Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has said that anyone invading farms will be arrested - in an apparent challenge to Robert Mugabe. Mr Tsvangirai said the recent land invasions "are actually acts of theft". President Mugabe has said that the government would continue to seize white-owned farms as part of his land reform policy.

Supporters of Madagascar's former President Marc Ravalomanana are staging daily street protests - just one indication that Africa's youngest president has a tough road ahead of him.

Hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees will face a humanitarian emergency this year, unless urgent steps are taken to deal with a serious public health crisis unfolding in the Dadaab refugee camp in northern Kenya, international agency Oxfam has warned in a new report.

Zambia is reckoned to be the 13th poorest country in the world. Sixty-four per cent of the people live in poverty. More than one in six children die before their fifth birthday, and if you live to the age of 42 you are doing better than average. Britain is the largest bilateral donor to Zambia, providing £40mn a year. But what Britain and the rest of the developed world provide may not be enough to stop an increase in children dying because of the global recession.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and its near global ratification have been seen as true accomplishments in this sense. Yet, despite this recognition and success, the range and severity of problems faced by children at the start of the twenty-first century are persisting, if not increasing. The year 2009 marks the 20 th anniversary of the Convention. The occasion provides a timely opportunity to assess the value of the CRC in engaging with dilemmas on the ground, in devising multi-faceted approaches other than a purely legal or technical response, and in evolving to meet new challenges that emerge from its practical implementation.

It is often said: “If you do not take care of politics, it will take care of you anyway”. Politics is in the public sphere because it is supposed to take care of defining, guiding and deciding the course of everyone’s life. Whereas women contribute to society, their input is not recognized. They cannot be in charge of their own destiny because gender is artificially relegated to the private domain. Assuring domestic labor, raising children and feeding everyone is done by women all over the world, but this essential contribution is taken for granted.

Society's expectations and presentation of women make them more vulnerable to catching sexually transmitted infections (STI’s) and HIV, participants at Southern Africa HIV and AIDS Information Dissemination Service (SAFAids) workshop heard last week. One of the facilitators, Lillian Chikara from SAFAids said there was need for women and girls to be empowered for them to make informed decisions when negotiating safe sex.

On April 27, 2009 the Ogoni people of Nigeria will finally have their chance at justice when the families of famed activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and his colleagues, who were sentenced to death in a sham trial in Nigeria and hanged in 1995, will show that Royal Dutch Shell was at the very least complicit in their deaths and likely colluded with the Nigerian military to quell peaceful protests through murder, torture and destruction of villages. The plaintiffs’ attorneys will use a U.S. law on the books since 1789 called the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) that allows violations of international law to be tried in U.S. courts.

Chinese officials plan to open a malaria research center in the Cameroonian capital of Yaounde, Shen Yi, a Chinese embassy official, said recently ahead of an opening ceremony for the center, Xinhuanet reports. The center is expected to cost three million Chinese yuan, or about $440,000, Xinhuanet reports. China also plans to send four malaria experts to Cameroon for 50 days, Shen said. Shen added that China sends a team of malaria experts to Cameroon annually but that the team plans to work with a Cameroonian team this year to share China's experience in controlling the disease.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao Tuesday urged tougher prevention and punishment on corruption, saying "China faced the toughest year in its economic development since the turn of the century." Localities and departments should step up supervision over corruption, regulate the use of executive power, tackle persistent problems that harm public interest and accelerate construction of a system to prevent and punish corruption to provide a solid guarantee for reform, development and stability, Wen told a conference on clean governance.

The Conflict, Security and Development Group (CSDG) at King’s College London together with the Africa Leadership Centre (ALC), in collaboration with the Commission of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), is pleased to announce a call for applications for the MA Studentships and Mentoring Programme 2009-2010.

Kwantlen Polytechnic University invites you to participate in the Kwame Nkrumah International Conference: August 19-21, 2010 at its beautiful Richmond campus in British Columbia, Canada. The Conference will commemorate the centenary of the birthday of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Africa’s Man of the Millennium, and bring scholars and students from Canada and from the around the world to share research and ideas on Africa’s place in the global community, and to discuss the life, achievements and shortcomings of Africa’s foremost Pan-Africanist.

March 24, 2009 is Impunity Day in Kenya - the Human Rights Defenders Day. It was the 24th day of March in 1996, when Daniel arap Moi’s State assassinated our dear Karimi Nduthu. Karimi Nduthu had just finalized an investigative report into the state sponsored ethnic clashes of 1992 and 1993 which targeted targeting ethnic populations of the Gikuyu, Kisii, Luo and Luyha in Rift Valley, Nyanza, Western and Coast Provinces.

In South Africa, if you are poor your right to justice through the legal system is often denied. If you don't have money for lawyers its hard to get justice. Therefore, the law is for the rich because they have ample money to buy 'justice'. Landlords who have money can afford to try and evict people continuously by accessing the courts and paying the best lawyers to throw people out of their houses. In South Africa, communities don't have money to continuously go to court to fight for, what should be, their basic rights. In the legal system, you are discriminated against if you are poor.

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) has partnered with the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) in Nairobi to unlock credit and financing for small-scale farmers and agribusinesses across sub-Saharan Africa. The organisation will expand AGRA's existing innovative financing projects to reach more countries and key stakeholders in the African agricultural value chain.

A Mozambican and South African consortium, Petroline Holdings, plans to start building a $620-million oil pipeline linking Johannesburg to the port of Maputo before the end of this year. Mateus Kathupa, CEO of state-run Mozambican company PETROMOC, which holds a 40% stake in the consortium, said on Thursday the construction of the petrol and diesel pipeline would take six months.

Chinese and Guinean workers toil shoulder to shoulder on a sun-blasted construction site at this crumbling city's edge, building the latest symbol of an old and sturdy alliance: a $50 million, 50,000-seat stadium. This city is littered with such tokens of a friendship that first flowered when Guinea was an isolated and struggling socialist state in the late 1950s.

The Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign decided at its provincial meeting to take up the case of the deceased one year old, Unabantu Mali, who died on her grandmothers back last week after being turned away from three clinics in Nyanga, Gugulethu and KTC. Unabantu's grandmother walked from Nyanga East to Gugulethu to KTC, barefoot, seeking help for Unabantu and being rejected at each clinic. She had no money to get to Red Cross hospital.

Oxford Transitional Justice Research (OTJR) aims to bring disparate views on and approaches to transitional justice into a single arena. In pursuit of this, we are proud to host, at the University of Oxford, an international conference, “Taking Stock of Transitional Justice,” which is designed to assemble vast knowledge on transitional justice from across geographical locations and areas of academic study and practice. Exploring established views and new thinking on transitional justice, OTJR would like to invite all interested parties to submit a presentation abstract or register for general participation.

At this session, this Council has heard about the tragic killing of three persons.
Edwin Legarda was shot to death on 16 December 2008 by members of the Colombian armed forces shortly after his wife, Aida Quilcué, had been active at the third session of the UPR Working Group in connection with its review of Colombia.
On 5 March 2009, Oscar Kingara and Paul Oulu were murdered - soon after meeting the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions during his mission to Kenya in February 2009.