently on behalf of radio journalist Farah Abadid Hildid, who works for the Europe-based station 'La Voix de Djibouti'. The station broadcasted on short wave and is now available on the Internet, although access to its website is blocked in Djibouti.

Health workers manning five health centres in two refugee camps in the southwestern Ugandan district of Isingiro say they are overwhelmed by the high number of refugees and local residents in need of HIV services. Severe personnel shortages in Nakivale and Oruchinga refugee settlements have led to long queues at the clinics and placed a heavy burden on the few health workers available, many of whom often have to take double shifts to meet demand.

A pilot version of an online mapping tool has been launched in Africa which enables researchers and policymakers to identify how climate change vulnerability, conflict, and aid intersect. Researchers from the Strauss Center's Climate Change and African Political Stability (CCAPS) programme, United States, integrated data from areas of climate change vulnerability and active aid-funded projects in Malawi, and mapped this information onto the locations of Malawian conflicts up to 2010.

The East Africa Association of Grantmakers (EAAG) is elated to announce the call for nominations for the inaugural East Africa Philanthropy Awards (EAPA) 2012. Launched in 2011, the Awards seek to identify, recognize and celebrate outstanding contributions of individuals and organizations to strategic social development and to the growth of the philanthropic movement in East Africa.

Oil transparency activists have vowed to continue a legal battle to require the government of Uganda to publish Production Sharing Agreements (PSAs) that it has reached with international oil companies. This comes after a court rejected an application from the African Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO) and three other civil society organisations for permission to present evidence at an appeal by two journalists against a separate ruling which denied them access to the PSAs.

The next major global climate change negotiations will take place in Durban, South Africa between November and December 2011, but the politics that sidelines developing regions of the world from shaping final agreements remains unchanged, writes Hewa Nzuri.

Climate change is already exacting a toll on populations and species around the world. Responses to the phenomenon must, however, be based not solely on economics but also science and the equity issue, writes Hewa Nzuri.

Africa remains at the mercy of a self-interested international ruling class interested purely in maximising profit at all costs and consolidating its position, writes Yash Tandon. As the continent faces up to the enormous challenge of climate change and the creation of a sustainable ‘green economy’, it must look inwards and draw upon its own expertise and resources and resist the temptation to rely on compromised external ‘experts’, Tandon stresses.

The build-up to the final United Nations Convention on Climate Change meeting in 2011 has been fractious and combative even as many countries grapple with negative impacts of climate change. Durban may not save the world, writes Kwesi W. Obeng.

In the run-up to the UN’s Rio+20 meeting next year and the Durban Conference of the Parties in November, ETC Group’s new book reveals ‘information that the large corporations who profit from climate change do not want the public to know.’

The World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth took place in April 2010 in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba after the 15th United Nations Conference of Parties (COP15) climate meetings in Copenhagen during December 2009. The event was attended by around 30,000 people from over 100 countries and issued the The Peoples Agreement, an extract of which is reproduced below.

Talks on climate change had reckoned without labour and labour related issues until now. But as Yahya Msangi points out, climate change ought to take account of labour.

The United States said on Monday 31 October it had stopped funding Unesco, the United Nations' cultural agency, following its vote to grant the Palestinians full membership. US State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland told reporters the US had no choice but to halt funding because of longstanding US law, saying Washington would not make a planned $60-million transfer that was due in November. The United States provides about 22 per cent of Unesco's funding.

Ugandan police released opposition leader Kizza Besigye on Monday 31 October, hours after detaining him for the second time in a month, but warned they would keep seizing him if he tried again to take part in protests against surging prices. Besigye was mobbed by supporters after he walked free from the Kasangati police station on the outskirts of the capital, Kampala, and drove off in his car, a Reuters witness said.

The 18-year-old Angolan youth who faces deportation despite having lived in the Netherlands since 2003, has made an emotional appeal to MPs to be allowed to stay. MPs will vote on whether Mauro Manuel, who has lived with the same foster family in Limburg since arriving as an unaccompanied refugee aged 10, can stay. The Christian Democratic party, which first supported Mauro and later changed its mind following pressure from immigration minister Gerd Leers, holds the key to his future.

