In this month’s issue:

Dialogue among Civilizations News
- Dialogue Among Civilizations Book Launch
- Dialogue Among Civilizations Exhibition KZNSA Gallery 2011
- Dialogue Among Civilizations Exhibition Leeds 2011
- Profile: Berry Bickle

Women for Children News
- Gabisile Nkosi Remembered (4 February 1974 - 27 May 2008)
- Youth Day 16 June 2011
- “Precious Cargo” by Ernestine White
- DUT Students view on Youth Day 2011

Break the Silence News
- 5th SA AIDS Conference - June 2011
- Art work: Yehoshua Comforting an Aids Victim by Mduduzi Xakaza

General News
- ASJ Conference
- Nelson Mandela Day – 18 July 2011

August is when Nchoo Ngochila would normally be gearing up for the traditional female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) season in her Ilchamus community in Kenya's Rift Valley Province. This year, however, Ngochila will spend her time trying to convince her community the practice should be abandoned. About a year ago, a campaign by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) urged FGM/C practitioners in the area to put down their razors and campaign for women's rights in their communities.

Despite 12 years of reform, Morocco’s universities continue to fall short of expectations, with students complaining that the training they get does not meet the demands of the job market. Professors in this North African country of 32 million people echoed their students’ grievances, adding that Moroccan universities are poorly managed and riddled with corruption. 'The kind of training provided by universities remains poor and does not meet any of the educational, pedagogic, academic and intellectual conventional standards,' Zakaria Rmidi, a student preparing for his master's degree in English studies, told IPS.

The Tanzanian Government has come under pressure to make public the revised version of the Constitutional Review Act 2011. Participants at a weekend meeting accused the government of being reluctant to issue the document and vowed that they would not relent in their quest to have it released. The chairman of the Constitutional Debate Forum, Mr Deus Kibamba, said the government appeared not to be ready for change, and was trying to delay the process. The country might experience chaos should the process of writing the new constitution not be transparent, he said.

Women in Law in Southern Africa (WILSA) working in Zambia, believes prevention is important in reducing the number of women who become victims of gender-based violence. Rudo Chingobe Mooba says the media can play an important role in raising awareness of risks and dangers as well as in influencing public opinion and policies that protect the rights of women. Rudo is worried that a number of gender-based violence cases occur in marriages. A situation she says 'poses a threat to stopping gender-based violence, notwithstanding the issues of HIV/AIDS which stand at 16% in Zambia.'

A massive shortfall in funding for African infrastructure projects is costing the continent up to three per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) a year, a senior African Development Bank official said. 'The gap right now is something like $45 billion a year and that gap is dragging down economic growth in Africa by as much as 3 percent of GDP,' Mthuli Ncube, chief economist for the lender, said at a launch event for its annual economic outlook. 'The most critical area is energy - power. Any power outages are bound to cause massive problems for growth.'

Four months before South Africa hosts the United Nation's big climate-change conference in Durban, concerns are mounting that the country is lagging behind in its preparations. This comes amid accusations that tensions are running high between the department of environmental affairs (DEA) and the department of international relations and co-operation (Dirco) over responsibilities. Because of international protocol, the environment department handles the content of the climate change conference and Dirco the logistics. Greenpeace's Melita Steele, who is also part of the civil society steering committee for COP17, said it was only now, in July, that Dirco was ready and the confusion over which department was responsible for what seemed to have been sorted out.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has appealed to the US Securities and Exchange Commission to prevent forthcoming conflict-mineral rules from causing a 'de- facto embargo' on trade from the Central African nation. The commission was asked to develop the guidelines last July under the Dodd-Frank Act to help cut the link between Congo’s mineral trade and armed groups. The SEC rules, which are expected as early as next month, will apply to US companies involved in the trade in tin ore, tantalum, tungsten and gold shipped from Congo and nine neighboring countries.

The Angola Monitor follows the progress of peace, stability, development and human rights in the country as it struggles to overcome the legacy of nearly three decades of war. Since the first multi-party elections in 1992, we have been monitoring the progress of democracy and peace in the region. The Monitor is produced in English and Portuguese. You can subscribe to the Angola Monitor and get it sent direct to your inbox four times a year.

