COVAW (K) is looking for persons to fill one (1) available position for a Legal Intern for a term of six (6) months beginning August, 2011. The intern will be required to conduct client interviews, draft pleadings, undertake case management, undertake comprehensive research on varied legal issues to back legal briefs and/or advice to clients and the Organization, accompany Programme Officers to field work activities, draft reports and attend meetings on behalf of the Organization if need arises.

Cash for guns or buy-back programmes in post-conflict states have fallen out of favour as a method of ridding a society of weapons, and have been replaced by often elaborate schemes designed to remove money from the equation, but the debate continues as to the best way forward. The disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) community has grappled for years with buy-back practices and acknowledges they can have a profound effect on the nature of peace and even encourage a return to conflict. However, sometimes they can be termed 'good practice'.

Opposition members of parliament in Burkina Faso have called on France to open its archives to look for evidence of involvement of the French secret services in the 1987 death of Thomas Sankara. The call is the latest effort in a long-running struggle to force a full and open inquiry into the assassination which brought Burkina Faso's current president, Blaise Compaoré, to power. 'Evidence presented in other countries indicates that France was involved in the death of Thomas Sankara,' said MP and lawyer Stanislas Benewindé Sankara - no relation to the former president - at a 16 July press conference in Ouagadougou, the Burkinabè capital.

African women want their governments to undertake reforms that will enable them to get easier access to land. Making the appeal, the over 40 women drawn from across the continent also clarified: 'We are talking about natural succession to land.' This was at the end of a two-day workshop in Cameroon's Edea town on 28 July.

'Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo', 'I Want A Wedding Dress' and 'Ungochani' were three of the films recently screened at the Women’s Law Centre in Harare as part of a new film based gender rights series initiative between Women Filmmakers of Zimbabwe (WFOZ) and The Women’s Law Centre. The collaboration started in February this year and will continue in the next semester.

The Republic of South Sudan (RSS) government has, in partnership with the African Development Bank (AfDB), officially launched a Curriculum Vitae (CV) registry that seeks to assist its citizens in their quest for employment opportunities in Africa’s newest nation. Under the new arrangement, the Ministry of Human Resource Development and other government ministries will review CVs received through the registry, thus matching them with appropriate openings within the public sector, if available. 'South Sudan requires a skilled and dedicated workforce in order to implement its national development plan and other goals effectively. The country needs qualified professionals to help it address challenges and who can share in the nation building process,' said AfDB in a statement.

The Hawks have taken the first step towards re-opening the multibillion-rand arms deal probe - which could expose those who took bribes to prosecution. The head of the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigations, Anwar Dramat, wrote to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa) informing it of the Hawks' intention to speak to European investigators to establish whether or not criminal charges should be brought against any South Africans. The Hawks controversially dropped the probe into the arms deal in September last year, arguing that prospects of successful prosecutions were slim.

In 2005, countries in the wider East African region launched a master plan that would finally sort out the region’s perennial power woes. The East African Power Pool (EAPP) was to exploit the enormous hydropower potential in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and Uganda, the geothermal potential in Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia, natural gas in Tanzania and Rwanda and coal in Tanzania and the DR Congo. Six years later, the region’s power troubles seem to be going from bad to worse - Kenya this week joined Tanzania and Uganda in the growing list of East African Community countries rationing power to domestic and industrial consumers.

In this month’s issue:

Dialogue among Civilizations News
- Dialogue Among Civilizations Book Launch
- Dialogue Among Civilizations Exhibition KZNSA Gallery 2011
- Dialogue Among Civilizations Exhibition Leeds 2011
- Profile: Berry Bickle

Women for Children News
- Gabisile Nkosi Remembered (4 February 1974 - 27 May 2008)
- Youth Day 16 June 2011
- “Precious Cargo” by Ernestine White
- DUT Students view on Youth Day 2011

Break the Silence News
- 5th SA AIDS Conference - June 2011
- Art work: Yehoshua Comforting an Aids Victim by Mduduzi Xakaza

General News
- ASJ Conference
- Nelson Mandela Day – 18 July 2011

August is when Nchoo Ngochila would normally be gearing up for the traditional female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) season in her Ilchamus community in Kenya's Rift Valley Province. This year, however, Ngochila will spend her time trying to convince her community the practice should be abandoned. About a year ago, a campaign by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) urged FGM/C practitioners in the area to put down their razors and campaign for women's rights in their communities.

