Tension over the future of Abyei, a flashpoint region roughly the size Lebanon on Sudan’s north-south border, erupted into armed violence and street demonstrations this week. On 5 July, gunmen mounted an attack near the village of Tajalei, about 30km northeast of Abyei town, killing five people, a police officer and four civilians.

Taking advantage of the G8 and G20 Summits in Toronto, the Food Sovereignty Coalition is warning the leaders of these countries about the global food disorder and is calling upon them to learn a lesson from it. Consequently, the Coalition is launching a mobilization campaign, the objective being to convince the G20 leaders that governments of the world should do everything possible to regain control of their national and the world's food systems, where failures are already afflicting a third of humanity.

Zimbabwean Finance Minister Tendai Biti has said that Zimbabwe won't be able to tap into a US$ 30 billion fund run by the African Development Bank to help member states over the next five years because it must first clear debt arrears to the AfDB, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Zimbabwe owes the AfDB a total of US$ 400 million, the World Bank US$ 1.2 billion and the International Monetary Fund US$ 140 million. Its total foreign debt amounts to some US$ 8 billion.

Open Channels is seeking to appoint an experienced individual to support its work with indigenous peoples in southern Africa, and in particular its work with San communities in Botswana. Interested applicants should submit their résumé, a covering letter and details of three references, all to be sent as attachments, by email to Open Channels’ administrator at: [email]sallanm@tiscali.co.uk The closing date for applications is 21st July 2010.

Over a half-century ago, Mahatma Gandhi led a multitude of Indians to the sea to make salt—in defiance of the British Empire’s monopoly on this resource critical to people’s diet. The action catalyzed the fragmented movement for Indian independence and was the beginning of the end for Britain’s rule over India. The act of “making salt” has since been repeated many times in many forms by people’s movements seeking liberation, justice and sovereignty: Cesar Chavez, Nelson Mandela, and the Zapatistas are just a few of the most prominent examples. Our food movement— one that spans the globe—seeks food sovereignty from the monopolies that dominate our food systems with the complicity of our governments. We are powerful, creative, committed and diverse. It is our time to make salt.

A new study has challenged widely held assumptions about income level in relation to HIV, finding that neither wealth nor poverty are reliable predictors of HIV infection in Africa. Previously, the argument that poverty drove HIV epidemics was supported by the World Bank and UNAIDS, as well as less reliable authorities like former South African President Thabo Mbeki, who told the International AIDS Conference in Durban in 2000 that the disease was a partner with "poverty, suffering, social disadvantage and inequity".

Zimbabwe's Finance Minister Tendai Biti says his government so far has been unable to do anything to fight the endemic corruption in the country. Corruption had become part of culture, he complains. Minister Biti, representing the former opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party in government, says he is close to powerless when it comes to fight corruption in Zimbabwe.

Without a major breakthrough in preventing and treating diabetes, the number of cases in sub-Saharan Africa is projected to double, reaching 24 million by 2030, according to the Brussels-based International Diabetes Federation (IDF). A recent study, Diabetes in sub-Saharan Africa, led by the University of Yaoundé in Cameroon and published in the British medical journal, The Lancet, said inadequate donor attention and national prevention programmes were creating a global "public health and socioeconomic time bomb".

Reform of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) is becoming more urgent as controversy over Zimbabwe's diamond sales pushes the international initiative designed to stem the flow of conflict diamonds towards paralysis. At the KPCS meeting in Tel Aviv, Israel, on 21-24 June, Zimbabwe dominated proceedings, and delegates were given a rude reminder of the growing disillusionment when diamond business magnate Martin Rapaport embarked on a three-day hunger strike to protest against "corrupt governments [that] have turned the KP on its head; instead of eliminating human rights violations the KP is legitimizing them".

Tens of thousands of Congolese Tutsi refugees living in Rwanda for more than a decade are preparing to return to North Kivu province. But longstanding and unresolved tensions over land threaten to upset their homecoming. More than 53,000 registered refugees have been living across the border since the chaos surrounding the 1997 ousting of President Mobutu Sese Seko by Rwanda- and Uganda-backed rebels.