Unless Malawi’s government does something to find solutions to its economic and governance problems, the country will see more nationwide protests like the ones last week where 18 people were killed and 275 arrested, analysts say. Mustapha Hussein, a political analyst at the University of Malawi, told IPS that Mutharika should start taking the concerns of Malawians seriously before things get out of hand. 'The president seems to not be ready to accept blame for the economic and governance problems facing the country. There will be bigger protests in the country than what we just saw should the government not move fast in addressing the issues that are being raised,' said Hussein.

Hundreds of people have taken to the streets in Swaziland protesting against poor governance which has led to a shortage of essential medical supplies in sub-Saharan Africa's sole absolute monarchy. More than 500 people demonstrated in Mbabane, the capital, on Wednesday (27 July) while nearly 1,000 protested in the western town of Siteki. AIDS groups have warned of an imminent shortage of anti-retroviral drugs in a country where a quarter of the people between the ages of 15 and 49 are believed to carry HIV.

President Goodluck Jonathan walked into the National Executive Committee (NEC) hall at the Peoples Democratic Party national secretariat in Abuja (PDP) recently to meet a tribe of anxious party faithfuls. They had gathered in the hall for the 56th meeting of the NEC, the first since the end of April general elections, to discuss the various issues confronting the ruling party. But prior to Mr Jonathan’s arrival, party members were overheard discussing the proposed amendment to the constitution to bring about a single term for the country’s president and state governors, which the incumbent, through his media aide, Reuben Abati, had offered explanations on, but which has raised the country’s political temperature.

Civil society organisations want East African governments to scrap tax incentives as a stimulus for investment inflows and development accelerator. Speaking during a roundtable discussion in Nairobi, Kenya on Wednesday, activists said incentives hinder the entry of revenue and have no empirical results to prove their efficacy and impact to investment. The meeting - organised by the Tax Justice Network-Africa and ActionAid International Kenya - attracted policy makers, academics, tax administrators and business leaders in the EAC.

There are several innovations to the research projects captured in this report. Firstly, it consists of studies of both xenophobic violence and community protests, drawing the links both empirically as one of collective action spawns or mutates into another, and theoretically through the concept of insurgent citizenship. Secondly, the research was conceived of, and conducted, through a collaboration between an NGO, The Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) and an academic research institute, the Society Work and Development Institute (SWOP) at University of the Witwatersrand. This brought together scholars and practitioners, psychologists and sociologists, in a challenging and productive partnership to try to understand collective violence and its underlying social dynamics.

The April 6 Youth Movement said that the movement, alongside 25 political powers, decided to suspend its sit-in in Tahrir Square until the end of Ramadan. 'We want to facilitate the traffic flow during Ramadan and put into consideration the special circumstances related to this holy month,' Amr Aly, member of the group's political bureau said.The movement said that it would continue exerting pressure on the government to execute the rest of their demands including ending the military prosecution of civilians, sacking the Prosecutor General, cleansing the interior ministry and setting a reasonable minimum and maximum wage.

Just Budgets aims to support civil society organisations, Southern governments and donors to track
donor and government commitment to gender equality thus promoting accountability to the poorest citizens.

Human Rights Watch is seeking a part-time (24 hours per week) Office Administrator to be responsible for providing a high level of professional day-to-day support to ensure the smooth and efficient running of HRW’s South Africa office. The position reports mainly to the NY-based Associate Director of Financial Operations, and will also have a dotted line to the South Africa Director.

In this week's edition of the Emerging Powers News Round-Up, read a comprehensive list of news stories and opinion pieces related to China, India and other emerging powers...

Governments, especially in Africa, need to have strong accountability measures in place in order to effectively reach women in rural areas through gender responsive budgeting. This was one of the recommendations in the Global Call for Action plan drawn up at the end of an international high-level meeting on gender responsive budgeting held in Kigali from 26 to 28 July. The meeting was held in conjunction with the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) and the European Union. Delegates also agreed that there was a need to strengthen the skills, competencies and abilities of local government leaders.

Goodluck Jonathan, the Nigerian president, has set up a committee to negotiate with a radical Islamist group that has claimed responsibility for a string of almost daily shootings and bomb attacks in northeastern Nigeria, the government has announced. The committee was set up on Saturday after a meeting between Jonathan and local leaders in Borno state, which concluded that the military's strategy against Boko Haram, the group in question, has done more harm than good.