Visiting a memorial to the Nanking massacre in China, Horace Campbell reflects on the lessons that Africa and the rest of the world can learn, both from the 1937 genocide and from the city’s response to it.

The No Military Trials group has stepped up the momentum in its campaign, presenting family members of military detainees at a conference chaired by Mohammad Abd Al-Qaddous of the Journalists’ Syndicate. Ahmad Darrag of the National Gathering for Change, who this week rejected a summons to appear before the military prosecutor in relation to the Maspero killings, also spoke. Close relatives of a dozen prisoners condemned or under trial by military courts spoke at the conference, and many more family members were in attendance.

The Cameroon government has introduced a bill to the national assembly that would give formal, political backing to section 347 of the country's penal code that criminalises consensual sex between adults of the same gender. 'It's getting worse,' Cameroonian lawyer Alice Nkom told the Guardian during a visit to London. 'These laws are illegal – the declaration of human rights is part of our constitution – but the judges still apply them. It's very difficult to prove you have had sex. Under the procedural code you cannot be put in jail unless caught in delecto flagrante.'

Maxwell Dlamini, President of the Swaziland National Union of Students (SNUS), has been nominated for the 2013 Student Peace Prize, an award given every other year on behalf of Norwegian students to fellow students around the world who have ‘done important work to promote peace, democracy or human rights.’

Nigeria has evacuated from Mali 104 of its citizens, mostly women, either made to work as 'sexual slaves' or suspected of involvement in human trafficking, officials said. The National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons (NAPTIP) evacuated 93 alleged victims of human trafficking, nine suspected traffickers and two babies, the agency's head, Beatrice Jedy-Agba, told reporters.

They are men who have lost all pride and self-confidence and who have been left severely traumatised by their experience. At the medical centre in Uganda where they are being treated, they talked candidly about the crimes carried out against them. 'In the past, I thought that it was only females who were raped but not men. I cannot understand myself today. I feel pain all the time in my anus and bladder. I feel like my bladder is full of water. I do not feel like a man. I do not know whether I will ever have children,' said John (not his real name), a 27-year-old refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo who is just one of possibly thousands of victims of male rape as civil wars and tribal conflicts continue unabated across Africa.

A spokesperson for the Somali militant group al-Shabaab said that Kenya's prime minister recently visited Israel to seek assistance in 'destroying Muslim people and their religion'. The office of Kenya's prime minister said on Monday 14 November that Kenya received the backing of Israeli leaders to help Kenya fight what it called 'fundamentalist elements'. Kenyan Prime Minster Raila Odinga visited Israel on and sought help building the capacity of his country's security forces.

Heavy rains and an outbreak of cholera in Kenya’s Dadaab complex is exacerbating the situation in the overcrowded refugee camp, where aid efforts were already hampered by insecurity, the United Nations reported. There are now 60 cases of cholera in the camps, including 10 laboratory-confirmed cases and one refugee death, according to Andrej Mahecic, a spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Human Rights Watch has urged the new government in Egypt against deporting Eritrean asylum seekers who are currently being detained in the North African country. The international advocacy group said Egyptian authorities are preparing to forcibly return a group of 118 Eritreans including recent deserters from the Eritrean Army; accusing Cairo of renewing the trend of mass deportations it exercised in 2008 and 2009. In most cases Eritrean refugees and asylum-seekers upon return are immediately thrown to secret detention centers where they are subjected to severe torture and other in-human treatments, the human rights group says.

Mauritanian forces killed a top official of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) during an air raid into Malian territory, a Mauritanian security source said. Mauritanian national Teyeb Ould Sidi Aly allegedly headed operations carried out with explosives-filled vehicles against Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz and the French embassy in Nouakchott.

The United States ambassador to Mozambique has saluted an anti-piracy agreement signed between South Africa and Mozambique last week which presages an accord with Tanzania. South Africa's defence minister Lindiwe Sisulu signed a memorandum of understanding with her Mozambican counterpart Filipe Jacinto Nyusi. The two countries applauded successful patrolling activities off the central Mozambican coast and decided to involve Tanzania - north of Mozambique - in their activities.

