Many refugee Somali parents are not sending their children to South Africa's public schools because they are intimidated by the official processes required to get their children into school and because of the discrimination foreign pupils frequently experienced there. Abdulkadir Khaleif, a representative of the Somali Association of South Africa in the Western Cape, told the Mail & Guardian that the documents schools required before admitting Somali children had often 'been lost because of the war' back home. He was one of about 80 participants at a two-day workshop in Cape Town held by the University of Johannesburg's Centre for Education Rights and Transformation.

Social media has gone mainstream in South Africa, with both individuals and businesses embracing the available platforms and the average age of users steadily increasing as more people become connected and networks mature. These and other findings were released in a study by Fuseware and World Wide Worx, titled South African Social Media Landscape 2011. Homegrown messaging application MXit and Facebook are the most popular choices of individual internet activity, while Twitter has seen the most growth in the past year.

George Clooney gets clobbered in an activist takedown of his advertisements for Nescafe’s Nespresso brand, reports 'The advertisement – featuring a Clooney lookalike – is aimed at getting Nescafe to commit to using only fairly traded coffee throughout its Nespresso and other product ranges. They were commissioned by Swiss non-profit Solidar Suisse, which undertakes humanitarian and development work in 12 countries.' Watch the advert through the link provided.

As the controversy over the plan by the Nigerian government to remove fuel subsidy deepens, the main opposition Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) rejected the plan. In a statement issued in Lagos and obtained by PANA, ACN called the proposal to withdraw fuel subsidy 'the handiwork of those propelled by the philosophy of the 'Washington Consensus' of rolling back the frontiers of the state.' Under the plan announced by the government, the price of a litre of fuel will go up from 65 naira (4 US cents) to as high as 150 naira (about US$1) from next year.

Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe has suggested the ruling party may yet heed calls from the media to write a public interest defence into the contested Protection of State Information Bill. Media organisations and civil rights groups have vowed to launch a Constitutional Court challenge to the legislation if it were passed in its present form.

Malawi has increased fuel prices by an average 27 per cent, a move likely to trigger broader inflation in the southern African nation that has already seen violent protests this year because of the dire state of the economy. Fuel shortages and the soaring cost of imported goods caused unprecedented demonstrations in July against President Bingu wa Mutharika, whose security forces killed 20 people in an ensuing crackdown.

A new policy brief faults prominent institutions and drug companies like Pfizer, Columbia University, Johns Hopkins University, and Population Council, for their involvement in unethical and illegal human experimentation in Africa. The report is titled 'Non-Consensual Research in Africa: The Outsourcing of Tuskegee' in reference to the illegal human experiment conducted in Tuskegee, Alabama, between 1932 and 1972 by the US Public Health Service. In that experiment, some 600 impoverished African-American men were observed in a study on the progression of untreated syphilis. Some of the men were intentionally infected with the disease and all of them were denied the cure.

Prominent Gaza human rights lawyer Raji Sourani has called South African judge Richard Goldstone a liar, following recent comments he made in the New York Times regarding apartheid in Israel. Speaking at a Palestine Solidarity Campaign event, the founder of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza lashed out at Goldstone for saying apartheid did not exist in Israel. Last month, Goldstone criticised the Russell Tribunal in an opinion piece in the New York Times, entitled 'Israel and the apartheid slander'. He wrote that there was no apartheid in Israel, and called the suggestion a 'particularly pernicious and enduring canard'.

'We don’t want South Africa to be the death of Kyoto Protocol,' Minister of Environment, Edwina Molewa said recently, referring to the outcomes aspired to by the incoming South African COP17 Presidency from 28 November to 9 December 2011. But what are the real chances of life for the Kyoto and what are the stakes if we lose it? The best bet, Molewa concedes is to take key elements of the Protocol and build it into a single new agreement, with a comprehensive united approach. The key issue will be whether the positive or flawed elements of Kyoto will be retained.

AWID has just launched its 4th global survey 'Where is the Money for Women’s Rights?' (WITM) This one of a kind survey aims to collect data on the trends, amount, and sustainability of funding available for women’s initiatives and organizations globally. AWID is asking for help in collecting this important information by filling out the survey and by spreading the word. 'Your participation is crucial if we are to develop our collective analysis of funding currently available for women’s rights organizing and in order to grow the resource pool available to women’s movements in the future.'

