Mohamed al-Korshan, representative of the Bedouin community in the West Bank, spoke at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, calling for recognition of his people as a displaced indigenous group.
Gun battles erupted across the capital of Yemen as security forces clashed with fighters from the country’s most powerful tribe, in the fiercest battles yet between supporters and opponents of President Saleh.
As NATO stepped up air raids on Tripoli, hundreds of African refugees who have fled Libya blocked roads near their camp in Tunisia to protest plans for their forcible repatriation, provoking a clash with local residents.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC in Washington DC was interrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters affiliated with the Move Over AIPAC coalition.
Ousted Honduran president Mel Zelaya and incumbent Porfirio Lobo signed a pact that will allow Zelaya to return to the country and “normalize” relations with the OAS. The next day, another journalist was shot in Tegucigalpa.
Ecuador and Bolivia have joined Peru in a regional bloc to regain lands and waters lost to Chile in the 1879-83 War of the Pacific. A case against Chile is pending at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
Following a regional summit in Bamako, the leaders of Algeria, Mauritania, Mali and Niger agreed to form a 75,000-man security force to police the Sahel and Sahara regions against al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
Tens of thousands of protesters have filled the main squares of Spain’s cities for the past week to protest government austerity measures—in defiance of a government ban imposed ahead of municipal and regional elections.
Thousands took to the streets across Syria for Friday protests, and security forces again responded with tear gas and live ammunition, leaving at least 32 dead. Protesters dubbed Friday “Azadi Day,” for the Kurdish word for freedom.
Extreme weather events, such as the flooding now devastating much of the South, are likely to increase in the future due to biospheric imbalance that once scientist terms “global weirding.”
Ethiopia’s Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) charges that the army has opened an offensive that is targetting civilians in the ethnically Somali region in the country’s east, and is demanding an immediate UN investigation.
Moammar Qaddafi’s forces are carrying an offensive into Libya’s western Nafusah Mountains that is not only targetting rebel training camps and supply routes, but villages of the indigenous Amazigh (Berber) population.
