Following its rejection of CAL’s (Coalition of African Lesbians) application for observer status, L. Muthoni Wanyeki of the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) petitions the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) to ‘provide leadership in the protection and promotion of the human rights of sexual minorities in Africa’.

We at Global Rights express our deepest disappointment, dissatisfaction and concern for the decision of the commission to deny observer status to the Coalition of African Lesbians (CAL).

INTERIGHTS urges the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights to reconsider its refusal of observer status for the Coalition for African Lesbians (CAL).

The Center for Women’s Global Leadership is writing to express our deep concern about the recent decision, made on behalf of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR), to not grant observer status to the Coalition of African Lesbians (CAL).

Lydia Alpízar Durán, on behalf of the Association for Women’s Rights in Development, writes to the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights regarding the denial of the application from the Coalition of African Lesbians (CAL) for observer status at the commission, news ‘received with great disappointment’.

Amnesty International welcomes this opportunity to address the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the state of the situation of human rights in Africa.

This is a protest letter at the decision by the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights to deny observer status to the Coalition of African Lesbians (CAL).

Egypt's ruling party has rejected as 'interference' calls, including by Washington, to allow foreign observers to monitor this month's parliamentary elections, media reports said on Wednesday. The National Democratic Party's secretary general Sawfat al-Sharif said only local groups would be allowed to observe the November 28 poll.

A new study finds a lack of transparency and corruption are reducing the impact of an initiative in Cameroon that channels a portion of national timber levies to rural forest communities. The study highlights the challenges of using a climate change pact to do something similar in forested regions around the world. In an article published in the peer-reviewed journal International Forestry Review, scientists at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) examined how revenues from a tax paid by logging companies in Cameroon, known as an Area Fee (AF), are distributed to local councils to reduce rural poverty and stimulate local economic growth.

Following concerted efforts to deny the Rwandan genocide from Edward Herman & David Peterson, Adam Jones urges Pambazuka readers to ‘do what they can to spread word of Herman & Peterson's denialist enterprise’.

'Loyalty to political parties and to those who try to privatise the history of the struggle against apartheid for themselves becomes a very serious threat to the poor in a top-down system of governance,' writes S'bu Zikode, president of South African shackdwellers’ movement Abahlali baseMjondolo. 'But loyalty has also been the source of our survival. Loyalty is fundamental to the strength that we build in our families and with our friends, our movements and our communities … Our loyalty should start from the bottom of society, where we are, and not from the politicians at the top of society.'

Petra Diamonds, the largest diamond-mining group listed on the UK's Alternative Investment Market (AIM), may deal in the glittering rocks that bring lovers together in holy matrimony. But the company’s activities behind the scenes may just be tearing people – and societies – apart, writes Khadija Sharife.

Kabiné Komara

Zaya Yeebo

As the two-year lifespan of Zimbabwe’s coalition government draws close to an end, Japhet M. Zwana finds little cause for optimism about the country’s future.

‘What may seem to some a progressive and brave government is upon closer examination a tyranny’, which despite ‘rhetoric about land redistribution, is ultimately very hostile to its own society’s poor and working people, women, youth, elderly and ill,’ writes Patrick Bond.

Protecting Nigeria’s thriving film industry from piracy, political alliances in Cote D’Ivoire and Guinea’s elections through the eyes of a Peace Corps volunteer are among the posts in this week’s roundup of the African blogosphere, by Dibussi Tande.

The banning of works of art at a national gallery both curtails ‘fundamental rights of freedom of conscience and expression’ and ‘derails attempts’ to grapple with Zimbabwe’s traumatic past in ‘a palatable manner’, argues David Coltart.

‘For the last twenty years, the most powerful political and economic interests in and around Haiti have waged a systematic campaign designed to stifle the popular movement and deprive it of its principal weapons, resources and leaders,' writes Peter Hallward. January’s earthquake ‘triggered reactions that carried and that are still carrying such measures to entirely new levels’.

Conditions were ripe for cholera because international policy towards Haiti hasn't changed in decades, says this opinion piece in the London Guardian. 'Economic exploitation, political intervention, NGO gifts with chains attached, media misrepresentation, the same mistakes have been made over and over again. Sadly, even an earthquake doesn't seem to have changed that. It's little wonder Haitians are manifesting their anger in increasingly heated protests.'

Global food import bills may pass the $1 trillion mark in 2010, a level not seen since food prices peaked in 2008, says a new United Nations report, which warns that harder times could be ahead without a major increase in food production next year. According to the latest edition of the Food Outlook report, released by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), food import bills for the world's poorest countries are predicted to rise 11 per cent in 2010 and by 20 per cent for low-income food-deficit countries.