ECOWAS Commission President James Victor Gbeho has decla red that the 'era of coups is over' in West Africa, following years of political instability highlighted by military intervention in the governance of member states.

The Nigerian Senate has cleared 38 ministerial nom inees for appointment into the federal cabinet, paving the way for Acting President Goodluck Jonathan to sw ear them into office and give them portfolios. The clearance of the nominees marked the end of three days of screening by the upper legislative chamber.

Supporting Henning Melber’s arguments

Gado's latest cartoon considers the practicalities of putting the Pope on trial.

Naked tracings worn thin of he
who walked miles in thousands of
shoes filled with sorrow,
shoe marks worn away
where he encamped
and where he alighted
on earth that tells the years passed
since the months of peace
gone, to months of what is now,
shoes that speak of dreams in the
West of when paradise was near;

to meet his lover of a far, he
left during the long nights that
desires to go where
the soul withdraws to its home,
to fly forgotten as a dream,
to cover the past with space
he sails on a small boat
in a sea so immense
that transports
dreams after dreams.

Night putting its shadow aside
for soles of the feet to cross
the river to Zion,
the boat awaits to take its guest
to a place of dreams of love, inside
left all; deserting a conduit and heaps
to travel with 7 oceans and
hundreds of millions of stars
swinging; to walk with a million suns
that light up the day
of whole rivers of light,

to swim, in seas of love waves
that shields pain,
to make blankets of dark sand;
sandcastles that shield,
to receive quiet nights
and mornings
that call songs of birds
that sings for souls of dreams,
and he, infix’t
to be one with dreams he becomes
one with everything around,
laughing only to the sky.

Unbending on dreams
he, dwells amid the stocks
of ruins of stone-walls
heading where the imagination
broke in, his entire sky
taken up by
a journey full of unawareness,
continuing; alighted by the affection
of Zion,
he remains a prisoner of his dream
captive to a world beyond knowing.

In the wide-of-eyes
on an open terrain he journeyed
for the love of Zion,
strung out along the route
chased, shadows of hope closing in
crying to his fears,
speaking with the deaf;
the unexpressed rocks,
befriending sands
that speaks of time.

Time that brings out his eclipse
of a spirit of unsullied lucid dreams
of mysteries of Zion,
in silence to join its silent secret place,
he sifts through the current of air
swamped by rains of a night traveler
flowing dark and under, he
enwrapped in every kind of cloud
passing the night
to join the cleared morning
of pearls of the great sky,
to witness nights of dark and under.

Unbroken, he continued
to brake past bonds
to make new ones
on the eastern slopes
to join with Zion,
and even in far holding on
to not brake the bonds of desire
he, pushed by the north winds
to what is the southern tip
of the north Afrik to that
of the northern terrain
of the Bilad as Sudan,

crossing to trade life for what
seemed not death
beyond flutes
of Sudanese tunes,
escaped eternal rest to bathe
in the Nile
to wash blood with sparks of gold,
black dust of the body
walked a mile in cracked
earth to find the feet reluctantly
stuck in cracks of xylophonic tunes of life.

A spirit of unsullied lucid dreams,
mysteries of Zion he meets,
one moment his life a stone
the next
a meet'ng of the land of his lovers;
to be embraced by ashes, cold winds
and blackened hearts of stones
of Zion,
oh closeness to life, hardness of life
to what is now
that grief’d him through journeys,

to at last, to have met his land of lovers
but to be met with phantoms
that creep around
that sting and bring droplets;
each drop for the lost dreams
of Zion;
deceived dreams that makes the heart
brew trouble and anguish,
the departure of paradise
the loss of a longed lover,

his Zion,
aching his heart of a dream
once promised and now lost,
of a friend she may have been
but even she could not keep
her promise to him,
for a well-meant word
could not be taken by she,
a friend he once called;

his heart weeps with no end
for the one he knows
and only loves,
others of a life to come;
more to come
to meet and to attest and
to have to turn their backs, and he,
the aloneness of the deluded soul
broken'n
fades into the distance
kept in the shadows of Zion.

