Millions of citizens from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have been killed or displaced during decades of political corruption and military conflict. Many forced migrants are young people, who are often seen either as passive victims or as radicalized and amoral child soldiers perpetuating the cycle of violence. Recounting Migration refutes these stereotypes by presenting young Congolese refugees' nuanced understanding of the complex power relations that affect their everyday lives.

South Sudan’s independence celebrations on Saturday will not only usher in the world’s newest country, they may also be a coronation of its southern neighbor, Uganda, as a cresting regional influence. Even now, with independence close at hand, South Sudan will be a nation in dependence. Countries from the United States to China are investing in the soon-to-be country, and the nearby East African Community says it is likely South Sudan will join the regional economic bloc. But Uganda, a developing country itself, holds a special place. A vast portion of South Sudan’s produce is imported, and Uganda exports more goods to South Sudan than any country in the world.

An appeals court in The Netherlands on Thursday 7 July sentenced a Rwandan citizen living in the country to life in prison for crimes committed during the genocide in 1994. Joseph Mpambara, 43, was found guilty by the appeals court of torture causing the deaths of two Tutsi mothers and their four children on 13 April 1994, upholding a previous lower court conviction.

The 'World Bank Out of Climate Finance' campaign calls on readers to send emails via urging the Transitional Committee of the UNFCCC to keep the World Bank out of the green climate fund.

This special issue of African Journal of Conflict Resolution (AJCR) on Southern Africa - 50 years after Hammarskjöld underlines the current relevance of Hammarskjöld’s legacy and the continued relevance of his mindset and convictions for our efforts today to enhance peace and reduce violence and discrimination. This covers not only dimensions seeking to protect individual people. It also includes efforts to ensure more equal relations among states within the international system, often misleadingly called ‘order’ but more often tantamount to a structurally embedded disorder. By doing so, the following contributions also articulate parameters for better conduct by and among states and their leaders, respecting the interest of ‘We, the Peoples’ as the Preamble of the United Nations Charter declares (in contrast to what follows in the actual clauses, which focus on the governments of states). the special issue.

An Angolan human rights activist arbitrarily detained without charge in the Democratic Republic of Congo for more than two weeks must be released immediately, Amnesty International has said. Agostinho Chicaia, an environmentalist and former president of the banned Angolan human rights organisation Mpalabanda, was arrested in Kinshasa on 20 June, apparently in connection with an attack on the Togolese football team last year.

With just weeks to go before a 27-month moratorium on deporting Zimbabweans living illegally in South Africa expires, the authorities are scrambling to complete a documentation process that will still leave hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans lacking the necessary permits to avoid arrest. The number of Zimbabweans who have fled the political and economic crisis in their country and moved to South Africa is unknown but estimates from the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) range from one to 1.5 million. Before the government introduced the moratorium in April 2009, the authorities were deporting Zimbabweans who had entered the country illegally at a rate of about 200,000 a year.

Four Numsa members were injured when police shot them with rubber bullets during an engineering sector strike in Krugersdorp, west of Johannesburg, the metalworkers' union claimed on Thursday, 7 July. The union's spokesman Castro Ngobese said the four men were in hospital and a case had been opened at a local police station. He condemned the alleged shooting, during protests for higher wages. On Wednesday Numsa claimed police intimidated, harassed, shot at and arrested strikers in Bellville, Cape Town and Germiston, Johannesburg.

To breathe new life into its agricultural sector and boost output, Sudan is desperately seeking foreign investment, especially from neighbouring Arab countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia which are nervous about their future food security. In recent months, farmers have staged sporadic demonstrations against what they consider an unacceptable offer by the government to buy their land. Some have degenerated into violent confrontations with the police. 'The farmers are complaining, because the price they are being offered for their land is not fair,' said lawyer and political activist Majdi Selim, speaking at his office in Wad Madani.

A ship packed with refugees bound for Saudi Arabia has caught fire and capsized off the northeastern coast of Sudan, killing 197 people, the Sudanese Media Centre, a state-linked news agency, has said. The ship had launched from the Red Sea State, one of Sudan's 26 states, and sailed for four hours in Sudanese territorial waters before the blaze broke out, according to the news agency.

