New mapping technologies make it easier to collect data on biodiversity, making biopiracy easier and taking intellectual property out of the hands of indigenous communities. ‘New forms of biopiracy and new strategies for biomass control may mean that the realisation of rights, benefits and justice for indigenous peoples are receding,’ Pat Mooney writes.

Silvia Ribeiro summarises the outcomes of the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, held in Bolivia this past April. The Accord of the Peoples, the product of the meeting, highlights the destructive nature of industrial agriculture, agrofuels and new technologies such as transgenics, ‘terminator technologies’ and nanotechnology.

The European Union has signed a voluntary partnership agreement with Cameroon, the largest African exporter of timber products to the EU. By July 2012, all shipments of wood products from Cameroon to the EU will be required to carry a license showing that they contain timber and wood products from a legal origin. This agreement expresses a strong joint commitment to eradicate illegal logging.

Produced in collaboration with the ETC Group, this special issue presents a range of articles discussing the staggering developments in bio- and nanotechnology and the alarming implications for the African continent and the global South at large. Firoze Manji and Molly Kane outline the sheer scale of this 'technological tsunami', the immense challenges for Africa’s self-determination and the action by activists to challenge the corporate assault on bio-sovereignty.

'During the last week of October we want everything to stand still in Cape Town, and possibly through out the country. And we are calling upon all people who are living in informal settlements to support the call by taking to the streets and making sure that everything goes to a standstill.'

Freedom House recently joined Global Witness, The Center for Economic and Social Rights, EG Justice, Human Rights Watch, The Open Society Justice Initiative, and Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos de España in calling on UNESCO to cancel the UNESCO-Obiang Nguema Mbasogo International Prize for Research in the Life Sciences. The prize is named for, and funded by, President Obiang of Equatorial Guinea, whose highly corrupt regime led Freedom House to list the country as one of the world’s worst human rights abusers.

Around the world, more than 200 million women lack access to basic contraception. Often, these women must travel far from their communities to reach a health facility, only to return home empty handed due to shortages and stock-outs. Family planning is an effective strategy to reduce maternal mortality. The film available through the link provided shows that ongoing challenges in obtaining reproductive health supplies can have devastating consequences for family size, abortion, spacing and delaying pregnancy, HIV/AIDS and other STIs.

Development models that harness the potential of specific areas can help solve the problem of regional disparities in social advancement in the world’s poorest countries, according to experts attending a United Nations - convened forum on local development. Participants at the three - day First Global Forum on Local Development, which opened in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, yesterday, stressed the importance of taking a regional or even district or commune - level approach to local development in developing countries.

An important new report from Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID), 'A nice judge on a good day: immigration bail and the right to liberty', reveals the systemic failures within the UK legal system which consigns detainees to oblivion for months or years, reports this article on the website of the Institute of Race Relations.

Poor education among women and lack of access to health facilities in many rural areas of war-torn Somalia have increased risks surrounding child birth, according to health officials. 'Home delivery and hospital maternity is not the same; when women deliver at home, some traditional midwives use unclean knives, increasing the risk of death even in cases where the process gets completed successfully,' said Habiba Isack Adan Hurmo, a doctor in Galkayo, Mudug Region, central Somalia.

Rampant corruption in the provision of life - prolonging antiretroviral (ARV) drugs and other HIV services is threatening Zimbabwe's national AIDS response according to a recently released report by a local human rights group. Commissioned by the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) in March 2010, the report - 'Corruption Burns Universal Access to Treatment' - found that 73 per cent of HIV-positive respondents had been asked to pay bribes by health workers. Most of those unwilling or unable to pay were turned away or given inadequate services.

The Bank Information Centre (BIC) has made available a new toolkit for civil society on how to access information at the World Bank. The resource is available for download as a .PDF from BIC's website.

The Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR) has expressed its condemnation on the closing of the transmission of El Badr channel by the Egyptian government. It considers this act to be a violation of the right to freedom of expression and opinion, which is guaranteed by the Egyptian Constitution and International Convention of Human Rights. On 1 October 2010, the Egyptian satellite company Nilesat shut down the transmission of El Badr channel and thus violated the previously agreed-upon terms and conditions.

