Blog Africa is a Country takes issue with the Failed States Index, published by Foreign Policy and the Fund for Peace. 'This year, pro forma, almost the entire African continent shows up on the Failed States map in the guiltiest shade of red. The accusation is that with a handful of exceptions, African states are failing in 2012. But what does this tell us? What does it actually mean? Frankly, we have no idea.'

Namibia Dairies, a subsidiary of the Ohlthaver and List Group, loses up to N$20 million a year due to South African predatory pricing practices, while the production of Namibian cheese has already been halted, because the market has been killed by South African products. This was revealed by the Managing Director of Namibia Dairies, Hubertus Hamm, during a visit by Botswana President Lieutenant-General Seretse Khama Ian Khama to the dairy Super Farm at Mariental.

£34,032 per annum
Central London

About the role

We’re looking for a Campaigner to contribute to our campaign against human rights violations in North Africa. Working at the International Secretariat, you will contribute to a range of projects, including Amnesty International’s response to the momentous changes in North Africa witnessed in 2011 and 2012. You will act as a focal point, providing advice and support to our worldwide membership, including devising campaigning strategies, preparing written and other campaigning materials and providing research support.

A new report by the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) says while the linkages between the economic, social and environmental pillars of sustainable development are well understood within Southern Africa, the subregion has not adopted an integrated approach to development. The report, 'Progress towards sustainable development in Southern Africa' prepared with the assistance of the African Development Bank, and circulated at the ongoing Rio+20 conference, says that for this reason, the 'inter-linkages between the economic, social and environmental pillars of sustainable development are fundamentally not being achieved'.

Fifty-seven journalists fled their country in the past year, with Somalia sending the greatest number into exile. Journalists also fled Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Rwanda - mostly for Kenya and Uganda. Exiles in East Africa must grapple with poverty and fear, according to a special report from the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The way of life of minorities and indigenous communities in East and Horn of Africa is under threat as governments and investors expand natural resource extraction on their lands, Minority Rights Group International (MRG) says in its 2012 annual report. 'State of the World’s Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2012' documents the scale and severity of the impact on minorities of an unprecedented competition for scarce resources, prompted by the prolonged drought that wreaked havoc in the region and the knock-on effects of the global economic downturn.

Maina Kiai, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association has said that gays should be free to assemble and associate saying ‘such rights are essential components of democracy.’ ‘It is astonishing how often States have encroached upon the right of individuals to assemble peacefully by also violating their rights to life and to be free from torture, rights which allow no limitation, Kiai said during the presentation of his annual report to the UN Human Rights Council, in which he makes a number of recommendations to establish minimum standards to protect the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association.

Ethiopia has always been a country at the cutting edge of Internet censorship in Africa. In the wake of violence after the 2005 elections, when other states were only beginning to recognize the potential for online reporters to bypass traditional pressures, Meles Zenawi's regime was already blocking major news sites and blog hosts such as blogspot.com. Some sites and Web addresses have been blocked for their reporting ever since, including exiled media like Addis Neger Online and Awramba Times.

Months after the central government tried to quell land speculation in oil-rich Bunyoro by suspending the issue of new land titles, Oil in Uganda visited Kasenyi, on the north eastern shores of Lake Albert, and unearthed a tale of double-dealing and thuggery seemingly abetted by district leaders and security officials. Eriakimi Kaseegu, the Kasenyi Local Council One Chairman, revealed that community land–including the plot where Tullow Oil’s Kasemene 3 well is located–was fraudulently sold by 'outsiders' and that the community’s efforts to investigate the sale were met with violence and arbitrary arrests.

Hundreds of Libyan protesters demanding greater autonomy for the country’s east have stormed the election commission building in the city of Benghazi, setting materials on fire. Chanting slogans in support of federalism on Sunday, the angry protesters, some of whom were armed, occupied the election commission office in the eastern city, took computers and ballot boxes out of the building and began crushing them.

