Early in June in Singapore, the International Centre for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) board of directors announced that they will allow more gTLD (generic Top Level Domains). Currently, there are only 22 registered gTLDs like .com and .org. The expanded gTLD space means that Africa can too have its own gTLD like .africa. An organisation going by the name DotConnectAfrica (DAC) (http://www.dotconnectafrica.org/) has been spearheading this venture for a while now. DAC has even been on social media, communicating their agenda and advocating for the .africa gTLD long before the ICANN announcement.

A married couple in the US pleaded guilty in federal court to exploiting an African woman and forcing her to work for them, authorities said. The woman, from Swaziland, was invited to travel to the United States and work as a caterer for a wedding. The wedding never existed. Instead, the woman was harboured in a home, concealed from law enforcement detection and kept working as a housekeeper until early 2007. 'This case reminds us that modern day slavery is occurring in our communities,' United States Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said. Last month, a Nigerian citizen in Atlanta was convicted for trafficking women from Nigeria to work as nannies.

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When Libyan rebels requested NATO air support to help them in their fight against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, they might have gotten more than they bargained for, and might be paying for it for a long time to come. Several scattered reports released since the conflict began claim that some of the missiles NATO jets are using to disable Gaddafi's army are tipped with depleted uranium, a toxic heavy metal that could have long-term negative health effects on populations exposed to it.

Egyptian companies and multi-nationals are now using images of and references to the youth-led uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak in advertisements to sell internet service, mobile phones, soft drinks, tourism and more. The marketing has sparked something of a backlash among young Egyptians and has contributed to a rise in politicised street art and graffiti. 'Everyone sold us down the river. So all these people coming now and claiming that their phones, their kitchen appliances, their whatever, has helped the revolution - nothing has helped the revolution but the people that did the revolution,' said one Egyptian.

In line with its mandate to promote high-level scientific and academic debates on various aspects of socioeconomic development in Africa, the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) hereby announces the 2011 edition of its Gender Symposium which will be held from 1st to 3rd November, 2011 in Cairo, Egypt. The Gender Symposium is a forum organized annually by CODESRIA to discuss gender issues in Africa, and the theme of this year’s edition is Gender and the Media in Africa.

A lack of proper primary care facilities in South Sudan means doctors are often overworked. And a lack of money means they are under-equipped, as well. The government in Juba does not give them enough to buy the supplies they need, and donations from the international community do not fill the gap. The health ministry has plans to open a network of primary care centres - roughly one per 15,000 people - but none are fully operational. And the military and police hospitals are closed, forcing hundreds of thousands of soldiers and officers to seek care from civilian facilities.

Women in minority and indigenous communities are especially vulnerable to wide-ranging forms of violence, abuse and discrimination, according to a new report released by Minority Rights Group International (MRG), a human rights group that works on behalf of minorities and indigenous peoples. The disproportionate levels of abuse and discrimination that these women face - including rape, other forms of sexual violence, and trafficking, from government forces, paramilitaries, or members of their own communities - can be attributed to the fact that their identity exists at the intersection of two rather marginalised groups, women and minorities, making them easy targets.

In a historic gathering, more than a hundred women from seven continents representing more than 40 women’s organisations worldwide attended the first general assembly of International Women’s Alliance (IWA) in Manila early this month. With the theme 'Advance global anti-imperialist women’s movement in the 21st century, strengthen the international women’s alliance', progressive women from 20 countries vowed to fight imperialist attacks against women’s rights and welfare.

The 'World Bank Out of Climate Finance' campaign calls on readers to send emails via urging the Transitional Committee of the UNFCCC to keep the World Bank out of the green climate fund.

This special issue of African Journal of Conflict Resolution (AJCR) on Southern Africa - 50 years after Hammarskjöld underlines the current relevance of Hammarskjöld’s legacy and the continued relevance of his mindset and convictions for our efforts today to enhance peace and reduce violence and discrimination. This covers not only dimensions seeking to protect individual people. It also includes efforts to ensure more equal relations among states within the international system, often misleadingly called ‘order’ but more often tantamount to a structurally embedded disorder. By doing so, the following contributions also articulate parameters for better conduct by and among states and their leaders, respecting the interest of ‘We, the Peoples’ as the Preamble of the United Nations Charter declares (in contrast to what follows in the actual clauses, which focus on the governments of states). the special issue.

An Angolan human rights activist arbitrarily detained without charge in the Democratic Republic of Congo for more than two weeks must be released immediately, Amnesty International has said. Agostinho Chicaia, an environmentalist and former president of the banned Angolan human rights organisation Mpalabanda, was arrested in Kinshasa on 20 June, apparently in connection with an attack on the Togolese football team last year.

With just weeks to go before a 27-month moratorium on deporting Zimbabweans living illegally in South Africa expires, the authorities are scrambling to complete a documentation process that will still leave hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans lacking the necessary permits to avoid arrest. The number of Zimbabweans who have fled the political and economic crisis in their country and moved to South Africa is unknown but estimates from the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) range from one to 1.5 million. Before the government introduced the moratorium in April 2009, the authorities were deporting Zimbabweans who had entered the country illegally at a rate of about 200,000 a year.

Four Numsa members were injured when police shot them with rubber bullets during an engineering sector strike in Krugersdorp, west of Johannesburg, the metalworkers' union claimed on Thursday, 7 July. The union's spokesman Castro Ngobese said the four men were in hospital and a case had been opened at a local police station. He condemned the alleged shooting, during protests for higher wages. On Wednesday Numsa claimed police intimidated, harassed, shot at and arrested strikers in Bellville, Cape Town and Germiston, Johannesburg.

The TASENE programme is a unique collaboration between COSTECH (Tanzania), Sida (Sweden) and NWO-WOTRO (The Netherlands). TASENE invites applications from recent PhD graduates in any discipline to conduct full time research over two years, jointly with colleagues from the other countries. The researchers will work in Tanzania and in either Sweden or The Netherlands. Research should be relevant to the research and university system in Tanzania.

July 9 is Independence Day in the Republic of South Sudan. Below are the words of the country’s new national anthem, which you can also

This discussion paper from the International Council on Human Rights Policy examines the human rights implications of the immense diffusion of data-gathering technologies across the world in recent years. It starts from the premise that the relevant issues, while much discussed, are not yet well understood and are evolving rapidly, both of which contribute to widespread anxiety. The paper explores the roots of this anxiety and attempts to determine its sources and effects. It queries the degree to which data-gathering technologies pose problems that represent (or are analogous to) human rights threats and asks whether and how human rights law may help to assess or address those problems.

Ten people were on Thursday 7 July arrested as protests against the high cost of living and graft at the Ministry of Education turned chaotic. And police were forced to lob several teargas canisters to disperse the group of Unga Revolution campaigners who are pressing for a reduction in the cost of flour as well a the sacking of Education minister Prof Sam Ongeri.

It's early morning in Zandspruit and police are barricading one end of the road. At the other end, behind a blockade of trees, rocks and burning tyres, a mob of young and old emerge, singing struggle songs. The protest started at 3am and will not stop until their councillor addresses them. It's been two months since South African local government elections, and the community is fuming that no one has come to address them since. As they march they carry posters that are calling for councillor Maureen Schneeman to step down.

Scholar Mahmood Mamdani has cautioned East Africans against copying the European model of regional integration, arguing that it is a recipe for disaster. He was addressing the East African Legislative Assembly symposium. Mamdani said those who call for unity in Africa have tended to follow a model - The European Community - yet developments in Greece, Spain, Ireland, etc should cause a rethink.