Pambazuka News 440: US apology over slavery: Why now?

Uganda will pass a law banning female genital mutilation, which is rampant among pastoralist tribes in the country's eastern region, the president said in a statement on Friday. "The way God made it, there is no part of a human body that is useless," President Yoweri Museveni told a gathering in the eastern Karamoja district.

Under a new initiative international donors are backing Africa-based policy research to improve local decision-making on complex global issues with potentially enormous humanitarian consequences like food security and climate change. Led by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and funded by IDRC, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Hewlett Foundation, the Think Tank Initiative will provide core funding for 24 African think tanks over 10 years. US$30 million ha...read more

Demand for medical male circumcision has been rising in Kenya's south-western Nyanza Province since it became available as part of a package of HIV prevention services in November 2008. Although local communities do not traditionally practice male circumcision, intensive sensitization programmes by governmental and non-governmental organizations are boosting acceptability.

State Security Minister Sydney Sekeramayi stunned a Harare Court by denying that the Central Intelligence Organization (CIO) was involved in the abduction of opposition and human rights activists, including Jestina Mukoko, last year. This is despite his predecessor in the ministry, Didymus Mutasa, admitting earlier this year that he had sanctioned the operation as a matter of state security.

More than 10, 000 Nigerian girls held captive as sex slaves in Morocco and Libya are to be repatriated, the House of Representatives Committee on Diaspora has revealed in a statement. The girls reportedly from Edo State, the southern part of the country, aged between 13 and 17, had been held captive by sex slave traders, the statement said.

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