The Industrial Court in Swaziland has refused to allow the government to jail the entire executive of the teachers’ union for leading a pay strike. The Swazi Government had previously gained an order at the same court outlawing a strike over a 4.5 per cent pay claim. But, some members of the Swaziland National Association of Teachers (SNAT) went ahead with the indefinite strike. For the past week the strikers have been visiting schools where some teachers continue to work to persuade them to join the strike.

Liberal Egypt news website al-Badil recently called on journalists and human rights activists to join them in a protest outside the Press Syndicate in Cairo after two of its reporters who were assaulted by security forces and military police during recent clashes, were taken to court by police, who are accusing them of participating in the violence. Islam Abu el-Ezz and Ahmed Ramadan were arrested while covering the development of the violent clashes and attacks on protesters in the populated area of Abbassiya last April.

Government accuses local groups of receiving foreign funds to recruit children into homosexuality.

Haiti is home to one form of slavery propelled by economic desperation. Parents who cannot feed or school their children regularly give them away in the hopes that the family receiving them will offer more than they themselves can.

The way of life of minorities and indigenous communities in East and Horn of Africa is under threat as governments and investors expand natural resource extraction on their lands, Minority Rights Group International (MRG) says in its 2012 annual report.

Kenya Railways Corporation has over the past two decades gone from being an exemplar of service and care to leaving behind a greed-driven legacy of retrenchment, dislocation and abandonment of its employees.

The Gulf States, America and Israel are hell bent on frustrating the revolution in Egypt. That is what the results of the presidential election show.

Militant Islam is well known in Nigeria thanks to the atrocities committed by Boko Haram and other radical groups. What is less known, but remains a problem, is the intense conflicts among Muslim sects, which often hurt non-Muslims.

Under the rhetoric of “green economy”, capitalists are actually attempting to use nature as capital, proposing unconvincingly that the only way to preserve natural elements such as water and forests is through private investment.

Police disrupt a peaceful party for a child, apparently at the instigation of the local ANC leadership, which wants to crush a rebellion in the area.

The militants put up posters throughout denouncing the abusive practice of using agrochemicals, which poison the food of the Brazilian population.

Civil society organisations say the ‘green economy’ concept is vague and that profit-oriented strategies could endanger Africa’s natural capital.

‘We are outraged that a vocal minority have hijacked the text on gender and health and blocked mention of sexual and reproductive rights, claiming that these have nothing to do with sustainable development.’

President Morsi's pledge of service to all is quite sincere, isn't it?

Celebrating victory in Egypt's presidential elections.

There are periods in a country’s history when the signs and warnings that that history will soon enter into a dramatically different phase are clear as day. Such is the period today in Haiti, where daily events portend an inauspicious development for the future: the Haitian Army may soon be returning.

Existe uma lenda colonialista zelosamente conservada afirmadora de que a África estaria melhor repartida nos anos 60 do que os 4 tigres asiáticos: Coreia (do Sul), Taiwan, Malásia e Indonésia.

Governments have tasked the United Nations with a growing number of global mandates, but they have provided it with very few resources to carry out the work, according to this article on Worldwatch Institute's website. 'UN funding is minuscule in contrast with that of other public bodies. The regular budget of the organization - $2.2 billion in 2011 - is less than the total annual spending of the Tokyo Fire Department. The small UN budget is striking in view of the multiplying global crises that need commonly decided international solutions - including climate change, financial instability, resource limits, transborder disease, and poverty.'

Egyptian women's rights activists have only bad options in the current power crisis. If the Islamists in parliament hold power, they could erase years of legal gains for women. But if the military has its way, a police state could re-emerge, reports

Campaigning for Libya's first national election in a generation has kicked off ahead of July 7 polls to choose an national assembly which will re-draw the autocratic system of rule put in place by ousted leader Muammar Gaddafi. In a statement published on its website, Libya's electoral commission said that candidates will have 18 days to campaign, from June 18 until July 5, with 2,501 independents and 1,206 political association candidates eligible to stand.

This is a short clip from the event 'No Economic Justice without Gender Justice: Building Inclusive Movements for Change', held at the AWID forum in Istanbul, April 2012, and organised as part of the BRIDGE Cutting Edge programme on gender and social movements. It discusses gender relations within social movements.

