'This October, three amazing women representing the energy and optimism of the World Pulse community will come to the US for the first time to lift their voices. These grassroots leaders will reveal how they are using the power of new media and technology to change lives and create solutions on the frontlines of today’s most pressing issues.'

'This paper is meant to serve as a background document to help civil society groups fighting for water justice and their governments take these two historic [UN] resolutions and make them work. It traces the history of the struggle for the right to water and lays out the case for why the recognition of the human right to water is needed.'

Tax Justice Network - Africa and Action Aid International Kenya have conducted country studies on tax incentives for all East African Community (EAC) member states except Burundi. The Rwanda country study is complete. The report titled 'Policy Brief on Impact of Tax Incentives in Rwanda' is available and the 'East African Taxation Project: Rwanda Country Case Study' is also available. The amount lost in tax incentives is staggering, and rising: 'In 2006, according to the International Monetary Fund, the amount of revenue foregone in Rwanda to tax incentives was three per cent of GDP. Calculations from our research suggest that by 2008, this had risen to 3.6 per cent and 4.7 per cent by 2009. This compares with 2.8 per cent of GDP in Tanzania in 2008/9; one per cent of GDP in Kenya and 0.4 percent in Uganda.'

In this week's edition of the Emerging Powers News Round-Up, read a comprehensive list of news stories and opinion pieces related to China, India and other emerging powers...

At least 125 people were confirmed dead on Sunday as sectional fighting continued between two feuding tribes in Jonglei state in South Sudan, officials said. Sixty others perished in fighting between the army and a militia group in Upper Nile state on Saturday, according to the army spokesman. The caretaker Justice Minister, John Luk Jok, said 125 bodies were found dead on the ground in Uror County in Jonglei state since the fighting broke out on Thursday.

Euphoric Libyan rebels have moved into the centre of the capital, Tripoli, as Muammar Gaddafi's defenders melted away and thousands of jubilant civilians rushed out of their homes to cheer the long convoys of pickup trucks packed with fighters shooting in the air. The rebels' surprising and speedy leap forward, after six months of largely deadlocked civil war, was packed into just a few dramatic hours. By nightfall on Sunday, they had advanced more than 32km to Tripoli. Pockets of fighters who are still loyal to Gaddafi still control parts of the city - including the areas around Gaddafi's Bab al-Azizia compound in the south of the city.

With power in Côte d’Ivoire having changed hands from Laurent Gbagbo to Alassane Ouattara, the social dynamic has shifted in Moyen-Cavally, creating new challenges for stability in the cocoa- and coffee-rich region where political partisanship runs largely along ethnic lines. But observers say community structures and local will to overcome divisions remain and can be built upon to move past unprecedented turmoil. 'People here have no choice but to coexist,' said Benjamin Effoli, prefect in the western town of Duékoué in Moyen-Cavally. 'Social cohesion is a non-stop job and every single person has his or her role.' He said in the wake of the latest crisis, long-standing community groups are monitoring the situation and discussing how to rein in strife.

Sharon Slater, American anti-gay activist and president of Family Watch International, recently encouraged delegates attending a law conference in Lagos, Nigeria to resist the United Nations’ calls to decriminalise homosexuality. Keynoting the Nigerian Bar Association Conference, Slater told delegates that they would lose their religious and parental rights if they supported 'fictitious sexual rights'. One such 'fictitious right' is the right to engage in same-sex sexual relationships without going to jail.

A group of asylum- seekers has applied to the High Court in Pretoria for an order directing the Home Affairs ministry to provide adequate refugee reception offices in South Africa, including in Johannesburg. The order - which, if granted, could force an overhaul of a refugee management system that at times borders on dysfunctional - seeks to compel the ministry to address a host of problems, including rampant corruption and overcrowding at reception offices that have made applying for asylum a nightmare in South Africa.

Africa Today host Walter Turner discusses the crisis in the Horn of Africa with a guest from a pastoral community and an environmental activist. Analysts have noted climate change and militarisation as some of the root causes of the crisis, notes Turner in his introduction.

An aid convoy which departed South Africa in July is soon to arrive in Gaza after traveling the length of Africa. South African Relief Agency Chief Coordinator Aneesa Brits answers questions from Pambazuka News about the reasons for the epic journey.

Guinea's President Alpha Conde has pardoned 17 opposition activists jailed for taking part in an illegal rally in April. The amnesty was aimed at promoting reconciliation after divisive elections last year, the BBC's Alhassan Sillah in the capital, Conakry, says. Mr Conde had also appointed Guinea's top Muslim and Christian clerics to head a reconciliation commission.

