Pambazuka News 522: Libya: Neither US invasion nor Gaddafism!
Pambazuka News 522: Libya: Neither US invasion nor Gaddafism!
Parliament this week, has been labelled inhumane, ill-conceived and draconian by lawyers and human rights activists, who say that asylum-seekers and refugees will be hard hit by it. 'The Bill favours the rich at the expense of the vulnerable,' said Fatima Khan, the director of the University of Cape Town's refugee rights project. Khan said the Bill allowed for asylum-seekers to be pre-screened at South Africa's border, in spite of the fact that immigration officials were not qualified to do this.
The UN refugee agency said on Friday (25 March) that up to one million people may have been displaced by the fighting in Cote d'Ivoire as more people fled their homes in Abidjan amid fears of all out war. 'There is escalating insecurity in Ivory Coast's Abidjan, we're seeing a sharp rise in displacement,' said Melissa Fleming spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
The main challengers in Benin's disputed presidential vote have filed appeals over results showing incumbent Boni Yayi won with 53 per cent, the constitutional court said Saturday (26 March). Tension has risen in the small west African country since the vote, with police firing tear gas to disperse opposition protesters in the economic capital Cotonou on Thursday (24 March).
Ethiopia has little time for critics of its large-scale land-leasing policy, insisting the millions of dollars of foreign investment will create jobs, improve domestic agricultural expertise and reduce both poverty and the country’s chronic food insecurity. The policy, part of a five-year Growth and Transformation Plan, has led to the cheap leasing of thousands of square kilometres. Detractors complain of forcible relocation of local pastoralist populations, poorly paid work on the new farms, environmental degradation and a failure to deliver on promises of better infrastructure.
Cote d'Ivoire's Alassane Ouattara has rejected the African Union's choice of mediator in the country's crisis. The African Union has appointed former Cape Verde Foreign Minister Jose Brito to mediate the country away from the brink of civil war. And in a later development Mr Gbagbo's camp said it had accepted the choice of Mr Brito as mediator.
Gunmen suspected of being members of a radical Islamic sect shot dead a political party youth leader in northeast Nigeria on Sunday, less than a week before elections begin in Africa's most populous nation. The local politician was a member of the opposition All Nigeria People's Party, which has localised support in parts of the north of the country but is not expected to gain the widespread backing needed to win the presidential vote.
The name of the man against whom dozens of protesters rallied in London last week was hardly visible on their placards. Zimbabwean exiles were protesting against the excesses of Robert Mugabe’s regime. But the protesters aimed their anger not at Mr Mugabe but at leaders from Africa and the West who they feel have ignored the crisis besetting the coalition in Zimbabwe.
Libyan rebels' push westwards towards Tripoli gathered momentum on Sunday as their pursuit of Muammar Gaddafi's forces saw them wrest back control of key oil town Ras Lanuf. Their next target is Gaddafi's hometown of Sirte, a central coastal city, and on the way they captured Bin Jawad, a hamlet 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Ras Lanuf, AFP correspondents reported.
Nigeria's three main opposition candidates have pulled out of election debates with President Goodluck Jonathan, accusing him of 'arrogance'. The three - Nuhu Ribadu, Muhammadu Buhari and Ibrahim Shekarau - are suspicious that he will take part only in a live TV debate largely organised by state-run media. Mr Jonathan refused to take part in a debate last week, organised by NN24 TV, saying he would participate only in one scheduled for next Tuesday run by the Broadcasting Organisation of Nigeria.
Kenyan forces have crossed into Somali territory to fight al-Shabab militants, an official source has told the BBC. However, the reports were denied by a police spokesman. Twelve militants were killed in the raid near the border town of Liboi, Kenya's Standard newspaper reports.
The private finance sector arm of the World Bank Group announced last month that it would invest $300 million to promote mining in Africa. Dr. Aaron Tesfaye, a professor of International Political Economy and African Politics at William Paterson University, said he is not surprised by the announcement because of the economic and security implications mining and strategic metals have for industrialised nations. While the IFC claims to promote poverty reduction through sustainable development in developing countries, it has been criticised because the mining projects it has funded have a track record of causing human rights abuses and massive environmental damage. 'This is bad news for Africans, at least those who aren’t members of the business and political elite,' said Jamie Kneen, Communications Coordinator for MiningWatch Canada.
