2010-07-22 On 21 July, when ruling on a case where 21 victims of torture at Nyayo House had approached the High Court for justice, Lady Justice Hannah Okwengu found the State agents culpable of having violated human rights and fundamental freedoms with impunity. While the victims filed the case way back in 2004, it was a vindication that even if the wheels of justice grind slowly, they still deliver justice and reparations to those afflicted by human rights abuses. The Judgment is a citadel for the defence of human rights in Kenya in many ways.

FEATURES – Khadija Sharife explores the diamond industry – Al-Shabab a product of context, says Yohannes Woldemariam – Cameron Duodu pays tribute to Basil Davidson, journalist and historian – Caroline Ifeka on AFRICOM, the kleptocratic state and under-class militancy + more COMMENT & ANALYSIS – Maurice Namwira discusses human rights activism in the DRC – Oluwole Onemola calls on fellow Nigerians to challenge politicians – Chi Mgbako on the Rwandan government's use of genocide legacy + more PAN-AFRICAN POSTCARD – Horace Campbell on the social sciences as a military battleground + more ADVOCACY & CAMPAIGNS – Anti-xenophobia campaign launched BOOKS & ARTS – Camilla Toulmin's 'Climate Change in Africa' reviewed AFRICAN WRITERS’ CORNER – Amira Ali's poem 'Speak no more – let us just make music'ANNOUNCEMENTS: Judgment on Nyayo house torture victims ZIMBABWE UPDATE: ‘War vets’ want members to be apolitical AU MONITOR: CSO recommendations on peace and security WOMEN & GENDER: Uganda ratifies Women’s Protocol CONFLICT AND EMERGENCIES: Resurgent Nigeria violence leaves 7 dead HUMAN RIGHTS: Bushmen lose right to Kalahari water well REFUGEES AND FORCED MIGRATION: Somaliland clashes displace thousands SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: Africa Youth Forum 2010 EMERGING POWERS NEWS: Emerging powers news roundup ELECTIONS AND GOVERNANCE: Nigeria’s Senate moves poll forward HEALTH & HIV/AIDS: AU Summit urged to uphold health committments EDUCATION: 2010 Distinguished Africanist Awards LGBTI: ECOSOC opens the UN to LGBT voices DEVELOPMENT: Bullish about Africa’s agricultural future ENVIRONMENT: Eco-Lens at Durban International Film Festivals LAND & LAND RIGHTS: DRC Gold mine to displace 15,000 FOOD JUSTICE: Niger on the brink of collapse MEDIA AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION: Calls to make journalism safer INTERNET & TECHNOLOGY: 3rd Uganda National Internet Governance Forum eNEWSLETTERS & MAILING LISTS: AfricaFocus: Africa: Multilingual education pays off JOBS: Fahamu seeks new executive director PLUS: Fundraising & useful resources, publications, courses, seminars and workshops *Pambazuka News now has a Del.icio.us page, where you can view the various websites that we visit to keep our fingers on the pulse of Africa! Visit http://del.icio.us/pambazuka_news - http://del.icio.us/pambazuka_news

2010-07-22 - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rough_diamond.jpg‘Given the context of blood diamonds, the real conflict rests not with militias mining diamonds’, but with ‘the battle to control markets and pricing’, argues Khadija Sharife, in an assessment of the structure of the international diamond industry. For developing country governments ‘at the helm of diamond-producing economies, corporate control over diamond markets means limited choices and fewer opportunities to collect equitable revenue from diamond resources’, says Sharife.

2010-07-21 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/securitywatch/3170546216/The rise of Al-Shabab in Somalia must be seen in the context of decades of mismanagement, dictatorship and abuse, writes Yohannes Woldemariam. Following Ethiopia’s US-backed intervention in 2006, the ascendancy of Somalia’s moderate UIC (Union of Islamic Courts) was blocked and some 300,000 people were displaced, in the wake of which ‘the Al-Shabab extremists triumphed as a hegemonic force’ from within the UIC. And as the dust settles on last week’s Kampala bombing, Woldemariam contends, the governments of US allies Ethiopia and Uganda are once again seeking to capitalise on the tragedy for their own ends, ‘with Obama playing right into it’.

2010-07-23 An organisation representing former freedom fighters says it wants its members to be apolitical and is fighting to have this included in the new constitution. The Zimbabwe Liberation Platform, ZLP, a liberal organisation that claims to be “a progressive section of former independence war fighters championing democracy and social equality” told The Zimbabwean that war veterans needed to regain their independence to avoid being manipulated by selfish politicians.

2010-07-23 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.

2010-07-23 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).

2010-07-23 It is both preventable and treatable, but obstetric fistula plagues the lives of thousands of women in Kenya every year, leaving them incontinent and ostracized. Here are some reasons why: Information deficit Lack of reproductive health education means there is widespread ignorance of the basic facts about fistula - a tear in the birth canal caused by prolonged obstructed labour, or by sexual abuse, surgical trauma, gynaecological cancers and related radiotherapy treatment. According to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), there are 3,000 new cases per year in Kenya, with about one to two fistulas per 1,000 deliveries.

