While protest movements are developing against dictatorial regimes in northern Africa and the Middle East, the statements and actions by European governments are mere rhetoric when it is a matter of reaffirming the necessity of a closure of borders that undermines fundamental rights, says this article. Thus, while Gaddafi brandishes the spectre of a migratory invasion by threatening European states of putting an end to any 'cooperation in the field of the fight against irregular immigration', the EU, through the words of its representative for foreign affairs, Catherine Ashton, claims that it does not want to give in to blackmail. At the same time European bodies continued to negotiate, less than a week ago, Libyan participation in their policy to secure the Mediterranean space.

The first issue of Development 54 starts the one year debate on sustainability by looking at the dilemma of the current global land grabs in Africa, Asia and Latin America. It engages academics and researchers of the Land Research Action Network and of the University of Utrecht in a hot debate on land speculation today. The journal issue tackles land, commodity and food speculation. It explores the implications for an equitable and sustainable development and looks at how to ensure that any benefits from foreign land development are passed on to local people.

The African Leadership Centre (ALC) was established in Kenya in June 2010 as a joint initiative of King’s College London and the University of Nairobi. The ALC is pleased to announce a call for applications for the Peace and Security Fellowship for African Women for 2011/2012. This Fellowship is an intellectual and financial award to those who have demonstrated obvious or potential capacity to make a change in their field. Please note that the Fellowship does not lead to an academic qualification, rather it is a postgraduate non-degree programme.

As part of its mission of collaborative peacebuilding, the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding
(WANEP) organised a regional workshop at the PACIFIC hotel in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso on
22 and 23 February 2011. After two days of discussions and exchange of experiences, the 50 participants from Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Togo developed mechanisms and solutions for sustainable and more effective actions, and identified the different actors and organisations for the implementation of the actions.