I had the privilege of visiting South Sudan a few months after the world’s youngest state had been born in July 2011. Then, most people were wondering what the future held for the country. The road has not been easy so far.
Last July marked 19 years of Gambian President Yahya Jammeh’s inordinately long rule. His legacy during this time is to mark his country as one of the most unapologetically repressive states in Africa.
As Zimbabwe is expected to head to the polls in a little less than two months, clampdowns on civil society in that southern African nation have increased, according to Godwin Phiri, western region chairperson of the National Association of Non-Governmental Organisations in Zimbabwe.
The Global Civil Society Network CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation has a new secretary general - Dhananjayan (Danny) Sriskandarajah, who was appointed Monday by the board of directors following the CIVICUS World Assembly in Montreal.
"Very disappointing." That was the term business and non-governmental organisations used to describe the formal intergovernmental negotiations at the Rio+20 Earth Summit as of Tuesday.