Thousands of Libyan students enrolled in universities and colleges in Australia, Britain, Egypt, South Africa and the US face suspension of their monthly stipend from the government in Tripoli, possibly by the end of August. Many students fear reprisals for holding protests against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi should they return home, but the British and US governments have promised to do what they can to ensure the students will be able to complete their courses.

Ishema in Rwanda has published an entire issue as an apology to President Paul Kagame, writes Tom Rhodes.

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Oil giant BP has entered the oil rush in Namibia by clinching 25 per cent of the equity in Chariot Oil & Gas’ exploration license in the orange Basin. The transaction is in the form of a farm-out agreement and was conducted through Enigma Oil & Gas Exploration, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Chariot. The new share structure of Block 2714A is Petrobras, as operator, with 50 per cent, with BP and Chariot sharing the remaining interest. The partners hope to strike an estimated nine billion barrels of oil.

Swaziland’s cash-strapped university failed to re-open for the new academic year, officials said, adding it would remain closed indefinitely. 'The registration process is suspended, and the commencement of the first semester lectures is postponed...to a date yet to be determined,' University of Swaziland Registrar Sipho Vilakati said in a statement.

The New York-based rights organisation Human Rights Watch has described the suffering of scores of women in South African government hospitals and clinics. It charges the abuse puts women and their newborn babies 'at high risk of death or injury'. The report says poor governance and corruption contribute to thousands of unnecessary maternal deaths.

In this article, a Congolese volunteer with People Against Suffering Oppression and Poverty (PASSOP) describes what it is like to live in South Africa. 'Life is tough here. Firstly, there is a lot of homophobia in the Congolese community in South Africa. When I first arrived, I lived with my cousin. When he found out from my family in Congo that I was gay, he kicked me out on the street. My mother ensured that no other family member in South Africa took me in after that. Since then I have moved around a lot, living with different Congolese people, but the story is always the same: once they detect that I am gay, they kick me out.'

As the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) marks 10 years of its existence as a continental programme aimed at fast tracking the development agenda of the continent, opinions are divided about how far it has succeeded in achieving its objective. Since its inception, NEPAD has undergone some metamorphosis. In February 2010, the 14th Assembly of AU decided to establish the NEPAD Planning and Coordinating Agency (NEPAD Agency), as the technical organ of the AU, to replace the NEPAD Secretariat.

Blog Black Looks reports on 'Blood in the Mobile', a documentary which traces the mobile phone to it’s source in the eastern DRC. The mineral cassiterite is mined in deep holes by men and boys and is then transported by foot through dense wet forests for two days before reaching the nearest town.

In early 2010, the government of Equatorial Guinea accepted more than 100 recommendations made by United Nation (UN) member countries at the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR). The accepted recommendations were aimed at improving several key areas related to the protection and promotion of human rights and civil liberties. It is unclear how or if the government of Equatorial Guinea is implementing the UPR recommendations; to date it has not provided the UN Human Rights Council with any updates to this effect, reports EG Justice.

With elections on the horizon, Ghana’s politics have entered the season of allegations - and counter-allegations. First, it was the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) which claimed it had in its possession a tape of the deputy minister of information, Baba Jamal, promising bribes to a group of journalists if they backed the government with positive stories. Before this could blow over, the propaganda secretary of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), Richard Quarshigah, flung out a cracker: that the NPP was planning to unleash a group of young girls to bait NDC officials in sleaze stings.

In assessing the chances of another financial crash, Richard Murphy, an adviser to the Tax Justice Network writes that there is a two-part economy in the world, the real one and the feral one, which exists beyond the limits of the real economy and is made up of the enormous financial balances that are only entries in computer ledgers. 'This feral economy represents the wealth quite deliberately extracted from the real economy by those who have exploited it over the last thirty years of neoliberal domination.'

An Italian coast guard patrol rescued almost 400 people aboard a boat that had left Libya six days before and was lost for more than 36 hours off the coast of Lampedusa. Arriving in Lampedusa, migrants declared tragic deaths had occured from hunger and fatigue during the voyage and dozens of bodies were thrown over board.

has an article on Gerta Louisama, a member of the executive committee and the National Women’s Committee of Tèt Kole. She writes: 'Us Haitian women, we have a lot of challenges, but as peasant women we have even more. We truly carry the burden of society. We’re the ones who hustle to feed the household and send the sick to the hospital if need be. We women, we work the land, we raise cattle, we transport merchandise like plantains, yams, and black beans to the capital. If we don’t work, there won’t be any flow of goods.'

