Negotiations for Rio+20 have been fraught with attempts to take 'people' and social development out of the equation and lay the solutions at the altar of market driven forces through the 'green economy.' For women and young people, this means that fundamental issues affecting them, such as their right to health and education, are in danger of being sidelined, says this article.

A petition backed by over 50 NGOs and charging Uganda's government with failing to prevent the deaths of expectant mothers was thrown out by the constitutional court on 5 June, but the petition’s supporters plan to appeal. The constitutional court argued that upholding the petition, which urges the government to boost health services, would have forced judges to wade into a political issue that was outside their jurisdiction. However, the petitioners said the court relied on outdated international law in making its decision and overlooked its constitutional obligation to protect Uganda’s mothers.

The United States military is expanding a secret network of air bases across Africa in order to spy on al-Qaeda and other such groups, a US newspaper said. The surveillance is carried out by small, unmarked turboprop planes with hidden state-of-the-art sensors that fly thousands of kilometres between air bases and bush landing strips across the vast continent, the Washington Post reported.

To what extent is China investing in experimental research? Which African countries have the most out-of-school children? How have graduation rates for girls in Latin America changed over time? The new UNESCO eAtlas series provides users with a powerful new tool to visualize data on critical policymaking issues in the field of education as well as science and technology. The three subjects covered are research and experimental development, out-of-school children and gender equality in education - an online companion to the print edition of the World Atlas of Gender Equality in Education.

In the latest of the Economic Justice Network's campaign to sensitize Ghanaians to why the Economic Partnership Agreements are bad for Ghana, here are two recordings of interviews that took place on EPAs. One discusses EPAs and Ghana's fuel subsidy and the other a 'face-off' with EU Ambassador to Ghana Claude Maerten.

A High Court judge claims he is ‘a bit constrained for time’ to deal with an urgent bail application by 29 MDC-T activists facing charges of killing a policeman. Asked by defence lawyers when he was going to deal with the bail application Justice Bhunu claimed he had a heavy workload and had not got around to dealing with the matter. This is despite the fact that the majority of activists charged in the case have been in custody for more than a year without trial.

ARTICLE 19 has welcomed the tabling of a proposed law on Internal Displacement for discussion in the Kenyan parliament and calls for its swift adoption by the Parliament, at a time when Kenya is heading into another election period. The Internally Displaced Persons Bill 2012, tabled by the Chairperson of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Resettlement, Hon Ekwee Ethuro on 13th June 2012, was developed under the leadership of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Resettlement. It was reviewed for consistency with relevant instruments and standards during a meeting of all major stakeholders including ARTICLE 19, UNHCR, the Refugee Consortium of Kenya (RCK), the Kenya National Human Rights Commission (KNHCR) and the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) in Mombasa in November 2011.

The UN Web TV Channel is available 24 hours a day with selected live programming of United Nations meetings and events as well as with pre-recorded video features and documentaries on various global issues. Videos for the Rio+20 event are available from the site.

Transparency International, the anti-corruption organisation, calls for the government of Gabon to uphold civil society’s right to peaceful activism following the detention last week of more than 40 people, including Grégory Ngbwa Mintsa, the 2010 recipient of the Transparency International Integrity Award. The civil society activists, who were taken into custody on 8 June and later released, were planning an alternative forum to a government-sponsored New York Forum Africa, a regional event to promote Gabon. The activists wanted to highlight the challenges ordinary citizens face in Gabon. Freedom of expression and the space for a vibrant civil society are essential in any country to ensure a government is accountable to its people.

An al-Shabab suicide bomber has rammed a vehicle packed with explosives into the gate of a Somali government base in Afgoye, west of Mogadishu, the capital, causing casualties. Al-Shabab said its suicide bomber had 'killed dozens' in Saturday's attack, while the police said the blast had only wounded three soldiers. The figures could not be independently verified. Many parties in the Somalia conflict tend to exaggerate enemy losses and minimise their own.

