Submit your essay on democracy, and get your free ticket to the world’s largest gathering of democracy and human rights activists in Jakarta, Indonesia, in 2010! The World Youth Movement for Democracy (www.wymd.org), a youth network of the World Movement for Democracy (www.wmd.org), is pleased to announce the launch of its Global Essay Contest. Fifteen winners (3 in each region: Asia, Central/Eastern Europe & Eurasia, Middle East & North Africa, Latin America & Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa) will be invited to participate in the upcoming 6th Assembly of the World Movement for Democracy in Jakarta, Indonesia, in April 2010.

History and current experience shows that so deep are the pains of most of the conflicts experienced in Africa that the popular individualized and rationalistic approaches to healing and transformation simply lack the language and resources to solidly address the challenge of holistic peaceful transformation. “Arts approaches” provide an accessible language, compelling processes that affirm everyone’s creativity and, above all, an inclusive space that enables healing, genuine dialogue and transformation to happen particularly where the violent conflicts and pains are experienced by masses of people. African countries that are victims of conflicts, can use dance and drama to subtly address the issues among community members.

Two hours later, there was no sign of what had taken place. The park in the Shapira neighborhood of southern Tel Aviv was again teeming with life. Foreign workers gradually arrived, filling the place up, children came to play and only a green garbage bin located at the foot of a tree in a corner of the park remained as evidence that a short while earlier, at 3:30 P.M., someone's life had come to an end. Abrehale Misghina, a 28-year-old refugee from Eritrea, dragged the bin to the tree, climbed on top of it, placed a noose around his neck, threw the other end of the rope over one of the branches, and committed suicide.

Sanusha Naidu does a roundup of the week's Sino-African news

Niger's former Prime Minister, Hama Amadou, has urged the country's political class to exhibit more responsibility in a bid to avoid some "useless rifts" about the debate on President Mamadou Tandja's bid to change the constitution through a referendum to have a third five-year term. “It is important that our political class shows a keen sense of responsibility in a bid to avoid in our dear country some useless rifts, by respecting constitutional legality,” he said.

The report of the government-constituted Technical Committee on the Niger Delta, submitted to Nigeria’s President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua on 1 December 2008, offers an opportunity to reduce violent conflict significantly and begin longer-term regional development in the oil-rich region. The government needs to respond urgently and positively, in particular by accepting a third-party mediator to facilitate discussions of amnesty and demobilisation of militants, in order to dispel growing misgivings in the Delta, save the region from further violence and organised criminality, and ensure Nigeria’s continued reliability as a leading source of energy for the world.

Members of armed paramilitary groups are a serious threat to civilians who fled violence and insecurity and are now returning to their villages, Human Rights Watch has said in a report. People who have returned to their home regions have been killed, forcibly recruited into paramilitary groups, and threatened with death by armed men who in many cases have seized their land.

As Omar Bongo Ondimba, the Gabonese president who died at age 73 in Barcelona on Jun. 8, is buried in Franceville in the south-west of Gabon on Thursday, his 41-year-reign as absolute ruler of this oil-producing country of 1.5 million has received mixed reviews. In neighbouring Congo, a seven-day period of national mourning has been declared. Congolese President Denis Sassou Nguesso was closely aligned with Bongo; his daughter, Edith Lucie, was married to the Gabonese president at the time of her own death in March.

South Africa's biggest farmers' union on Friday criticised the government's plans to scrap a voluntary system of buying land from white farmers to give to poor blacks. Johannes Moller, president of farmers union AgriSA said the move to scrap the willing-buyer, willing-seller model, under which the government negotiates with owners to buy land, would be unconstitutional unless the system were replaced with a similar one.

"My worry is that my children are going to be slaves because they won't have anything. These foreign people come to South Africa with nothing, but tomorrow he has cash, third day he owns a shop and fourth day he has a car. Where do these foreign people get this money?" Small business owners are venting their frustrations on 'foreign nationals' - among them many Somalis - who own shops in the country's townships, causing experts to warn that xenophobic violence could increase.

The gays and lesbians debate threatened to split the Zimbabwe Christian Alliance into two at the just ended Constitutional Indaba held in Bulawayo as the men of cloth exchanged harsh words in defence and against the accommodation of homosexuals in the new constitution, Zimbabwe Telegraph reports. A larger fraction of the pastors who attended the Indaba felt it was the role of the church to push for the accommodation of homosexuals in the new constitution as it was left upon the church to fight for the rights of the gays and lesbians so as to win them to Christ.

Zimbabwe Women's Resource Centre and Network has the pleasure of announcing the launch of its blog platform, Zimbabwe Women's Voices. The blog will begin on the Constitutional Reform Process and seeks to provide Zimbabwean women and community at large an opportunity to voice their perspectives on the Constitutional Reform process between now and November 2009 when public consultations are scheduled to be complete.

The Gambian Press Union (GPU) has in a statement issued on June 12, 2009 condemned President Yahya Jammeh’s deliberate attempt to vilifying Deyda Hydara, editor and a former critic of his repressive administration, brutally murdered in 2004 by unknown assailants, immediately after his newspaper celebrated its 13th anniversary.

On 15 June 2009, Pre-Trial Chamber II of the International Criminal Court confirmed some of the charges brought by the Prosecutor against Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo for crimes committed on the territory of the Central African Republic from on or about 26 October 2002 to 15 March 2003.

The mandate of the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences (SRVAW) must be strengthened if the elimination of all forms of violence against women is to become a reality. This was a key recommendation from the parallel event ‘15 years of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women: gains, challenges and the way forward’ held at the Palais des Nations, Geneva, Switzerland on June 5, 2009, in parallel to the 11thsession of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC).

This is a photo essay of the recent occupation of a piece of land in Macassar. On Tuesday 19th backyarders in Macassar, desperate for homes, built shacks on municipal land on a field adjoining the N2

During the 1960s and 1970s, Chinese relations with African countries were driven by ideological considerations, with China presenting itself as an alternative to both the West and the Soviet Union. During that time, China’s support consisted mainly of moral and material support for liberation struggles. During the 1980s, the relationship shifted towards economic co-operation based on common aims. After the end of the “Cold war”, China attached importance to both political and economic benefits and portrayed itself as an attractive economic partner and political friend.

The Comoros autonomous islands will hold legislative and local government elections on 2 August, the permanent representative of the African Union (AU) in Moroni, Mourad Taiati has told journalists. The AU official, who was speaking at the end of a meeting in Moroni with the Comoran Foreign Relations Minister, Ahmed Ben Said Jaffar, stressed that the elections were the expression of a “fervent wish” of the Comoran authorities.

Five more people have died of their injuries after a suicide attack on the Somali security minister, bringing the total number of dead to 35. Omar Hashi Aden was buried hours after the blast at a hotel in Beledweyne, north of the capital, Mogadishu. The funerals for some of the other victims, who included Somali diplomats, are being held on Friday.

The Tanzanian and Ugandan governments should ensure that refugees living in camps due to close on June 30 and July 31, 2009 are not forcibly returned to their home countries and are immediately given full information about their options, Human Rights Watch has said. Human Rights Watch also urged both governments to avoid repeating Rwanda's unlawful forced return of up to 504 refugees to Burundi at gunpoint on June 2, after it closed its last refugee camp for Burundians.