Anuak indigenous people from Ethiopia’s Gambella region have submitted a complaint to the World Bank Inspection Panel implicating the Bank in grave human rights abuses perpetrated by the Ethiopian Government. The complaint alleges that the Anuak people have been severely harmed by the World Bank-financed and administered Protection of Basic Services Project (PBS), which has provided 1.4 billion USD in sectoral budget support for the provision of basic services to the Ethiopian Government since 2006.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has said the seeking of asylum is not a criminal act and those who seek it should not be detained. In a statement obtained by PANA in New York Sunday, the UN refugee agency also called on all states to seek out alternatives to detention when dealing with migrants and refugees. The statement, issued following the agency’s new guidelines on the detention of asylum-seekers, urged the world’s governments to make better use of alternatives to detention for those irregular migrants seeking refuge within their borders.

Global leaders from governments, international organizations and civil society have endorsed an urgent Call to Action to ensure the world’s most vulnerable children and youth receive a good quality education by protecting schools from attacks, significantly increasing humanitarian aid for education and planning and budgeting for emergencies before they occur. The leaders urged immediate action for the 28 million children – nearly half of all children not in primary school – who live in countries scarred by war and conflict, as well as millions more struck by humanitarian emergencies such as flooding, food shortages, earthquakes and other disasters.

Civil rights organisation Touche pas à ma nationalité TPMN (in English: Do not interfere with my citizenship) has called for a large march on September 27, 2012 in the capital Nouakchott to commemorate the passing of anti-racism activist Lamine Mangane. Mangane was killed a year ago by authorities in the town of Maghama during protests against a census that marginalized black citizens of Mauritania.

The Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellows Program at the Washington, DC–based National Endowment for Democracy invites applications for fellowships in 2013–2014. This federally funded program enables democracy activists, practitioners, scholars, and journalists from around the world to deepen their understanding of democracy and enhance their ability to promote democratic change.

A decision by COPAC to exclude civil society organizations from the second all stakeholders’ conference has sparked a firestorm of controversy, with accusations that the move is not only retrogressive, but dangerous. Following meetings of COPAC’s secretariat and the select committee this week it was decided, allegedly because of budgetary constraints, to reduce the number of participants from 2,400 to 2,000. They also decided that each of the three parties will send 600 delegates, with the remaining 200 slots being allocated to Members of Parliament.

An analysis of gendered fighter constructions in the liberation movements in Eritrea and southern Sudan (EPLF and SPLA/M), examining the question of female access to the sphere of masculine fighter constructs and the relevance of this for influence in peacetime affairs. Empirical research in both countries, in particular interviews with participants, reveals that what keeps women out of the sphere of legitimized violence is not some 'inherent peacefulness', but the exclusivist construct of the masculine fighter, which is supported by society.

Jalila Khamis, a Nuba woman activist, faces charges under articles 50 and 51 of the Sudanese Criminal Act of 1991. Both articles are crimes against the state and punished by death.

It is a long-standing tradition in many African countries to frown upon the selling of land. When land is snapped up by large agribusiness interests in these countries, it is experienced as a brutal violation of this tradition, one that compromises the lives and livelihoods of entire generations to come. This phenomenon of large-scale land appropriation really took off with the food crisis of 2008. As the many cases of land grabbing identified in West and Central Africa have demonstrated, profit seems to be the only motive pursued. The whole model is inimical to - really a frontal attack on - the goals of food sovereignty, which is fundamentally about human survival, especially in African countries that are still largely rural. Read the rest of this GRAIN article by clicking on the link provided.

Campaigners have called for a UK criminal investigation to be brought against Trafigura for the dumping of toxic waste in Ivory Coast in 2006. The Dutch-based company with London offices paid an Ivorian company to dump the waste in Abidjan. Thousands of people sought hospital treatment. Amnesty and Greenpeace say a three-year investigation shows the UK and Dutch authorities failed to stop the dumping or hold Trafigura to account.

