Desmond Tutu, Nobel peace prize winner and former archbishop of Capetown, is to make an urgent plea to Libya on Monday . He will ask the Libyan government to clarify what has happened to a prominent dissident, Jaballa Matar. His family...

A BAE middleman has been arrested and held , charged with conspiring to make corrupt payments to promote the sale of fighter planes to Austria, Czech Republic and Hungary. The Attorney General, Lady Scotland, has not yet allowed the...

A report from Human Rights Watch says that Barack Obama has set a different tone from Bush but has failed to prevent abuses .

A report from the UN says that Britain was complicit in mistreatment and possible torture . The report indicates that Britain was involved in the secret detention of British Muslims. It follows a report from Human Rights Watch, based...

The Millennium Development Goals , to be achieved by 2015 which is now only 5 years away, include this one: Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases. Malaria can be controlled with technology as simple as bed nets to keep...

The Millennium Development Goals , to be achieved by 2015, include: Goal 5: Improve maternal health Here is the Millennium Development Campaign's web page on Goal 5. As it says on that page, too often the day a baby is born is the day...

The Iraq war was illegal, the inquiry has found . No, not that inquiry in London so much in the news recently. This is a tribunal of seven judges in the Netherlands.

The attack and murder of Togolese footballers in Angola has drawn the attention of the media, yes even of the Sun. It is amazing how a link with football can make news. Lara Pawson writes in the Guardian that Cabinda should be kept in...

The eight Millennium Development Goals , intended to be met by 2015, include this one: Goal 4: Reduce child mortality One of the ways to prevent childen dying is to ensure that they receive injections to protect against common and...

English PEN has today published an update on its campaign, Freedom to Write in the Americas . They are concerned for the safety of journalists in countries including Mexico and Cuba. Roy Greenslade in his blog reports briefly on the...

It is five years since the agreement signed between the government of Sudan and the SPLM, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement in the south of the country. Oxfam and other aid charities say that there should be urgent international...

The eight Millenium Development Goals to be reached by 2015 (or you may think, unlikely to be reached by 2015) include this one: Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women Education is one very important area where gender...

Continuing my look at the Millennium Development Goals , here the second: Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education If you were required to be at school until you were 15 or 16 it does not seem much to ask that all children in the...

I wrote about the Millennium Development Goals to be achieved by 2015 and said that I would return each goal in more detail. True to my word let us look at the first one: Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger Now that is an...

It is now nearly a year since Barack Obama became president. On his inauguration there was comment on the Amnesty Trade Union solidarity blog about the need for respect for the rights of workers in the USA . I wonder how things have...