On March 6, the U.S. Department of State released its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2006. As in previous years, the State Department pointed the finger at human rights conditions in more than 190 countries and regions, including China, but avoided touching on the human rights situation in the United States.

South African Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma has dismissed claims that China's involvement in Africa is of a colonialist nature. She commented that China's trade with Africa has increased by 40% per annum since 2000 and this has had an encouraging effect on Africa.

The third Joint Economic and Trade Commission China-Angola is taking place from the 14th to the 16th of March in Beijing. This meeting signifies the augmentation in ties between these two nations in addition to the fact that Angola is already China's largest trade partner in Africa.

A family of seven Somali migrants who moved into a new house in North London five years ago has barely gone 48 hours without suffering some sort of racial abuse.

The UK and the other countries of Europe are signatories to children's rights conventions and yet they are systematically robbing a whole group of children of their basic, human rights by classifying them not as children but as foreigners and asylum seekers.

Ugandan health officials on Monday said they would seek alternative funding for anti-malaria projects after the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria declined a grant application of US$16 million because of concerns over financial mismanagement.

A number of regions of the world are reversing centuries of deforestation and are now showing an increase in forest area, according to FAO's State of the World’s Forests report, released on Tuesday 13 March.

Most development practitioners and development cooperation agencies agree that knowledge is at the core of sustainable development processes. This increased awareness has resulted in the upcoming trend of development oriented knowledge sharing programmes, according to Margaret van Doodewvaard.

An incisive new article by Akwe Amosu takes a critical look at Sino-African relations, in which she states that China’s march into Africa has reminded pundits of those two proverbial elephants fighting. Evoking the battle between East and West, they opine that it will be the grass that suffers - except in this instance, the people are the grass and one of the elephants is their own governments.

Human rights defenders are increasingly using computers and the Internet in their work. Although access to technology is still a huge issue around the world, electronic means of storing and communicating information are getting more and more common in human rights organisations. These issues are dealt with in a new manual published by Front Line.

This article explores SMS technology and the potential use of mobile banking systems for farmers in rural Africa.

"At the time of his death Chima was the Executive Director of the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO) where he worked for 15 years. A committed human rights activist, Chima was remarkable for his unwavering dedication to social justice for ordinary Nigerians. Since his university days, Chima had been actively involved in shaping political events in Nigeria."

Girls from around the world – including a former child soldier from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), an HIV-positive rape victim from Zambia, and a child-labourer from Nepal – have come together to share the experiences that made them activists at an event at United Nations Headquarters.

The Sudanese government is "paralysing" the aid operation in its conflict-torn western region of Darfur, the US special envoy to Sudan has said. Andrew Natsios said there had recently been a big increase in red tape and the harassment of aid workers.

There was outrage among European oil exploration companies interested in Kenya when it emerged last week that the state-owned National Oil Corporation of China — CNOOC — has quietly put out notices offering to farm out to third parties some of the oil exploration blocks granted to it by President Mwai Kibaki in April last year.

Yaba Badoe and Wangui wa Goro are joined by publisher Becky Clarke and Elleke Boehmer (chair), a specialist in postcolonial writing, to discuss the African Love Stories Anthology, a radical collection of short stories, spanning the continent and featuring challenging themes hitherto considered a taboo.

The University of Oxford Department for Continuing Education is now accepting applications for its part-time Master's degree in International Human Rights Law for 2007/8 admission. If you have any queries or would like to request a printed brochure, please email [email][email protected] Application deadline is 16 March 2007.

Bringing down the costs of Internet access could set off the same wave of connectivity that has made mobile phone usage commonplace in developing countries, said innovators and corporate leaders from some of the world’s leading technology firms meeting in northern California with government leaders, activists and United Nations officials.

A federal jury in Miami has found Colonel Carl Dorélien, a former member of the Haitian Military's High Command, liable for torture, extrajudicial killing, arbitrary detention and crimes against humanity suffered by plaintiffs Lexiuste Cajuste, Marie Jeanne Jean and her two young children.

An open letter demanding "an immediate halt to the deforestation of the Amazon jungle" has been released by Brazilian television stars taking part in the Globo Network series " Amazonia, de Galvez a Chico Mendes" (Amazonia, from Galvez to Chico Mendes).