The University for Peace (UPEACE) is pleased offering the online course on “Peace and Conflict Studies; The Foundation Course”. This is a 10 weeks course, from 4 October to 10 December 2010. The course will be delivered by UPEACE faculty members: Dr. Amr Abdalla and Dr. Victoria Fontan. This course is offered for 3 academic credits or for a UPEACE training certificate. It focuses on understanding the complex and interconnected challenges to peace, as well as the need for different approaches to meeting these challenges.

In this week's emerging powers in Africa round-up, a big shift in trade relations is taking shape across Africa, China's Liu Zhenmin meets AU Chairman Ping, India targets more links in Africa’s food supply chain, World Cup lends South Africa confidence to unite continent, and NGOs slam EU-Brazil plans to develop biofuels in Africa.

Amnesty International has urged the Kenyan authorities to investigate the death of a market trader reportedly shot dead by police during a protest against forced evictions in a Nairobi settlement. Jackson Maina Kihato, 74, was killed on Monday after he tried to complain about the police beating a woman during demonstrations in Kabete NITD. Protests have continued in the settlement since an estimated 1,000 people lost their homes and market stalls in a mass forced eviction on 10 July.

Unsafe abortions account for more than one in 10 women who die in pregnancy in Ghana, according to new research by the US-based Guttmacher Institute, with ignorance of the law and inadequate facilities partly to blame, say health authorities. Abortion was declared legal in 1985 for women who have been raped, in cases of incest, or where the pregnancy will cause the mother physical or mental harm, but decades on, only 4 percent of women are aware of the law, according to 2009 government health statistics (based on 2007 data).

Journalists and media organisations have denounced the move by the Securities Commission of Zimbabwe (SEC) to register financial journalists as securities investor advisers in terms of the Securities Act of 2004. In terms of Statutory Instrument 100/200 which put into force the Securities Act, financial journalists are required to pay a license fee of $2 000 by 31 December 2010. Media practitioners argue that this would result in over-regulation of media practitioners. Media organisations argued that financial journalists who report and analyse securities such as stocks, bonds, bills and others are already accredited by the statutory Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC).

Three journalists were formally charged after refusing to reveal to Ivory Coast's state prosecutor their sources for a corruption story based on a document leaked from the prosecutor's office. The journalists could face up to 10 years in prison. Managing Editor Stéphane Guédé, News Editor Théophile Kouamouo, and Editor-in-Chief Saint-Claver Oula of the daily Le Nouveau Courrier were charged with "theft of administrative documents," defense lawyer Désiré Gueu told CPJ. The three are expected to be transferred from police custody to a prison in the commercial city of Abidjan pending trial, he said.

Since the second half of the 1970s, and in particular since the first major world conference on water (organized in 1977 by the United Nations at Mar del Plata, Argentina), world leaders have been aware of the scale of the problems concerning access to water of sufficient quantity and quality, and of the risks associated with growing shortages and degradation of the supply. The Mar del Plata conference set out the basic facts and made water one of the top issues on the international political agenda. And yet the ‘water crisis’ has continued to worsen

117 African Health, Social Development, Gender Based, Human Rights Organisations, and Trade Unions have written to the July 2010 15th African Union Summit of Heads of State holding in Uganda - urging governments to uphold, improve and urgently implement African and global health and social development financing commitments.

Solidarity for African Women’s Rights (SOAWR) coalition joins Women First (the Ugandan Women’s Rights Coalition to welcome and congratulate the Republic of Uganda for depositing its instrument of ratification of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa at the opening of the 17th Ordinary Session of the Executive Council of the African Union, at Munyonyo, Uganda, 22 July 2010. Uganda becomes the 28th member state of the African Union and the third East African Community Member to ratify the Protocol on the Rights of Women after Rwanda and Tanzania.

At a local maternity clinic in one of Bulawayo’s high density suburbs, midwives are at pains to explain to a pregnant 15-year-old girl why she must be tested for HIV before she gives birth. But the teenager, who lightly beats her chest in an effort to pacify what seems like a painful cough, will not hear of it. She is afraid that her worst fears will be confirmed as she already suspects she could be HIV-positive.

"Africa is the only continent where the majority of children start school using a foreign language. Across Africa the idea persists that the international languages of wider communication (Arabic, English, French, Portuguese and Spanish) are the only means for upward economic mobility. .. [But] New research findings are increasingly pointing to the negative consequences of these policies ... We recommend that policy and practice in Africa nurture multilingualism; primarily a mother-tongue-based one with an appropriate and required space for international languages of wider communication." - Adama Ouane, Director, UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning

Suddenly, after 20 years of relative neglect, African agriculture is a hot topic, with a substantial growth in production and a new interest among major donors in funding the sector. That is the message emerging from a series of seminars now taking place in London looking at the constraints and opportunities facing Africa’s farmers.

On 21 July 2010 Swazi traditional authorities threatened Swazi journalists with death if they continued to write stories considered by the authorities as undermining the country's leadership and system of government. The death warning came from Prince Mahlaba, brother to King Mswati III and also a member of the King's advisory council, the Swazi National Council Standing Committee (SNC), which is a highly influential body in Swazi politics.

MS Action Aid Denmark
Volunteer opportunity
Application deadline: August 30 2010

The West African countries of Burkina Faso and Niger have submitted a dispute over their common border to the United Nations International Court of Justice (ICJ) as part of a wider agreement by the two States to resolve the situation peacefully. In a joint letter, the ICJ – which is also known as the World Court – has been asked to delineate the border between the two nations from the Tong-Tong marker to the start of the Botou bend.

Burundi is east Africa's most corrupt nation according to an anti-graft watchdog, while Kenya, which usually tops Transparency International's (TI) annual list of graft-prone countries in the region, was third. Burundi and neighbouring Rwanda were included in the East African Bribery Index survey 2010, commissioned by TI-Kenya for the first time this year.

KwaZulu-Natal is committed to a massive male circumcision drive using all available medical methods including the controversial Tara Klamp, according to Health MEC Sibongiseni Dhlomo. Circumcised men are up to 60 percent less likely to get HIV than uncircumcised men, according to studies.

Algeria has adopted a law which will allow private firms for the first time to lease state-owned farmland but it also imposed restrictions on foreign investment. Gulf investors have shown an interest in Algerian farmland, part of a global trend for countries with large cash reserves to try to secure food supplies by targeting farmland abroad.

Participants at the on-going Fifth African Agriculture Science week, which entered its third day on Wednesday, want all the stakeholders including political leaders to develop func tional policies that will encourage more intra-Africa trade. The participants, who include civil society groups from within and outside Afric a involved in agriculture, farmers group and non-governmental organizations, said existing protocol on free movement of goods and persons, particularly in ECOWAS countries and other Regional Economic Communities (REC), needed to be fully implemented.

Kenya’s Constitutional Court is due to set a date on Jul 22 for a hearing on the application against the Anti-Counterfeit Act of 2008, of which clauses pertaining to medicines have been suspended pending the court’s decision on whether the law violates the right to health and life.