If global temperatures increase by only a few of degrees by 2100, as predicted by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, people around the world will be forced to migrate. A consortium of 12 scientists from around the world gathered last year at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center to review 50 years of research related to population resettlement following natural disasters or the installation of infrastructure development projects such as dams and pipelines. The group determined that resettlement efforts in the past have left communities in ruin, and that policy makers need to use lessons from the past to protect people who are forced to relocate because of climate change.

About 1,841 Zimbabweans who were living in South Africa illegally had last week trickled back into the country as the first batch of those deported arrived. Most of the deported Zimbabweans spoke out about their chilling experience at the hands of South Africans. 'Life in South Africa is very difficult for foreign nationals. Every day I was constantly reminded that I was a foreigner and most of the South Africans call us makwerekwere, a derogatory term used to mock foreigners,' said Alson Mhiri, a deportee.

Nearly three years after the xenophobic violence in South African townships, some foreigners are still living in what was meant to be temporary shelters because they are afraid of going back to their former communities. Two groups of refugees - one near the De Deur police station in Orange Farm, south of Johannesburg, and the other at the Rural Institute for Education and Training (Riet) family guidance centre in Randfontein - seem to have slipped through the cracks. The Gauteng department of social development said all camps it was responsible for had been closed down.

Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale has warned the ANC leadership not to underestimate the power and influence of the youth wing president Julius Malema and his executive. Sexwale, who testified for Malema during the disciplinary hearings into his conduct, was speaking at a gala dinner in Eastern Cape organised by the Dr AB Xuma Foundation. In what appeared to be a thinly veiled attack on President Jacob Zuma, Sexwale warned that no one was guaranteed re-election to a party position, the Times reported. The ANC's national disciplinary committee announced last week that Malema had to vacate his position as youth league leader after an effective suspension of five years.

At least two men have been killed in a second day of clashes as fighters from Zawiya set up roadlocks to prevent rivals from the nearby town of Wershefana entering their territory. There are conflicting reports about what triggered the confrontation on Saturday near a military camp. The reports of the clashes came as production resumed at Italian energy company Eni's largest oilfield in Libya.

Rebels in Sudan's Darfur region and in the troubled border states of Blue Nile and South Kordofan have formed an alliance to overthrow the government of President Omar al-Bashir, a statement released by the rebels said. The alliance, called the Sudanese Revolutionary Front, is bent on 'toppling the regime of the [Sudan's ruling] National Congress Party with all possible means' and replacing it with a democratic system, the groups said in the joint statement sent to the Reuters news agency on Saturday.

Amnesty International has called on Shell to pay $1bn to start cleaning up two oil spills in Nigeria's Niger Delta which it says caused huge suffering to locals whose fisheries and farmland were poisoned. The report by the human rights group to mark the 16th anniversary of the execution of environmental activist Ken Saro Wiwa by Nigerian authorities said the two spills in 2008 in Bodo, Ogoniland, had wrecked the livelihoods of 69,000 people.

At least eighteen people are dead and scores wounded in a fierce fighting between the army and the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) in South Sudan Friday, the military has said. 'Heavily-armed' SAF forces attacked Kuek area in Upper Nile state along the borders with Sudan’s White Nile state, leading to death of five of his soldiers and 13 of the attackers, said The SPLA spokesman, Col. Philip Aguer Panyang. At least 26 were wounded on the side of the SPLA and 47on the SAF side, according to Aguer.

This report discusses supranational governance and public authority in five issue areas: financial systems, security/ small arms, migration, extractive industries and obnoxious goods. Public control in all five is weak, although a few initiatives in supranational governance are showing promise. For each issue area, the report outlines existing international rule and enforcement systems or regimes; the interests steering or blocking them; and the resulting deficits in democratic supervision, coherence and compliance. The report concludes by suggesting ways in which supranational public authority may be better developed in order to promote state resilience and peacebuilding.