Kenyan MPs were heavily criticised by the US for voting to have the government compensate Mau landowners. In a cable to his bosses in Washington dated 23 September 2009, US ambassador Michael Ranneberger accused Kenyan MPs of entrenching the culture of impunity by passing an amendment seeking to compensate those evicted from the Mau water tower.
An international diamond watchdog, the Kimberley Process and Certification Scheme (KPCS), has authorised Zimbabwe to export its gems after years of wrangling. The country had been barred from exporting diamonds from its main mine in the east of the country over concerns of human rights abuses.
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...
More than 265 participants from ten Southern African countries will converge in Johannesburg, South Africa from 28-30 March 2011 for the second Gender Justice and Local Government Summit. The event showcases examples of local efforts to end gender violence and empower women across Southern Africa. Convened by Gender Links under the banner 365 Days of local action to end gender violence, the summit is being attended by journalists, local government authorities, municipalities, NGOs and representatives of ministries of gender and local government.
Professor James Gathii, Associate Dean for Research and Scholarship and the Governor George E. Pataki Professor of International Commercial Law at Albany (New York) Law School, has launched a new blog - - focusing on Kenya's efforts to defer an International Criminal Court (ICC) case against the six alleged masterminds of Kenya's 2008 post-election violence.
The International Secretariat of OMCT has been informed by The Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR), a member organisation of the SOS-Torture Network, about the allegations of torture and ill-treatment, and arbitrary detention suffered by Mr. Mahmoud Ragab Ibrahim, a 21-years old craftsman from Alexandria, by prison guards of the al-Hadra Prision, in Alexandria. According to the information received, on 1 February 2011, Mr. Ibrahim was passing through the area of Sidi Beshr, in the city of Alexandria, when he was approached by members of the community watches. They considered him suspicious and he was subsequently handed over to the Command Center of the Northern Area of the Armed Forces (CCNAAF), despite having presented his national identification card to the community watches members.
The current special theme is: 'Africa: Front Lines or the Margins of a Global Anti-Poverty Movement?' Within this theme authors could consider the following sub-themes:
1) 'Moving from Charity to Solidarity Models'
2) 'Contours of African Struggles in the Global North and South'
A new online collection from the National Archives (UK) of thousands of images from the photographic collection of Foreign and Commonwealth Office is now available. The images span over 100 years of African history. The images are all available via Flickr and grouped by country; with opportunities to comment or help with captioning images. The site also includes podcasts and some useful research guides.
The final program of the Third Julius Nyerere Intellectual Festival Week for 2011 is available via the link provided.
Some of the articles included in this edition are:
- Towards a better understanding of global land grabbing: an editorial introduction
- Challenges posed by the new wave of farmland investment
- How not to think of land-grabbing: three critiques of large-scale investments in farmland
The exhumation exercise being carried out by ZANU PF in the Mt Darwin area has received strong criticism from civic groups, that say the rest of the country has been excluded and the careless handling of bodies is disrespectful. They say the exhumers are also missing the opportunity to collect important information about the victims. Strongly worded statements were issued by the Solidarity Peace Trust, the Crisis Coalition and the MDC. Under the theme of 'healing the dead', ZANU PF has claimed that the bodies they are displaying in photographs and on state television were victims of the liberation war and were massacred by the Rhodesian army. But experts have said the appearance of some of the bodies shows they could have died much more recently.
Equal Education is calling on the people of South Africa to write to Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga. 'Let’s flood her with letters,' says the blog Writing Rights. 'We are asking all teachers to write letters and to organise time in your classes for learners to write these letters. Spread this e-mail appeal far and wide. Tell the Minister about the need for libraries, laboratories, clean and safe toilets, adequate classrooms, sports fields, and staff rooms.'
'We're calling on all citizens,' said Riovoarilala Rakotondrabe, putting the final touches on a giant poster announcing a massive community clean-up for the coming Sunday. 'Since we are in the midst of the rainy season, the city administration has recommended that each fokontany [the basic administrative unit at the neighbourhood level in Madagascar] should carry out collective cleaning,' she said. Rakotondrabe is local head of the association charged with maintaining water infrastructure, hygiene and sanitation.
Pambazuka News 521: African awakenings: The spread of resistance
Pambazuka News 521: African awakenings: The spread of resistance
When violence broke out in the western Libyan town of Zawiyah, Bangladeshi migrant worker Mohammed Nienn, 28, was doing a shift as a steelworker. In a hurry to leave, he persuaded his Libyan supervisor to hand back his passport, but not the wages he was due. Then he jumped into a taxi with four other Bangladeshis and headed for the Tunisian border, where a bus eventually took him to Choucha transit camp, 25km from the frontier town of Ras Ajdir. Ten days later, he was still there, waiting for a flight to Dhaka.
