Through an initiative by called 'Treasures we Bring' migrants of all kinds - refugees, economic migrants, students, cross border or from one city to the next - are being invited to share their stories thorough video testimonies about a treasured object that represents where they come from, their journey, their challenges, and their hope for the future.

By telling these stories, the videos aim to show how migrants bring a wealth of diversity, talent, and skills to their new homes, while also sharing the histories of the personal objects that they consider to be treasures.

The recorded videos are uploaded to

This edition includes the articles:

- The extraversion of protest: conditions, history and use of the ‘international’ in Africa,
Marie-Emmanuelle Pommerolle
- Internal dynamics, the state, and recourse to external aid: towards a historical sociology of the peasant movement in Senegal since the 1960s
- Peasant struggles in Mali: from defending cotton producers’ interests to becoming part of the Malian power structures by Alexis Roy.

Click on the link provided to access the journal.

Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos at the end of 2010 gave a state-of-the-nation address to the citizenry in Luanda, a move analysts say was doubtlessly informed by the looming 2012 general election. Dos Santos, who has ruled Angola for 30 years, focused his end-year speech on the polls. Under the terms of the new constitution which was approved early this year, dos Santos will not face a direct presidential election. He will instead be automatically elected from the top of legislative poll lists.

Wikileaks has revealed diplomatic cables complaining of favouritism and suspicion of corruption in the manner Air Tanzania Company Limited (ATCL) went about shopping for jetliners for its ageing fleet four years ago. The newspaper report titled: 'Diplomats Help Push Sales of Jetliners on the Global Market. Tanzania and the Fight to Stop Airbus Sale,' said Boeing executives, at times, were pressed by foreign government officials and airline executives to hire 'agents' or other intermediaries to help deliver a sale.

The future of Zimbabweans without legal documentation in South Africa is uncertain, after a brief window to regularise their stay in the country slammed shut last week. The South African government has said more than 232,000 Zimbabweans applied to legalise their stay in the country before the December 31st deadline passed last Friday. This means that an estimated million Zim nationals who live in South Africa have missed this opportunity to apply for relevant work or study permits.

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information has said that the bombing of a church in Alexandria proves that the emergency law imposed on Egypt for 30 years has not provided security and safety to Egyptians. 'This law resulted in nothing but an acute retreat in civil and political freedoms and wasting rights of Muslim and Christian Egyptians.'

In the last six years, there has been a dramatic increase in foreign investment in land deals across Africa and the Malibya deal - a 50-year lease agreed by the Malian and Libyan Presidents - has become totemic of the fear that this new phenomenon of land grabbing will deprive subsistence farmers of their land and their food, reports The Guardian. Mali is one of the countries most affected by the scramble for land, and Segou, the country’s rice basket, is at the eye of the storm, with buyers from Senegal, South Africa, and Asia, as well as domestic companies snapping up leases on thousands of hectares.

South Africa may start deporting more than 1.2 million Zimbabweans in April after they missed a deadline to legalise their residency, Lawyers For Human Rights said. Almost 255,000 Zimbabweans applied to legalise their residency before the 31 December deadline, South Africa’s government said while ruling out an extension to the process. A 'conservative' estimate by Johannesburg’s University of The Witwatersrand is that there are 1.5 million Zimbabweans in South Africa.

Tunisian lawyers have been making a stand throughout protests in that country - and paying the price for it. The lawyers have been protesting regularly to denounce what happened in Sidi Bouzid and the social situation in Tunisia. This is why the government has decided to ‘punish’ them. Every day, news of the kidnapping, arrest, or assault of lawyers is surfacing on social networking sites, report bloggers via Global Voices.

The second India-Africa Forum Summit takes place in 2011, three years after the inaugural event in New Delhi. Sub-Saharan Africa’s exports to India have almost trebled over the past five years and Indian-African business links – particularly in energy resources, precious metals and uranium – have boomed. This paper from Chatham House assesses the prospects for the 2011 India–Africa Forum.