With India's role as 'pharmacy to the developing world' seriously threatened by a free trade agreement to be signed with the European Union in December, the fate of cheap or free antiretroviral treatment for people living with HIV and AIDS hangs in balance. At the next EU-India free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations, due to be held 6 -8 October in the Indian capital, Europe is expected to push for TRIPS-plus provisions that major non-government organisations such as Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) have warned will put the lives of those on antiretrovirals at risk.

Gender Training Institute (GTI) is a centre for feminist leadership under the Tanzania Gender Networking Programme (TGNP). Since 1993, the institute under Tanzania Gender Networking Programme (TGNP) has been providing transformative gender training and capacity development services based on animation/participatory approaches. The core purpose of GTI is to provide learning and capacity development in support for transformative feminist movement building, policy engagement and social transformation at all levels within the country and beyond. The organisation’s vision is to become the epicenter for feminism transformation through effective capacity building. The course is being conducted in the context that there still exists unequal global, regional and national economic and social relations and limited focus of pro-poor and gender considerations in macro- economic policies and budget.

AFLA’s “ flagship journal”, the Africa Legal Aid Quarterly, highlights the often marginalised voices of Africa in human rights discourse. Since its launch in 1996, the AFLA Quarterly has produced a wealth of information from African legal scholars, judges, gender advocates, legal practitioners and opinion leaders, on human rights and justice developments relating to Africa. Due to its affordability at €100 for four issues, the only major journal addressing human rights and justice developments in Africa in popular legal discourse is accessible to all. So if you believe there is a need to mainstream African Voices in popular legal discourse, a need for a comprehensive analysis of the most pertinent issues at the heart of the African continent, and a need to make African issues visible on the International Agenda, then the Africa Legal Aid Quarterly is for you. Confirm your subscription today at [email][email protected]
For more information on AFLA Publications and a free sample of the AFLA Quarterly, visit www.africalegalaid.com

At the end of September WalMart made a formal but conditional offer for the South African based retail giant Massmart, of R32 billion. While the South African business fraternity has lauded the possible arrival of WalMart on our shores, labour, social and environmental insiders have expressed serious disquiet about the arrival of this giant at the gateway to Africa. It is eminently clear that Wal-Mart views the acquisition of Massmart as just that - an entry point into Africa and a bridgehead to build trade into the continent.

The Mandela Park Back-yarders, a social movement in Cape Town, describes the aftermath of the situation in Hout Bay in Cape Town, where the City of Cape Town attempted to demolish shacks they claimed where illegally built.

Google is working on a new service called 'Baraza', which will enable Africans to interact and share knowledge by asking and answering questions, reports the White African Blog. Baraza is the term used for meeting place in Swahili, with Google's interest in developing the service being in seeing more African content coming online.

Rwanda, home to Africa's largest solar power plant, is eager to harness renewable energy to ensure economic development. But its grand ambitions face many challenges. The US$1.3 million plant, known as Jali, is covered in 4,000 solar panels covering 2,880 square metres. It produces 325,000 kilowatt hours of electricity a year - but this is still just 0.1 per cent of Rwanda's total electricity production.

Women in Nigeria remain victims of gender discrimination, especially in politics. This monograph examines the possibility of utilising the First Lady’s institution to achieve gender mainstreaming and consequently terminate the sustained feminine marginality in Nigerian politics. The study finds that the First Lady’s office is self-serving as successive First Ladies since the Babangida military era are merely utilising their positions to mobilise and rally support for their husbands in power.

The former leader of Nigeria's armed group has said he was arrested because he refused to tell the group to retract a statement claiming responsibility for last week's deadly attacks in the capital, Abuja. Henry Okah, currently being held in jail in South Africa, told Al Jazeera on Tuesday that he received a phone call from a 'close associate' of Goodluck Jonathan, the Nigerian president, telling him to urge the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) to withdraw its claim for the bombings, which killed at least 10 people and left 36 others injured on the 50th anniversay of Nigeria's independence.