JK4, otherwise known as Edagberi/Betterland community is a community in Ahaoda West local government area of Rivers State, Nigeria. It is located along the Taylor Creek, sharing boundaries with Biseni and Ikarama communities in Yenagoa local government area of Bayelsa State. Over forty oil wells operated by Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), several crude oil pipelines and Shell’s Adibawa Flow Station are located within the community. Community leaders have complained in the past that Shell has not been fair to the community in terms of amenities, even though so much wealth is pumped out from the community soil daily. Without pipe borne water the people have been drinking from the Taylor Creek that has often been polluted by crude oil spills. Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria heard of a protest by women in the community (10 October 2011) and promptly visited the community to compile the reports available at this link.

Just over three weeks before the presidential election on 28 November, Reporters Without Borders and Journalist in Danger (JED), its partner organisation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, have written to Adolphe Lumanu Mulenda Bwana N’Sefu, the deputy prime minister and interior minister. The two organisations, concerned about the increase in violence against media workers since the start of the election campaign, are asking him to do all he can to ensure journalists are able to carry out their work without being targeted.

Research on drug development for neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), tuberculosis and malaria will receive a boost from a major initiative launched by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). 'Re:Search' will provide free access to research on medicines, vaccines and diagnostics, based on patents and research held by a consortium of eight major global pharmaceutical companies, the US National Institutes of Health and other organisations. But only the 49 least developed countries will be able to get a free licence to develop products based on the initiative, a limitation which has been criticised by key organisations in the field such as the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) and the aid organisation Doctors Without Borders.

The new school year began at the end of October in Côte d’Ivoire but is getting off to slow start as students struggle to return to study after post-election violence disrupted education in many schools for months. In the west of the country along the Liberian border, schools between the villages Blolequin and Toulepleu are still closed, and many children have still not returned home after fleeing to Liberia or other parts of Côte d’Ivoire with their families, said Paul Yao-Yao, coordinator of Save the Children’s education programme in Abidjan.

This video is a collage of comments made by US President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State Hilary Clinton on protests in Libya, Egypt and Syria. Meanwhile, footage of police action against protestors in New York City is edited into the collage with the intention of showing the hypocrisy of the US administration.

Young supporters of Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe stoned and beat backers of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai on Sunday, blocking a planned rally of his Movement for Democratic Change party. 'Unfortunately we are unable to do this rally because of incredible acts of wanton violence, malicious violence that we have suffered at the hands of ZANU-PF this morning,' Tendai Biti, MDC secretary general, told a news conference. Biti said seven MDC activists were admitted to hospital, while five party vehicles were damaged.

This PressTV video is a news feature on the Russell Tribunal on Palestine that took place recently in Cape Town. It features interviews with Desmond Tutu and Cynthia McKinney. The tribunal is an international people's forum created by a large group of citizens involved in the promotion of peace and justice in the Middle East and is a public awareness campaign.

18 November sees a discussion on the intersections between sex, power, masculinity, and femininity with human rights activists and scholar, Dr. Sylvia Tamale, as she signs her new book. This groundbreaking volume 'African Sexualities: A Reader', the first of its kind written by African activists themselves, aims to inspire a new generation of students and teachers to study, reflect and gain fresh and critical insights into the complex issues of gender and sexuality. It opens a space - particularly for young people – to think about African sexualities in different ways.

'We call on all farmers, workers and the landless and all social movements to join us in Durban and everywhere in the world on the 5th of December 2011 to demand a change of the entire capitalist system. The fight against climate change is a fight against neoliberal capitalism, landlessness, dispossession, hunger, poverty and inequality. The crisis of the planet requires that we take direct action. During the agro-ecology and food sovereignty day we will have public protest marches to the conference of the polluters, actions against multinational corporations like Monsanto undermining our seed sovereignty, which will cuminate in a massive Assembly of the Oppressed to discuss ways of ending this unjust system.'

Activists are calling on South Africa to take the lead in moves for a 'Robin Hood' tax for health. Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) have pointed out that as the only African country in the G20, South Africa had a role to play in ensuring that a portion of the FTT went to health and not bailing out banks. The FTT is not another tax on working people, but on financial institutions only – it could cover any financial transaction between banks or be more specific and cover currency exchanges between banks.