Ugandan Opposition leader Kizza Besigye has walked to partial freedom after the Magistrates Court in Kasangati, Wakiso District, acquitted him of charges related to the April walk-to-work demonstrations which at one point almost paralysed the country. The charges which had been preferred against Dr Besigye included alleged rioting after proclamation, incitement to violence, and disobeying lawful orders of a traffic police officer.

Climate change, a growing number of voices in media and policy circles warn, is raising the risks of violent conflict in the twenty-first century. Dire futures are predicted for some of the world’s poorest, least prepared countries and their most vulnerable citizens. This report, sponsored by the Centers of Innovation at the U.S. Institute of Peace, evaluates these claims for conflict-prone Nigeria. Based on a comprehensive literature survey, interviews with senior government officials, academics, and private sector figures, and the author’s work as a conflict analyst in Nigeria, the report calls for a more nuanced approach to mapping the links between climate change and conflict.

An Uwezo report confirms that in Tanzania 23 per cent of teachers are not in school on any given day and when in school, teachers spend half of their time outside the classroom. As a consequence, children are only taught for two hours and four minutes a day, instead of the expected five hours.

Undeterred by police warnings, the opposition have said they are resuming nationwide protests to express their dissatisfaction with the government’s handling of the high and rising cost of living in the country. Masaka Municipality MP and national coordinator of Activists for Change pressure group, which is leading the protests, Mr Mathias Mpuuga, said that protesters would only bow to police attempts to stop their plans if police quoted the specific law empowering it to prevent them from exercising their constitutional right to hold a peaceful demonstration.

Immigration detention in South Africa and internationally is extremely expensive, can harm the health and wellbeing of those detained and has been found to not be effective at deterring irregular migrants, including Zimbabweans, says this press release. Global research spanning two years conducted by La Trobe University and the International Detention Coalition (IDC) found cheaper alternatives that work effectively in the interests of government and the individual.

This blog article tackles the issue of how to end conflict in the DRC. 'Ending the world's deadliest conflict is no easy task, but a growing consensus of Congolese civil society, electronics and metals companies, investors, and governments are now taking action to do so. A chief driver of their work is the Dodd-Frank legislation on conflict minerals, which is why a coalition of 40 Congolese human rights groups called it "the leverage needed to instill and impose ethical business practices in the Great Lakes region."'

Indigenous peoples in the Congo - minorities who are often marginalized and experience discrimination - are calling for the application of a law on the promotion and protection of the rights of autochthonous peoples passed in February. Potential beneficiaries say the authorities should implement the law as soon as possible to stop discrimination. 'As an aboriginal person, I stand to gain from this law; but we want it to be applied immediately,' Ngouélé Ibara, who heads the Association of Indigenous Peoples of the Congo, told IRIN.

ZANU PF has strongly denied the existence of torture camps near the controversial Chiadzwa diamond fields, after video evidence of the ongoing abuses by the military there was released. The UK’s BBC Panorama investigative series has revealed that the camps have been operational in the Marange region for the last three years, and the explosive report shows how civilians are subject to severe beatings and sexual attacks. But Mines Minister Obert Mpofu has denied the camps exist, calling it 'cheap propaganda from the BBC'.

2011 is a year for all Zimbabweans to begin to challenge those that lead the country and those that insist on imprisoning national consciousness in their versions of heroism and history, says the Committee of the Peoples Charter.

Somalia's government has offered an open amnesty to al-Shabab fighters after the rebels made a surprise withdrawal from the capital, Mogadishu, over the weekend. 'We offer an amnesty - put down your weapons and your guns, and come and join the people and your society,' Abdirahman Osman, a government spokesman, was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency on Tuesday. Al-Shabab, who still govern over much of southern Somalia, have waged a bloody war since 2007 to topple the Western-backed transitional government.

The UN is said to be planning a close monitoring of the clean-up of the Ogoni oil spill in Nigeria as recommended by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) in its report, the Guardian newspaper reported, quoting Martin Nesirky, the spokesperson to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The paper said that the UN chief is being briefed about the details of the UNEP report, which called for the biggest oil spill clean-up ever recommended.

Nearly one third of Tanzanian girls experience sexual violence before they turn 18, a Unicef survey has found. The figure among boys is 13.4 per cent, says the UN children's agency. The most common form of abuse is sexual touching, followed by attempted intercourse, it says. Unicef official Andy Brooks said the survey was the most comprehensive carried out on this issue in any country and showed the government was prepared to tackle the problem.

