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.

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."'

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'.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR), Navi Pillay, said that 'an estimated 370 million indigenous people' globally have lost or face the threat of losing their ancestral lands and natural resources due to 'unjust exploitation for the sake of development', PANA reported. According to UNHCR, when indigenous communities are alienated from their lands because of development and natural resource extraction projects, they are often left to scrape an existence on the margins of society.

There is no bi-lateral agreement between South Africa and Zimbabwe to prevent refugees from the famine-wracked Horn of Africa entering South Africa, said state officials last week. The statements from the South African department of Home Affairs and the Zimbabwean Ministry of Foreign Affairs this week are in direct contrast to statements appearing on the South African Home Affairs website, and Zimbabwean news reports on Zimbabwe’s decision to bar entry to Somali and Ethiopian refugees.

Joseph Kaute, the 43-year-old gay Cameroonian who was due to be deported from the UK, is back at Harmondsworth detention centre, thanks to Air France, the airline that was due to fly him from Heathrow back to Yaoundé via Paris. It was the third attempt to deport him. 'Air France refused to allow me to board,' Mr. Kaute told UK Gay News.

The Institute for Race Relations in the United Kingdom reports on prisoner transfer agreements between the UK and other countries. 'For the past few years, under pressure from right-wing Tories, the government has made strenuous attempts to reach agreements with countries such as Nigeria to enable prisoners serving sentences here to be compulsorily repatriated to complete their sentences in their home countries, so as to save costs, reduce the foreign national prisoner (FNP) population and make space for British prisoners.'

The New York Times profiles the use of private US military contractors in the war in Somalia, introducing the story with Richard Rouget, whom they describe as 'a gun for hire over two decades of bloody African conflict'. The story goes on: 'Rouget, 51, commanded a group of foreign fighters during Ivory Coast’s civil war in 2003, was convicted by a South African court of selling his military services and did a stint in the presidential guard of the Comoros Islands, an archipelago plagued by political tumult and coup attempts. Now Mr. Rouget works for Bancroft Global Development, an American private security company that the State Department has indirectly financed to train African troops who have fought a pitched urban battle in the ruins of this city against the Shabab, the Somali militant group allied with Al Qaeda.'

A sign of cordial relations between Rwanda and Uganda?

This video posted on Youtube provides a simple explanation of the US debt crisis and why it spells disaster for the global economy. What the world is facing, says the video, is complete global economic collapse, something that has never happened before. And it's not a matter of if it will happen, but when.

has an article on Gerta Louisama, a member of the executive committee and the National Women’s Committee of Tèt Kole. She writes: 'Us Haitian women, we have a lot of challenges, but as peasant women we have even more. We truly carry the burden of society. We’re the ones who hustle to feed the household and send the sick to the hospital if need be. We women, we work the land, we raise cattle, we transport merchandise like plantains, yams, and black beans to the capital. If we don’t work, there won’t be any flow of goods.'

In a bid to break the silence around violence against children, Tanzanian authorities launched a five-year plan on 9 August to eliminate all forms of violence against children, including sexual, physical and emotional abuse. 'Levels of violence [against children] reported are high in all settings; forms of violence reported and described are equally disturbing, including being beaten, tortured, sexually assaulted and even murdered,' Sophia Simba, the Minister for community development, gender and children, said in Dar es Salaam during the launch of a survey on the subject.

On the occasion of the 49th anniversary of Jamaica’s independence, Caribbean Political Economy as reproduced Bert Tucker’s lyrical account of Jamaica’s political climate and cultural ferment in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Mr. Tucker, now Ambassador for Foreign Trade and Head of International Cooperation in the Government of Belize, was a student on the Mona Campus of the UWI at the time. As Caribbean Political Economy notes, the reflection was written on the occasion of Jamaica's 38th Anniversary of Independence on 6 August 2000, but has the same freshness and resonance now as it did then.

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.

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.

Every year thousands of West Africans migrate to Europe in search of a better life. But for some, that search will end in tragedy as they fall victim to organised crime gangs. In one area of southern Italy, thousands of women from Nigeria are trapped in a nightmare world of prostitution. Many are trafficked illegally by Nigerian criminals, who deceive them with promises of regular jobs.

Blogger Scarlett Lion spent a weekend snapping photos of the same sex weddings that took place recently with the passing of New York’s Marriage Equality Act, an experience she describes as 'amazing'. You can view the pictures on her blog.

In a statement issued 10 August, Amnesty International urged NATO to conduct a full investigation of a recent attack near Zlitan, which the Libyan government reported killed 85 civilians. NATO denied seeing any evidence of civilian casualties. But did it look? asks this article on 'Its not clear. Officials reported the attack and independent journalists confirmed seeing large numbers of dead civilian bodies in the morgue, including a number of civilians.'

NATO is agreed that Gaddafi must go, but...

With nearly two months to go before constituent assembly elections, Tunisia confronts a long list of challenges to the creation of a democratic system, begins this policy brief from Freedom House. 'Expectations for swift and wide-ranging reforms are very high among a population hungry for change after decades of harsh authoritarian rule. Ordinary citizens are eager to enjoy the benefits of meaningful political freedom and economic prosperity, having endured unrelenting repression, mismanagement, and the plundering of resources by a small circle around the family of former president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.'