Aside from its reliance on anonymous witnesses, the Washington Post story – while criticizing Burundian soldiers - failed to mention that the top ten contributors of UN peacekeeping troops include infamous human rights abusers Ethiopia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Rwanda, Nepal, Egypt and Indonesia. 

What are the lessons from Cuba in dealing with racism? Denial of racism is clearly not an option. Discouraging public discourse about it can not help either. Greater awareness is needed of the systemic nature, the multiple forms and the seeming invisibility of racism in institutions, social spaces and relations.

The Black Panthers made clear the need for organized collective action by way of the formation of political organizations of and by the oppressed. The BPP became the vehicle through which the cop watch patrols and the necessary resources were mobilized to collectively fight police terrorism.

To call a conscious protest by schoolgirls resisting racism a “tantrum” is myopic. Although apartheid has long been legally dismantled in South Africa, racism still exists and whiteness there still means being part of a privileged group; one whose traditions, religion, food and appearance - including hairstyle - is still the default norm.

Nigeria and its backers must now know that no force can stop the determined will of a people. No other African peoples have suffered such an extensive and gruesome genocide and incalculable impoverishment as the Igbo. Yet the Igbo have written a stunning essay in the past 50 years on human survival and resilience, overcoming the most desperate, unutterably brutish forces in Nigeria. 

If it boggles the mind that a bigoted politician spewing hatred, misogyny and division could win the American Presidency, what does one make of a justice system that grants freedom to the murderers of an elderly woman who allegedly blasphemed Islam? Nigeria is busy destroying the very thin fabric that holds it together.

The 15th Session of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute is going at The Hague, the seat of the International Criminal Court. A network of civil society organisations in Kenya delivered the following statement to the Assembly:

Large amounts of the money raised globally by Bill Clinton after the earthquake, and pledged by the U.S. under Hillary Clinton, simply disappeared without a trace, its whereabouts unknown. A whopping $465 million of the relief money went through the Pentagon, which spent it on deployment of 20,000 U.S. troops, many of whom never set foot on Haitian soil. What the Clintons did to Haiti was callous, selfish and indefensible.

Much of the whining about the American working class falling victim to neoliberal globalization is rooted in American exceptionalism. Everyone else has supposedly reaped a windfall from neoliberal free trade. It is a narrative with very little sympathy for, or solidarity with, the victims of globalization around the world - particularly in Africa.

People who murder others allegedly for blasphemy in Nigeria - a secular, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural country - are never brought to justice. Yet without justice there can never be peace. And the absence of peace means there is no unity. For how long will this situation last?

It is deeply disheartening that a country that fought so hard and long to win independence for its people has plunged into a civil war with no end in sight. South Sudanese are suffering again, this time in the hands of the same generals who led them to victory. Salva Kiir and Riek Machar, if they have a heart in their breast, must put aside their own pride and do whatever it takes to end this senseless war.

Who benefits from withdrawal from the International Criminal Court as a response to the double standards and asymmetrical power relations in global politics? Leaving the ICC erodes international criminal jurisdiction and thereby the protection of people further, especially on a continent where no other local, regional or continental court with a similar mandate exists.

The people in Calais are not just some unfortunate exception to the rule that the world is OK. Their desperate presence tells the truth about an unacceptable world dominated by a handful of countries that have prospered at the expense of the vast majority of the planet's people, through plunder and war. That there are 63.5 million refugees and displaced people in the world is an irrefutable proof – only one of too many – that the capitalist-imperialist system does not work for humanity and the planet. 

Sudan is the birthplace of the contemporary global wave of terrorism, supported by countries in the Middle East and the West. Those destabilizing Africa are aided and abetted by empire building interests in the developed world, which see Africa as a soft target ripe for re-colonization. 

Some critics who have analyzed the circumstances surrounding the well-publicized capture of Chibok schoolgirls in 2014 have concluded that it was an elaborate political web of deceit weaved by the Islamic north to wrest power from a southern Christian president.

About two weeks ago, there were dramatic scenes of joy and relief in Nigeria when the government handed over 21 schoolgirls to their parents after their captors, the militant group Boko Haram, released them. Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu reconstructs the event in this piece of fiction.

Many young people from Africa are risking their lives making perilous journeys to the West in search of greener pastures. The cause of this is to be found in the failure of African governments to offer opportunities to young people to realize their dreams. Africa is not poor; its children do not need to die in international waters looking for a better life.

Media organisations, like most of South Africa’s formal institutions, were infused with institutional racism during the apartheid-era. In many cases this is still unchanged. There has to be a greater acknowledgement of institutional racism in organisations.

The man most responsible for the death of six million Congolese – the worst genocide since World War Two – holds periodic celebrations in cities all around the world to celebrate the accomplishments of his regime. Rwandan President Paul Kagame is armed, financed and protected by the United States. When Kagame showed up in San Francisco last month, the author was there to mark the occasion.

How it is possible that a government that is led by people who, as part of the Black community, have first-hand experience of the brutality of state violence through the police, unleash the same type of state violence against their own people, and even seek to justify the use of such anti-Black violence? Every Black police officer must refuse to be used to silence their own Black sisters and brothers.