Zambia's newly elected President Michael Sata has outlined plans to review the higher education sector as well as establish three new universities, to fulfil his election manifesto. Job creation for higher education graduates would also be prioritised. Sata, who came to power last month after defeating former president Rupiah Banda, said he also had plans for the establishment of universities and technical colleges in each of the country's nine provinces and intended rehabilitating existing institutions. Staff recruitment would be scaled up to meet demand in these institutions.

Botswana should decriminalise homosexuality and prostitution to prevent the spread of HIV, ex-President Festus Mogae has told the BBC. Mogae, who heads the Botswana government-backed Aids Council, said it was difficult to promote safe sex when the two practices were illegal. A government spokesman on HIV/Aids told the BBC homosexuality and prostitution would remain illlegal until the government concluded wide-ranging consultations to see whether there was a need to change the law.

A few thousand Egyptians marched through the streets of downtown Cairo in a protest against military tribunals and solidarity for a jailed blogger on 31 October. The march started at Talaat Harb Square and went through busy streets all the way to the prison where prominent activist and blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah is being held for 15 days under investigation.

The first international farmers’ conference, whose objective is to strengthen the fight against land grabs in Africa and other parts of the world, will be held in Sélingué from 17 to 19 November 2011, and will bring together almost 200 farmers affected by land grabs as well as numerous other participants, including researchers, political figures, and NGOs resisting the unprecedented land-grab offensive by large businesses and hedge funds, among others, that compromises the ability of people to feed themselves.

Three members of the opposition Forum for Democratic Change who were last week charged with treason in connection with walk to work have been further remanded to Luzira Maximum Security Prison. The FDC women leader Ms Ingrid Kamateneti Turinawe along with Sam Mugumya, the political assistant to Dr Kizza Besigye and Mr Francis Mwijukye who heads the FDC youth wing appeared Monday 31 October at Nakawa Chief Magistrates Court before Mr Charles Sserubuga. The trio were produced in court for mention of their case but court remanded them until 14 November.

Hundreds of SPLM-North fighters were killed in clashes with the Sudanese army in South Kordofan state, local governor Ahmed Haroun said. 'Several hundred members of the movement were killed this day in an assault on the city of Teludi that was repelled by the armed forces,' the governor of South Kordofan, an oil-producing state and scene of frequent clashes, said. An army spokesman, Sawarmi Khaled Saad, said 'this morning more than 700 rebel fighters together with 12 officers tried to attack Teludi (east of the provincial capital Kadugli) to occupy it'.

At least five people, including three children, have died after a refugee camp in southern Somalia was bombed, the MSF charity says. Kenya's army denied bombing the camp, saying it had been attacked by the militant Islamist group, al-Shabab. A Kenya fighter jet only hit al-Shabab positions in Jilib, killing 10 of its fighters, an army spokesman said.

Education is priority number one in Tanzania: the education budget has grown, primary school enrolment is close to universal, and secondary school enrolment is expanding fast. But, writes Rakesh Rajani, head of Twaweza, a ten-year initiative to promote citizen agency and improved service delivery in East Africa, millions of children are not learning. 'According to the large-scale and independent Uwezo Survey, 7 out of every 10 children in Grade 3 cannot read Swahili at their level, 8 out of 10 cannot do math and 9 out of 10 cannot read English. Even after seven years, when they have completed primary schooling, half the children cannot read Grade 2-level English.' So, after 50-odd years of advice and studies and reforms and programmes, why have the experts not managed to deliver a system where children are learning?

Kenya’s war against the Al-Shabaab militia has received support from the European Union, the US, Canada, Turkey, Australia, China, India, Japan, South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt and Gulf Cooperation, who met Prime Minister Raila Odinga and his Somali counterpart Abdiweli Mohamed Ali and expressed their support for the military operation.

Finance Minister Maria Kiwanuka has said 'tougher times were still ahead' for Uganda. Her statement comes on the back of rising inflation which currently stands at 30.5 per cent up from 28.3 per cent in September. The high inflation trend has reduced real incomes and increased the costs of living and doing businesses in Uganda.

This paper from the Governance and Aids Programme at Idasa examines the role that local government might play in promoting food security for people living with HIV in a democratic governance context. It examines local government's role in food security through interviews with local councillors in the Tshwane area.