Crimes under international law, including rape and murder, continue to be committed by the Congolese army and armed groups in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo following decades of similar crimes across the country, Amnesty International has said. A new Amnesty International report 'The time for justice is now; new strategy needed in the Democratic Republic of Congo' calls for the reform and strengthening of the country's national justice system to combat impunity that has been fostering a cycle of violence and human rights violations for decades.

After initially trying 'quiet diplomacy', Ghanaian LGBT have formed an alliance with civil society supporters to oppose an increasingly vociferous anti-gay campaign in that country. A Coalition Against Homophobia in Ghana (CAHG) has been announced. It says: 'The Coalition has among its objectives to create a friendly rapport between the media and the LGBT community and also educate people to respect the rights of LGBT people’s privacy and human dignity, which is a vital part of fundamental human rights.'

'US officials led a far-reaching international campaign aimed at keeping former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide exiled in South Africa, rendering him a virtual prisoner there for the last seven years, according to secret US State Department cables,' write Kim Ives and Ansel Herz.

‘The perception amongst workers who are trying to make a difference at the grassroots in Zimbabwe is that big aid agencies such as UNICEF and DfID don’t engage with communities to find out what they need; they deliver to them,’ writes Diane Jeater.

Cape Verdeans are going to the polls this month to decide who will replace Pedro Pires as he approaches the end of his second and final term. As Cláudio Furtado writes, regardless of who ultimately triumphs, two things make this particular election stand out: the fact that four candidates – three with a genuine chance of winning – are in the running and the wider implications for the PAICV (Partido Africano de Independência de Cabo Verde) party and the country’s government.

This morning the eThekwini Municipality launched another armed raid on the Kennedy Road shack settlement to try and disconnect the people from electricity. As usual there was resistance, unarmed resistance, to this attack from the Municipality. The Municipality's security guards responded by firing live ammunition at the protesters.

We, the undersigned, are ordinary citizens of Africa who are immensely pained and angered that fellow Africans are and have been subjected to the fury of war by foreign powers which have clearly repudiated the noble and very relevant vision enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations.

Sometimes when a paper produces a defamatory piece, an apology will be published on page two in the next edition along with the day's news. In Rwanda, it would appear, a paper will use an entire edition to apologise - if the insults were directed at the president. The latest issue of Ishema, at left, is perhaps a sign of the times for Rwanda's press. The vernacular bimonthly had recently published an opinion piece that claimed President Kagame was a sociopath. The paper fell over backward in its attempts to apologise.

At every stop along the campaign trail, Edith Kabbang Walla, 45, popularly known here as Kah Walla, is generating excitement among women nationwide. Walla is the only female candidate running for president in Cameroon’s October elections. 'The interest of women in politics has been aroused, but now we want their active participation,' Walla says during a recent visit to Bamenda, a city in northwestern Cameroon. Tracing women’s political participation in Cameroon, Walla says that women were the first group to hold a public demonstration against colonizers in the fight for Cameroon’s independence.

In this months newsletter Daniel Large provides commentary on relations between China and South Sudan, as well as the potential role for China to play in the newly independent state. In our second commentary piece, Peter Bosshard provides insight into the long-term impact of China's Three Gorges Dam and the lessons they offer Africa as the number of large-scale hydro-power projects on the continent continues to increase. Translations of the two commentaries are also provided in our continuing Chinese series. The July edition is available .

Angolan authorities should explain the arrest and incommunicado detention of a radio journalist for reporting on a nationwide wave of mass fainting of people, the Committee to Protect Journalists has said. Since April, more than 800 people, mostly teenage schoolchildren, have fainted after complaining of sore throats and eyes, shortness of breath, and coughs, the Catholic Church-run station Radio Ecclesia reported.

The 7th conference of 'The Revival of Panafricanism Forum' was held on Saturday, 16 July 2011. The topic of the conference was 'Panafricanism: A Viable Ideology to Address Africa’s Rape Redux/Euro-American 21st Century Neo-Colonial Re-Conquest and Scramble for Africa.' The speakers were Dr. Molefi Kete Asante (keynote), Peter Bailey, Maurice Carney, and Chioma Oruh. Videos of the conference are posted on Youtube:
- (Part 1)
- (Dr. Molefi Asante, keynote speaker)
- (Closing remarks and comments).

