Fred Magdoff is professor emeritus of plant and soil science at the University of Vermont and adjunct professor of crop and soil science at Cornell University. As climate crisis threatens millions of people around the world, the latest round of climate talks, COP 17, began in Durban on 28 November. Farooque Chowdhury interviewed Fred Magdoff for about what strategies and tactics people can employ to tackle climate crisis at COP 17 and beyond.

The Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) has recently issued a report that examines four recent detailed studies of countries’ mitigation pledges under the Cancun Agreements, for the purpose of comparing developed (Annex 1) country pledges to developing (non-Annex 1) country pledges. It finds that there is broad agreement that developing country pledges amount to more mitigation than developed country pledges.

In [PDF]:

- The Bangkok Principles on the Status and Treatment of Refugees
- African NGO resolution on the rights of refugees, asylum seekers, migrants and displaced persons
- Asia Pacific model pledge towards upholding refugee rights worldwide
- MIGREUROP explores readmission instruments
- The situation of refugees in Israel
- Question & answer: the Cessation Clause examined
- The Cessation Clause: a primer
- ECtHR allows extradition to Rwanda of alleged Hutu genocidaire with refugee status in Denmark; UNHCR does not intervene
- ‘Is this Caribbean idyll the worst place in the world to be a woman?’
- WikiLeaks diplomatic cables: a tool for refugee legal aid workers?
- In limbo in Latvia
- Asia Pacific Regional Immigration Detention Working Group workshop
- Country of origin & legal news headlines
- Requests, announcements, publications & opportunities

Fahamu Refugee Legal Aid

No easy way to deal with them!

This is a call for materials for a biographical book on the life, work and legacy of David Kisule Kato – the deceased Ugandan human rights defender for sexual (and other) minorities. The biography is being developed and written by researchers in the Law, Gender and Sexuality Research Project of the Faculty of Law at Makerere University – Kampala. We are interested in a range of materials including essays, fiction, poetry, web blogs, art, crafts, photographs, film, documentaries, speeches, diaries, letters and other correspondence, music, academic publications, etc. that reflect any aspect of the life and work of David Kato.

This week, former Ivory Coast ruler Laurent Gbagbo was extradited to the Hague to account for alleged human rights violations before the International Criminal Court. Justice appears to be slower in coming to rival fighters loyal to current President Alassane Ouattara. According to Committee to Protect Journalism research, Ouattara's forces have been involved in the deaths of two journalists, most recently Gilles Tutsi Murris Dabé.

The ANC will push for a new interventionist economic nationalism, rather than a simplistic nationalisation of the country's $2.5-trillion in resources not yet mined, which was what ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema had wanted. The Mail & Guardian has learned from various sources that central to this plan is to force competitive input prices through taxes and other penalties and for state institutions to take bigger stakes in companies that hold key strategic infrastructure minerals.

This critical review of carbon trading in Africa includes analyses of the context and trends in the carbon market in Africa; offset projects in Uganda, Ethiopia and South Africa; and carbon finance and regulation. It shows how carbon trading provides new and different ways of profiting at the expense of a deteriorating climate.

The Sudanese Ministry of Petroleum has suspended the exportation of the South Sudanese oil through north Sudan till an agreement is reached between the two governments on transit fees, the acting Petroleum Minister in Sudan, Ali Ahmed Osman, has said.

Nnimmo Bassey's new book 'To Cook a Continent: Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa’, published by Pambazuka Press, shows that exploiting Africa’s resources has delivered huge profits to the North and huge damage to Africa. Overcoming the environment and climate change crises means also addressing corporate profiteering and resource extraction.

Standing across the street from the American embassy in Tel Aviv, more than 200 Eritrean asylum seekers chanted 'Yes to justice! Yes to humanity!', and demanded international intervention to stop torture camps in the Egyptian Sinai. Protests by African asylum seekers in Israel are growing, in the face of increasingly tough policies by the Israelis. 'We’re here to stop this torture and to call the world to be aware of this,' said Habtom Mehari, a 30-year- old Eritrean asylum seeker, at the rally on 25 November.

