Pambazuka News is produced by a pan-African community of some 2,600 citizens and organisations - academics, policy makers, social activists, women's organisations, civil society organisations, writers, artists, poets, bloggers, and commentators who together produce insightful, sharp and thoughtful analyses and make it one of the largest and most innovative and influential web forums for social justice in Africa. 
atrocities
DRC: The future has come and gone
Lansana Gberie
2009-06-04, Issue 436
cc Julien HarneisReturning to DRC for the first time since 1996, Lansana Gberie finds that a little cash comes in handy for dealing with bureaucracy and that it is impossible to get anything done without a ‘fixer’. Considering the conflicts in the country’s history, Gberie notes that in Congo ‘money is always at the centre of the bigger drama of suffering’ and that justice – or the interests of victims of mass atrocities – has had to be subordinated to wider geopolitical interests. Leaving Kinshasa after just over a week, Gberie finds himself feeling that he is ‘in a place whose future has come and gone’.
Gambia: Time to stop the abuse
Popular criticism of Jammeh government swells
Abena Ampofoa Asare
2009-05-14, Issue 432
cc WikimediaState-sanctioned witch-hunts in March have triggered growing popular criticism of Gambia’s repressive Jammeh government on the ground as well as internationally, writes Abena Ampofoa Asare. Detailing the failure of regional and continental mechanisms from the Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS) court to the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) to respond effectively to human-rights abuses in a deteriorating political situation, Asare calls for the issue to be addressed at the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights annual meeting on 13 May.
Who dropped the baton?
Njonjo Mue
2009-05-07, Issue 431
cc WikimediaKenya is a country of runners, writes Njonjo Mue, but for all its athletic prowess the country has yet to prove medal-worthy in the relay race of building true nationhood. With the baton passed from race leg to race leg, the Kenyan people have seen participation in the race restricted to a select, exclusivist and often brutal few, with many who have sought to champion the right of others to be involved being severely crushed. The finishing line of true nationhood remains a distant dream, with the runners even having dropped the right baton altogether, and if Kenya is not to perish entirely, the race's next leg can only be run by all Kenyans together.
Peace is a mere illusion when rape continues
Stephen Lewis
2008-09-10, Issue 395
Here is an unassailable truth: if sexual violence is not addressed during the course of a conflict, then sexual violence will haunt the post-conflict period, and make of the ostensible peace a mockery for half the population....
Central African Republic and France’s long hand
Vincent Munié
2008-05-27, Issue 375
Vincent Munié looks at France's strategies and machinations in the Central African Republic.
Women and scientific experiments: Is informed consent enough?
Jegede Ademola Oluborode
2008-05-27, Issue 375
Jegede Ademola Oluborode looks at the Protocol on the Rights of Women in relation to medical or scientific experiments and argues that ethical and scientific standards are lowered when it comes to African women and informed consent may not be enough to protect vulnerable African women.
Women left for dead—and the man who’s saving them
Eve Ensler
2008-05-22, Issue 374
In the Congo, where tens of thousands of women are brutally raped every year, Dr. Denis Mukwege repairs their broken bodies and souls. Eve Ensler visits him and finds hope amid the horror.
Truth commissions and prosecutions: Two sides of the same coin?
Joseph Yav Katshung
2008-03-17, Issue 354
Yav Katshung Joseph argues that as truth commissions multiply around the world it is important to look at their relationship to prosecutions and justice in an immediate and historical sense. Are TRCs designed to generate more truth, more justice, reparations, and genuine institutional reform? Or are they designed to the State’s and society’s legal, ethical and political obligations to their people?
Why the archives of the Rwanda tribunal must remain in Africa
Yitiha Simbeye & Chidi Odinkalu
2007-12-12, Issue 332
The authors of the article argue that giving Africans ready access to the kind of information contained in the archives will play a part in fighting the apathy that catapulted events in Rwanda from civil strife to genocide.
Justice for Mau Mau War Veterans
Mukoma Wa Ngugi
2007-10-25, Issue 325
As the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) prepares to sue the British Government for personal injuries sustained by survivors of the Mau Mau war for independence whilst in British detention camps in Kenya, Mukoma Wa Ngugi unravels the Colonial myths of Christianisation and civilization and exposes the reality of torture, murder, slavery, landlessness, dehumanization and internment.