We, the organisations united in the search for truth and justice, welcome the report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extra Judicial Executions, Prof Philip Alston. We praise it for its clarity and candour, perceptiveness and precision as well as its bold recommendations. The mountain of evidence in the report is only a confirmation of what our membership that is engaged in human rights work have known and condemned for a long time – that sections of the security forces have been turned into killer squads with no respect for human life; they have become a law unto themselves.

eLearning Africa is delighted to announce that this year’s conference, the fourth in the highly successful series of pan-African gatherings, will take place in Senegal. In May 2009, the Continent’s largest annual assembly of eLearning and education professionals from Africa and beyond will convene in the capital, Dakar.

Teachers in Zimbabwe have agreed to end their strike after the government promised to review salaries, and to appeal for substantial aid for schools. The teachers had been demanding their salaries in foreign currency to get around Zimbabwe's massive inflation. But they said the new Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai had been willing to listen to their grievances.

Africa Centre for Open Governance (AfriCOG) is seeking a qualified and experienced Programme Intern to provide support and assistance in all matters relating to the programme implementation functions of the organisation.

This is a call for materials for a contemporary Reader on African sexualities, which is being developed and edited by Prof. Sylvia Tamale-outgoing Dean of Law at Makerere University and Coordinator of the Law, Gender and Sexuality Research Project at the Faculty of Law. This seminal work will be a compilation of diverse populist and academic pieces that either engage with or inform sexualities enacted all over the African continent.

An appeal submission is being prepared for an asylum claimant in Thailand who is from DRC. His case is being adjudicated by UNHCR. The refugee has been rejected on the grounds that he can go to an alternative part of the country, i.e. Kinshasha.

CODESRIA/SEPHIS is pleased to announce its Equity Policy Dialogue 2009 and to invite interested researchers and policy makers to submit abstracts and paper proposals for consideration for presentation at the policy dialogue which is scheduled for 1st - 3rd October in Dakar, Senegal. The policy dialogue will bring together experts, activists and policy makers from all regions of the South.

Over the next few weeks, Pambazuka News will be publishing a series of articles on the case for reparations for the Mau Mau (Kenya's liberation movement). This is a call for articles on this theme. Articles should be no longer than 3000 words, written in clear, jargon-free language, and should include a summary of no more than 200 words. Please send contributions to

CREAW is a non-governmental, non-partisan, membership organization based in Nairobi, Kenya. Our Vision is to realize a just and free society in which women and men have, exercise and enjoy equal, full rights and opportunities. CREAW's mission is to transform society by empowering and expanding new frontiers for Women's rights and freedoms. The organization also seeks to expand the legislative and policy framework through Lobbying and Advocacy for laws and policies that enshrine women rights whilst, its research and documentation work
lays a framework for more ground breaking interventions against gender based violence and discrimination.

They are no longer stirring still. In fact, they are dying at an alarming rate. First, there was Edward Said, then Mahmoud Darwish, and now Tayeb Salih. And if Said sang about the pleasures of the “placeless place,” Darwish wrote like a jealous child unwilling to share the page with anyone, especially with a ruthless occupier. Salih, on the other hand, spent most of his life living on borderline between East, West, and the Rest. As a thinker, citizen, and writer, he towered quietly over our time with extraordinary luminosity. He also had a prodigious capacity for understanding people no matter where they came from. A sign well defined in his work of art, Season of Migration to the North, where the narrator intones: “They [the Sudanese people] were amazed to learn that Europeans with some differences were much like us, marrying and raising children in accordance with tradition and that generally they were a moral and honest people.” A humanist voice at its best! This is not the nonsense one finds in shabby screeds likes the “clash of cultures” or “what went wrong?” Suffice it to add that Salih had an unbounded energy for waging struggles on behalf of the truth—the truth not only of usually unrecorded social suffering, but also the truth about the institutional obduracy that lurks insidiously beneath the surface of things, and a persistent endeavor of his last years the callous posturing of so-called realistic, or pragmatic writers.