The South African University of Johannesburg (UJ) senate has threatened to end its relationship with the Israeli university, Ben-Gurion (BGU), unless certain conditions are met. In a statement released on Wednesday, the South African university's highest academic body said Ben-Gurion University would have to work with Palestinian universities on research projects and stop its 'direct and indirect support for the Israeli military and the occupation'.

Sudan has announced November 14 as the start date for voter registration for a referendum on independence for the south, amid fears over the amount of time left to organise the vote. Under a 2005 peace agreement that ended Africa's longest-running civil war, the south is to vote on January 9 on whether to become independent or to remain part of a united Sudan.

Uganda has taken the lead in the fight against the Islamist militants, with more than 4,000 so-called peacekeepers in the African Union force in Mogadishu. More than 90 trainers from 14 European Union countries are currently giving the Somali army a boost at a Ugandan training base.

In his latest partisan move on Zimbabwe, South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma told EU Foreign Affairs Committee MEPs on Wednesday 29 September that 'the international community should lift sanctions against Zimbabwe', and claimed credit for giving leadership 'before anybody else did and the current power sharing deal was facilitated by South Africa'. Before the EU lifts targeted sanctions on Mugabe and his inner circle, they should note that the whole of Zimbabwe is 'a giant crime scene' based on what happened before and after the 2008 elections as well as what is happening on the ground now.

Thousands of freshly molded reddish-brown bricks lie baking under the hot Malawian sun. Residents of Manase, like too many other villages in Malawi, have seen members of their communities die while travelling to faraway medical clinics. But the Manase residents are determined to see themselves into better health, even if it means building their own hospital from scratch.

In their latest report on 'Global Trends of Youth Employment' the International Labour Organisation (ILO) found evidence of an increasing gender disparity in unemployment rates in developing countries. The agency expresses concern that policies against gender discrimination are being neglected in efforts to encourage the global economic recovery.

Yaounde's Briketteri neighbourhood, home to Muslim traders in textiles and beef, is seeing a surge of climate migrants - farmers and fishermen fleeing fast - drying Lake Chad to the north. Lake Chad, a large shallow freshwater lake that borders Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon, has shrunk in size by as much as 90 per cent over the last four decades, forcing a growing number of farmers, fishermen and herders who depend on it to seek new livelihoods elsewhere.

Gay rights groups and human rights activists will hold a public meeting at J Dumani Community Hall in Vosloorus on 9 October 2010 to develop a plan of action to deal with the 'growing homophobia at the hands of the police', following the arrest and verbal harassment of 12 people at a house party attended by gay people in Vooslorus after the Joburg Gay Pride event on 4 October 2010.

Links on biofuels, land rights in Africa and global land grabbing

Geoengineering is playing an increasingly more prominent role in northern-led approaches to tackling climate change, writes Diana Bronson, with proponents dismissively oblivious to the social and environmental consequences for populations around the world.

Violence in Cape Town’s Hout Bay over housing has raised a broader debate about housing policy and how a segregated city can transform itself. Ardiel Soeker and Kailash Bhana argue for an alternative way of managing urban housing needs – one that will ensure access for low-income families.

Twenty-five years ago the idea that would become the Rural Advancement Foundation International (and then, in 2001, ETC Group) began with a conversation about seeds. A quarter of a century later, ETC Group is still talking about seeds, but the world has grown more complex: new technologies have developed; economies have globalised; multinational companies have expanded their reach; and wealth and capital are concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer giant corporations. Life itself has been manipulated, picked apart, reassembled – and then patented.

The 11.7 billion dollars pledged Tuesday to replenish the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria for the coming three years falls significantly short of the 20 billion dollars hoped for, threatening to undo the progress made in the fight against these diseases - the three largest infectious killers in the world.

The UN refugee agency has appealed for faster efforts to help the world's estimated 12 million stateless people, including through stepped up accessions to two key international legal instruments – the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. The appeal was made by UNHCR's director of international protection, Volker Türk, in a meeting held in Geneva on the sidelines of UNHCR's annual executive committee gathering.