At the end of 2010 at least 4.5 million people were internally displaced in Darfur, the Greater Khartoum area, South Kordofan and the ten states of Southern Sudan. It is thought that in December 2010 there were between 4.5 and 5.2 million IDPs, in the western region of Darfur (where estimates ranged between 1.9 million and 2.7 million), in and around Khartoum, in the state of South Kordofan and in Southern Sudan. In addition, there were unknown numbers of IDPs in the other northern and eastern states.

In what is being hailed as a victory by human rights activists, a Ugandan court has issued an interim order restraining the editors of the Rolling Stone tabloid from any further publication of information about anyone alleged to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.

The journal Humanity now has a blog that will feature debates about the big and small issues of human rights, humanitarianism and development. Current posts include:
- Human rights as a form of idealism
- The World Bank blog site
- The velvet glove of humanitarian biomedicine.

Algeria's National Consultative Committee on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights (CNCPPDH) held a conference in Algiers on 9 December on ways to implement civil rights legislation and enhance the role of women in politics. One hundred and fifty delegates, including ministers, UN agency representatives in Algiers, the two houses of parliament, members of diplomatic bodies in Algiers, along with representatives from the judicial police and national police force, took part in the conference, held to mark the 62nd anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned the arrest on 16 December of Mohamed Daramy, a radio presenter and Ibrahim Farmer, technician for KISS FM Radio in Bo, southern Sierra Leone by Police Assistant Inspector General (AIG) David Sesay who was acting on the order of Minister of Agriculture Dr Sam Sesay. According to the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ), an IFJ Affiliate, on 16 December 2010, Mohamed Daramy and Ibrahim Farmer were arrested and detained overnight in a police cell, following an incident that saw the debate sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture discontinued for a pre-arranged radio programme paid for by the mobile phone company, Africell.

The Ecowas Court of Justice in Abuja has declared the arrest and detention of Musa Saidykhan, a Gambian journalist, illegal and unconstitutional 'as it contravenes the Plaintiff’s human right to personal liberty as guaranteed by Article 6 of the African Charter on Human and People's Rights'. The Court also awarded the Plaintiff $200,000 as damages for the violations of his human rights by the Gambian authorities.

South African bureaucracy - and the vast numbers of Zimbabweans applying for a special permit to remain in the country - could delay the deportation of citizens from the neighbouring state for months. Home Affairs Minister Nkosozana Dlamini-Zuma reportedly told a meeting with the Zimbabwean Stakeholder Forum on 14 December in Pretoria that 'They [Home Affairs] have close on 40,000 applications still outstanding as we speak. So, clearly, they will not be able to finish that backlog before the end of the month.' The deportation of undocumented Zimbabwean nationals would only begin once all applications were processed, the minister said.

According to Vision 2030, which is a government strategic plan on how to boost growth and development in Kenya, there are an estimated five million out of an estimated eight million households who depend directly on agriculture, despite the fact that agriculture continues to be one of the most under-budgeted ministries. Researchers have intensified research on crops that can grow in most parts of the country and which can be used to alleviate food insecurity. This has led many Kenyans to accommodate traditional vegetables that were earlier dismissed as the 'poor man’s crop'.

Nigeria has dropped charges against former US Vice-President Dick Cheney over a 1990s bribery scandal, anti-corruption officials say. The case focused on bribes paid by engineering firm KBR while it was a subsidiary of Halliburton, a firm headed by Mr Cheney at the time. Nigerian officials said Halliburton agreed an out-of-court deal worth $250m (£160m). The firm has not commented.

The world's biggest corporations are rushing to grab and convert living plant matter - called 'biomass' - into fuel, chemicals, and other profitable products. This new 'biomass economy' represents a trillion dollar industry but it will not feed the people or stop climate change. In order to shed light on this new economy, farm leaders from the global South participated in a public forum to share their reality and propose alternatives. This page presents a series of videos from the forum.