When standing on the shore line at Rufisque L’est, one of the oldest neighborhoods in Dakar, Senegal, it’s hard not to buy into apocalyptic climate change scenarios. The beach is gone. Wharves built by the French colonists, once linked to the shore, have been completely swept away, with just a few wooden pillars rising from the water as evidence of their existence. In one stretch, three city blocks, which included homes, warehouses, and a mosque, were pulled into the ocean.

We, the undersigned Equatoguinean and international scholars and professionals write to you with the hope that UNESCO will reconsider its decision to establish the UNESCO-Obiang Nguema International Prize for Research in the Life Sciences, and abolish this award named for and funded by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea.

Google Maps was launched in 30 Sub-Saharan African countries. This is an amazing asset for everyone to use, and it’s also an incredible testament to the number of users using their “My Maps” feature, as this is where this data comes from.

With often preventable, non-communicable diseases such as heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, cancer and chronic respiratory illness accounting for 60 percent of all global deaths, experts from around the world gathered at a United Nations forum to draw up plans to reverse the trend.

Zimbabwe's still-limping economy can provide few essential services, so children living along the border cross into South Africa to attend school during the day or even to see a doctor, often at great risk to their personal safety.

utrition experts in Guinea are studying options for treating moderately malnourished children, as funding shortages disrupt normal programmes using fortified flour. In recent months local health centres ran out of supplies and had to refer families to remote facilities for corn-soya blend (CSB), used for the treatment of moderate acute malnutrition and provided by donors through the UN World Food Programme (WFP).

South Africa's Supreme Court of Appeal ordered the Department of Home Affairs on 24 February 2010 to immediately release an Ethiopian asylum seeker from "unlawful" detention after he had languished in repatriation centres for over nine months.

Amina* and Rajab*, in their mid-twenties, spend most of their days getting high on heroin; when broke, Amina injects herself with Rajab's blood as soon as he has mainlined his heroin, for a second-hand hit. "Rajab is the one who first introduced me to the idea of transfusing myself with his blood whenever we'd run out of the drug and the cash to buy [more]," she told IRIN/PlusNews from her home in Majengo, a low-income estate in Kenya's coastal city of Mombasa.

New research could bolster arguments for a controversial approach that could eradicate HIV transmission in South Africa within five years, said Dr Brian Williams of the South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis (SACEMA).

During a United Nations Human Rights Council review of Egypt's rights record on 17 February, Egyptian NGOs, including the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), the Arab Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) and the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR), called on the government to seriously address human rights violations.

Critics are concerned that private military contractors are positioning themselves at the centre of an emerging "shock doctrine" for earthquake-ravaged Haiti. Next month, a prominent umbrella organisation for private military and logistic corporations, the International Peace Operations Association (IPOA), is co-organising a "Haiti summit" which aims to bring together "leading officials" for "private consultations with attending contractors and investors" in Miami, Florida.

The rich have got a lot richer in China during the financial crisis. This has fueled strong resentment among ordinary Chinese, who feel official nepotism and corruption is making some people extremely rich. These are the outcome of recent studies by five different organizations, two of which are connected to the government. The resentment factor has been mapped by studies done by the People's Daily, the organ of the Communist Party of China and the State-run Zhejiang Academy of Social Sciences.

This study examines the impact of two decades of neoliberal policy reform on food production and household livelihood security in three West African countries. The rice sectors in The Gambia, Côte d’Ivoire, and Mali are scrutinized as well as cotton and its relationship to sorghum production in Mali. Although market reforms were intended to improve food production, the net result was an increasing reliance on imported rice.

The Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa (IHRDA), with the support of the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA), is operating a fund for individuals/groups litigating cases before the Africa Commission for Human and Peoples’ Rights. The fund covers travel, accommodation and other related expenses.

The International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI) has released a trial observation report, The Gambia: Freedom of Expression on Trial, which raises concerns with respect to the Gambia’s compliance with fair trial standards and the application of criminal law to seven journalists who legitimately and peacefully exercised their right to freedom of expression.