US officials led a far-reaching international campaign aimed at keeping former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide exiled in South Africa, rendering him a virtual prisoner there for the last seven years, according to secret US State Department cables. The cables show that high-level US and UN officials even discussed a politically motivated prosecution of Aristide to prevent him from 'gaining more traction with the Haitian population and returning to Haiti'.

More and more Eritrean refugees, mostly educated young men, continue to arrive in Ethiopia, with the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, expressing concern over the rising numbers. 'Most say they left their country [to avoid] a prolonged military conscription, but they also say they want to join their families on the road,' Moses Okello, UNHCR’s representative in Ethiopia, told IRIN. Ethiopia hosts at least 61,000 Eritrean refugees.

Witnesses' chilling depictions of a new Sudanese genocide at an emergency US congressional hearing quelled any remnants of doubt that a humanitarian crisis is unfolding in the Nuba mountain region of South Kordofan, reports IPS Africa. 'It is a war of horror,' Sudanese bishop Andudu Adam Elnail told a House committee here. Elnail's closest colleagues had told him they witnessed two pits being dug at a school one night, where bodies were later transported to the site, put in 'wide body bags' and thrown in the pits – something to add to the heap of evidence piling up in Washington that a decades-old campaign to exterminate the ethnic Nuba has resumed in the wake of the south's independence.

South Africa's preparations to host the next major round of climate talks have met with scepticism from activists critical of what they say is the country's lack of leadership on environmental issues. The high-level meeting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, scheduled for 28 November to 9 December in the eastern port city of Durban, is seen as the last chance to renew the Kyoto Protocol, the only international agreement with binding targets for cutting greenhouse gases. But environmentalists have voiced concern that South African organisers are not doing enough to lay the groundwork for an ambitious conference that will make hard commitments on climate change and raise the cash to achieve them.

Lingering armed conflicts have kept 40 per cent of African children out of school, according to a global report released recently in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The 2011 Education For All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report, which focuses on crisis and their underlying causes, said the impact of armed conflicts on education had been widely neglected, becoming a 'hidden crisis' which is 'reinforcing poverty, undermining economic growth and holding back the progress of nations'. The report was presented at the 26-28 July Kinshasa Round Table on 'Education, Peace and Development', organised by the Association for the Development of Education in Africa.

The promotion of two Côte d’Ivoire military commanders against whom there are serious allegations of involvement in grave crimes raises concerns about President Alassane Ouattara’s commitment to end impunity and ensure justice for victims, Human Rights Watch has said. On 3 August 2011, President Ouattara signed a promotion making Chérif Ousmane the second-in-command for presidential security (Groupe de sécurité de la présidence de la République). During the final battle for Abidjan, Ousmane was the head of the Republican Forces operations in Yopougon neighborhood, where scores of perceived supporters of Laurent Gbagbo were executed extrajudicially.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/543/stranded_tanker_tmb.jpgFrom a wrecked tanker on South Africa’s coast to the forests of South America, Patrick Bond explains why mining oil is a bad idea.

The Symphony Way Anti-Eviction Campaign reports on a spate of killings in Cape Town's notorious Blikkiesdorp and demands to know what the City of Cape Town is doing to address their circumstances.

‘Defying the image of Kenyans as a parasitic nation that would gladly stand by and watch fellow citizens die’, Kenyans of various backgrounds have raised ‘in eight days ten times what the Kenyan government had pledged to put towards food distribution to the drought stricken areas,’ writes H. Nanjala Nyabola. Shouldn't the government be doing more?

'The surreal images of ex-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak on a hospital bed inside an iron cage in a Cairo courtroom have been the leading topic in the African blogosphere this week,' writes Dibussi Tande.

The ‘international and continent-wide issue is not so much whether Gaddafi's regime should be removed’, but rather ‘how this should be approached, and why it is being approached at all,’ writes Khadija Sharife.

Swaziland's pro-democracy activists have threatened to march on the Union Buildings in Pretoria to protest against SA’s R2,4bn conditional rescue package for the kingdom. Swaziland has been hit with protests this year after its government froze public sector salaries and cut social services. Protesters have accused King Mswati of looting state coffers to finance his extravagant lifestyle. The Swaziland Solidarity Network, which represents a consortium of pro-democracy movements in the kingdom, said it would organise protests at the Union Buildings and around SA to voice displeasure at the loan and in support of their demand that King Mswati lift the ban on political parties, in place since 1973.

