MPs have said they are being restricted from accessing details of the Oil Sharing Agreements (PSAs) as the Parliamentary Natural Resources Committee proposed stringent clauses that will, among others, see government officials who negotiate bad oil contracts face jail. Kitgum Woman MP Beatrice Anywar said they are subjected to tough guidelines. 'To look at a copy of the PSAs you must first write to the speaker notifying her about the date, hour and which pages you want to look at to enable them assign you a library staff to supervise you when you are reading that particular page,' Ms Anywar said.

The UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, Ms. Gulnara Shahinian, has said more than half of the 215 million children working throughout the world are subjected to the worst forms of child labour, including sexual and labour exploitation. In a statement she issued in New York to mark the World Day Against Child Labour, Ms. Shahinian said one of the most abhorrent forms of child slavery is found in mining and quarrying, where children start work from the age of three.

The green economy is nothing more than capitalism of nature, states this article from 'The 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, which is promoting a green economy, is the next step in the evolution of capitalism. The goal is to implement an alternative to global regimes cashing in on creation by privatizing, commodifying and selling off all forms of life - including air, water and genes, plants, traditional seeds, trees, biological and cultural diversity, ecosystems and even indigenous traditional knowledge.'

This book is a compilation of feature stories and news articles by journalists who participated in the media trainings on environmental reporting organised in six states across the Nigerian federation by the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN). The book is an attempt to assess the quality of reports from journalists and to contribute to enhancing the capacity of members of the network and media users to further broaden the environmental discourse by opening new vistas for investigation. It can be downloaded through the link provided.

The parliament in Burkina Faso has granted amnesty to President Blaise Compaore and all of the country's previous heads of state. The immunity from prosecution will cover all presidents since independence from France in 1960. President Compaore came to power in a 1987 coup in which popular leader Thomas Sankara was killed.

On 28 May 2012, a group of organisations wrote to the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) to request that it urgently investigate the state of health and health care service provision at Lindela Repatriation Centre (Lindela). Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), SECTION27, Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR), and People against Suffering, Oppression and Poverty (PASSOP) requested a response from the SAHRC by 11 June 2012. To date, they have not received a response. Recent reports of violent protests within Lindela add even further urgency and credence to the request and the need to ensure that health and health rights are protected. Therefore, the organisations are now making the request public.

The Japanese government is bowing to pressures of the nuclear lobby in Japan.

Jennifer Abalo struggles to support two of her own and two of her late sister's children. She lost her father, sister and two of her children to Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) violence between 1998 and 2004, but like thousands of other victims she has never received any compensation, despite government promises. In 2010 Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni promised monetary compensation to 10,000 victims of the two-decade-long war between the LRA and the government.

Burundi has announced the setting up of a committee to investigate alleged cases of extra-judicial executions in the country. Public prosecutor Valentin Bagorikunda announced that a committe of six magistrates of the Public prosecutor's office would investigate allegations made over the past few months by national and international human rights organizations.

Isaac Mangena, in this opinion piece, assesses the political in and outs of Toyko Sexwale and his apparent bid to take the top spot of the ruling ANC from Jacob Zuma. 'Sexwale is not tainted much, and perhaps that’s why he is hated and not trusted so much inside the ANC than he is outside it. Unlike our current president, Sexwale is not exposed and his wealth make him less susceptible to corruption.'

A meeting of the Democratic Left Front (DLF) in South Africa discussed a proposed youth wage subsidy, the crisis of democracy, organising women and building the movement.

Local Egyptian reports mentioned on Monday 11 June the dreadful progress in the case of the Islamist parliamentarian whom police have accused of public indecency, as the girl in the case has been detained for four days under orders by the prosecutor. A report said that the prosecutor has also ordered a 'virginity test' on her to determine if she is a virgin or not. The news has caused an uproar among the rights community over the virginity tests, which brought back to mind the same tests that were forced upon female protesters in Tahrir Square in March 2011.

South African President Jacob Zuma has fired his police chief, who is implicated in suspect property deals, and replaced him with first woman head of the scandal-tarnished service. Zuma removed controversial police commissioner Bheki Cele from the post after a commission of enquiry found him 'unfit for office' over leases for police offices at far above market rates. Ms Mangwashi Phiyega was appointed the new national police commissioner with immediate effect. A technocrat with considerable management experience, she has been a trustee of Nelson Mandela's foundation and an executive at Barclays-owned banking group Absa.

This article from the Oxford Monitor of Forced Migration explores the ways in which Eritrean asylum-seekers in Israel narrate their experiences of suffering. These narrators were held hostage in the borderlands of the Northern Sinai desert by human traffickers for indefinite periods of time en route to Israel. Numerous Eritrean asylum-seekers experience and bear witness to torture, kidnapping, extortion, rape, and organ removal during the journey.

In the southwest region of Cameroon, within a beautiful rainforest, several Indigenous communities are working hard to make their voices heard. Their struggle began in 2011 when the government of Cameroon granted a vast land concession to SG Sustainable Oils, a subsidiary of the New York-based Herakles Farms. What the government overlooked, was that this concession occurred on the homelands of the Oroko, Bakossi, and Upper Bayang peoples in the Ndian, Koupé-Manengouba, and Manyu divisions of Cameroon.

The long-running spat between the African Union (AU) and International Criminal Court (ICC) over perceived bias has prompted the AU to push ahead with plans to form its own Africa-wide criminal court, but analysts believe the move could complicate, rather than enhance, international justice. 'Africa wants regional ownership of its crimes and its leaders,' Alan Wallis, an international justice lawyer at the Johannesburg-based Southern African Litigation Centre (SALC), told IRIN, but pointed out: 'There is a misbelief [by the AU] that Africa is being targeted, as all cases before the ICC concern African situations, but this ignores the fact that of those six [cases], three were referred to the ICC by the countries concerned.'

Togolese security forces on Tuesday 12 June used teargas to disperse a huge demonstration staged by civil society organizations and some opposition political parties in the capital, Lomé. Tens of thousands of people led by opposition and civil society figures defied a heavy downpour to heed the call by the umbrella 'Let's Save Togo' to denounce actions by the government they claimed were intended to manipulate the electoral process.

Armed militants hostile to the Ivorian government have recruited Liberian children and carried out deadly cross-border raids on Ivorian villages in recent months, Human Rights Watch says. Liberian authorities have failed to investigate and prosecute dozens of Liberian and Ivorian nationals who crossed into Liberia after committing war crimes during Côte d’Ivoire’s 2010-2011 post-election crisis, some of whom have been implicated in the recent attacks, Human Rights Watch said.

The Kimberly Process intersessional in Washington, with Human Rights Watch (HRW) urging the diamond monitor to tackle what it calls continuing human rights violations in Zimbabwe's Marange fields. The meeting, which ran from 4-7 June 2012, will take up a range of topics related to the mining and trading of conflict-free rough diamonds. Human Rights Watch Africa director, Daniel Bekele urged the Kimberley Process, under the chairpersonship of the United States, to address the ongoing rights abuses in Zimbabwe’s Marange fields and the lack of transparency by mining companies operating there.

AIDS activists and researchers are at loggerheads over the planned South African trial of a lower dose version of the controversial antiretroviral stavudine, which has in the past been responsible for debilitating side-effects in HIV patients. In the one camp, the Treatment Action Campaign, Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without borders) and the Treatment Action Group have serious concerns about the proposed trial.