2010-07-22 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/isawnyu/4546289910/Basil Davidson wrote so passionately about Africa it was assumed he was an African, writes Cameron Duodu, paying tribute to the late historian, whose work ‘enriched the world's understanding of Africa’. Davidson was ‘not only an inspiration to progressives inside academia, but was an important resource for African leaders themselves’, says Duodu, at a time when the majority of ‘histories’ depicted Africa as ‘a land full of barbarous peoples “until the whiteman came”’.

2010-07-22 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/unnamed/47093936/The arrest of three journalists in Cote d’Ivoire for publishing a leaked report on alleged corruption in the coffee and cocoa trade, and the death of Pius Njawe, Cameroonian journalist and founder of newspaper Le Messager, are among the key stories covered in this week’s round-up of the African blogosphere.

Steel vices, clenched fists and closing walls (part I) 2010-07-22 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewheavens/52673789/It seems the concern for the liberation of the oppressed injected into US foreign policy is merely a muted growl from a seemingly ‘toothless and clawless (paper) tiger’, writes Alemayehu G. Mariam. Mariam voices the frustrations of those in Ethiopia who lay witness to the empty human rights rhetoric of US foreign policy makers, and urges the US to back up its big human rights talk with big human rights action in the country so to avoid its descent as a silent witness to the crimes of dictatorship.

2010-07-22 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewheavens/162811544/With a focus on the role of ‘free and fair elections’ in promoting democracy, Zaya Yeebo takes a look at how electoral politics are shaping up across the continent. ‘The important consideration for the state, the media, civil society and political parties,’ says Yeebo, ‘is to work within an African framework, and for international supporters and interlopers to recognise the local reality, and not impose conditions based on geopolitical and economic interest.’

2010-07-22 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/usarmyafrica/3658816625/The ‘War on Terror’ has provided US-NATO commands in Stuttgart and Brussels with justification for securitising ‘dangerous’ West African Muslim states, writes Caroline Ifeka. But competing with China to control strategic resources from oil to subterranean water around the Sahara and Sahel, they’re also quietly manoeuvring leases to exploit resources vital to US and EU capital accumulation. The principal cause of youth militancy around ethnicity and Islamic reformism in these regions, says Ifeka, is the ruling classes’ failure to share the rental incomes from – traditionally – community-owned resources. Community capacity building and restoration of a sense of agency and ownership rather than the militarisation of development, says Ifeka, is better strategy for diminishing discontent and building trust in democracy among the youth.

2010-07-20 Gado's latest cartoon…

2010-07-21 Some five years after the assassination of Pascal Kabungulu, formerly secretary general of DRC human rights group Héritiers de la Justice, Maurice Namwira, the organisation’s executive secretary, discusses activism, impunity from justice and Heritier’s work with Christian Aid with Emma Pomfret.

2010-07-21 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/satanoid/4184107987/Nigeria needs to draw upon its own political and organising traditions and not simply mimic Western models, writes Oluwole Onemola. Not only does this ‘shoe’ not fit, Onemola argues, trying to put it on has allowed exploitative politicians to enrich themselves to the complete detriment of the people they represent. But, the author stresses, ‘[t]hey are not the corrupt ones, we are, because we have let them plunder away at our national pride unchallenged, with only the faintest of castigations.’

2010-07-22 - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rwanda_genocide_wanted_poster_2-20-03.jpgWith Rwanda’s presidential elections scheduled for August, Chi Mgbako looks at the country's post-genocide government and argues that the Kagame administration is using the memory of the genocide to hold onto power. Highlighting the government’s censorship of the media and its alleged involvement in silencing the opposition, Mgbako argues that such actions trivialise the memory of those who lost their lives in the genocide and questions how this will help Rwanda achieve national unity.

2010-07-21 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/44085287@N05/4055841336/Following the publication of racist references to migrants in South Africa in a London Review of Books blog by R.W. Johnson, a collection of writers, academics and publishers demands a public apology.

2010-07-21 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/44222307@N00/1595376479/Narrated by Maina Kiai, the film 'Clearing the Air' - http://vimeo.com/13242621 is a short film about Kenya's draft constitution designed to stimulate debate and discussion among Kenyans in the run-up to the 4 August referendum.

2010-07-22 New initiatives at the United States’ Department of Defense indicate that the militarisation of the social sciences is high on the agenda of its forward strategy for fighting wars, cautions Horace Campbell. With academics being encouraged to produce intelligence on Africa, ‘[i]ndependent and progressive scholars and activists must intensify the peace work so that there is a new social science infrastructure that can work hand in hand with the revolutionary foment that is brewing’ on the continent says Campbell.