Proscovia Alengot Oromait has become Africa's youngest Member of Paliament (MP) at the age of 19, after she won the Usuk county election with 11,059 votes. The outspoken youngster replaces her father who died earlier this year, reports Global Voices Online. Alengot is a member of National Resistance Movement, headed by President Yoweri Museveni. Other people who stood for the post included, Charles Ojok Oleny with 5,329 votes, Charles Okure from FDC with 2,725 votes and Cecilia Anyakoit of UPC with 554 votes.

On the evening of 12 September, a dispute between Eritrean and Nigerian detainees at the Khoms detention centre for 'irregular migrants' had escalated into violence, reports this Amnesty International blog post. During the chaos a group of Somalis chose their moment to escape. A 29-year-old man from the Eritrean capital Asmara, who has spent six months in various detention centres across Libya, told Amnesty International that one man in military uniform hit him on the head with a metal bar and deliberately stepped on his hand with his military boots.

Nearly 25,000 people have signed an AllOut.org petition asking the Cameroon President and Minister of Justice to reverse the decision to jail Roger Jean-Claude Mbédé for three years and to put a moratorium on the laws that sent him to jail in the first place. Roger was arrested last year for sending another man a text message that said, 'I'm very much in love w/u.' He was charged and convicted under Cameroon's law that criminalizes 'homosexual behavior' and sentenced to three years in prison.

Proposed changes to the Employment Equity Act will severely penalise companies that lag behind on transformation if they come into effect, including hefty fines for noncompliance. But companies still have a long way to go to achieve greater representation of black people, women and people with disabilities in the workplace. The Commission for Employment Equity released its 12th annual report this week, which shows that white men remain dominant in almost all top management levels in the workplace. They make up 65.4% of top management positions, six times the part of the economically active population they represent.

South Africa truck drivers and other transport workers launched a strike for higher wages Tuesday, a union spokesman said, amid concerns that the standstill could cause fuel shortages. Truckers were seeking a 12-percent increase for 2013 and 2014, but would not settle for less than nine.

Two years after oil began flowing in Ghana, ordinary Ghanaians are wondering where the oil money is going. The government says there has not been much oil revenue coming in thus far, and analysts say the money that is coming in is not reaching the poor. Vast reserves of oil were discovered in Ghana in 2007, and production began almost two years ago in the Jubilee Oil Field off Ghana’s western coast. In 2011, its first year of production, Ghana brought in about $444 million - which was half of expected revenue.

A group of smallholder farmers in Mali have turned to the courts to try to recover land they say they have lost to big private investors. The legal action comes as foreign investors are losing interest in Mali due to political instability and an armed rebellion in the north. 'We have laid a complaint against the agricultural land grabs that have hit so many smallholders,' said Lamine Coulibaly, a member of the National Coordination of Peasant Organisations, which is resisting the large-scale acquisition of agricultural land by foreign investors.

On the International Day of Peace, Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka visited the United Nations – and called for armed intervention against the terrorist group Boko Haram in his home country of Nigeria. 'This is a violent organisation,' Soyika told IPS. 'What do you do with them? I am sorry, but you must fight them.' On 21 September 2012 the International Day of Peace was celebrated with a debate about how to build a global culture of tolerance.

This drought-prone country of 16 million is so short on food that it is ranked dead last by international aid organization Save the Children in the percentage of children receiving a 'minimum acceptable diet'. The consequences are dire. A total of 51 per cent of children in Niger are stunted, according to a report published in July by Save the Children. The average height of a 2 1/2-year-old girl born here is around 3 inches (8 centimeters) shorter than what it should be for a child that age.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has strongly condemns the killing of four journalists in twenty-four hours. 'This is definitely a war against journalists. The authorities must stop it so as not to become partners of the authors of these terrible acts,' said Gabriel Baglo, IFJ Africa Director. According to the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ), an IFJ affiliate, three journalists were killed on Thursday 20 September in a horrifying suicide attack in Mogadishu restaurant frequented by journalists.