On 14 May 2009 the Constitutional Court will hear the attempt by the shack dweller’s movement Abahlali baseMjondolo to have the KwaZulu-Natal Slums Act declared unlawful. Other provinces have been mandated to develop similar legislation and the decision of the court may have a significant impact on the future of our cities.

South Africa is on the eve of a major broadband infrastructure roll-out. Affordable broadband can have a significant impact on the country’s socio-economic, political, cultural and educational development; but broadband penetration in South Africa lags behind countries with a similar level of development such as the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Turkey.

Abahlali baseMjondolo will once again climb another high mountain for the first time when our struggle for the safety, dignity and equality of the poor ascends to the Constitutional Court of the Republic of South Africa. In 2005 when we formed our movement we committed ourselves to do whatever it takes to protect the rights, lives and future of the shack dwellers and the poor in South Africa. We are determined to defend our children, without compromising our future generation.

Campaign groups in Cape Town have demanded the release of Zimbabwean civil society and opposition activists, describing their safety as ‘of grave concern’. Calling for South Africa to take action against ‘the Mugabe regime’, the group held a protest outside parliament to make the point that many Zimbabweans are refugees, not just economic migrants.

This guide presents advocates with a collection of popular online services that can be used for advocacy quickly with little to no technical support. There are services for publishing photographs and video, for setting up a campaign blog or for using mobiles to communicate in a group. An amazing amount of functionality and tools are available simply by connecting to the Internet and opening up a web-browser. You don't need to have a lot of technical expertise to try some of these. You also don't need much money, these services are offered at low- to no-cost.

Mobiles in-a-box from the Tactical Technology Collective is a collection of tools, tactics, how-to guides and case studies designed to help advocacy and activist organisations use mobile technology in their work. Mobiles in-a-box is designed to inspire you, to present possibilities for the use of mobile telephony in your work and to introduce you to some tools which may help you. After reading the material in this toolkit you can expect to be able to design and implement a mobile advocacy strategy for your organisation. >>

Trade unions are preparing to mobilise in force for this year's Labour Day activities in Morocco. The holiday falls in the run-up to union elections scheduled for May 14th-19th. During the pre-campaign period, regional union branches are making banners and recruiting people for the annual parades that will take place across the country on Friday (May 1st), especially in the major cities.

Days after a judge confirmed Shell Oil will stand trial here May 26 on charges it was complicit in the murders of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Nigerian activists, environmental and human rights groups announced they have formed a global campaign to hold Shell accountable and demand that it stop gas flaring in Nigeria.

Dawit Isaak, a journalist,writer and playwright born 1964 in Eritrea came to Sweden as a refugee from the war in 1987 and became a Swedish citizen in 1992. When Eritrea gained independence, Dawit Isaak returned to his native country and became a part-owner of the country's first independent newspaper, Setit. Dawit Isaak was taken into custody on 23 september 2001. He has not been either charged formally or given a fair trial. Neither his family nor Swedish authorities nor international human rights organizations, International Journalist Association or International PEN have been allowed to visit him.

Police in Zanzibar have banned a Muslim group from demonstrating in the islands in support of the recent move by Zanzibar legislators to demand ‘oil and natural gas’ be removed from the list of union matters. The Association for Islamic Mobilisation and Propagation (JUMUKI) had notified the police of their plan to demonstrate Friday in what they termed as “to show our support to Zanzibar government and legislators on ‘oil and natural gas’ issue.”

At least 2,400 children have been rescued from ‘hazardous’ work in Zanzibar; the Isles Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Employment, Youths, Children, and Women Ms Rahma Mshangama, has revealed. Officiating at celebration to mark 90 years of International Labour Organization (ILO) at Bwawani Hotel, Ms Mshangama said the children included those engaged in fishing and seaweed farming.

African nations must stop signing away their natural resources in skewed deals with foreign firms, the African winner of the 2009 “Green Nobel” prize said in an interview. Ona, a wheelchair-bound Gabonese activist, has won the African 2009 Goldman Environmental Prize for a decade of activism to protect the Congo Basin Rainforest, the second largest rainforest in the world.

The in solidarity with Minority Women In Action are profoundly concerned about the increasing violence, discrimination and violation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, transgender, intersexes and queer (LGBTIQ) individuals' rights in Kenya. In particular we vehemently condemn the unjust and unconstitutional acts occasioned against Ms Faith Onyimbo on the early morning of Saturday 18 April 2009 at Florida 1000 on Nairobi's Koinange Street.

A United States judge has ruled that lawsuits can go ahead against several companies accused of helping South Africa's apartheid-era government. IBM, Ford and General Motors are among those corporations now expected to face demands for damages from thousands of apartheid's victims.

Following the arrest and trial of novelist Magdy El-Shafei on grounds of ‘publishing and distributing publications incompatible with public morals’, the is calling for the Egyptian government to drop the charges against the writer, which violate the freedom of opinion and expression, and to amend the existing criminal legislation to ensure the practice of freedom of opinion and expression.

The main militant group in Nigeria's oil producing Niger Delta region has scoffed at an amnesty offer announced on Thursday by President Umaru Yar'Adua, describing it as "unrealistic". "Such an offer by a government known for its insincerity must first be given to those who are being held captive by the Nigerian state for the rest of us to take seriously," the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said in a statement e-mailed to journalists, in an apparent reference to its leader, Henry Okah, who is being tried for treason by the government.

In 2006 while we were being forced to live on the pavement – due to evictions – the Mayoral Committee of Housing promised the Gympie Street Residents that they would be given accommodation in old Woodstock Day Hospital after negotiating with Provincial Government. At the same time as this was going on Mrs Zille ignored a personal plea from the children of Gympie Street to address their educational needs, which were being denied due to the fact that they were being forced to live on the pavement and did not have access to proper meals for six weeks.

The 18th African Human Rights Moot Court Competition will be held at the University of Lagos, Nigeria from 10 to 15 August 2009. Students, academics and judges from all over Africa are invited to participate. All law faculties in Africa are invited to send one faculty representative who works in the field of human rights (dean or another lecturer) who will serve as a judge in the preliminary rounds, and two undergraduate students (preferably one man and one woman) who will constitute the team that represents its university at the Moot Court.

In South Africa, if you are poor your right to justice through the legal system is often denied. If you don't have money for lawyers its hard to get justice. Therefore, the law is for the rich because they have ample money to buy 'justice'. Landlords who have money can afford to try and evict people continuously by accessing the courts and paying the best lawyers to throw people out of their houses. In South Africa, communities don't have money to continuously go to court to fight for, what should be, their basic rights. In the legal system, you are discriminated against if you are poor.

March 24, 2009 is Impunity Day in Kenya - the Human Rights Defenders Day. It was the 24th day of March in 1996, when Daniel arap Moi’s State assassinated our dear Karimi Nduthu. Karimi Nduthu had just finalized an investigative report into the state sponsored ethnic clashes of 1992 and 1993 which targeted targeting ethnic populations of the Gikuyu, Kisii, Luo and Luyha in Rift Valley, Nyanza, Western and Coast Provinces.