The Refugee Consortium of Kenya writes with concerns on refugees and asylum seekers rights abuses by law enforcement officers and by extension the Government of Kenya.

cc In light of a recent general strike in Guadeloupe, an overseas department of France, Kont Pwofitasyon (LKP) addresses the people of Guadeloupe and seeks to encourage their continued political involvement in the struggle to end economic oppression and exploitation. The group indicates that the recklessness of employers, elected officials, representatives of the French government, and colonial institutions within this archipelago in the French Antilles has threatened the livelihoods of Guadeloupians. Through Liyannaj Kont Pwofitasyon (LKP), a social movement of trade unions and social organisations, activists are exposing the injustices endured by the masses and mobilising the country by demanding an increase in the minimum wage, the people's access to commodities, and the promotion of new social relations.

cc The Kenyan government must issue orders for the military and police to ‘cease and desist from acts of intimidation and harassment of human rights defenders and to make public the text of such instructions’, Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, has said in a statement issued on 7 April. Alston said that dozens of prominent and respected human rights defenders who provided information to the UN have been targeted in ‘a blatant campaign designed to silence individual monitors and instil fear in civil society organisations at large’, with all indications seeming to point to the fact that the campaign ‘has been carefully coordinated within the government’.

cc Attending a conference on Kenya’s national dialogue and reconciliation in Geneva, Yash Tandon, notes that the issues of power sharing, ethnicity, and governance overshadow matters related to economics and welfare. He also ponders why, other than the 50-60 Kenyans present, he and Tanzania’s former president Benjamin Mkapa are the only attendees from East African countries. Given the ‘many daily cross-border interactions between the people of the region’, this lack of interest in Kenya, he says, demonstrates ‘a serious slip-up of the principle of solidarity among East African neighbours’. Help from European friends to Kenya has, Tandon suggests, allowed Uganda and Tanzania and the East African community ‘an exemption from their moral responsibility’.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/427/55474_Paul_Muite_tmb.jpgHa… been credibly informed that his life could well be in danger, Paul Muite considers the implications of his willingness to speak out against the Kenyan government's involvement in the assassinations of Oscar Kamau King'ara and Paul Oulu. With the Kenyan authorities themselves at the forefront of extrajudicial killings and threats, Muite highlights the Kenyan citizenry's complete lack of confidence in the government or police to protect people's rights.

cc Following the resignation of Kenyan Justice Minister Martha Karua,

In an interview with Conversations with Writers, Zukiswa Wanner discusses her books Behind Every Successful Man and The Madams.

Commenting on the G20 (The Group of Twenty), Jacques Depelchin asks why, when Africans have suffered so much under the ’most predatory system ever invented by humans’, African leaders are helping to prop up that system, rather than encouraging new ways of doing things.

The peace and security council (PSC) of the African Union (AU) has proclaimed that the process leading to the assumption of power by opposition leader Andry Rajoelina in Madagascar was unconstitutional and therefore has decided to suspended Madagascar’s membership from the organisation. Other African leaders, including the president of South Africa and current chairperson of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Kgalema Motlanthe, also condemned the ousting of President Ravalomanana as the product of unconstitutional action against democratic institutions. Prior to Ravalomanana’s resignation, the PSC had urged all Malagasy parties to uphold the spirit of dialogue and compromise in order to find a peaceful and consensual solution to the crisis and to carefully follow the provisions of the constitution of Madagascar on interim arrangements in the event of resignation. In a communiqué that the PSC issued on Madagascar, it reiterated that ‘the transfer of power was made in violation of the relevant provisions of the Malagasy Constitution and that the subsequent decisions to confer the office of the President of the Republic to Mr Andry Rajoelina constitute an unconstitutional change of government’.

The Libyan leader and chairman of the AU, Mouammar Kadhafi, met with officials of the AU Commission to discuss on a range of issues including the peace and security in Africa, the monitoring and implementation of decisions made at the 12th AU summit and the preparations for the next AU summit among others. Meanwhile, Mauritius has expressed its interest to host the 13th AU summit that was due to be held in Madagascar in July citing the need for the summit to be held in a country of the Indian Ocean region.

SADC leaders, who brokered the power-sharing agreement between Zimbabwean President Mugabe and Prime Minister Tsvangirai, pledged to mobilise economic support for Zimbabwe to the tune of $8.3 billion from international donors at their recent summit. Further, African trade ministers are meeting to discuss the impact of the global financial crisis on African economies, increasing food prices, climate change and global trade. They are also ‘expected to reflect on how to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Doha round of negotiation and the EPA negotiations can be successfully concluded’. Meanwhile, India is seeking to strike comprehensive economic cooperation agreements with the Common Market of Southern Africa and the East African Community (EAC). Also in development news, the self-evaluation report published by the African Peer Review Mechanism forum warned that Mozambique’s development model is creating a wide moat separating the rich from the poor, which could lead to social convulsions in the medium term.

Civil society organisations gathered in Tanzania to talk about their increased participation in discussions on the integration process of the EAC, a contribution that would go a long way in deepening the democratic foundations of the bloc. Meanwhile the EAC deputy secretary general Julius Rotich, stressing the importance of the civil society in the affairs of the region, used the gathering to urge non-state actors to actively take part in the organisation. Participants in the sixth African Development Forum aimed at reviewing progress made towards achieving gender equality in Africa put their leaders to task over their failure to implement international declarations made to end violence against women. Also in regards to civil society, the Forum for the Participation of non governmental organisations in the ordinary sessions of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights will take place in Gambia from the 13th to the 27th of May, 2009, to deliberate on the human rights situation in Africa.

