Dear Mayor Patricia de Lille,

This letter has been written by the provincial executive of Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement South Africa. As poor people living in informal settlements, we have many severe grievances regarding our living conditions.

From the reaction of various stakeholders, ranging from the Zambia Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) to the Zambia Federation of Employers and ordinary citizens (through spoof letters stating new conditions of service for the domestic servants) who, before the new policy came into effect, could afford to employ domestic help, the minimum wage effected on 4 July 2012, is arguably one of the most controversial policies of the 10 months old Patriotic Front (PF) government, begins this article from Global Voices Online.

The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR) has expressed great concern over an attack on workers of the Samoli Spinning and Weaving Company during protests held on 21 July 2012. Following the protest the workers went to the mosque when suddenly unknown individuals started to shoot randomly. Ahmed Hosni, one of the workers, was killed while three others were injured while protesting in front of the company headquarters.

Pour réclamer justice après l’arrestation et la disparition de leurs pères et maris.

Ethiopia’s relentless clampdown on freedom of speech and dissent has sparked global outrage. A selection

16 July 2012 - From early this evening, the community of SST and the Progressive Youth Movement (PYM) in the Khayelitsha township of Cape Town has been in the midst of a mass action in front of the home of Amos Nkomeni, the ANC ward councilor for ward 93 in the City of Cape Town. Councillor Nkomeni’s response to the community march to his house was arrogant and dismissive, instead of responding to the demand for an end to the degrading and dehumanising bucket system imposed by the City of Cape Town in the absence of decent sanitation at SST.

The Angolan government is targeting protest organizers for arbitrary arrest and detention in response to increasing demonstrations criticizing the government or its policies, Human Rights Watch says.

Please support this appeal for the release of protestor Mohammed Salah, and join the solidarity movement below via: [email][email protected]

Child labour is on the rise in Ghana, particularly in urban areas. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund’s (UNICEF) 2012 State of the World’s Children Report, 34 per cent of Ghanaian children aged between five and 14 years are engaged in child labour – up from 23 per cent in 2003. Emilia Allan, a Child Protection Officer at UNICEF Ghana, noted that Kumasi alone makes up eight per cent of that figure.

Nurses are to join teachers and civil servants in the growing public sector strike in Swaziland. They will strike from 18 July 2012 in pursuit of a 4.5 per cent salary increase. Teachers have been on indefinite strike for nearly a month and civil servants joined them last week.

The independent trade unions that have sprung up across Egypt over the last 17 months face an uncertain future, caught between Islamists and the military and operating under labour laws that have not changed since Hosni Mubarak was in power. 'The government and business owners don’t want to respond to workers’ demands or give them rights, so they are opposed to seeing workers establish independent syndicates,' says Kamal Abu Eita, a leader of the independent union movement.

A vibrant and cutting edge Cape Town-based NGO seeks an Advocacy and Human Rights Defence Manager to manage its Advocacy Programme. The position is available from the 1st August 2012. The organisation promotes the health and human rights of sex workers within the existing legal system in which sex work is criminalised, by providing and facilitating access to health care services for sex workers in several provinces in South Africa; facilitating the defence of sex workers’ human rights in and outside of court; providing safe spaces for sex worker empowerment and organising, and conducting action-oriented research and monitoring of sex worker human rights issues.

Seventeen human rights non governmental organizations officially launched their 'Human Rights in 100 Days' campaign to pressure new Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi to follow through on rights of Egyptian citizens. The newly created Forum of Independent Egyptian Human Rights Organizations, which includes the Egyptian Association for Community Participation Enhancement (national focal point of Social Watch), had sent a letter to President Morsi 'delineating the most important steps which must be taken to improve Egypt’s human rights condition and which they believed were missing from the President’s strategies and statements,' reported Bikya Masr news portal.

Many people under occupation are aware of the struggles of others living in similar circumstances. Building strategic solidarity among the different groups could be beneficial.

Group demands a full investigation into the unlawful assault of minors.

The battle for supremacy between Nigeria and South Africa and an attempt by France to play a bigger role in African issues, are likely to influence who becomes the next head of the African Union Commission in this week’s polls. There is a growing competition between Nigeria and South Africa for the control of the continent’s economic and political scene after South Africa offered the candidature of Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, contrary to the unwritten rule that big economies should stay away from the leadership.

This study (by Salimah Valiani, Associate Researcher, Centre for the Study of Education and Work, University of Toronto, With a Foreword by Samir Amin) traces the structural forces creating the conditions for the increased supply and demand of temporary migrant nurses around the world. It is argued that technology-driven health care cost escalation, the restructuring of nursing work, persistent undervaluing of nursing labour, and concerted state effort to produce nursing labour for export, put in motion, the global integration of nursing labour markets. Please click for details of launch events in Kenya and South Africa.

Message of solidarity and indignation from the Africa Region 1 of La Via Campesina after our comrades Alberto Gomez and Fatimatou Hima have been expelled from the Kinshasa airport, DRC, respectively in the evening of the 29th of June and 1st of July 2012.

02 July 2012 - The Democratic Left Front (DLF) fully endorses the call for support issued jointly by Abahlali BaseMjondolo (AbM) and the Unemployed People’s Movement (UPM) for the mass occupation of the ward councillor’s office in the Zakheleni shack settlement (in Ward 88 in Umlazi). This call for disciplined and peaceful occupation of the office is part of intensifying mass mobilisation and pressure against the ward councillor (Nomzamo Mkhize) and the eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality.

The ruling reaffirms that multinationals cannot use their power to silence the media.