When the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria suspended funding to Zambia in late 2010 it made international headlines and rocked donor confidence, but the stock-outs and drug rationing in the wake of the scandal have received little attention. In March 2009 a whistle blower's allegations of corruption in the Zambian Ministry of Health (MoH) triggered an investigation by the auditor general, and a web of corruption in the health sector began to unravel. The audit found that the largely donor-funded ministry could not account for more than US$7.2 million, about five per cent of which was estimated to have come from Global Fund coffers.
The UN estimates that some 60,000 people could come into Niger from Libya in the coming weeks. As of 10 March, 2,205 had arrived - 1,865 of them Nigeriens and the rest from other West African countries - according to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).
The Kenyatta International Conference Centre resembled one big nursery with parents and their crying babies. 'We’ve started the global rollout of these (pneumonia) vaccines that will save thousands of children’s lives. It is a very exciting day,' said Helen Evans, interim CEO of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI). The vaccine, already available in various private hospitals, has remained out of reach for many children. A full dose costs about 188 dollars, which for the many Kenyans living on less than a dollar a day is too expensive.
The government of Swaziland has banned the daily live transmission of BBC Focus on Africa programme after one of the news clips, broadcast through the English channel of the state radio, Swaziland Broadcasting and Information Services (SBIS), was critical of government. The programme broadcast daily in the mornings, mid-day and evenings has been off air for the past week. The state radio has been running apologies to listeners of the programme for its absence, stating that it was due to technical problems.
This paper from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights analyses Israel's response to a recent influx of African asylum seekers. Since early 2006 Israel has become a destination country for thousands of Africans who are willing to take a long and risky journey to Israel. As with other industrialised countries, Israel has responded with a range of exclusionary and at times contradictory policies which aim to control and limit entrance to its territory. Unlike other such countries, however, until very recently Israel did not have an asylum system, and its ongoing institutional evolution is partly a response to the recent influx.
carries an interview with the wife of one of the activists currently jailed in Zimbabwe and awaiting a bail hearing on Wednesday 16 March. In the interview, she talks about the impact of her husband's detention on her life. 'You know, you feel helpless because you don’t [know] who to approach or where to go for help. All you can do is wait at central police where no one tells anything. At the end of the day you don’t really feel safe.'
Organisation errors by the protest movement and clever manoeuvres by the government are strongly challenging the pro-democracy protests in Algeria. It is unsure when new protests will be held. In February, a newly formed National Coordination for Change and Democracy (CNCD) took charge of the protest movement, strongly inspired by the successes of protesters in Tunisia and Egypt. One month later, the CNCD shows strong signs of weakness and fragmentation and is unable to gather large crowds to what was supposed to become weekly, or even daily, mass protests.
As the deadline to register candidates for Djibouti's 8 April presidential election has passed, no opposition candidates have registered. The boycott comes as further anti-government protests are planned. Sources confirmed that there will be only two names on the ballot paper: the incumbent President Ismaël Omar Guelleh and Mohammed Warsama, the former President of the Constitutional Court and an ally of President Guelleh.
A recent Constitutional Court judgment rendering the Communal Land Rights Act (CLARA) unconstitutional must not be allowed to throw decentralisation policy making into disarray, says this policy brief from Sindiso Mnisi of the Law, Race and Gender Research Unit at the University of Cape Town. 'Decentralisation holds much potential for lively, participatory democratic law making and enforcement, through which rural women can gain greater power and secure more rights. However, there are many challenges in the often fraught context of decentralised law and power.'
Many of Uganda's most science-supportive parliamentarians lost their positions in last month's general election (18 February). Ten MPs, all scientists by training, lost their seats. They had been instrumental in influencing policy and financial appropriations for scientific research.
Libyan security forces have launched a wave of 'arbitary arrests and forced disappearances' in the capital to stamp out protests against Muammar Gaddafi's rule, Human Rights Watch has said. The New York-based group said it compiled evidence from Tripoli residents of scores of people being detained if they helped organise or took part in anti-government protests, or if they were suspected of speaking to foreign media.