Ongoing clashes between various armed groups in western Sudan have intensified since May, displacing 725 households from Jebel Mara to Hassa Hissa camp in Zalingei, West Darfur, aid workers said. An inter-agency verification exercise, conducted on 27 June, followed an appeal by the joint UN-African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) to the parties in the conflict to cease hostilities. On 24 June, UNAMID reported casualties in clashes between the Rizeigat and Misseriya communities in Bugulay and Tereij villages, 28km southeast of Zalingei.

The spread of digital technologies in the Middle East and Africa has generated the view that 'new media' open up political spaces for dissent, activism and emancipation. Cambridge University's Centre of Governance and Human Rights is convening a conference entitled 'New media, alternative politics' (14-16 October 2010) that will bring together researchers, academics, activists, journalists and policy makers to discuss whether and how new media empower an alternative politics and mobilise political change. A call for papers (and presentations) is now out, and can be found at

A major report that reveals how vulnerable the internet as we know it is, has just been published in French and Spanish by two global civil society organisations. The annual report, called Global Information Society Watch (GISWatch), was in November by the Association for Progressive Communications and Dutch-funder Hivos. GISWatch 2009 is entitled Access to online information and knowledge – advancing human rights and democracy.

Binti Omar waits anxiously for her HIV test in a tent erected as part of a testing drive being conducted by the Council of Imams and Preachers of Kenya (CIPK) in the coastal city of Mombasa; Omar is accompanied by her fiancé, Abubakar Ismael, and his two wives. "I'm about to be part of Abu's larger family, so we found it necessary to come here and get ourselves tested so that we can plan our future much better," Omar said. "Life nowadays is so risky... It would be good for us all to get to know each other's HIV status."

When Sabah Ismail Ali, a social worker in Somalia's self-declared republic of Somaliland, first started working with children, truancy and aggression were common, especially among children from families with problems such as extreme poverty and displacement. "I started off as a child protection officer, then I later trained as a psycho-social worker, qualifying by December 2007. I realized right from the start that many children who showed aggression were being caned by teachers who had no idea of the social problems such children were dealing with."

As part of its Network of networks project for a free and open internet, the APC is conducting a survey to examine how funding is changing within the ICT for social change arena. The survey will also examine the possibilities for creating an annual civil society summit on ICT public policy. The survey only takes about ten minutes and results will be shared with the community.

New laws should be in place in Europe by the end of this year obliging timber importers to ensure the wood they buy has been legally produced - and Ghana will become the first exporting country to be able to offer such a guarantee. The timber trade is a huge business. In Cameroon, where timber exports rank second only to oil in value, it is worth more than US$700 million a year. Indonesia earns nearly $3 billion a year from wood and wood products, but Greenpeace says that as much of 80 percent of the logging in Indonesia is illegal.

Small-holder farmers, who make up almost all of Africa’s agriculture sector, need more support to reduce over-dependence on increasingly costly food imports, states a new report. Policymakers should “strengthen the competitiveness of small-holder farmers, thus avoiding a rural exodus that would put pressure on the cities and lead to more food imports”, according to the 2010 technology and innovation report by the UN Conference on Trade and Development.

As the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) transforms into a stabilization force, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has stressed that the world body’s main priority of protecting civilians will continue. Last month, the Security Council passed a resolution authorizing the withdrawal of up to 2,000 UN military personnel – from an existing strength of 19,815 – by today from areas where security has improved enough to allow their removal.

Despite holding several meetings, aimed at fixing a date for the often-postponed elections, Guinean authorities have again failed to come up with a date. The latest in the series of meetings, involving President Laurent Gbagbo, his major opponents, Henri Konan Bedie, Allasane Dramane Ouattara, the representative of the mediator (Blaise Compaore), officials of the country's independent electoral commission (CEI), was held Wednesday in the capital, Abidjan, and it also failed to come up with a date.