The South African University of Johannesburg (UJ) senate has threatened to end its relationship with the Israeli university, Ben-Gurion (BGU), unless certain conditions are met. In a statement released on Wednesday, the South African university's highest academic body said Ben-Gurion University would have to work with Palestinian universities on research projects and stop its 'direct and indirect support for the Israeli military and the occupation'.

Gado's latest cartoon captures the contrast between the United Nation's response to Rwanda's genocide and its recent report on the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Friends of the Earth International, the world's largest federation of grassroots environmental organisations, is proud to announce that its chair, Nnimmo Bassey from Nigeria [1], will be a recipient of the 2010 'Right Livelihood Award'. [2] The Right Livelihood Award, often referred to as the 'Alternative Nobel Prize' will be delivered in Stockholm on December 6.

Nnimmo Bassey, who is also Executive Director of Friends of the Earth Nigeria, was nominated ‘for revealing the full ecological and human horrors of oil production and for his inspired work to strengthen the environmental movement in Nigeria and globally.’

Comrade Peter Young Kihara, veteran human rights defender, died on 26 September 2010 in Nairobi, Kenya. Kihara played 'a crucial role in constitution making' and showed 'unwavering commitment to work with the poor' at grassroots level, writes the RPP.

The cancellation by Egyptian security of an international NGO conference in Cairo, just two days before it was to take place, is a brazen example of the government’s increasingly hostile behavior towards civil society, according to Freedom House. The conference, entitled 'Freedom of Association in the Arab World: Reality and Expectations', was organised by One World Foundation in cooperation with Al Sadat Association.

ARTICLE 19 and four other international freedom of expression organisations are calling on the government of Uganda to respect its international and constitutional obligations to safeguard freedom of expression. The International Freedom of Expression Partnership four - day mission was undertaken in September 2010 to assess the deteriorating freedom of expression situation in the country, in the wake of the killing of two journalists and in the light of forthcoming elections in 2011.

Over the next three years, TrustAfrica will provide US$2.7 million for pioneering research on ways to stimulate the development of small and medium - sized enterprises and ensure that prosperity is broadly shared. 'Africa has achieved remarkable economic growth over the last two decades, outpacing most other regions in the world,' said Dr. Akwasi Aidoo, TrustAfrica’s executive director. 'But the benefits of greater investment and higher returns have not been reaching large segments of the population.'

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) is pleased to announce the third Guy Mhone International Conference, under the auspices of its Economic Research Programme. The theme of this year’s conference is The Renaissance of African Economies.

From May 31 to June 11, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) attended the first-ever review conference of the Rome Statue, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court. At the conference, IWPR journalists had the opportunity to hear the concerns of the victims who suffered at the hands of the Lord’s Resistance Army, LRA, Uganda’s notorious rebel group. These concerns prompted IWPR-Netherlands to produce a series of special reports to coincide with the conference. The articles in 'ICC Review Conference: Taking Stock on the Ground' give a voice to the victims of the LRA and look at the different aspects of international justice that were discussed during the review conference through the eyes of the people that the court was set up to serve.

African governments have been called upon to show the political will and creativity to make up for the delay in early childhood education and care. According to statistics presented at the opening of the first world conference on childhood education and care, only 15 per cent of children have access to pre-school education in sub-Saharan Africa. However, 'hope to make up for this delay is quite possible,' said Hamidou Boukary, senior specialist at the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA), who is taking part in the meeting in Moscow, Russia.

Leaving your children behind in your home country is by no means easy, but more and more people are moving to crossing our borders in the hope of making a better living. Zoopy TV's newsteam spent a day with Belinda, a Zimbabwean who now works as a domestic worker in South Africa.

After she became a mother just before her 15th birthday, Diana Ricardo* was forced to drop out of school and give up her dreams of a brighter future. Ricardo says she was impregnated by a teacher, who afterwards refused paternity testing claiming he could not afford a second wife. Ricardo’s case is not unique. Worrying statistics around sexual abuse in schools and high female drop-out rates means Mozambique and other countries in the sub-Saharan Africa region may not reach the 2015 education and gender targets set out in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The objective of this topic is to enable research on common challenges that are relevant to all sub-Saharan African countries and that could be met more effectively by them collectively rather than individually. In order to meet this objective, the research should be multidisciplinary oriented, including the humanities, use and integrate quantitative and qualitative methodologies, develop forward looking approaches when relevant and create knowledge platforms to ensure exchange and transfer of knowledge within Africa and with Europe.

African nations lack the political will to provide access to primary education to all children, according to the Global Campaign for Education (GCE), a coalition of organisations in 100 countries. In most countries on the continent, achieving basic education remains a far-off dream, the coalition stated in a report titled, "Back to School? The worst places in the world to be a school child in 2010", which was launched during the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Summit in New York, where world leaders are gathering to evaluate their countries’ progress five years ahead of the 2015 deadline.

As millions of children around the world start school this month, many are discovering something critical is missing. It's not teachers or textbooks - it's toilets. Poor sanitation doesn't just cause high rates of illness and absenteeism, but it also affects a child's intelligence, aid agencies say, with research showing that diarrhoea and worm infestations can lower IQ.

As world leaders meet this week to review a UN bid to cut poverty and hunger by 2015, the Global Campaign for Education warned that the financial crisis had halted improvements in education for children in impoverished countries. There are 69 million children out of school around the world, said a report on the world's 60 poorest nations by the campaign, a coalition of more than 100 organisations.

Panos has produced a briefing document for journalists on economic growth and poverty reduction. It sets out the main issues around the topic and gives tips on reporting it. It aims to help journalists consider issues and debates, and research their own stories.

Zimbabwe's education ministry has backtracked on a new policy, introduced in August 2010, to grant pregnant schoolgirls and the prospective fathers maternity and paternity leave from school, and has opted for disciplinary measures instead. "Learners in all schools may be suspended, excluded or expelled from school for various acts of misconduct of a serious nature," Stephen Mahere, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture, said in a circular.

A recent government directive forbidding unqualified teachers - estimated to comprise as much as 60 percent of the staff complement at rural schools - is causing severe disruptions to education. "It is surprising that the government has chosen to stop temporary teachers from resuming duty this [third] term, when it is well known that they form the bulk of teaching staff in rural areas," said Janet Chikawa, a teacher at a secondary school in Seke district, about 50 km south of the capital, Harare.

Civil society is calling for an end to impunity for the harassment of human rights activists in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The renewed call comes as an activist kidnapped at the end of August have described their detention and torture by uniformed captors. Bwira Kyahi, president of civil society in Masisi, a town in the province of North Kivu, and another human rights advocate, Balisi Kapumba, who works as an organizer with the NGO Solidarity Action for Peace and Development, were kidnapped during the last week of August in Goma. Kyahi was found Aug. 30, 2010.