Africa needs urgent action on global warming. The consensus position adopted by African leaders ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen failed. African environmental activists are now debating their way forward.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has voiced concern about events in Côte d’Ivoire, where the Government has suspended voter registration ahead of this year’s already delayed presidential election because of rising tensions.

A refugee rights group in South Africa has accused the United Nations refugee agency of ‘xenophobia,’ for not affording Zimbabwean refugees the same treatment as other refugees in South Africa. The group PASSOP has this week said that Zimbabwean refugees in South Africa are victims of a form of ‘selective assistance’ by organisations meant to help them.

The Peking University Law School Research Centre for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law ( RCHR) is offering visiting scholar positions at our centre to facilitate solo and collaborative research and teaching. Visiting scholars will be expected to make a modest contribution to the masters’ programme, teaching a one semester course in a specialist topic of their choice.

The emergency aid industry has improved but must try harder, according to the broadest ever assessment of its performance. Reviewers from the Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in humanitarian action (ALNAP) assessed how well donors, UN agencies, the International Organization for Migration, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent movement and NGOs were meeting humanitarian needs worldwide and coordinating.

MA in international labour and trade union studies
Start: October 2010
Full-time (12 months) OR
Part-time (24 months)
Limited scholarships available

Ten years ago the WTO-protests in Seattle were the beginning of a powerful re-vitalization of global struggles against capitalist globalization. What is the state of the global justice movement today? Is there a need for a strategic re-orientation? Franco 'Bifo' Beradi argues that social movements were in a deep crisis. His article 'Ten years after Seattle. One strategy, better two, for the movement against war and capitalism' recommends a retreat into monasteries and change of concepts and strategies.

If nothing else, President Jacob Zuma’s belated apology about his out-of-wedlock child with Sonono Khoza following unprecedented outrage at the way he has demeaned the highest office in the land has shown the power of public opinion in a democracy. We have also established once and for all that the personal is political and that leaders must practice what they preach where HIV and AIDS is concerned.

Eugénio Costa Almeida

André de Oliveira, Jefferson Pinheiro, Sarah Brito e Sergio Valentim

ICRW is offering a post-doctoral fellowship for a social scientist with gender and population expertise at its Washington, DC office. This fellowship is geared toward early career Ph.D. professionals who would like to conduct research within an action research organization and network with a wide range of experts on gender, population and development.

I have been following with interest the debate around Zuma and the baby with Irvin Khoza’s daughter. Of course, we know that polygamy is an old-age cultural norm among the Zulu and the Ndebele from Zimbabwe. We may debate the pros and cons of this practice; some say it is disrespectful of women while others say it is a tradition that should be preserved for future generations. Whatever you believe, we need to scrutinise the real issues around the outcry about Zuma.

Brazil's mining company, Vale, is preparing to start operations in Mozambique as South America's largest economy steps up its involvement in the scramble for Africa's resources. The remote town of Tete in central Mozambique sits on top of some of the world's largest reserves of coal. With migrant workers and contractors flooding in to take advantage of the opportunities created by this multi-billion dollar Brazilian investment, Tete has become a boomtown, its infrastructure creaking under the constant flow of business visitors.

IRIN Films is pleased to release a short film about displacement in Haiti as part of our series on internal displacement entitled Forced to Flee. Filmed in late 2009, just weeks before the earthquake struck, this short film tells the extraordinary story of what used to be Haiti's finest hotel, the Simbi Continental.

On the ground floor of a squat building in downtown Lusaka, Zambia’s capital, tellers sit inside tiny wooden cabins, counting out money. Welcome to the Indo-Zambia Bank, which came into being after three Indian state banks and the Zambian government joined forces in 1984. Its 57-year-old Managing Director, Satish Shukla, describes it as a “joint venture of four cultures”.

HIV-positive Justine Kirumira* is a mother torn between doing what is right for her daughters and her own fear of HIV/AIDS. She suspects that her eight and 12-year-old daughters may also have the virus. But she may never know the truth of their status because she refuses have them tested.

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains a letter from 80 U.S. organizations to U.S. Treasury Secretary Geithner calling for cancellation of Haiti's debt, a background paper on Haiti's debt by Jubilee USA, and a brief description by historian Alex von Tunzelmann on the historical origin of Haiti's debt.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that around one-third of cancer deaths are preventable, through education programmes, better detection and treatment. As a result, the disease hits hardest in developing countries, where such programmes are rudimentary, if they exist at all.

Join Ashoka's Changemakers, ExxonMobil, and The International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) in this global Women | Tools | Technology: Building Opportunities & Economic Power challenge! Share your innovations which enable women to access and use the power of tools and technology to expand their opportunities for economic advancement. For more information, visit also ICRW's Bridging the Gender Divide in Technology.

The spirit in which Parliamentary Service Commissions in democratic countries exist is that of providing parliamentarians with the requisite support and resources to undertake their duty to citizens. The history of the Parliamentary Service Commission in Kenya is replete with impropriety in resource utilisation, reports Transparency International.

By age 15, Annonciata Nduwimana was an accomplished fighter for Burundi's opposition Forces nationales de liberation (FNL) and knew how to kill in battle. "My father was killed, accused of sheltering rebels. We [her mother and two elder brothers] then fled to Bujumbura to seek safe haven," she said.