Southern Sudan has suspended talks on independence with the north's National Congress Party, accusing the north of planning to overthrow the south's administration. Pagan Amum, the secretary-general of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), reiterated the accusation on Sunday (13 March), saying that the northern government was arming local tribes to use as proxy forces.
A major offensive by African Union troops in Somalia, in which dozens of peacekeepers from Burundi and Uganda were killed, reclaimed 'significant' territory from insurgents, an African Union envoy has said. Burundi has announced that at least 43 of its soldiers were killed, but Uganda has yet to acknowledge any deaths.
'Although the Internet is certainly used by dissidents, it is also used by the authorities to relay regime propaganda and enforce a police state,' says this report from Reporters Without Borders on the use of Twitter and Facebook in recent popular uprisings. 'The Internet remains above all a tool used for the better or the worse. In the most closed countries, it creates a space of freedom which would not otherwise exist. Its potential to disseminate news irritates dictators and eludes traditional censorship methods.'
Religious practices, cultural beliefs and stigmatisation by the general population hamper access to health care and HIV/Aids prevention for Malian Men who have Sex with other Men (MSM) and force them into bisexuality or underground sexual practices that put them at high risk of Sexually Transmitted and HIV infections, says Dr Dembelé Bintou Keita, Director of ARCAD/SIDA, an HIV/Aids organisation that also provides health care for MSM in Mali.
Rights activists are speaking out against rapes targeting lesbians in South Africa. About 25 demonstrators rallied outside Parliament on Monday while their leaders met with government representatives. Luleki Sizwe - which means guide a nation - is a small group of lesbian activists in the townships of Cape Town who also circulated an online petition calling on Justice Minister Jeff Radebe 'to address 'corrective rape'.
Zimbabwe police raided Harvest House, the headquarters of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) arresting five people whose charges are yet to be known. The MDC said 30 police officers besieged Harvest House at around 7pm on Sunday night (13 March) and arrested officials and youths who were at the headquarters. The party said the five arrested are still in police custody.
Eight South Africans and 10 Mozambicans, aged between 18 to 25, gathered in Maputo in mid-December to give feedback on a pilot exchange programme of volunteers between the two countries. The Southern Africa Trust and AFS Interculture South Africa established SayXchange in response to the 2008 xenophobic violence in South Africa in an attempt to build regional integration and nurture future leaders. The volunteers, who worked with several NGOs during their stay, lived with host families for five months.
Gaddafi remains firing on all cylinders, says Gado.
Yes, I have struck the match, ready to light my cheap, blonde hair extensions. I am waiting for my sister to buy the kerosene to pour on myself.
Nigerian environmental and human rights activist Nnimmo Bassey talks to The Africa Report's Khadija Sharife about Nigeria's upcoming elections, the prospects for political change and whether Nigeria will go the way of North Africa.
The North African revolts have seen Arab countries portrayed as somehow separate from the rest of Africa. Elleni Centime Zeleke critiques the trend and exposes in whose interests it works.
Patrick Bond rips through the liberal veneer of Saif al-Islam Gadaffi, highlighting the complicity of the London School of Economics in accepting money from Gadaffi.
The Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation has just published its latest 'Development Dialogue' (no. 55/March 2011) on 'Dealing with crimes against humanity'. It is the third volume in a series with a thematic
focus on genocide and mass violence. Its contributions deal among others with the jurisdiction of the Rwanda tribunal, with sexual violence, the Responsibility to Protect and the Crimes Against
Humanity Initiative. The volume is freely accessible through the weblink provided.
With the number of protests happening in the Middle East and North Africa, it's sometimes hard to keep track of what is happening. This page from National Public Radio looks at which countries have seen protests and provides details on the state of each country.
Grace Mwalabu lives in Chikalogwe, Balaka District, in southern Malawi. On a warm day, she stands smearing cucumber seeds on the outside wall of her kitchen. She explains, 'It is our tradition. I smear them one or two metres from the ground. The advantage is that the seeds dry quickly, do not rot and survive the dry season.' Hybrid seeds are popular in some areas of Malawi. They often yield more than local varieties. But they are expensive. Farmers need to buy them every year, so they are dependant on seed companies and distributors. They know that saving local seeds from harvest is cheaper and more reliable, reports Farm Radio Weekly.