Members of the Pan African Parliament, who feel that they are ready to be vested with some authority, are blaming the AU for slowing down the process of transforming the continental body into fully legislative organ rather than the current advisory role it enjoys. Also in regards to continental integration, Azubuike Ishiekwene analyses the difficulties that the United States of Africa agenda will face as African leaders continue to struggle to put their houses in order.

All but one of Zimbabwe's ministers from the former opposition has accepted an official Mercedes Benz. When they were in opposition MDC politicians condemned the profligacy of Mr Mugabe’s Mercedes Benz-mobilised Zanu PF party. Last September, when the agreement to form a power-sharing Government was signed, senior MDC figures made an informal decision never to accept an official Mercedes.

The UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, James Anaya, visited Bushmen from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana this month. He met with Bushmen who are living inside the reserve without access to water. Professor Anaya visited several Bushman communities in Botswana, including the resettlement camps Kaudwane and New Xade, where the government dumped several thousand Bushmen after forcibly evicting them from their homes inside the reserve. He also visited two Bushman communities inside the reserve, Gugamma and Metsiamenong.

Four repentant leaders of Algeria's Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) issued a fresh appeal to Islamist militants to surrender under the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation. The statement joins a series of appeals coming to light in the run up to the April 9th presidential elections.

Ten staff including James Maridadi, the spokesperson of the Zimbabwe Prime Minister, have not been paid for over two months. The Public Service Commission has refused to confirm their appointment. heir details were submitted two months ago to the Commission headed by ZANU PF's Dr Mariyawanda Nzuwa to be on government payroll but no action has since been taken.

The hybrid United Nations-African Union (AU) peacekeeping force in Darfur, known as UNAMID, received a boost today from the arrival of 100 personnel from the second Egyptian Infantry Battalion. Another 100 troops from the battalion are slated to arrive tomorrow in the strife-torn western flank of Sudan as a meeting of the Tripartite Committee – comprising the Government of Sudan, the AU and the UN – is scheduled to take place for the first time in Darfur.

The United Nations refugee agency has expressed its concern over the increasing trend by Kenyan authorities to forcibly Somali asylum seekers back to their war-torn nation. On 31 March, 31 asylum seekers – nine men, eight women and 14 children – traveling by bus to refugees camps in Dabaab, in north-eastern Kenya, were sent back to Somalia.

The anti-poverty charity War on Want today condemned Gordon Brown and other G20 leaders for throwing money at the global economic crisis rather than addressing its root causes. According to War on Want, the G20 has used the London summit to resurrect the failed policies and institutions of the free market era, in a deal which prioritises short-term action at the expense of fundamental reform.

The main objective of the G20 meeting was to save global capitalism. The emphasis on more regulations, the attacks on tax havens, the reference to the “moralization of capitalism” all converge toward the same objective: restore trust in global capitalism and some of the legitimacy it has lost in the eyes of the general public.

One of the most remarkable decisions of the G20 is to triple the IMF sources in order to increase its lending capacity to “poor” and middle-income countries. If this decision may save the institution from financial bankruptcy, it cannot, however, save it from moral and intellectual bankruptcy. In fact, the world financial crisis is a further illustration of the abject failure of the policies advocated by this institution along with the World Bank and the WTO. .

So tripling the IMF sources is not good news for Africa because it will only give the institution more power to continue imposing the same failed and ruinous policies. It is a new debt cycle that will start with the loans the IMF will be making with these resources. For Africa, the IMF is part of the problem, not of the solution. Therefore, any move aimed at strengthening it is not in the interest of Africa.

As expected, the G20 has failed to rise to the challenge of proposing structural changes in the world monetary, financial and trading system. In some respects, the Stiglitz Commission has made bolder and more interesting proposals to respond to the crisis. However, those proposals remain somehow within the confines of global capitalism.

But the genuine solutions to the current multiple world crises lie in the shift in paradigm. This is one of the messages sent by the tens of thousands of protesters who jammed the streets in London for two straight days. They not only denounced the horrors and crimes of global capitalism but also stressed the need to move toward alternative policies which would put people at their center, not profit and greed.

Guinea-Bissau's former Prime Minister Francisco Jose Fadul is recovering in hospital after being beaten by people dressed as soldiers. Mr Fadul said 15 armed men in uniform had raided his house, assaulting him and his wife and stealing computers, phones and even their wedding rings. The beating came after he had urged the government to hold the military to account for alleged corruption.

Guinea's military authorities have released three former ministers after they agreed to repay money they are accused of embezzling. The three, who include former Prime Minister Ahmed Tidiane Souare, were arrested last week. They have already repaid the first instalments of the money. However, another ex mines minister was "unco-operative" and remains in custody.

Sudan will hold general elections in 2010 - a year later than expected - the electoral commission has announced. The deputy chairman of the commission, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, said the electoral process would begin next month and finish in February next year. Under the 2005 peace deal to end years of war in the south, the elections were supposed to be held this year.