The adoption of international guidelines to regulate so-called land grabs has been pushed to next year after negotiators failed to agree on conditions for large-scale land investments and enforcement. The guidelines, in the making for several years, were sparked by fears that a 'land rush' is leading to hunger, conflict and human rights abuses. More and more investors have flocked to the developing world over the past decade, snapping up huge tracts of farmland. Investment has intensified since the 2008 food and fuel price crisis. Once in place, the United Nations’s Committee on World Food Security guidelines are meant to protect people, mainly in poor countries such as Sierra Leone, from 'land grabbing'.

The World Bank has approved $250 million in funding for South African power utility Eskom to develop a wind and solar plant as part of a push to boost sources of clean energy. The World Bank said the funding through its Clean Technology Fund will finance a 100-megawatt solar power plant in Upington in the Northern Cape province and a 100-megawatt wind power project at Sere, north of Cape Town. 'The loan will help Eskom to implement two of the largest renewable energy projects ever attempted on the African continent,' the bank said in a statement.

The International Labour Organisation has warned that a jobs crisis caused by the slowdown in the global economy threatens a wave of widespread social unrest engulfing both rich and poor countries. 'We have reached the moment of truth,' said Raymond Torres, director of the ILO International Institute for Labour Studies to mark the publication of the organisation's World of Work report. In a new 'social unrest' index, the ILO said there was growing unhappiness over the lack of jobs and anger over perceptions that the burden of the crisis is not being shared fairly. It noted that in over 45 of the 118 countries examined, the risk of social unrest is rising, with particular signs of tension in the EU, the Arab region and to a lesser extent Asia.

As concerns deepen about the quality of education in Zimbabwe, parents can expect an indefinite extension of subsidising teacher salaries as the cash- strapped government struggles to meet the bloated civil service wage bill. Teacher incentives - a stipulated amount of usually between two to five dollars, which is paid by parents directly to teachers on a monthly basis - were introduced two years ago by the government to supplement teacher salaries. But many parents say the situation has become untenable and that they can no longer afford to contribute to teachers' salaries.

Swaziland’s economic crisis has forced the government to put on ice the agricultural input scheme that has made the survival of many subsistence farmers and their families less precarious on communal Swazi Nation Land, where 70 per cent of the 1.1 million population live. 'There is no seed subsidizing now. We used to do it, and we are talking about reviving the programme,' Xoxile Nxumalo, of the agriculture ministry, told IRIN. Under the Swazi Agricultural Development Programme, seeds were sold at a discount or provided free of charge to subsistence farmers working on communal land.

The global diamonds watchdog, the Kimberley Process, has cleared Zimbabwe to sell alluvial diamonds from the controversial Marange fields, despite documented evidence that top military and political chefs are involved in massive looting and that human rights abuses continue.

Patrick Bond argues that there is a desperate need to connect the dots between genuine local grievances and insensitive government climate politics so as to solve the problems from both below, in the wretched townships, and above.

Jared Sacks attended an Occupy Cape Town event on 15 October and found 'a huge theoretical gulf between the lived experience of those whose voices are invisible and the liberal white activists who proclaim that we are all, in fact, the same'.? He writes that: 'It is about time that white male activists who sincerely want to dismantle oppression, begin to take seriously the voices of the oppressed from within the 99 per cent.'

Imperialism is alive and well, and the Libyan invasion by Western forces is the latest example, writes Motsoko Pheko. Only a united Africa protecting and defending the interests of her own people collectively can defeat imperialists.

As industrial agricultural corporation AgriSol Energy sets it sights on 800,000 acres (325,000 hectares) of land in Tanzania that is home to 162,000 people, the Oakland Institute continues its call for people to urge the company, other investors and the government to step away from the project.

The Ugandan government and public officials are increasingly placing illegitimate restrictions on freedom of expression and peaceful assembly to silence critical voices, Amnesty International said in a new report. 'Stifling Dissent: Restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly in Uganda' describes how journalists, opposition politicians and activists face arbitrary arrest, intimidation, threats and politically motivated criminal charges for expressing views deemed critical of the authorities.