From a distance, the mud houses in the village of Gwélékoro appear to sit in the middle of the fields, which are bare in this dry season. Farmers gathered their harvests last November. Now they patiently wait for the next rains, expected between June and July. But despite the apparent tranquility, farmers are worried. Life is difficult this year in this village 60 kilometres south of Bamako, the capital of Mali. Not only was the harvest poor, but cereal prices have jumped significantly, reports Farm Radio Weekly.
This article from Think Africa Press examines the human rights situation in Somaliland. 'If we compare the brutal, systematic repression that characterises governance in Ethiopia and Eritrea, then yes, Somaliland’s government respects the human rights of its citizens. But, if we try to assess the situation objectively Somaliland’s human rights’ gains are both limited and fragile.'
Since the unveiling of the 2011 political campaigns, the Nigerian media landscape has been very busy. Nigeria comprises 36 states and Abuja, and there is at least one television station each, as well as a handful of privately owned television houses. Lagos State, being home to almost every ethnicity in Nigeria, has the biggest share of these stations, more so considering its status as the former capital. To avoid political conflicts in campaign strategies, most politicians prefer to go to the private television stations for their television commercials, otherwise known as TVCs, says this article from Free African Media.
When it comes to Zimbabwe, tough questions lie ahead, not just for South African foreign policymakers, but for the general South African public, says this article from Free African Media. Langton Miriyoga, a Zimbabwean national working for People Against Suffering, Oppression and Poverty, a community-based non-profit organisation, said: 'South Africans and Zimbabweans living in South Africa can and should do more to put pressure on the South African government to intervene more decisively and proactively to stop Mugabe’s human rights abuses.' He added that people in Zimbabwe are either too scared to do anything, fearing retribution, or have completely bought into the propaganda that there can be no Zimbabwe without the Zanu-PF.
Visit this multimedia page on for the latest videos on the situation in Libya.
Benin’s media regulatory body, the Higher Authority for Audiovisual Communication (HAAC) on 10 March suspended, for a week, nine privately-owned newspapers in the country over false and abusive publications. The newspapers have been barred from publishing since 14 March.They are, however, expected back on the newsstands on 20 March.
EG Justice has released a policy paper titled 'Transparency and Accountability in Equatorial Guinea: Policy Recommendations for the Obama Administration'. The paper outlines the ongoing political and economic challenges confronting Equatorial Guinea, including corruption, a lack of respect for civil liberties, democratic procedures, and the rule of law, and the inability of civil society organisations to operate freely without government intervention.
This report from the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa examines the impact of attempts to formalise street trading in the City of Durban since 2000 on the livelihood of traders, particularly female and migrant traders. 'Durban has been at the forefront of developing policies to manage and control informal economy activities; however, as the report notes, the effect of the push for formalisation is exclusionary and mimics the influx control regimes of the apartheid administration, which prevented black communities from pursuing business opportunities in central business districts,' says the abstract of the report.
Recently WikiLeaks revealed that Swaziland had tried to acquire arms from the UK. It was reported by The Guardian - and later local newspapers - that Britain had blocked a $60 million sale of helicopters, armoured cars and machine guns to Swaziland, fearing the weapons could end up in Iran, at least according to US diplomatic cables.
President Rupiah Banda has cautioned Zambians to refrain from conducting parallel vote tabulation (PVT) in elections due later this year. Zambia’s main opposition party – the Patriotic Front (PF), other opposition parties, and influential civil society groups are planning to conduct PVT to counter-check the results. The Banda-administration reacted angrily and threatened to file a complaint against US Ambassador to Zambia Mark Storella after the envoy endorsed the PVT system.
This policy series paper from the Southern African Migration Project looks at remittances in Lesotho. 'Lesotho is one of the most migration dependent countries in the world. Migrant remittances are the country’s major source of foreign exchange, accounting for 25 per cent of GDP in 2006. The majority of households and rural communities are dependent on remittances for their livelihood. Households without access to migrant remittances are significantly worse off than those that do have such access.'
The International Criminal Court judge who declined to issue summonses to six Kenyans suspected of being behind the post-election violence says the cases should be dealt with locally. In his dissenting opinion published on Tuesday (15 March) night, Judge Hans-Peter Kaul said that Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo had not convinced him that the crimes committed in Kenya meet the threshold of crimes against humanity.
Some women's rights groups have expressed their disappointment at the recent national constitutional review conference organised by the Constitution Review Commission in Accra recently. The women were stunned that all the 25 areas which formed the subject matter for the conference did not feature any gender concerns. They claimed they were at the conference in their numbers to support the cause of women but to their amazement none of the concerns raised by them were mentioned.