Haiti’s earthquake has left women and children in the country highly vulnerable to rape and violence. Beverly Bell gives an account of this vulnerability and of the relentless work of KOFAVIV (Commission of Women Victim-to-Victim), a grassroots anti-violence group in Haiti, to prevent and protect women and children against rape and violence. Bell depicts the hostile environment that KOFAVIV is working in – one in which police and aid and relief groups are either less than willing to help or have limited resources. Furthermore, Bell points out that KOFAVIV members' advocacy has ‘come at a price’: Their daughters, their families and they are being personally targeted for their work.

Author of ), Léonora Miano, expresses her profound disagreement with both the content and the inclusion of a foreword by Terese Svoboda in the University of Nebraska Press edition of her book: ‘Let’s say it frankly,’ she says, ‘it’s full of lies’. Highlighting specific errors, Miano undermines the foreword point by point and demands that University of Nebraska Press withdraw it.

Even as opposition parties threaten a last-minute boycott, Elections in Darfur and the Consequences of a Probable NCP Victory in Sudan , this latest policy briefing from the International Crisis Group, examines how the National Congress Party (NCP) has manipulated the 2008 census, drafted the election laws in its favour, gerrymandered electoral districts, co-opted traditional leaders and bought tribal loyalties. It has done this everywhere in Sudan, but most dramatically in Darfur, where it has greater freedom and means to carry out its strategy because of the ongoing conflict.

A well known artist Owen Maseko and Voti Thebe, the person in charge of the Bulawayo National Arts Gallery, were arrested last Friday, a day after they launched an exhibition of provocative paintings about the Gukurahundi era.

Magatte Mbodj Guèye et Madické Diagne

Magatte Mbodj Guèye et Madické Diagne

Major corruption loopholes are jeopardising Egypt’s attempts to combat the problem despite the existence of a broad range of anti-corruption laws and regulations, according to a new report released today by Transparency International (TI).

Attacks on rebels by government troops and African Union peacekeepers in Somalia kill and injure many civilians and should be much more discriminate, human rights group Amnesty International said on Thursday. Islamist rebels have been fighting the Horn of Africa state's fragile government since the start of 2007. African Union's (AU) force AMISOM is supporting the U.N.-backed administration, which controls just parts of the capital, Mogadishu.

Egyptian state security prevented activists from holding a symbolic "trial" of Egypt's ruling party on Thursday, using force to disperse those who tried to resist, activists said. Security men in civilian clothes beat some of the activists who gathered to hold the event at a lawyers' club south of Cairo.

Togo's government has outlawed further demonstrations against the results of a March 4 presidential election, which opposition leaders say was rigged to favour the incumbent. The decree came a day ahead of a scheduled opposition rally in the seaside capital of Lome, escalating tensions in the West African state whose election had been widely seen as a test for regional democracy.

As voter registration kicked off all over the country in Kenya, the Internally displaced people, especially in Eldoret were considering to boycott the whole process altogether due to what they term as lack of confidence in the electoral system in kenya.

The world's most water-deprived countries are also receiving some of the least help from the World Bank to improve conditions, according to a study that the bank's independent evaluators released on Monday. The study said water shortages, being felt in more than 40 countries, are at risk of getting worse.

The Ethiopian government is waging a coordinated and sustained attack on political opponents, journalists, and rights activists ahead of the May 2010 elections, Human Rights Watch said in a report. On May 23, 2010, Ethiopians will vote in the first parliamentary elections in Ethiopia since 2005, when the post-election period was marred by controversy and bloodshed.

The police have for the past two weeks arrested scores of MDC supporters across the country on trumped-up charges in a worrying partisan move as cases of Zanu PF-instigated violence against MDC members are on the increase.

South African President Jacob Zuma urged Western nations to lift targeted sanctions against Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and his allies, saying they were undermining the nation’s coalition government. “We don’t need these sanctions now,” Zuma told lawmakers in Parliament in Cape Town.

Nigeria's Acting President Goodluck Jonathan has sent the list of the first batch of 25 ministerial-nominees to the upper legislative chamber, the Senate, for clearance. vOut of the 25, three served as Ministers while four were Ministers of State in t he 42-member cabinet which was dissolved 17 March.