The European Parliament sent a bold message to the world last week with its comprehensive and ambitious resolution to put an end to the illicit global arms trade. But analysts regret the new resolution ignores several key factors, such as the impact of the arms trade on the socio-economic development of recipient countries, and the involvement of civil society in future negotiations. Next month member states will gather at the United Nations headquarters in New York to negotiate the first binding Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), a potentially ground-breaking humanitarian treaty regulating international trade in conventional weapons. Currently, there is no universal set of rules controlling the global arms trade.

Amid continuing instability and bursts of fighting in eastern Congo, civilians keep crossing into Rwanda - where the number of arrivals since late April has passed 10,000 - and south-west Uganda. The 10,000 figure was reached last weekend and the number of Congolese refugees registered at the crowded Nkamira Transit Camp had risen to 11,339. In recent days a daily average of about 230 arrivals have been recorded at Nkamira, which lies some 20 kilometres from the Goma-Gisenyi crossing with Democratic Republic of the Congo's North Kivu province.

There was a dramatic turn this week in the ongoing row between Defence Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa and Finance Minister Tendai Biti, who revealed that the Public Service Commission had illegally recruited 10,000 new staff members and among them were 4,600 soldiers. The revelation was surprising because the defence ministry had recently demanded $2.5 million from the treasury, insisting the funds were needed to feed soldiers who are going hungry in the barracks and to pay for an additional 5,000 new recruits. Mnangagwa went as far as threatening violence, vowing to send army generals to Biti’s offices.

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) is pleased to announce its Small Grants Programme for Thesis Writing for the year 2012. The grants serve as part of the Council’s contribution to the development of the social sciences in Africa, and the continuous renewal and strengthening of research capacities in African universities, through the funding of primary research conducted by postgraduate students and professionals.

Thirty per cent of threatened species are at risk because of consumption in developed world according to research made by University of Sydney. The study mapped the world economy to trace the global trade of goods implicated in biodiversity loss such as coffee, cocoa, and lumber. Years of data collection and thousands of hours on a supercomputer to process, lead to these global supply chains in amazing detail for the first time. The study evaluated over five billion supply chains connecting consumers to over 15,000 commodities produced in 187 countries. This was cross-referenced with a global register of 25,000 endangered and vulnerable species.

Three blasts have hit churches in the northern Nigerian state of Kaduna in the latest apparent attacks targeting Christian worshippers in the region, emergency services and residents said. All of the blasts happened close to the city of Zaria. It was not immediately clear if there were any casualties in Sunday's blasts, but residents said they feared many people had been killed.

Reporters Without Borders has condemned the slow death of freedom of information in Mali. 'In the past few days, a newspaper editor has been arrested for the second time in a month, soldiers raided a TV station to prevent it from broadcasting an interview with a Tuarag chief, and a French journalist was prevented from travelling to the breakaway north,' says RSF.

The People’s Summit has brought together civil society organisations from all over the world, and is seeking an alternative to the 'green economy' that will be defined by heads of state and government at the climax of the Rio+20 conference on 20-22 June. 'Native peoples know perfectly well what sustainable development involves. Our harmonious coexistence with nature is a living portrayal of our way of life, which neither destroys nor degrades,' said Sonia Guajajara, a coordinator of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB). Miguel Palacín, a Quechua Indian from Peru and head of the Andean Coordinator of Indigenous Organisations (CAOI), said the green economy 'exists to legitimate and continue to rely on the capitalist system that has put us where we are today'.

Touareg rebels in northern Mali entered into talks with regional mediators for the first time last week, expressing a willingness to engage in dialogue with the international community. A delegation from the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) led by Ibrahim Ag Mohamed Assaleh met Burkinabe President and Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) mediator Blaise Compaoré for the first time on Saturday (9 June) in Ouagadougou.

No single infection has probably inspired as many conspiracy theories as AIDS has over the last 30 years. The science of AIDS has endured tremendous attacks from as early as when the virus first appeared. A book entitled 'The AIDS Conspiracy – Science Fights Back', looks at how science has triumphed and sought to bring sense to a condition that has attracted a flurry of mad conspiracy theories. The book traces the emergence of AIDS denialism both in the United States and in South Africa from as early as when AIDS was believed to be the American government’s way of destroying sex and mankind. This is the second book on AIDS conspiracies and denialism that has been written by Nicoli Natrass, a professor at the School of Economics at the University of Cape Town.