President Robert Mugabe has insisted that foreign investors should embrace Zimbabwe's equity laws, which require them to sell a 51 per cent stakes to locals, or 'stay out'. 'Our resources are ours, they belong to Zimbabweans, they belong to the sons and daughters of Zimbabwe," he said.

On the eve of their Independence Day Guineans are uneasy as tensions threaten a political transition many had hoped would end decades of repressive rule. Concern over delays to a second-round presidential election merged this week with pain and anger stoked by the anniversary of the 28 September 2009 military crackdown on demonstrators in the capital Conakry, in which hundreds were killed, wounded or raped.

The Mozambican Parliament has assured the Mozambican branch of the regional press freedom body Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA-Mozambique) that a Bill on Freedom of Information will be debated in the near future. Announcing this on 28 September 2010 the Director of MISA-Mozambique, Alfredo Libombo, said that all three political parties in the Assembly (the ruling Frelimo Party, the former rebel movement Renamo and the Mozambique Democratic Movement, MDM) were in agreement on this, and that the assembly’s bill will be based on a draft that MISA deposited with parliament almost five years ago, in November 2005.

This blog post reports on a meeting in Prague hosted by the International Bar Association (IBA). One of the issues raised was that of developing countries taking action against foreign companies, as evidenced by in the case of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project. Interestingly, another issue is the concept of social damages for corruption, where those found guilty of corruption are made to pay to repair the damage caused to a society.

Gado's latest cartoon captures the contrast between the United Nation's response to Rwanda's genocide and its recent report on the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Neighbour of mine, I see your pain is growing. I think to cook today would be too much for you. Come sister, share mbebe and nshima with me.

Following the 1 October bombs in Abuja, suggestions have been made that northern interests in Nigeria were attempting to convey a message to President Goodluck Jonathan in response to his 2011 presidential ambitions, writes Cameron Duodu. While political declarations around responsibility for the bombing confuse the public, People’s Democratic Party (PDP) ‘elders’ are in discussions over whom to endorse as the 2011 party candidate.

A new film and book, launched in London on 5 October, show how community participation in development projects has led to successful agricultural change and environmental recovery in Burkina Faso and Kenya. They show that despite a growing population, tree cover and food production have
both improved because of the tactics local people have adopted to manage their environment.

On the 8th of September 2010 the UPM in Durban sent a letter of demands to Jacob Zuma. His office acknowledge reciept of that letter (which is pasted in below this email) but he has never given us the courtesy of a response to our demands. Therefore we have no choice but to take our desperation and anger to the streets. We will be marching in Durban on 14 October 2010 in support of the demands in this letter. In addition to these demands we also demanding an end to the attacks on democracy from the ANC.

The October issue of the International Development Research Centre's (IDRC) Lasting Impacts publication, 'Food Security and Nutrition' has been published. This is the URL for the October issue: Or, you can navigate in from the Lasting Impacts homepage (http://www.idrc.ca/lastingimpacts) and click on October.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is sponsoring the Guardian's Global development site is being heavily criticised in Africa and the US for getting into bed not just with notorious GM company Monsanto, but also with agribusiness commodity giant Cargill, reports the London Guardian. Seattle-based Agra Watch - a project of the Community Alliance for Global Justice - was outraged. 'Monsanto has a history of blatant disregard for the interests and well being of small farmers around the world… [This] casts serious doubt on the foundation's heavy funding of agricultural development in Africa,' it thundered.

A Million Women Rise delegation of British women is to attend the Third International Action of the World March of Women in Bukavu (province of South Kivu) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as part of a global action to campaign for an end to violence against women. The global action, from 14 - 17 October 2010, involves women from 48 countries travelling to the DRC to express concrete solidarity with Congolese women and all women struggling against poverty and violence.

In this week's emerging powers news, a call for applications to attend a Fahamu study tour to India, emerging economies outpace Japan in the battle for trade with Africa, China extends Africa push with loans and a deal in Ghana, an Africa-China partnership in combating HIV/AIDS and India to train police forces of African countries.