Oil bearing and hosting communities of the Niger Delta, Nigeria's main oil and gas basin, and Environmental Rights Action (ERA) concluded a meeting in Effurun, Delta State, resolving to mount pressure on the Federal Government to urgently regulate oil activities in the country. In a communique, the two parties explained why government should regulate the extractive industry. According to them, 'the Nigerian Government should exercise its statutory powers to regulate oil and other extractive industry activities to bring an end to impunity and environmental degradation in the Niger Delta and other parts of the country.'
Italy has prevented a ferry carrying 1,800 people, mainly Moroccans fleeing the fighting in Libya, from docking in Sicily. The ship had sailed from Tripoli and asked for permission to refuel on the island after being refused entry to Malta, Italian media said. Meanwhile, 41 people are feared drowned after a boat carrying migrants capsized off Tunisia, UN officials say.
A community-based organisation in the Kenyan slum area of Kibera set out to clean up garbage and deal with waste water; Ushiriki Wa Safi ended up creating a community cooker that turns waste into an energy source.
Despite formal recognition of domestic workers' rights in South Africa, they still face a struggle for fair treatment. In June this year, the second and final reading of an International Labour Organisation Convention on the rights of domestic workers will take place. If it is adopted, it would strengthen legal protection for millions of the most vulnerable workers worldwide.
In the wake of the UK Department for International Development’s (DFID) decision not to award core funding to the Nairobi-based United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT), Rasna Warah considers the implications of the cuts.
Expressing his disappointment at US President Barack Obama’s unwillingness to criticise despotic African leaders in the same way he did as a senator, Alemayehu G. Mariam discusses the Obama administration’s policy towards Africa.
On the 21 March 2011 Abahlali baseMjondolo Western Cape will have a mass rally at VE informal settlement at 10:00 till 13:00.
Directed and narrated by Yaba Badoe and produced by Amina Mama, 'The Witches of Gambaga' is a sensitive, excellent film capturing the experiences of women accused of witchcraft in the village of Gambaga in northern Ghana, writes Sokari Ekine.
This is an urgent alert on the case of Kenneth Irungu, a witness in the case of extrajudicial killings of John Kamuri and Peter Irungu who were killed in Ruiru, Kenya, in December 2010. Kenneth Irungu witnessed the arrests of Kamuri and Irungu. One other witness has disappeared and another is in hiding. Kenneth Irungu was abducted today 11th March 2011 at around 13.00hrs in Muthurwa by three men in a Toyota Premio KBG 447R. We believe that, given the background to the case, he may be in the hands of the Kwe Kwe squad and is in grave danger. Please use any channel to bring this issue into light so as to exert pressure on the police to release him.
The ‘Pan-Africanism for the New Generation’ conference at the University of Oxford marks a turning-point in the history of Pan-Africanism, writes Moshe Molefe.
Two weeks before Nigeria's election, Ike Okonta takes aim at progressive politics in Nigeria - or the lack thereof. He traces the crisis back to the rule of General Ibrahim Babangida in the 1980s, when universities were devastated by economic policy.
A week after the date of the revolution supposed to 'dethrone' Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos and his royal court, the situation in the country appears calm. It is as if there had never even been a call for revolution, reports Global Voices. The actions of the State contributed greatly to this. A preemptive manoeuvre involved putting troops at the ready and convened pro-MPLA rallies from Cabinda to Cunene.
The World Social Forum should remain true to its founding aim of being an open space that builds alternatives to neoliberalism, writes Yash Tandon.
Taking note of the people’s uprisings across North Africa, the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste of France denounces the repression of President Blaise Compaoré's regime.
Since the current wave of Arab revolutions first ignited in Western Sahara in November 2010, February and March have seen a new upsurge in protests across Morocco and its illegal Occupied Territory of Western Sahara, writes Konstantina Isidoros. As the extraordinary events sweeping the Arab world bring down republic government figureheads, a new question is whether these social reset buttons will have the tenacity to tackle Arab monarchies.
The European Union (EU) uses a plethora of policy instruments to protect its agricultural sector and to ensure that European farmers, despite having higher production costs, are still able to continue production for both the European and export markets. This paper from the South Centre provides a snapshot of these instruments and also gives an overview of the new instruments that are increasingly being used resulting from the on-going reforms in the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).