Sudanese authorities should immediately release Hawa Abdallah or formally charge her with a credible, recognized offense, Human Rights Watch has said. Abdallah, who was arrested on 6 May, is a community activist from the Abu Shouk displaced persons camp in North Darfur and a staff member of the United Nations/African Union peacekeeping mission (UNAMID). On 8 May, Sudan's state news service published an article accusing Abdallah of 'christianising' children in displaced persons camps and of links to a rebel group.

After the arrest in the city of Abidjan on 11 April 2011, of Laurent Gbagbo, former president of Cote d'Ivoire, and his wife Simone, some confusion remains regarding the process that led to his capture. Website Abidjan.net has published a series of videos entitled, 'The film of Laurent Gbagbo's arrest: New elements', divided into four videos of 10-14 minutes each. The videos, some of them included in this Global Voices post, show the sequence of events of the Gbagbos' arrest, from the bombing of their residence by French Special Forces, to the transfer of the Gbagbo family to the Hotel du Golf.

Egypt's transitional government moved quickly to defuse tensions after Muslim-Christian clashes in Cairo left 12 dead and cast a cloud over hopes for peaceful post-revolutionary change. Angry demonstrations erupted in the capital after a Coptic church in the Imbaba neighbourhood was burned down on Saturday night. Military police separated opposing camps at one protest reminiscent of the dramatic events that overthrew the regime in February.

Cocoa speculators are among the few to benefit from the crisis in Côte d'Ivoire, as disruptions to the supply chain drive up global prices of the commodity, writes Khadija Sharife.

This brief available from the website of the Refugee Studies Centre analyses the challenges and opportunities - after 35 years of protracted displacement and encampment - for the Sahrawi refugees, their political representatives and international actors. It calls for a careful analysis of the diverse alternative solutions to encampment in Algeria that have been adopted or proposed and of the relevant protection concerns which may arise.

At least nine unarmed Ugandans were shot dead - many of them in the back – by government security agents in the recent walk-to-work protests despite not being involved in rioting, a new report says. In its report, Human Rights Watch (HRW) called for a 'prompt, independent, and thorough investigation' into the use of lethal force by security forces to counter the protests against the rising cost of living.

EG Justice and other civil society organisations have credited UNESCO’s Executive Board for soundly rejecting a petition by the government of Equatorial Guinea to reinstate a prize funded by and named after its president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. In a decision on 9 May 2011, the Executive Board declined to consider a 4 May request by the Obiang government to reverse its prior decision and award the prize without delay. UNESCO indefinitely suspended the $3 million UNESCO Obiang Nguema Mbasogo International Prize for Research in the Life Sciences in October 2010 after an unprecedented global outcry seeking its cancellation.

The blog Africa is a Country features a new documentary called Colour Bar. It is the story of Roland Gust, who was born to a Congolese mother and a Belgian father. He grew up in Congo, believing he was white until his family decided to return to Belgium when he was twelve. The documentary follows him as he attempts to describe his past. The blog post also has a Q&A with Gust.

Baton-wielding riot police waged a brutal crackdown recently on peaceful Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) demonstrators in Bulawayo, with witnesses saying dozens of people were injured. WOZA said thousands of protesters gathered in central Bulawayo to express their frustration at the persistent daily ‘18 hour power cuts,’ when riot police arrived and began to indiscriminately beat the peaceful activists. The protest was aimed at the Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC) for what WOZA termed was daylight robbery by the utility company.

Profiling the words of Senia Bachir Abderahman, a Saharawi activist from occupied Western Sahara, Peter Kenworthy writes of the need for genuine international support for Saharawi self-determination.

More than 80 rebels and civilians were killed when insurgents attacked a camp in south Sudan, the army said on Tuesday (10 May), in the latest violence to mar preparations for the region's independence. In a separate incident, unknown attackers shot and wounded four Zambian UN peacekeepers in the contested Abyei region on Tuesday, another north/south flashpoint, the United Nations said. People from Sudan's oil-producing south overwhelmingly voted to secede in a referendum in January, promised in a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war with the north.

'The so-called International community pushes the agenda for intervention in certain countries if they are sure of receiving comfortable dividends in return, usually in the forms of natural resources or the protection of western interests,' states this article. 'But if they stand little to gain in political or economic terms, powerful countries will find themselves lacking in “political will”, never mind how grave the catastrophe maybe. To save face, they will pass powerless resolutions while abuses continue and human dignity is disgraced.' The UN will have to live up to its core values calling for the maintenance of peace and security and call an end to selective intervention if this is to change.

UN investigators in Côte d'Ivoire have determined there were at least 68 bodies spread out across 10 burial mounds in a mass grave recently discovered on a soccer field in Abidjan, the country's commercial capital. Guillaume Ngefa, the deputy director of the human rights division of the UN mission in Côte d'Ivoire, said on Monday (09 May) the victims were probably killed by pro-Laurent Gbagbo militias on 12 April, the day after the strongman was arrested.

President Rupiah Banda had no role in the alleged illegal $100 million arms procurement deal and does not owe people an explanation on the transaction, says Zambia's Defence minister. An ex-minister of defence in the Banda Cabinet, Mr George Mpombo, a fortnight ago claimed he quit his position in 2009 after he resisted pressure from the head of state to approve an arms deal with a South African firm, in which President Banda's son was the middleman. Mpombo, now aligned to main opposition leader Michael Sata and a fierce critic of President Banda, insisted the head of state constantly phoned him at the time to influence the signing of the deal and when he refused, he was scorned in Cabinet meetings, hence his resignation.

Minister Louis Farrakhan, in this video interview, discusses the role of the CIA in the conflict. He points to the contradiction of Western concern over the people of Libya, while the people of Palestine and Rwanda, for example, were ignored.

The ‘Governing Migration’ conference will draw together approximately 350 persons working in the field of forced migration (academics, practitioners and policy makers and forced migrants themselves) to debate recent research findings, hot policy topics, and pressing concerns in the field of forced migration as they relate to the fields of Governance and Justice, and to catalyse the establishment of new research, policy and practice agendas.

A national task team is to tackle hate crimes against lesbians and gays, the justice and constitutional development ministry said on Wednesday. The decision came in response to a 170,000-strong Change.org campaign calling for action on 'corrective rape', spokesperson Tlali Tlali said in a statement. It followed the murder of lesbian activist Noxolo Nogwaza, 24, who was stoned, stabbed with broken glass and gang-raped in KwaThema, Johannesburg, last month.

The seventh annual meeting of Arab national human rights organisations wrapped up in Nouakchott last week with an affirmation of the groups' role in protecting civil liberties. The 27-28 April conference focused on how rights organisations in the Arab world can help monitor and enforce international treaty obligations with respect to human rights. Participants concluded the event with a 'Nouakchott Declaration' that emphasised the role national human rights bodies have in implementing rights treaties and developing civil society.

Fahamu’s Refugee Programme is pleased to announce the , a monthly publication that provides a forum for providers of refugee legal aid. With a focus on the global South, it aims to serve the needs of legal aid providers as well as raise awareness of refugee concerns among the wider readership of Pambazuka News. You can also read the newsletter on our new blog and

In order to advise policy-makers at a critical juncture after the re-election in January 2011 of President François Bozizé of the Central African Republic (CAR), the Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict (Watchlist) and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) joined forces to conduct a four-week field mission to CAR to research and report on the situation of children affected by armed conflict. Evidence was found that at least four of the six grave violations monitored under UN Security Council Resolution 1612 (2005) are still being committed against children in CAR: the abduction of children, recruitment or use of child soldiers, attacks against schools, and the denial of humanitarian access to children. This is a link to the full report.