Torture, murder, arbitrary arrests, and violence. During the last year, 256 reports of human rights violations have been reported in the occupied territory of Western Sahara.

They point out that organizations located in the communities they serve have the trust, networks, and cultural understanding to accomplish what international organizations cannot.

Millions of people around the world are burning with outrage under imperialist oppression. Islamic fundamentalism tragically channels this explosive discontent into mindless violence that offers nothing positive. This nightmare will only get worse, unless people fight to take their societies on a radically different path.

The conference aims to examine the past and current approaches to peace, security and development in Africa in light of confronting the new challenges and the opportunities offered. Key themes focus on the emerging security challenges, technology and innovative approaches to peace and security and celebrating African successes and development.

With “Food Safety” being the theme of this year’s World Health Day on April 7, 37 laureates of the Right Livelihood Award from across the world have endorsed a declaration on the future of nutrition, denouncing Golden Rice and Genetically Modified Bananas as “false miracles” to achieving food security. Golden Rice is a genetically engineered rice variety offered by GM proponents as a cure for Vitamin A deficiency (VAD), while GM bananas are proposed to compensate for a lack of Vitamin A and iron.

A petition has been launched demanding that French universities not succumb to pressure to ban anti-apartheid activist and scholar Prof Farid Esack.

By Dhiru Soni, Ahmed Shaikh, Anis Karodia and Joseph David
2015-03-16, Issue 718

There is serious concern about the protection of migrants in South Africa, especially African migrants. It seems that people from other parts of the continent can be killed with impunity.

A third woman has reported Standard Group journalist and PEN Kenya Secretary General Tony Mochama to Nairobi's Central Police Station for alleged sexual assault. The alleged assault occurred on September 21st 2014, at the National Museum, during the Westgate Memorial Service of Storymoja Hay Festival. The OB Number is 74/17/3/2015.

Farmer organizations, indigenous groups, trade unions and other civil society organizations, under the umbrella of Our Land Our Business, call World Bank’s annual Conference on Land and Poverty a sham.

The Pan African Congress was held 21 years after the previous one. Its resolutions capture the Congress’s desire to re-ignite the Pan African spirit, enthuse commitment to our African identity and inject energy into the Pan-African Movement.

This week the government of Joseph Kabila has been arresting young people in sustained efforts to frustrate their organizing for change.

The Network in Defense of Humanity say the US threat against Venezuela is explicitly a declaration of war against the Bolivarian Revolution and a step forward in the US escalation to crush the anti-imperialist voices.

A coalition of 76 civil society organisations from within and outside Africa has written to the African Union seeking immediate publication of the report of the AU Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan (AUCISS), whose findings they believe will make a critical contribution to the the peace process in the war-torn nation.

Leading human rights organisations including Crisis Coalition, Zimrights and the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights have expressed their utter sense of shock at this latest development.

The Campaign for Democratic and Workers’ Rights (CDWR), Osun State Chapter hereby calls on the authorities and Prof. ‘Tale Omole-led administration of Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife to reinstate six student activists currently under politically motivated suspension.

The students’ body says the unsanitary conditions of school toilets in poor urban neighboruhoods and in rural areas have remained unchanged 21 years after the end of apartheid.

Movement for Social Progress calls for full investigation of Ebola funds, free health care for all citizens and nation to properly remember medical personal who died fighting Ebola.

The exclusive meeting in London and the focus of the report on how private interests can profit from essential life processes in African agriculture exposes the agendas of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID. It is disappointing that the African Union is willing to endorse such blatantly neo-colonialist plans.

The November issue of the International Refugee Rights Initiative’s Refugee Legal Aid Newsletter (formerly the Fahamu Refugee Legal Aid Newsletter) is out. Find the full newsletter .