In light of the increasing homophobia perpetuated against marginalised gay asylum-seekers and immigrants, a Cape Town based community organisation, PASSOP (People Against Suffering Oppression and Poverty) has launched a Gay Refugee Programme, aimed at supporting and building a network for this group. In a statement, David von Burgsdorff, Programme Coordinator for PASSOP said, 'recognizing the vulnerability, the programme will provide support and advocacy for this social group and will include a solidarity network to unite Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) refugees, asylum-seekers and immigrants by providing them with outlets for emotional support and counseling.'

Gamba Manyatta village is empty now, weeds already roping around the few skeletal hut frames still standing. The people who were evicted took as much of their building materials as they could carry to start again and the land where their homes stood is now ploughed up. The eviction of the villagers to make way for a sugar cane plantation is part of a wider land grab going on in Kenya's Tana Delta that is not only pushing people off plots they have farmed for generations, stealing their water resources and raising tribal tensions that many fear will escalate into war, but also destroying a unique wetland habitat that is home to hundreds of rare and spectacular birds.

An Egyptian court has acquitted three ministers from the toppled regime of Hosni Mubarak of squandering public funds. They were the first not guilty verdicts issued in a series of trials of former senior officials following the fall of Mr Mubarak in February. The ministers include former Finance Minister Youssef Boutros Ghali.

One person dies weekly in Kenya due to a shortage of anaesthetics and the situation is worse in slums and rural areas across the country. In areas like Turkana in the Rift Valley, and the North Eastern, Eastern and Western provinces people are enduring painful operations without any anaesthetics at all. This is according to James Kamau, a civil society activist and the chief executive of the Kenya Treatment Access Movement, a local non-governmental organisation.

The Civil Society Information Society Advisory Council to the OECD has declined to support an official communique on principles for internet policy-making, saying that it could undermine 'online freedom of expression, freedom of information, the right to privacy, access to knowledge, and innovation across the world.' Their concerns include the communiqué’s over-emphasis on protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights at the expense of fundamental freedoms.

Judge Modather Al-Rasheed of the Khartoum press court has sentenced Fatima Ghazali, a journalist with the daily Al-Jarida, to a fine of 2,000 Sudanese pounds (516 euros) or one month in prison in case of refusal to pay. As Ghazali refused to pay the fine, she was immediately taken to Omdurman prison to begin serving her sentence. The judge also sentenced Al-Jarida editor Saadeldin Ibrahim to a fine of 5,000 Sudanese pounds (1,290 euros) in connection with the same articles about human rights violations by the security forces.

As the country’s inflation rate hits a staggering 14.5 per cent – compared to 4.5 per cent in December 2010 - Kenyans are struggling to afford basic commodities like maize, amid a shortage of the staple food. But with a recent budget allocation of almost 112 million dollars for agriculture, maize shortages may soon become less frequent in years to come. At nine per cent, the budget allocation is only one percentage shy of meeting the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) policy framework. CAADP requires that countries signatory to the agreement allocate at least 10 per cent of the national budget to agriculture.

Civil society organisations from Latin America, Europe and around the world have issued an open letter calling on the World Bank's International Finance Corporation to reject a proposal to finance Calyx Agro, a company that acquires farmland in Latin America on behalf of wealthy foreign investors. Calyx Agro is a subsidiary of Louis Dreyfus, one of the world's biggest commodity traders. The World Bank is considering a loan of up to US$30 million to help Calyx Agro expand its operations in Latin America. The letter also denounces the Bank for its on-going support to other leading investors involved in land grabbing around the world.

The 1972 Succession Act identifies the persons eligible for inheritance and their respective share entitlements in Uganda, but the majority of women in rural communities are not aware of this office and its function, nor do they understand Uganda's legal provisions for inheritance, says this policy brief from the Uganda Land Alliance and the Uganda Media Women's Association. Current policy on the implementation of women's legal rights must be revised to address this problem. Action needs to be taken to educate and sensitize the community as well as women their legal entitlement to land inheritance of property.

The Women’s Health and Equal Rights (WHER) Initiative, established in 2010 to fight for the right of Nigeria’s lesbians and bisexual women, last week held a picnic to create awareness about their work. Nigeria’s first lesbian/bisexual rights organisation, WHER, was set up to counter the repression faced by people whose sexual orientation and gender identity do not conform to the 'societal norm'. The establishment of the WHER Initiative was meant to enable a holistic and more representative approach to LGBT rights activism in the country.