This web-only AfricaFocus Bulletin contains brief excerpts on the role of wind in the world energy economy from the chapter on renewable energy in the new book Plan B 4.0 by Lester Brown.

Taking practical measures to realize the rights of the child is the greatest gift that we can give to our future generations, said High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay as the Convention on the Rights of the Child turns 20 years old. A two-day commemoration is taking place in Geneva on 8 and 9 October to kick off some five weeks of activities world-wide ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Convention on 20 November.

This is the declaration issued by the Heads of State and Government of Africa and South America, meeting in the Second Africa-South America Summit (II ASA) in Nueva Esparta State, Isla de Margarita, Venezuela on 26 and 27 September of 2009.

More than one-million babies are stillborn during labour every year – 98% in low- and middle-income countries - yet global policy discussions around these largely silent deaths are mostly nonexistent. On top of this another 904 000 babies die soon after birth due to birth complications, closely linked to almost half of the world’s 536 000 maternal deaths.

The University of Oxford, Department of Continuing Education is now accepting applications for the Master's in International Human Rights Law 2010-11 entryThe aim of the degree programme is to train and support future leaders in the field of international human rights law. A central objective of the course is to ensure that participants not only know but can also use human rights law. The curriculum places roughly equal emphasis on the substance of human rights law, its implementation, and the development of human rights advocacy skills. Application deadlines: 20 November 2009, 22 January 2010, 12 March 2010.

The push to reinvent the International Monetary Fund took a significant step forward this week, with nations agreeing to a rough timetable to come up with plans to reform its governance and expand its role in the global economy. The agreements, reached during the IMF's semiannual meeting in Istanbul that ends Wednesday, come as the mission of the 65-year-old Washington-based institution is re-examined in the wake of the global financial crisis

In this week's emerging powers news, Stephen Marks looks at claims by Robert Fisk that Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading, a new report from the IMF suggesting that emerging and developing countries are leading the recovery from the global financial crisis, and demands by Africa's poorest nations for representation in the G20

Ufahamu* has been an important forum for the publication of materials addressing Africa and the African Diaspora for more than 30 years. Named after the Swahili word for comprehension, understanding or being, UFAHAMU is committed views about social issues, addressing both the general reader and the scholar. Since its establishment in 1970, UFAHAMU continues to challenge and correct misconceptions about Africa, thereby creating relevant criteria for African Studies.

The application for the 2010 session of the annual Human Rights Advocates Program (HRAP) at Columbia University is now available. HRAP is designed to prepare proven human rights leaders from the Global South and marginalized communities in the U.S. to participate in national and international policy debates on globalization by building their skills, knowledge, and contacts. The Program features a four-month residency at Columbia University in New York City with a structured curriculum of advocacy, networking, skills-building, and academic coursework.

The transnational corporations are our common enemy; they constitute the present form of capital which exercises control over our economies. In the rural areas we are witnessing a savage offensive by capital and by the transnational corporations on agriculture and natural resources. It is a privatisation war of plunder directed against peasants and indigenous people, a privatisation robbery of the land, biodiversity, water, seeds, production, and agribusiness trade.

This report on Integrated Resource Recovery (IRR), written by Justin Carter for the Global Environmental Institute (GEI), outlines various components of a conceptual design that attempts to integrate community and industrial processes with ecological design. It is intended that by extracting the relevant parts of this approach, IRR-specific guidelines can be created that will serve the IPP program’s overall objectives. Much of what is described here is done with one of the Global Environmental Institute’s (GEI’s) core mandates in mind.

Specific home and host-country policies, cheap land, the lack of a legal infrastructure, investment opportunities and the promise of quick profit returns are the driving factors behind land acquisitions throughout Africa, argues Nikolaj Nielsen in this week's Pambazuka News.

Salma Soliman reviews 'Global Unions, Global Business', by Richard Croucher and Elizabeth Cotton. Engaging with key themes such as the challenges for trade unionism presented by the growth in 'informal' employment, Soliman lauds a leading work on the central question of how imbalances between multinationals and employees can be redressed to the benefit of workers around the world.

More than half of HIV-positive pregnant women in low- and middle-income countries continue to go without life-saving anti-retroviral medication that could prevent transmission of the virus to their unborn children, according to a new report, Towards Universal Access. "Although there is increasing emphasis on women and children in the global HIV/AIDS response, the disease continues to have a devastating impact on their health, livelihood and survival," Ann Veneman, executive director of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), said in a statement.

Aid for thousands of survivors of an earthquake in the Indonesia port of Padang began trickling in on Friday, but rescue efforts were hampered by power blackouts and a lack of heavy equipment to shift masonry. The United Nations said more than 1,000 had been killed in Wednesday's quake in and around the city of 900,000, which sits atop one of the world's most active seismic fault lines along the Pacific "Ring of Fire".

The Civil Society and Outreach Unit of the United Nations Secretariat's Division for Social Policy and Development invites organizations to take part in a survey on the current situation that local, national and international civil society organizations (CSOs) are facing as a result of the global economic and environmental crises. The results of the study will be published for advocacy use of CSOs and also made available at the next session of the UN Commission on Social Development.

The top United Nations official in Cote d’Ivoire warned today that technical difficulties may adversely affect the timeline for the country’s long-awaited presidential elections, which were to have been held as far back as 2005, and are now scheduled for 29 November. Young-Jin Choi, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative and head of the UN Operation in Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI), said that two months have already been lost, but he noted some successful political developments, such as the establishment of mobile court hearings across the country and the end of voter registration.

Nigerian militants said on Tuesday they opposed a bid by a Chinese energy group to secure 6bn barrels of crude reserves, comparing the potential new investors to “locusts”. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta told the Financial Times that the record of Chinese companies in other African counties suggested “an entry into the oil industry in Nigeria will be a disaster for the oil-bearing communities”.

A very successful Second Edition of the Price Moot Court took place in Oxford from 18 - 21 March 2009. Teams from Malaysia, India, China, Jordan, Europe and the United States competed, and many internationally recognized media law experts acted as judges, including Judge Dean Spielmann from the European Court of Human Rights, Ms Siobhain Butterworth from The Guardian, Ms Gugu Moyo from the International Bar Association, Mr Mark Stephens from Finers Stephens Innocent and Sir Louis Blom-Cooper QC. The finals of the Third Edition of the competition will be taking place in Oxford in March 2010.

When is a government guilty of mass murder? If a government knowingly allows hundreds of thousands of people to die unnecessarily, what is its responsibility? Is indirect guilt, or guilt by omission, less culpable than direct guilt or guilt by commission? All these fraught questions now arise because Apotex, the Canadian generic drug giant, has sent its final shipment of inexpensive AIDS medication to Africa. The company says that the five-year-old federal legislation meant to facilitate this process is impossible to work with, and the Harper government refuses to fix it, writes Gerald Caplan.