Attacks on LGBTI people in South Africa and Uganda continue while in Ghana a 20-year-old refugee camp is set to close. Protesters have returned to the streets of Sudan. And is former Egyptian strongman Mubarak still alive?

This article gives some pointers for NGOs experiencing a funding crisis. 'In recent years, NGOs nationally have faced dire circumstances due to the reduction of funding by, or the exit of, key funders both local and international, inadequate funding and, in numerous cases, delayed disbursement of funds by the South African government. These funding shocks - financial challenges with deep negative impact - have resulted in many NGOs downsizing staff, services and branches, or closing altogether.'

Aid agencies working in northern South Sudan are worried about refugees from Sudan's war-torn Blue Nile State who are reaching under-resourced camps in increasingly poor health. In recent weeks over 35,000 people have flocked to a site 50km from the border known as Kilometre 18 (KM18) by aid agencies - the distance to the nearest refugee camp (Jamam) holding over 30,000 people.

Dakar, Senegal
XOF 42,877,548

We bring change for the better worldwide. But to improve human rights in over 150 countries we must always strive to improve ourselves. Our Organizational Development professionals make us more effective in the countries that need our help most. In this consultative role, you’ll strengthen our operations in the global south.

These three Middle Eastern nations have not succeeded in their attempts at emergence due to meddling by imperialist powers and the lack of capacity to challenge them.

Walter Rodney’s scholarship of resistance and recognition of the unity created by African and Indian workers’ common experience of labour and struggle for liberation endures.

A reincarnated Hans Christian Andersen may have painted ‘The Spear’ for those denying the testimony of their eyes.

Certain governments in East Africa have recently come under scrutiny for cracking down on peaceful protests. Yet freedom of assembly is a fundamental right enshrined in international law and in the constitutions of these nations.

East Africa’s music videos periodically engage in regressive gender politics. But one could still trace female agency and empowerment and immediately begin to counter notions of male dominance.

The colloquium will discuss the topic 'The Reproduction of Cheap Labour in Post-Apartheid South Africa' according to two themes:
I. The low wage regime problem in South Africa
II: Strategies towards a wage-led and sustainable growth path.

It is against the background of increasingly greater challenges in almost every environmental respect that the Rio +20 conference takes place. But wouldn't it be more accurate to call it Rio -20?

The Programme Officer, as member of Goree Institute’s programme team, will be responsible for the successful delivery of Goree Institute’s programme of work on conflict prevention and peacebuilding, and developing and establishing new areas of engagement for Goree Institute in West Africa. He/she will be responsible for conceptualizing and implementing projects and will work in close cooperation with partners to develop and implement Goree Institute’s programme and projects.

Tens of millions of people worldwide will be condemned to long-term joblessness unless global leaders make significant changes to address unemployment and worker training, according to a new study. Between 90 and 95 million low-skill workers - or 2.6 percent of the global workforce - will not be needed by employers by 2020 and will be vulnerable to permanent joblessness, according to a report released by the McKinsey Global Institute.

ARTICLE 19 has welcomed the unusual event of two reports concentrating on the same issue being presented at the twentieth session of the UN Human Rights Council on Tuesday 19 June 2012. The reports, by the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression and the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, both focus on the issue of impunity for violations of journalists’ human rights. Both reports urge relevant state and non-state actors to secure journalists’ rights by implementing international human rights law and monitoring this implementation.

Renowned author and political activist accuses Jewish state of apartheid and persecution of Palestinians.

Author, playwright and civil rights activist who confronted the tough realities of race, sex, class and poverty in her work.

This new South Centre research paper discusses recent negotiations in technology transfer, sustainable development and climate change. In terms of proprietary rights, the author categories technologies and related products into three domains: the public technologies; patented technologies and future technologies. After revealing the effects of patents on access to climate-related technologies, a number of measures are discussed to address problems arising should patents become a barrier to the transfer of climate related technologies.