A report released yesterday (15 August) by the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights says that, if substantiated, violations of international criminal law and international humanitarian law which are alleged to have taken place in Sudan’s Southern Kordofan State in June “could amount to crimes against humanity or war crimes.”

On 5 June 2011, violence broke out in Southern Kordofan between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). In the ensuing days, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the Human Rights Component of the United Nations Mission to Sudan (UNMIS Human Rights) received reports of serious violations of international human rights and international humanitarian law, including extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and illegal detention, enforced disappearances, attacks against civilians, looting of civilian homes and destruction of property. (See here for a background to the conflict in Southern Kordofan.)

The limited charge sheets presented at the trials of Hosni Mubarak and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali may seem at first puzzling, but limiting them in this way serves the useful function of preventing their grandstanding and using their trials to try and defend their regimes, writes Pádraig McAuliffe.

We are familiar, post-Watergate, with the old adage that “It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.” As trials proceed in Tunisia and Egypt after the fall of their anciens regimes, the phrase might be bowdlerized to “It's not the human rights violations, it’s the embezzlement” given the eye-brow raising charge sheets.

London's rioters may be engaging in indefensible behaviour, but they shouldn't be written off simply as mindless, apolitical thugs, writes Richard Seymour.

You've probably heard it said a dozen times today: "It's like 28 Days Later out there." Every thirty seconds, there's a new riot zone. I've rarely known the capital to be this wound up.  It's kicked off in East Ham, then Whitechapel, then Ealing Broadway (really?), then Waltham Forest...  It's kicked off in Croydon, then Birmingham, then (just a rumour so far) Bradford...  The banlieues of Britain are erupting in mass civil unrest. Until now, the claim has been that this is merely a criminal enterprise. At a stretch, it was orchestrated criminality, using Twitter and Blackberry messenger. If you're following what's happening in the UK, that's an impossible position to sustain. A few looters here and there might be evidence of little more than opportunism. But clashes with police in several major cities, including the two largest cities, doesn't look like mere entrepreneurialism to me. And as it spreads to hitherto unexpected places, it certainly doesn't look orchestrated.

We could all benefit from taking a more Norwegian approach to the terror attacks, writes Axel Bruns.

When injustice is done, when the innocent are threatened, a common expression of sympathy is “I am one of you”.

So, as the famous movie line goes, “I am Spartacus,” or a little more recently, “Ich bin ein Berliner.” After 9/11, for a moment, we were all New Yorkers; after 7/7, Londoners; after the atrocious terrorist attacks in Oslo and Utøya, we are all Norwegians.

If only this were true.

The reaction from the Norwegian public and from its politicians alike has been nothing short of exemplary in its intelligence and even-handedness.

The severe drought across much of east Africa is a human emergency that requires urgent attention. It also signals a global crisis: the convergence of inequality, food insecurity and climate change. By Paul Rogers.

A drought across much of east Africa in mid-2011 is causing intense distress among vulnerable populations, many of them already pressed by poverty and insecurity. The range of  the affected areas is extensive: the two districts in Somalia that are now designated as famine-zones are but the most extreme parts of a much wider disaster that stretches from Somalia across Ethiopia into northern Kenya, and as far west as Sudan and even the Karamoja district in northeast Uganda.

The numbers put at risk in this, the worst drought in the region since the 1950s, are enormous. At least 11 million people are touched by the disaster. In the Turkana district of northern Kenya, 385,000 children(among a total population of about 850,000) are suffering from acute malnutrition (see Miriam Gathigah, “East Africa: Millions Stare Death in the Face Amidst Ravaging Drought”, TerraViva / IPS, 18 July 2011). In Somalia, the conflict between the Islamist Shabaab movement and the nominal government makes conditions even more perilous for those affected.

The UN has officially declared a famine in two regions of southern Somalia today.

Governments around the world have collectively failed to act to prevent the famine in Somalia, Oxfam Ireland Chief Executive Jim Clarken has said.

“The crisis has been building for several months but the response from international donors and regional governments has been mostly slow and inadequate and the aid response is still $800m short of what is needed,” he added.

He was speaking from Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, where he is part of a consortium of Irish aid agencies visiting the drought-stricken region with former Irish President and President of Oxfam International, Mary Robinson.

East African nations including Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya are experiencing the worst drought in 60 years. The failure of crops and conflict between al-Qaeda-inspired al-Shabaab insurgents has forced almost 800,000 refugees to flee Somalia to neighbouring countries.

The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have boarded the French Vessel Dignité Al-Karam which was attempting to break through the Israeli blockade of Hamas-controlled Palestinian territory.

The Dignité Al-Karam was the only remaining vessel of the Second Freedom Flotilla, which originally consisted of 10 ships, including the Irish vessel MV Saoirse.The Saoirse was prevented from taking part in the flotilla when its propeller was sabotaged, making it extremely dangerous to sail. Another ship due to take part in the flotilla was also allegedly sabotaged, while the rest were prevented from leaving port by the Greek authorities.

According to the IDF, the Dignité Al-Karam was ordered to divert from their destination of Gaza, and dock at the port of Ashdod, about 40 kilometres south of Tel Aviv. The IDF then dispatched the navy to intercept the Dignité Al-Karam. The IDF claims that these soldiers "operated in line with procedures and took every precaution necessary while using all operational tactics determined prior to the operation, and avoid causing harm to the activists on-board while ensuring the safety of the soldiers."

South Sudan celebrates its independence this week, becoming the world's newest nation. But the festering divisions that are likely to haunt the north and South for the foreseeable future beg the question: will secession succeed in providing stability for the long-oppressed citizens of these two countries? By Fatin Abbas (A version of this article was posted on OpenDemocracy.net).

As South Sudan celebrates its independence on July 9th, becoming the newest African nation, feelings of jubilation are widespread among Southern Sudanese, and understandably so. Secession, which is the outcome of the referendum vote brokered as part of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A – the ex-southern rebel movement) and the Khartoum government in 2005, represents a milestone in the country's history. After decades of oppression and exploitation at the hands of the north, and a north-south civil war fought on southern territory that left millions dead, Southerners at last have the chance to escape the cycle of violence and injustice by taking control of their own destiny. Given the deplorable role that successive northern governments have played in thwarting that destiny, it is no surprise that Southerners have opted overwhelmingly for secession.