The International Council of the World Social Forum and the African Social Forum and the Senegalese Organizing Committee launch a public consultation until September 10th to finalize the thematic axes of the centralized edition of the WSF, to be held in Dakar, Senegal, on February 06-11 2011.

Civil society organizations in Kenya have helped build an online platform that has actively monitored Kenya's constitutional referendum on August 4, 2010 via sms, titter and mail. This is a key step towards the consolidation of democracy in the country.

When the United Nations hosts a summit meeting of world leaders next September to assess the current state of its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), it is expected to single out one of the major "success stories" of the day: a reduction in global poverty.

Ten thousand Haitian peasants marched to protest US-based Monsanto Company’s ‘deadly gift’ of seed to the government of Haiti. The march was organized by several Haitian rural social movements that are proposing a development model based on food and seed sovereignty instead of industrial agriculture.

From the struggle for independence, through the Mexican Revolution and the indigenous uprising in Chiapas in 1994, claims over land have been a central part of the demands of social movements in Mexico. For indigenous communities in Chiapas, land is not just a means of survival. It is also central to their identity and their vision of indigenous autonomy.

The UN General Assembly convened a 'MDG summit' this September, with the objective to accelerate progress towards all the MDGs by 2015. In order to provide input to the preparatory process for this meeting, the UN is holding informal interactive hearings with civil society organizations from 14-15 June 2010 at UN Headquarters in New York.

In Nepal, lost in the chaos of political upheavals, a silent revolution is afoot. In remote villages of this mountainous and energy-starved country people are demanding their right to electricity.

A violent paramilitary attack on a peaceful solidarity campaign in Oaxaca, Mexico, resulted in the killing of human rights defender Bety Cariño as well as an international observer from Finland, Tyri Antero Jaakkola.

In a televised address to the General People's Congress (GPC), Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi said the idea of a civil society "is a bourgeois culture and an imitation of the West that has no place here."

Civil society interaction with the United Nations (UN) system has increased significantly over the past 15 years. So far, the majority of these relations have been with non-governmental organizations of various kinds, including humanitarian and development NGOs, advocacy groups and faith-based organizations.