The 2009 session of the CODESRIA sub-regional methodological workshops will explore the conditions for the employment and validation of qualitative perspectives in African contexts. To this end, the workshops will be open to all the social research disciplines. These disciplines are uniformly confronted with broadly similar difficulties of understanding social reality and the challenges posed by techniques of data collection and analysis, which, on account of their “qualitative” nature, are suspected by some to be seriously lacking in scientific rigour.

On March 20-22, a conference will be held in Toronto at the University of Toronto to coincide with the 15th anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide, which claimed the lives of some 1,000,000 in approximately 100 days. The conference, which will focus on lessons learned / not learned from the Rwandan Genocide, will feature some of the world's most renowned genocide scholars and genocide activists. Hundreds of scholars, students, teachers, members of the Rwandan community, and other members of the general public are expected to attend.

With the onset of multi-party democracy in Kenya, three of the four general elections conducted have resulted in a web of violence of an unprecedented scale, each seemingly surpassing the other. Taking the dimension of inter-ethnic struggles, they have not only been notable for their brutality, but also for the widespread internal displacement of civilians and destruction of property never seen since the days of colonialism. The election held in December 2007 was the latest, and led to an unprecedented process of national reconciliation and dialogue.

The Centre for Rights Education and Awareness (CREAW) is a non-governmental, non-partisan, membership organization whose Mission is to transform society by empowering women and expanding new frontiers for women's rights and freedoms. Our Vision is to realise a just and free society in which women and men have, exercise and enjoy equal and full rights and opportunities. We are seeking the services of a researcher.

CREAW is a non-governmental, non-partisan, membership organization whose goal is to transform society by empowering women and expanding frontiers for women's rights and freedoms. CREAW aims at setting standards in upholding human rights and empowering society through civic education, legal advocacy and women's rights awareness. CREAW seeks to fill the position of Finance officer

CREAW is a non-governmental, non-partisan, membership organization based in Nairobi, Kenya. Our Vision is to realize a just and free society in which women and men have, exercise and enjoy equal, full rights and opportunities. CREAW’s Mission is geared to transform society by empowering and expanding new frontiers for women’s rights and freedoms. The paralegals responsibility will be to give limited assistance to clients. They will also help clients access the police, chiefs, write simple documents and hold monthly community forums.

CAFS seeks a dynamic and charismatic Director to be an ardent advocate, leader and champion of our work in training, technical services, and research. Our goal is to build and sustain human, institutional and program capacity for health and development in Africa with emphasis on population and development, sexual and reproductive health, and HIV&AIDS. Reporting to the CAFS Board, the Director is accountable for the overall leadership, executive management, strategic partnerships, and institutional success of CAFS, and for ensuring its efficient and effective operation. The position is based in the CAFS Corporate Head office in Nairobi, Kenya

And they asked him:
Why do you sing?
And he answered, as they seized him:
I sing because I sing

And they searched his chest
But could only find his heart
And they searched his heart
But could only find his people
And they searched his voice
But could only find his grief
And they searched his grief
But could only find his prison
And they searched his prison
But could only see themselves in chains

From Poem Of The Land, Mahmoud Darwish
(Written to commemorate five Palestinian girls killed by the Israelis, 30 March 30 1976 at a demonstration to protest Israeli seizures of Arab land).

Last July, my young son was enlisted in an armed group during a recruitment campaign near his school. Despite my repeated attempts to intervene, he was covertly sent into military training", a Chadian man recently told JRS. On Red Hand Day, 12 February, JRS calls upon the government, with the support of local and international communities, to increase efforts to prevent the use of children in armed groups through the creation of safer schools.

The teachers union in Tanzania is considering legal action after 19 school teachers were given the cane. The primary teachers were caned by a police officer after an inquiry into poor exam results at three schools. The report blamed teachers for being late or not showing up for work and not teaching the official syllabus.