Comparative African Perspectives on China and other emerging powers in Africa is a research project initiated by FAHAMU, the network for social justice issues. China’s deepening engagement with Africa is receiving increased attention from the global media, public- and private sectors as well as academic research. This should however not overshadow the activities of other emerging powers in Africa, including India, Russia, Brazil and South Africa. This call therefore seeks to develop an African perspective by strengthening the civil society voice in the discourse surrounding the engagement between Africa and these emerging powers.

Each year between 50 000 to 100 000 women worldwide are affected by obstetric fistula, a hole in the birth canal. The development of obstetric fistula is directly linked to one of the major causes of maternal mortality: obstructed labour.

This is a statement prepared by participants at the special meeting of the African Union s Extended Technical Committee on the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Plan for Africa in Pretoria, February 18-20. The Statement reflects the views of participants, on how to move forward with approaches national and regional strategies for country-driven pharmaceutical innovation and access to medicines.

The press conference celebrating 100 days before the World Cup kick-off left the big question unanswered, argues Azad Essa: How will South Africans benefit from the World Cup? For Essa ‘only the dim-witted, government or FIFA communication officers walked away feeling that the World Cup was really about anything more than ending Afro-pessimism and stroking a couple of shiny suits'.

Voices of Dissent. Activists Engagements in the Creation of Alternative, Autonomous, Radical and Independent Media.
Interface is a new journal produced twice yearly by activists and academics around the world in response to the development and increased visibility of social movements in the last few years – and the immense amount of knowledge generated in this process. This knowledge is created across the globe, and in many contexts and a variety of ways, and it constitutes an incredibly valuable resource for the further development of social movements. Interface responds to this need, as a tool to help our movements learn from each other’s struggles, by developing analyses and knowledge that allow lessons to be learned from specific movement processes and experiences and translated into a form useful for other movements.

In response to the request by ICC Judges of 18 February 2010, the Prosecutor has clarified that senior political and business leaders associated with the main political parties, the PNU which was in the government at the time of the violence and the ODM which was the main opposition party at the time, organized, enticed and/or financed attacks against the civilian population on account of their perceived ethnic and/or political affiliation pursuant to or on furtherance of a State and/or organizational policy.

The Africa Initiative of Syracuse University, recognizes the need for the debate on Africa-China relations to transcend the emerging Sino-phobic scholarship and analyses that conceptualize Africa-China relations only through the limited lens of exploitation, new imperialism and anti-democracy. Towards this end, the Africa Initiative will host a select group of distinguished scholars to assess and deliberate on the nature and future of Sino-African relations and cooperation. This special symposium will be held from 8th-10th April 2010 in the main campus of Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York.

ARTICLE 19 welcomes the recent bold move by the Uganda Parliament to pass the Whistleblowers Bill, a critical milestone in the country's efforts to stem corruption and embrace transparency and accountability. The Bill, approved by Parliament on 3 March 2010 in Kampala aims to create an enabling environment for citizens to freely disclose information on corrupt or improper conduct, both in the public and private sectors. In enacting the law, Uganda is the third country in Africa to adopt such a comprehensive law.

Two former leaders of the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front have alleged in a BBC radio programme that the TPLF leadership – which included Meles Zenawi – used millions of dollars earmarked for famine relief in the 1980s to buy weapons and enrich themselves. ‘The facts are plain to see,’ writes Alemayehu G. Mariam, ‘We know now that these thieves did not stand for the people of Tigrai at the critical hour in 1984. They sure as hell do not stand for the people of Ethiopia today.’

we belong to a beat generation
not the american one between
the earthy 50s & heady 60s,
but our identity inspiration
in their own is seen,
we kenyans born
after the 60s,
after a-levels
after apollo
arty 8-4-4s,
but before
beat
it

we came of age via a rite of passage
familiar from town to town to village
when you will be caught out at night
in intoxication singing sedition
by cops of an earlier age
cops with a Kanu accent
beasting their beat
on lawless lanes
past midnight
pass without:
"minus pass?"
plus
pa!
pe!
pi!
po!
pu!

howling to the moon never helped
as one crouched in growing groups
at times naked under a starless sky
waiting for the black santa maria
to come and haul you to cells
filled with bed and jail bugs
because you were not fit
to join the parrot patrols
in their parody beats
each saturday night
across evil streets
full of an age-set
breaking the law
or remaking it
or beating it.

