Hundreds have taken to the streets of Mauritania’s capital, Nouakchott, shouting and honking car horns in celebration after the army announced it had seized power and ousted long-ruling President Moawiya Ould Tayeh. Convoys of vehicles with people hanging out the… Read moreCoup d’etat in Mauritania
You’d think right on the heels of the Live 8 hype, the world would be doing something about this, no? The response to the crisis, which was building throughout the Edinburgh hoopla, appears to be dramatically too little and too… Read moreStarvation in Niger
The new peace deal in Sudan, ending a 22-year civil war in which two million people lost their lives, took effect July 9, when Col. John Garang of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) was sworn in as Sudan’s first… Read moreSudan peace deal signals regional re-alignment
Just what we needed to hear. The world stands by as massive ethnic cleansing—perhaps genocide—continue in Darfur. Now we are told of a similar crisis in Mauritania, which hasn’t even come to the world’s atttention. This from Johannesburg’s Business Day,… Read moreEthnic cleansing in Mauritania
A militant group in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta kidnapped two German and four Nigerian workers of Bilfinger Berger Gas & Oil Services, a contractor firm for Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell June 15. The workers were abducted around Warri by a… Read moreShell workers kidnapped in Nigeria
Police in Zimbabwe fought running battles June 14 with residents of Makhokhoba, one of the oldest townships of the country’s second city, Bulawayo as they demolished illegal structures. One woman stripped naked in protest after police destroyed her shack (a… Read moreZimbabwe police demolish township
The Pentagon is rapidly expanding its little-noted “anti-terrorist” training program in the nations of Africa’s Sahel. From page 11 of the New York Times, June 10: As Africans Join Iraqi Insurgency, U.S. Counters With Military Training in Their Lands A… Read morePentagon “Pan-Sahel Initiative”
The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is protesting the arrest of a second representative in Sudan. Vincent Hoedt, a Dutch national and regional coordinator for MSF in Darfur, was arrested May 31 in Nyala. A… Read moreDarfur: Doctors Without Borders volunteers arrested
Italy has finally blinked. Afer two generations of delay, the first of three pieces of a third-century Ethiopian obelisk plundered by the Italian fascist occupation in the 1930s has touched ground in the ancient city of Axum, where it was… Read moreItaly blinks in obelisk controversy
Unfortunately, the recent victory for indigenous land rights in Brazil may be followed by a rollback of recent gains for indigenous peoples in Botswana–where the world is paying even less attention. Reads an April 18 alert from Survival International: Botswana’s… Read moreBotswana: indigenous rights under attack
Italy has once again retreated from a repeated pledge to return to Ethiopia a third-century 75-foot obelisk from the ancient city of Axum which fascist dictator Benito Mussolini brought to Rome as a prize of conquest after his invasion and… Read moreItaly plays politics with Ethiopian obelisk
Brian Grogan, a spokesman for Jan Egeland, the UN emergency relief coordinator, told the UK Guardian that an average 10,000 civilians are dying each month in Darfur, totalling 180,000 over the past 18 months. These are only the victims of… Read moreDarfur: 180,000 dead