This year, for the first time, the World Bank dedicated its 2012 annual flagship World Development Report to women as indispensable players in the global economy and launched a media campaign to 'think equal'. But while bold statements and glossy reports paint the picture of benevolent financial institutions throwing money behind the gender justice struggle, the paper trail of IFI investments leads elsewhere - down into mines and barren fields, where big business is reaping private profit at the expense of women's safety, equality and dignity.

ARTICLE 19 says it has analysed the provisions of the Draft Penal Code for Rwanda (Draft Penal Code) that engage the rights to freedom of expression and information, to assess their compatibility with international standards. 'With this focus, ARTICLE 19 finds the reviewed provisions to be fundamentally flawed and incompatible with Rwanda’s obligations under international law. The bill represents a significant regression in protections for the right to freedom of expression and information in Rwanda.'

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has asked the authorities in the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia to end the campaign of intimidation and harassment of leaders of the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ), an IFJ affiliate. The Federation was reacting to news that NUSOJ organising Secretary in Mogadishu was summoned by police for questioning over the union's activities in the country.

Technical experts from global lenders the International Monetary Fund arrived in Malawi recently for a mission to offer technical assistance that seeks to revive a stalled programme meant to cushion foreign exchange shortages. Ruby Randall, an IMF resident representative told reporters the team, co-led by Etibar Jafarow and Nadia Rendak, comprises monetary capital markets and legal experts whose findings will be 'expected to help authorities implement key extended credit facility (ECF) programme commitments'.

The name Solomon Abera will forever be etched in the collective memory of Eritrea's press corps. On 18 September 2001, as the world focused its attention on the terrorist attacks on the United States, the government of Eritrea borrowed Abera's voice to sound the death knell, on state-controlled airwaves, of the Red Sea nation's independent press. Shortly after Abera read the announcement, the government rounded up leading independent newspaper editors and a dozen ruling-party dissidents calling for democratic reform - all of whom have disappeared in custody. On 2 December, the Committee to Protect Journalists said they learned that Solomon Abera, who lived in exile in Germany after fleeing government censorship and intimidation in 2005, was no more.

'Just think of these figures: The third quarter profits for Morgan Stanley $2.2 billion; for Wells Fargo $4.1 billion; for J.P. Morgan Chase $4.6 billion; Bank of America $6.2 billion...these were the banking outfits that helped to fashion the near-depression. Remember all these figures are this year, well after the fiscal calamity of three years ago. Or take the oil companies in the third quarter of 2011: BP, despite paying out billions in compensation for the oil spill, made $5.1 billion; Shell made $7 billion; Mobil Exxon came in at $10.3 billion. And we can’t find money for the Global Fund? Is there any better definition of the 1%? And I haven’t even enumerated the restoration of corporate bonuses. Do you see what’s at work here? In the reckless haste to coddle the multinationals, global public health has taken a merciless hit. And here’s something else to think about. Not a one of these companies has given a direct nickel to the coffers of the Global Fund, despite endless requests that they do so. And BP, Shell and Exxon Mobil are all members of the Global Business Coalition Health (GBCHealth), successor to the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS.'

Some European banks are now refusing to lend to firms trading with Africa, threatening growth in the world's poorest continent, a senior official of the African Development Bank (AfDB) said on Tuesday. The reluctance of some banks to make Africa-related loans as Europe's own debt crisis turns them increasingly risk-averse is an ominous sign as it repeats one aspect of the 2008 credit crisis.

Civil society in Mozambique has been actively engaging among themselves, with the state, and with investors to improve large scale land transfer governance. The initiatives underway range from: a land forum that brings together the various stakeholders to discuss land governance issues; community land delimitation initiatives by the Rural Mutual Support Organisation (ORAM); more extreme actions where communities have uprooted investors’ eucalyptus plantations and successfully renegotiated the return of their subsistence production land from an investor.

Poor countries have depended on rich nations to supplement their sector budget without which millions of people would have continued to live in abject poverty. Have the years of funding made these countries any less dependent? Sector budget is aid that is allocated to developing a country’s particular development priorities, which could be in the areas of health, education or even sanitation and housing.