African LGBTI human rights defenders attending the 45th Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR) currently underway in Banjul, Gambia, are optimistic that a resolution aimed at ending all forms of discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in Africa will be adopted by the African Commission. On 14 May, the panel presented the resolution which has been continuously barred during the preceding ordinary sessions.

Sanusha Naidu compiles a list of the top stories on Sino-African relations.

Morocco had been decided as the venue of this meeting towards the end of the
previous IC meeting held in Belem just after the WSF 2009 in January. Morocco, which had held the Maghreb Social Forum earlier, had made the request for an IC meeting there as, in their opinion, it would strengthen their efforts in consolidating the Magreb-Mashrik process, encompassing the Arab world.

cc As the African Development Bank (AfDB) holds its 44th annual assembly, African civil society groups met at a forum in Dakar to express their deep dissatisfaction with the bank's policies. Forum participants allege that the bank does not fully understand the implications of the global financial crisis for Africa and that it has done nothing more than peddle the neoliberal line of institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). They also say that it has failed to come up with a single initiative of its own to tackle the African debt crisis. The forum stressed the need for the AfDB to be an institution committed first and foremost to the welfare of the African people if it is to promote sustainable development and food sovereignty successfully.

cc It's true that Congo is a disappointment, says Ali M. Malau, responding to

Sudan's government says it will invite new aid groups to work in Darfur and allow those still operating there to expand their activities. The UN's head of humanitarian affairs welcomed the move. Sudan expelled 13 foreign aid groups in March after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.

IIE is pleased to announce Scholar Rescue Fund (SRF) fellowships for threatened academics whose lives and work are in danger in their home country. Professors, researchers and lecturers from any country or field may apply. We invite you to refer suitable candidates, and ask for your help in forwarding the announcement to any academic colleagues who may be interested.

Sanusha Naidu compiles a list of the top stories on Sino-African relations.

Sinohydro is China's leading dam builder, and is developing scores of hydropower projects outside China. Its investments in Africa include dam projects such as Bui (Ghana), Dikgatlhong (Botswana), Grand Poubara (Gabon), Imboulou (Congo-Brazzaville), Kariba North Bank Extension (Zambia), Merowe (Sudan), Tekeze (Ethiopia) and Zungeru (Nigeria). The company is committed to becoming a global brand in the hydropower sector.

As a new post-Cold War order takes shape, the Indian Ocean brings into sharp focus many of the forces shaping contemporary world history. The rise of India and China raise questions about whether we are in a ‘post-American’ world. Yet, at the same time, Sino-Indian makes apparent new configurations and contradictions in the ‘South’. More generally, the historical experiences of the Indian Ocean offer a counterpoint to those of the black Atlantic which has become invisibly normative in much social and political theory.

An earlier Indian Ocean network conference in Johannesburg in January thisyear explored ‘Print Cultures, Nationalisms and Publics of the Indian Ocean’. At the Goa conference, the aim is to develop further agendas for transnational research, transcending the points of reference provided by national historiographies. An important focus will be the dynamics of port cities, places of transit, and networks of migration, trade and communications, whose interconnectivities criss-cross the histories of empires, colonies and nations.

This stream invites papers that develop a critique of –or a dialogue with- Eurocentric interpretations of human rights, and proposals that advance an understanding of rights grounded on any of the historical and geographical sites of the modern struggles for self-determination in the Global South. This stream also welcomes papers that, from the point of view of Europe, enter into a dialogue with the Third-World conceptualization of human rights. Please send your name, affiliation, title of your paper and an abstract of no more than 250 words by Friday, 26 June 2009 directly to the stream convenor.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has a long and ugly history of discrimination against Black people. The Department’s new Secretary, Tom Vilsack, recently said “Some folks refer to USDA as the last plantation.” Across the South, White local and regional USDA managers routinely denied Black farmers critical farm loans and disaster assistance—aid that was easily granted to White farmers. This federal assistance often meant the difference between a thriving, economically viable farm and foreclosure.

In the second quarterly report on the Macau Forum, Lucy Corkin explores developments between China and Portuguese-speaking countries. From China’s burgeoning trade and investment relationship with Brazil and its continued engagement with Angola, Corkin explores Mozambique’s new strategic relationship with Beijing.

cc Africans and Africa suffer from planned underdevelopment, with colonialism and slavery providing economic benefits to one group at the expense of another, the International Association Against Torture’s Roger Wareham tells Riaz K. Tayob in Durban Review Conference. But the West won’t pay Africans reparations instead of aid, because then it couldn’t benefit from its ‘charity’, he adds. Wareham, ‘a black man who grew up in a racist country’, speaks about his lifelong commitment to the liberation of African people. International public opinion is important for influencing what happens on the ground as it isn’t possible to change a system from within, when its beneficiaries are also its gatekeepers.

After months of speculation about how the global economic downturn might affect HIV/AIDS programmes, a new World Bank report details the projected aftermath of the crisis and how it could place the treatment of more than 1.7 million at risk by year's end. Drug shortages, treatment interruptions and higher burdens of AIDS-related diseases are just some of the grim predictions for developing countries, laid out in a recently released report, Averting a Human Crisis During the Global Downturn: Policy Options from the World Bank's Human Development Network.

Security in-a-box is a collaborative effort of the Tactical Technology Collective and Front Line. It was created to meet the digital security and privacy needs of advocates and human rights defenders. Security in-a-box includes a How-to Booklet, which addresses a number of important digital security issues.

The United Nations anti-racism conference in Geneva concluded its general debate after hearing statements on new forms of racist discrimination and expelling three non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for disruptive behaviour. A number of the UN agencies spoke at the five-day Durban Review Conference, which comes to a close tomorrow, including the International Labour Organization (ILO), which warned that saying no to racism in the work is key to promoting respect, tolerance and inclusiveness.

Poor countries, including Kenya, are to receive financial support to develop and diversify exports when the ongoing trade negotiations under the World Trade Organisation (WTO) are concluded. WTO members have pledged to assist Least Developed Country (LDC) members in addressing their supply side capacity constraints, as well as the challenges that will occur due to increased competition as tariff rates used to protect their economies drop, once the Doha Round is concluded.

cc The whole financial system has to be broken down and rebuilt so that finance serves the real economy – and if the private sector does not deliver this, then the government must intervene, Heinner Flassbeck, UNCTAD’s chief economist has said in a wide-ranging interview with Riaz K. Tayob. A recent report from UNCTAD calls for ‘much more regulation’ to avoid ‘excessive speculation’ which treats commodities as an asset class. Flassbeck slates the G20 for its ‘traditional’ approach, which he says does not go far enough to address the misallocation of resources caused by ‘overshooting’ currencies and commodity prices.