Pambazuka News 486: Remembering Soweto/World Cup 2010

In a slow-motion disaster predicted months ago by aid agencies, Africa's Sahel region is lurching towards a food crisis which the world has only weeks left to avert. Yet even if more aid is pledged right now, the obstacles in getting succour to the most vulnerable and remote communities on the planet mean hundreds of thousands of children in Niger and Chad are already facing life-threatening hunger.

The world's oceans are virtually choking on rising greenhouse gases, destroying marine ecosystems and breaking down the food chain -- irreversible changes that have not occurred for several million years, a new study says. The changes could have dire consequences for hundreds of millions of people around the globe who rely on oceans for their livelihoods.

Tunisia rejected on Thursday allegations from human rights campaigners that a new law setting out tough penalties for conspiring to harm the country's economy would suppress free speech. Tunisia's parliament this week passed amendments to the penal code which make it a crime for anyone to incite foreigners not to invest in the north African nation, give it loans or sign trade deals with it.

The Ugandan government will compensate about 10,000 people in the country's northern region, who were maimed by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels over two decades, ahead of elections next year. One of the most ruthless rebel groups, the LRA waged a brutal but futile insurgency from their bases in northern Ugandan and southern Sudan to dislodge President Yoweri Museveni and establish a theocracy in the east African country.

Chad is holding the first summit on the "Great Green Wall" of Africa which is a proposal to plant trees along the borders of northern Africa to battle alarming desertification. The Global Environment Facility is funding the project with about US$119 million. Eleven leaders are at the summit.

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