The drought and famine in East Africa is already throwing up some uncomfortable questions for the model of large scale agro-investment in a poor country for export, says this article on 'How would an agribusiness be able to export maize from a famine-stricken country that depends on the crop as its staple food? The furore over South Korean company Daewoo's plans to grow export maize in Madagascar was at least in a mainly rice-eating country. But imagine an investor had spent years and millions of dollars developing export-maize plantations in a mainly maize-eating east African country amidst the region's current famine.'

In a bid to break the silence around violence against children, Tanzanian authorities launched a five-year plan on 9 August to eliminate all forms of violence against children, including sexual, physical and emotional abuse. 'Levels of violence [against children] reported are high in all settings; forms of violence reported and described are equally disturbing, including being beaten, tortured, sexually assaulted and even murdered,' Sophia Simba, the Minister for community development, gender and children, said in Dar es Salaam during the launch of a survey on the subject.

Journalists and civil society members in West Africa analysed a 'counter-terrorism plan' drawn up by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) at a 4-5 August meeting in the Senegalese capital Dakar. Main issues that emerged were the need to strengthen regional cooperation and to address root causes of terrorism - poverty and lack of education, said Biram Diop, director of the African Institute for Security Sector Transformation, who facilitated discussions.

On the occasion of the 49th anniversary of Jamaica’s independence, Caribbean Political Economy as reproduced Bert Tucker’s lyrical account of Jamaica’s political climate and cultural ferment in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Mr. Tucker, now Ambassador for Foreign Trade and Head of International Cooperation in the Government of Belize, was a student on the Mona Campus of the UWI at the time. As Caribbean Political Economy notes, the reflection was written on the occasion of Jamaica's 38th Anniversary of Independence on 6 August 2000, but has the same freshness and resonance now as it did then.

Competition between rival interests is behind the violence in Sudan, writes Explo N. Nani-Kofi. As a result, voices for empowering popular forces for justice and resistance are not being heard.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR), Navi Pillay, said that 'an estimated 370 million indigenous people' globally have lost or face the threat of losing their ancestral lands and natural resources due to 'unjust exploitation for the sake of development', PANA reported. According to UNHCR, when indigenous communities are alienated from their lands because of development and natural resource extraction projects, they are often left to scrape an existence on the margins of society.

On 6 August 2011, journalists in the West African country of Togo rallied in the streets of the capital Lomé [fr] to protest against the threats that their colleagues received recently, reports Global Voices. The rally was launched on 3 August by the association ‘SOS Journalistes en Danger' (SOS Journalists in Danger). The week prior to the event, several media professionals in the association warned against threats sent to a group of Togolese journalists that were believed to be 'critical of the power in place'.

There is no bi-lateral agreement between South Africa and Zimbabwe to prevent refugees from the famine-wracked Horn of Africa entering South Africa, said state officials last week. The statements from the South African department of Home Affairs and the Zimbabwean Ministry of Foreign Affairs this week are in direct contrast to statements appearing on the South African Home Affairs website, and Zimbabwean news reports on Zimbabwe’s decision to bar entry to Somali and Ethiopian refugees.

International NGO Human Rights First (HRF) has issued a call for pressure on the Ugandan authorities to properly investigate last week's break ins at the offices of LGBT groups Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) and Freedom and Roam Uganda (FARUG). And FARUG are calling for financial and technical support to replace their losses. The SMUG raid was thwarted by employees presence but the raid on FARUG led to the theft of computers, equipment, and the electronic database containing members' names.

Joseph Kaute, the 43-year-old gay Cameroonian who was due to be deported from the UK, is back at Harmondsworth detention centre, thanks to Air France, the airline that was due to fly him from Heathrow back to Yaoundé via Paris. It was the third attempt to deport him. 'Air France refused to allow me to board,' Mr. Kaute told UK Gay News.

Stressing the need to turn the publishing sector and the concept of freedom of speech on their head, Jared Sacks discusses the ideas behind ‘No Land! No House! No Vote!’, a book produced by the Symphony Way Pavement Dwellers in South Africa. With the group seeking support to bring their story and struggle to the wider world, readers are invited to make donations at:

Of ‘growing public and government concern in Western Libya is the whereabouts of 53 female and 52 male children’, who were ‘part of a government-run home for orphans and abused children that until February was operating in Misrata, now under rebel control,’ writes Franklin Lamb.

Fellowships and residences play a crucial role in nurturing the talent of budding writers. But although Africa is full of creative and highly innovative individuals, it lacks avenues to support them. The ‘plain truth’, says Mildred K. Barya, ‘is that we need them so we have to create them.’