Despite 12 years of reform, Morocco’s universities continue to fall short of expectations, with students complaining that the training they get does not meet the demands of the job market. Professors in this North African country of 32 million people echoed their students’ grievances, adding that Moroccan universities are poorly managed and riddled with corruption. 'The kind of training provided by universities remains poor and does not meet any of the educational, pedagogic, academic and intellectual conventional standards,' Zakaria Rmidi, a student preparing for his master's degree in English studies, told IPS.

The Tanzanian Government has come under pressure to make public the revised version of the Constitutional Review Act 2011. Participants at a weekend meeting accused the government of being reluctant to issue the document and vowed that they would not relent in their quest to have it released. The chairman of the Constitutional Debate Forum, Mr Deus Kibamba, said the government appeared not to be ready for change, and was trying to delay the process. The country might experience chaos should the process of writing the new constitution not be transparent, he said.

Women in Law in Southern Africa (WILSA) working in Zambia, believes prevention is important in reducing the number of women who become victims of gender-based violence. Rudo Chingobe Mooba says the media can play an important role in raising awareness of risks and dangers as well as in influencing public opinion and policies that protect the rights of women. Rudo is worried that a number of gender-based violence cases occur in marriages. A situation she says 'poses a threat to stopping gender-based violence, notwithstanding the issues of HIV/AIDS which stand at 16% in Zambia.'

A massive shortfall in funding for African infrastructure projects is costing the continent up to three per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) a year, a senior African Development Bank official said. 'The gap right now is something like $45 billion a year and that gap is dragging down economic growth in Africa by as much as 3 percent of GDP,' Mthuli Ncube, chief economist for the lender, said at a launch event for its annual economic outlook. 'The most critical area is energy - power. Any power outages are bound to cause massive problems for growth.'

Four months before South Africa hosts the United Nation's big climate-change conference in Durban, concerns are mounting that the country is lagging behind in its preparations. This comes amid accusations that tensions are running high between the department of environmental affairs (DEA) and the department of international relations and co-operation (Dirco) over responsibilities. Because of international protocol, the environment department handles the content of the climate change conference and Dirco the logistics. Greenpeace's Melita Steele, who is also part of the civil society steering committee for COP17, said it was only now, in July, that Dirco was ready and the confusion over which department was responsible for what seemed to have been sorted out.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has appealed to the US Securities and Exchange Commission to prevent forthcoming conflict-mineral rules from causing a 'de- facto embargo' on trade from the Central African nation. The commission was asked to develop the guidelines last July under the Dodd-Frank Act to help cut the link between Congo’s mineral trade and armed groups. The SEC rules, which are expected as early as next month, will apply to US companies involved in the trade in tin ore, tantalum, tungsten and gold shipped from Congo and nine neighboring countries.

The Angola Monitor follows the progress of peace, stability, development and human rights in the country as it struggles to overcome the legacy of nearly three decades of war. Since the first multi-party elections in 1992, we have been monitoring the progress of democracy and peace in the region. The Monitor is produced in English and Portuguese. You can subscribe to the Angola Monitor and get it sent direct to your inbox four times a year.

Unless Malawi’s government does something to find solutions to its economic and governance problems, the country will see more nationwide protests like the ones last week where 18 people were killed and 275 arrested, analysts say. Mustapha Hussein, a political analyst at the University of Malawi, told IPS that Mutharika should start taking the concerns of Malawians seriously before things get out of hand. 'The president seems to not be ready to accept blame for the economic and governance problems facing the country. There will be bigger protests in the country than what we just saw should the government not move fast in addressing the issues that are being raised,' said Hussein.

Hundreds of people have taken to the streets in Swaziland protesting against poor governance which has led to a shortage of essential medical supplies in sub-Saharan Africa's sole absolute monarchy. More than 500 people demonstrated in Mbabane, the capital, on Wednesday (27 July) while nearly 1,000 protested in the western town of Siteki. AIDS groups have warned of an imminent shortage of anti-retroviral drugs in a country where a quarter of the people between the ages of 15 and 49 are believed to carry HIV.

President Goodluck Jonathan walked into the National Executive Committee (NEC) hall at the Peoples Democratic Party national secretariat in Abuja (PDP) recently to meet a tribe of anxious party faithfuls. They had gathered in the hall for the 56th meeting of the NEC, the first since the end of April general elections, to discuss the various issues confronting the ruling party. But prior to Mr Jonathan’s arrival, party members were overheard discussing the proposed amendment to the constitution to bring about a single term for the country’s president and state governors, which the incumbent, through his media aide, Reuben Abati, had offered explanations on, but which has raised the country’s political temperature.