Foremost environmental rights advocacy organization in Nigeria, Environmental Rights Action (ERA), has accused the Anglo-Dutch oil and gas major, Shell, of not being a good corporate citizen in the country. ERA claimed in a statement that the warning by Shell that Nigeria’s declining oil output will be aggravated if the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) is passed into law was an attempt to frustrate the move by the country to bring sanity into the sector and recover some level of sovereignty in relation to the resource.

This workshop explores the notion of ‘difference’ – as identity, opposition and even resemblance – in its multiple meanings and settings, and the ways in which it plays out in the social-political landscape. Moving away from the idea of difference as essential or natural, we explore how difference is constructed, manifested and obscured in socially uneven societies, particularly those fueled by neoliberal economic growth in the recent years.

About 155,000 Burundian refugees, seeking Tanzanian citizenship, have had their requests granted, according to a communiqué from the United Nations High Commissioner for refugees (UNHCR), published on Thursday in Bujumbura, the Burundi capital.

A campaign dubbed "Borderless Trade", which is aimed at fighting against hindrances to the free movement of people and goods in West Africa, was launched on Wednesday in Krak', at the border between Benin and Nigeria.

The death toll from two days of fighting in Somalia’s capital between government forces and al Shabaab rebels has risen to 54, ambulance services said as clashes subsided with both sides claiming successes.

Hundreds of women have taken to the streets of Nigeria's capital, Abuja, and the central city of Jos in rallies against Sunday's massacre near Jos. The women, mostly dressed in black, demanded that the government protect women and children better.

This week, the US State Department is honoring Ann with the 2010 International Women of Courage Award. With this award the US government pays tribute to outstanding women leaders worldwide, recognizing the courage they've shown as they struggle for social justice and human rights. In over a decade as a women's rights activist, nobody deserves this award more than Ann Njogu, writes Janet Walsh.

The chairperson of the ANC's biggest and most influential region in KwaZulu-Natal, John Mchunu, has been awarded tenders worth at least R40-million by the eThekwini municipality. Mchunu recently made headlines for allegedly vetoing the completion of a R1.5m elephant sculpture project for the new Warwick Avenue interchange, apparently because it was the symbol of the IFP.

The African Union (AU) has called for minor const itutional amendments in Guinea, a review of the voting rules and the extension of the voters' registration exercise, to accommodate thousands of other Guineans in exile across West Africa.

IGAD Heads of State and Government have urged parties to the Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) to remain committed to the implementation of outstanding issues in the agreement. The IGAD leaders, meeting in Nairobi Tuesday, asked the parties to the CPA to particularly move towards completing the North-South Abyei border demarcation and redeployment of forces.

Have we seen a response so far from the capitalists and their governments that suggest that they are going to change from neo-liberal globalisation? Will they look once again to the kind of Keynesian capitalism that worked so well for them in the 40's, 50's and 60's and regulate capital flows, invest in public services and seek to grow capitalism by stimulating demand and providing full employment? Or are they still wedded to the same system of mobile capital, speculation and the privatisation of public goods?

Conference will be a space for activists and analysts to debate the underlying causes of the global crisis, the responses of states, including South Africa and the response of the dominated classes to the global crisis and possibilities for alternatives to capitalism.

An Expression of Interest form is available

Let us know if you are coming.

Contact the organisers
[email]ilrigrlfconference2010@gmail.com

Former rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo who now serve in the army are running mafia-style extortion rackets in the mines, campaigners say. The country has some of the world's richest mines, which provide minerals to the global electronics industry.

For the two decades that he has been free, Souleymane Guengueng has constantly relived the two years he spent in a Chadian prison, where he watched hundreds of cellmates die from torture and disease. Thrown in jail in 1988 for still-unknown reasons, the deeply religious civil servant took an oath before God: If he ever got out alive, he would bring his tormentors to justice.

With at least 67,000 refugees in southwest Uganda, the government and aid workers are still battling inadequate resources in what a UN official described as a "silent emergency". "We can hardly meet international standards of indicators such as water, health and food," Nemia Temporal, deputy representative of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Uganda, told IRIN on 8 March. "For instance, we are delivering 15 litres [of water] per person per day instead of the standard 20l."

Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action, the pioneering, highly regarded South African gay and lesbian archives, invites African writers to submit stories on a queer African theme for publishing in a ground-breaking anthology. Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action intends the anthology to query stereotypes, show that there are many ways of being queer in Africa, and encourage queer artistic expression and appreciation. Literary merit and an insightful response to the complexities of African queerness will guide the selection.

The concept of commodity fetishism helps explain where today's climate policies have gone wrong. In classic fetishistic fashion, "cost-saving" institutional practices have helped entrench many dangerous equivalences across society: equivalences among molecules, places, technologies and times; equivalences between offsets and emissions reductions, between biotic and fossil carbon, between hypothetical and real reductions, between fines and fees, between uncertainty and probability and so on. This illustrated powerpoint presentation diagnoses 12 examples of climate fetishism currently shaping the thoughts and behaviour of research institutions, UN climate negotiators, national governments, large corporations, physical scientists, traders and others.

A coalition of 140 international organizations has sent a letter to Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to demand that he immediately halt plans to build Belo Monte Dam on the Amazon's Xingu River due to its immense social and environmental impacts, and instead consider alternatives.

Fourteen Egyptian human rights groups have expressed their full support of the statement issued by the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights which condemned the Egyptian security forces for killing up to 60 migrants on the Egyptian side of the borders with Israeli since mid 2007.

Mawuli Dake

Momar Dieng

Many are saying food is becoming the new oil. In the past two years there has been a remarkable increase in purchases of large-scale farmland by foreigners throughout Africa, Latin America, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia.