The Oxford University Refugee Studies Centre (RSC) course on statelessness and international law will take place from 16–18 April 2010 and is intended for experienced practitioners and graduate researchers. It draws on the expertise of RSC staff and associates, as well as members of external institutions, including UNHCR. Registration is now open. The for this course is available to download (PDF).

African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD), a project of the CGIAR Gender & Diversity Program, is now accepting applications for its 2010 fellowships. The deadline for all applications is 22 March 2010.

Eight months after the end of joint military operations by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda, many parts of Orientale Province, in northeastern DRC, are still in turmoil, says the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Attacks on civilians by Ugandan rebels and local militias have left 340,000 people displaced, and 30,000 refugees have fled to Sudan.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has sentenced to 15 years imprisonment Tharcisse Muvunyi, a former Lieutenant Colonel in the Rwandan army, for direct and public incitement to commit genocide in 1994. Presiding Judge Dennis C.M. Byron, assisted by judges Gberdao Gustave Kam and Vagn Joensen, Thursday also ordered 57-year-old Muvunyi to remain in the custody of the Tribunal pending his transfer to a country where he will serve the sentence.

Amnesty International (AI) has called on the Chadian government to allow UN peacekeepers to continue protecting 250,000 refugees from Darfur and 170,000 internally-displaced people (IDPs) in the east of the country.

Local chiefs and Kenyan officials have prevented a planned "gay wedding" in Kenya - where such unions are illegal. The marriage had been due to take place in a private villa near the resort of Mombasa but chiefs took action after it was reported in the local press.

The Zuma administration has clearly taken a far harder line on crime, in accord with its populist approach. Central to this is the direct threat to 'get' criminals. Invoking this 'shoot to kill' philosophy has already impacted tragically on innocent lives, writes Glenn Ashton.

Before the opening of the main conference at eLearning Africa, pre-conference meetings, seminars and workshops will be held on Wednesday, May 26th, 2010, offering participants the opportunity to learn a new skill, enhance their knowledge or gather information about a specific topic. Such activities are not only excellent opportunities in themselves, but are also valuable pre-conference networking activities in their own right.

Despite fighting that has displaced hundreds of thousands of people in Mogadishu, health workers have fanned out across the war-torn capital of Somalia in a three-month United Nations-backed campaign that has immunized nearly 300,000 women of child-bearing age and 288,000 children.

African leaders must cast aside a tendency to "manage poverty" and instead pursue basic economic growth if they want to improve the lives of their people, a leading regional development expert has said.

Each year, the May 18 Memorial Foundation announces this award in a spirit of solidarity with those working towards democracy. The award goes to one individual or organization who has contributed to the promotion and advancement of human rights, democracy and peace in their work.

On February 3, 2010, the Brazilian Congress approved the Constitutional Amendment Project (PEC in Portuguese) 047/2003, to incorporate the Right to Food as a fundamental right in the national constitution. The Right to Food will be included in article 6 of Brazil’s supreme law that already contemplates other social rights such as the right to work, health, education, and social security.

Schools in Dongo, Equateur Province, in western Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the scene of inter-ethnic clashes from October to December 2009, are still closed because parents are worried about security, despite a call for their reopening by the provincial government.

Jabulile Dlamini* is sweet sixteen and has never been kissed. And she is not expecting to be kissed any time soon or to even receive any gifts this Valentine’s Day.

The 2010 session of the CODESRIA sub-regional methodological workshops will explore the conditions for the employment and validation of qualitative perspectives in African contexts. To this end, the workshops will be open to all the social research discipline. The East and Southern Africa edition of the methodology workshops is designed for doctoral and masters students and young, mid-career African researchers resident in East and Southern Africa.

For the Foresight journal’s Special Issue on the theme “Is Africa the land of the future?”, we invite papers that look at the potential conditions and the roles of Africa and Africans in the future world. In addition to the exploration of possible futures, the theme of the Special Issue also calls for considerations for robust policies and creative strategies that could ensure sustained transformation within the African continent.

Soldiers have been deployed to help restore order after a resurgent communal violence in Nigeria's northern Gombe state has claimed six lives and left many more injured, the News Agency of Nigeria reported Thursday, quoting a Nigeria Red Cross official.

Nigeria's Vice President Goodluck Jonathan has assumed office as the country's Acting President, after the two chambers of the National Assembly (parliament) passed separate res olutions that ended 78 days without anyone being in charge of Africa's most populous nation,.

The international peasant's movement La Via Campesina welcomes the preliminary UN recognition of the role and rights of peasants and small farmers in the world. The Fourth Session of the Advisory Committee of the UN Human Rights Council, who met in Geneva on 25-29 January 2010, adopted the report of the Advisory Committee titled “Discrimination in the Context of Right to Food” (A/HRC/AC/4/2).

Opposition party members are facing increasing threats, attacks, and harassment in advance of Rwanda's August 2010 presidential election, Human Rights Watch has said. Human Rights Watch urged the government to investigate all such incidents and to ensure that opposition activists are able to go about their legitimate activities without fear.