Mary Ndlovu's article is well-written, says Lloyd Whitefield Butler, but it doesn't address the root causes of the present Zimbabwe crisis.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/473/62924_herf-doctors_tmb.jpgIn a revealing interview, Amanda Zivcic asks Marilyn Langlois of the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund (HERF) about the country's efforts at recovery following its devastating earthquake in January, the dubious practices of foreign organisations ostensibly operating in support of the Haitian people, and the debilitating historical and contemporary role played by US policy.

‘Please tell me how we address this patriarchal society and how we can reach a point where women are superior’ is what one young girl from an impoverished school in Zimbabwe replied when asked what she thought was standing in the way of her dreams of a trail-blazing career. ‘She’s going to need that kind of bull-headed feistiness to move herself forward in her life’, writes Sokwanele’s Hope, ‘especially if she stays in our country’. It is voices like those of this young girl, says Hope, that will help silence the few who seek to ‘preserve the status quo by denying rights to others'.

While South Africa's apartheid may represent the closest historical precedent to Israel–Palestine, writes Saree Makdisi, the Israeli state's treatment of Palestinian people in many respects eclipses the suffering imposed by the South African apartheid government on 'non-white' people. Though its supporters worldwide refuse to countenance that any form of systematic racism is perpetrated by Israel, Makdisi stresses, the country's racism is one 'practised in practice rather than in language' and is rooted in treating Palestinians as not merely inferior, but subhuman.

Rumours about Nigerian president Yar’Adua, violence in Jos, controversy over what happened to aid money during Ethiopia’s famine in the 1980s and International Women’s Day all feature in Sokari Ekine’s round-up of the African blogosphere. There’s also good news for Zimbabwe, as a documentary about the remarkable singer Prudence Mabhena and her band Liyana scoops an Oscar, with its inspiring story about overcoming the stereotypes around disability.

Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) is deeply concerned at the continued restrictions and threats to opposition parties in the run-up to Rwanda’s presidential elections on 9 August 2010 and urges the Rwandan government to take immediate steps to ensure respect for the basic, universal rights to freedom of expression, freedom of association and peaceful assembly of opposition parties. The absence of these rights is tantamount to breaches of the Commonwealth’s fundamental political principles that insist on free and fair elections (Harare Declaration 1991).

The on-line dialogue Documenting Violations: Choosing the Right Approach, organised by New Tactics, took place from 27 January to 2 February 2010. The dialogue featured practitioners that have developed database systems to document human rights violations, organisations on the ground documenting violations, and those that are training practitioners on how to choose the right approach and system for their documentation. We looked at options for ways to collect, store and share your human rights data safely and effectively.

Coinciding with International Women's Day, a group of personalities from the United States have sent a letter to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and to the Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, asking them to immediately grant humanitarian visas to two Cuban women so they can visit their husbands in US prisons.

Mbariza Ntore” (Kirundi for “inform us so that we can vote”) is a media support project of the Dutch NGO, La Benevolencija, set up with a total of 18 different media houses (radio, print press, TV, Internet and news agency) in Burundi. The project enhances the capacity of citizens to better understand the conditions in which they are being invited to fulfill their political rights.

Around the world on 8 March, thousands of women (and men!) worldwide celebrated International Women's Day by gathering on bridges from San Francisco to Congo to call for an end to war and demonstrate that women can build the bridges of peace and hope, writes Loveness Jambaya. This action, organised by Women to Women International, is just one of the actions by communities and organisations in the global campaign ‘Say NO UNiTE to End Violence Against Women’, initiated by the United Nations secretary general.

With at least 67,000 refugees in southwest Uganda, the government and aid workers are still battling inadequate resources in what a UN official described as a "silent emergency". "We can hardly meet international standards of indicators such as water, health and food," Nemia Temporal, deputy representative of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Uganda, told IRIN on 8 March. "For instance, we are delivering 15 litres [of water] per person per day instead of the standard 20l."

Following the tabling of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill before the Ugandan Parliament that provides for imprisonment and the death penalty for infringements of the bill, civil society organisations in Africa are mobilising to persuade Ugandan parliamentarians to block this pernicious bill. The bill could become law during the course of this year. Organisations and prominent individuals are invited to endorse a statement as part of the campaign to block the bill.