The UN is to publish a long-awaited report on the impact of the oil spills in Nigeria's Ogoniland region. The report took two years to produce and is controversial in part because it was funded by oil giant Shell. On Wednesday (03 August) Shell accepted liability for two spills that devastated communities in 2008 and 2009. One community said it would seek hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation. Shell said it would settle the case under Nigerian law. After two years of research, and consultations with all the concerned parties, the UN Environment Programme must now present its findings to Nigeria's president and the wider public.

Mali will soon hold a referendum to vote on political reforms after the country's parliament adopted proposed changes to its supreme law. The National Assembly's vote was overwhelming in favour of the constitutional changes, with 141 deputies supporting them. Only three deputies rejected the draft while one member abstained. Some 105 out of 122 articles are targeted in the reforms but the presidential term limit remains pegged at two and the governing system semi-presidential, although the president's duties will be reinforced.

Whites still occupy 73.1 per cent of top management positions in the country, the Commission for Employment Equity (CEE) says. Black people made up 12.7 per cent of top management, Indians 6.8 per cent and coloureds 4.6 per cent, the CEE said in its 11th annual report released in Pretoria. Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant said she was disappointed at the slow pace of reform at top management.

The goal of this material is to connect some of the ideas and energy from the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth held in Bolivia in 2010 with the issues on the table at UN climate talks. It contains briefs on 13 issues, including climate debt, mitigation, adaption, the dangers of climate markets and gender and climate justice.

'In many ways,' writes Sophia Azeb on the blog Africa is a Country about the trial of former Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak, 'this trial is a showpiece.' Azeb writes that it is another attempt by the military to distract Egyptians from their own despotism. 'While many are well aware of this, Mubarak facing trial and conviction for his crimes against the people is still very important. I doubt this trial will keep the military safe from further demonstrations and actions just as I doubt this trial will end well – whether Mubarak is convicted or not. This spectacle is disturbing to me, and I don’t think imprisoning or executing the Mubarak family will mean justice is served.'

With Pambazuka News publishing its 200th French-language edition this week, Tidiane Kassé – Pambazuka’s French-language editor – discusses the importance of alternative, Africa-led media and the challenges for the future.

In recent years, Egypt has become home-away-from-home for a big number of Africans migrants, asylum seekers and refugees. Though the majority of these are Sudanese from both sides, Ethiopians, Eritreans and Somalis also make up the numbers, with a mixture of other African nationalities. Despite their numbers here, there are no reliable statistics of African migrants in the country, but most organisations quote a figure between 250,000 to a few million.

New research suggests that HIV epidemics are emerging in North Africa and the Middle East among men who have sex with men (MSM). According to researchers from Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar, countries such as Egypt, Sudan, Pakistan and Tunisia are seeing high rates of infection in gay and bisexual men. Across the region, homosexuality is illegal or frowned upon in most countries. The researchers said it was a common belief that little or no data is held on MSM HIV transmissions in North Africa and the Middle East. However, they discovered some reliable and previously unpublished sources.

The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights has been working on the question of indigenous peoples since 1999. The Commission recognises the specific obstacles which indigenous peoples face in gaining recognition, exercising and enjoying their rights. The toolkit available through the link provided has been created in order to introduce indigenous women, and the organisations which represent them, to the African system of human and peoples’ rights. It highlights the different routes available to ensuring that the rights of indigenous women are valued and taken into account by
the African Commission.

Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ) says that it is outraged by the way that the country's media has targeted homosexuality in its reporting on the case of a police officer accused of sodomising his brother’s ten-year-old son. 'There has been a trend in the media to equate sodomy with rape,' said the organisation. 'This is alarming because it promotes the dangerous myth that homosexual men are automatically rapists and abusers of children.'

South Africa’s department of Home Affairs has indicated that the current moratorium on Zimbabwean deportations has not yet been lifted, insisting that the condemned practice of mass deportations will not happen. The forced removals were set to begin when the Zimbabwe Documentation Project (ZDP) ended, and that deadline was meant to be 31 July. Over the weekend, Zimbabwean nationals were reportedly on the verge of panic amid concerns that deportations would resume first thing on Monday.

Blogger Natasha Elkington writes about a controversial online game involving refugees that was taken offline a few months ago, but has recently been relaunched. The game, which was taken offline after its launch amid claims it objectified refugees and lacked sensitivity, was developed by the Danish Refugee Council (DRC) with funding from ECHO, the European Commission’s humanitarian agency, and designed to raise awareness of Dadaab refugee camp on the Kenyan-Somali border. It is now back online but with some noticeable changes.