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zimbabwe: what next?

Extract from an International Crisis Group Document

2002-06-20

http://www.intl-crisis-group.org/projects/showreport.cfm?reportid=679

In the aftermath of the deeply flawed March 2002 presidential election, Zimbabwe has dropped off the radar screen of most policy-makers and media but its crisis is deepening:

- the ruling ZANU-PF party and the government are systematically using violence to intimidate the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and civil society in order to punish and compel them to accept the results;

- the economy is further deteriorating as foreign investment and food both become scarce commodities; with regional drought compounding the land seizure crisis, UN agencies warn of possible famine; and

- as the opposition considers mass protests, the prospect of serious internal conflict is becoming imminent, with grave implications for the stability of the wider Southern African region.

The international response has been mixed and inadequate. South Africa and Nigeria, who made possible the Commonwealth's suspension of Zimbabwe in the immediate aftermath of the election, have attempted throughout the spring to facilitate party-to-party talks between ZANU-PF and the MDC. Many African governments, however, have given barely qualified if slightly embarrassed approval to President Mugabe's re-election while trying to minimise Zimbabwe's relevance to their efforts to construct new economic relationships between the continent and the rest of the world.

Most Western countries have done little except repeat rhetorical condemnations that appear, counter-productively, to have persuaded Mugabe that their policies are "all bark, no bite" and to have increased sympathy for him in much of Africa. The European Union (EU) and the United States (U.S.) have meaningfully expanded neither the target list of affected individuals nor the scope for the sanctions (primarily travel restrictions) they imposed on senior ZANU-PF figures before the election. Key G-8 countries have signalled in advance of their 26-27 June 2002 summit that they may be prepared to relax the requirement that African states apply serious peer pressure on Zimbabwe as a precondition for advancing the New Program for Africa's Development (NEPAD) initiative on which the continent pins its hopes for integration into the world economy.

The party-to-party talks initially made progress. An agenda was agreed, and the facilitators had begun to explore ideas, built around a transitional power sharing arrangement, to pursue constitutional reform and restructure the presidency to require new elections while finessing the MDC's requirement for a rerun of the March poll and ZANU-PF's insistence Mugabe's victory be accepted. However, the talks collapsed in May when ZANU-PF withdrew, demanding that the MDC drop its court challenge to that result.

The substantive gap is considerable, and ZANU-PF is carrying out repressive actions around the country that heighten tension and damage the environment for any negotiation. The MDC entered talks despite considerable scepticism at its grassroots - based on those actions and earlier history - that the governing party intends anything except to destroy or co-opt it. Serious internal fissures and pressures now threaten to radicalise the MDC's strategy. Its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, has begun to speak of switching to mass public protests within weeks if there is no movement toward new elections. Every indication is that this would produce a sharp ZANU-PF response that would set off a cycle of much more serious domestic conflict, refugees across borders, and further economic decline.

In these circumstances, it is vital for the international community to focus its efforts with renewed urgency on defusing the immediate crisis. The most promising avenue, if only for lack of any realistic alternative, is presented by the party-to-party talks. South Africa and Nigeria need to become much more assertive in encouraging ZANU-PF to return to the negotiating table and both sides to pursue genuine compromises. In particular, they need to use more of their considerable political leverage to push the governing party to improve the negotiating environment by ending the widespread violence for which it is responsible. By so doing they will also gain credibility with the MDC that can be used at a later stage to broker agreements.

Other African states should give full support and make clear that President Mugabe will be isolated if he does not end the political violence and negotiate in good faith. The Africans should also use Qadhafi's desire to be accepted as a statesman to encourage Libya to cut off material support that encourages Mugabe's intransigence.

His fellow African leaders, especially Presidents Mbeki of South Africa and Obasanjo of Nigeria, have most of the real leverage that can influence Mugabe. However, the EU, U.S. and other friends of Zimbabwe can play important roles by focusing on helping the facilitators get the party-to-party talks back on track within the next several weeks. They should mute the rhetoric but toughen and extend targeted sanctions; make clear there will be no progress on NEPAD at the G-8 Summit unless Africans put more pressure on ZANU-PF; and (especially the British) pledge anew to contribute significantly, in the context of an overall settlement, to land reform in Zimbabwe - which is a genuine issue though one cynically abused by the ruling party.

They should also offer assistance that strengthens civil society and helps provide unemployed young people with economic alternatives to joining the ruling party's militias. These middle and longer term objectives, however, must be subordinated to the immediate priority of heading off an increasingly dangerous confrontation this summer.

Zimbabwe is not a lost cause. Conflict prevention based on democracy, rule-of-law, and a functioning economy can succeed, but only if the key international actors, led by the Africans themselves, throw their full weight behind a genuine negotiating process before the grievances are taken into the streets.

A handbook for advocacy in the African human rights system

Advancing reproductive and sexual health

2002-06-20

http://www.ipas.org/arch/index.html#hr

Prepared by legal scholars under the auspices of the International Programme on Reproductive and Sexual Health Law at the University of Toronto, this 193-page manual aims to facilitate use of Africa's human rights system to promote and protect reproductive and sexual health.

another world is possible

2002-06-20

http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/people.htm

Activists from developing countries are seeking 1 million signatures for a petition affirming a globalization that puts people over profits to be given to world leaders at the Johannesburg Summit in August.

information pack on Advocacy and Lobbying Strategies

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/advocacy/8346

Chapter 2 will soon provide a useful information pack on Advocacy and Lobbying Strategies for Campaigns to assist civil society with their activities.

Chapter 2 will soon provide a useful information pack on Advocacy and Lobbying Strategies for Campaigns to assist civil society with their activities. The booklet will include the following information:

· Tools for campaigning
· Challenges and strategies of campaigns
· Lessons learnt

Contact the Chapter 2 team for your free copy.

For free subscription to this service email collette@idasact.org.za

We continue to strive to provide you with accurate and timeous information about social justice issues that affect your work and welcome any suggestions from you. Please let us know if you need further assistance with your campaigns, or information that could be of help to you in your work.


Warm regards
Chapter 2
www.advocacy.org.za

Take Action: Show the G8 the red card!

2002-06-20

http://web.amnesty.org/G8/action.html

The transfer of small arms from developed to developing countries fuels conflict, undermines democracy, worsens human rights, and hinders development, says this sign-on letter urging the G-8 to control arms peddlars.

Bertha Amisi

Nairobi Peace Initiative Africa

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/8381

Luigi M Bianchi

York University, Toronto, Canada

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/8396

BATTLING BIG BUSINESS

Edited by Eveline Lubbers

2002-06-20

http://www.evel.nl/pandora/bbb.htm

Losing control in the media arena as a result of activist pressure has become a public relations nightmare for the modern multinational enterprise. Shell's Brent Spar fiasco is one well-known example, when the Greenpeace campaign against sinking that former drill platform achieved its goals. Monsanto's gross underestimation of the European resistance against the introduction of genetically engineered products is another. Today, as more companies shift to being all about brand meaning and image, the more vulnerable they are to attacks on that image. At the same time, corporations are becoming as powerful as governments. Battling Big Business reveals how corporate giants attempt to control their 'enemies' and how groups and individuals can fight back.

online ugandan art exhibition

2002-06-20

http://www.theartroom-sf.com/WomenEmerging.htm

You are invited to visit a new online exhibition entitled: Women Emerging: A Tribute to Uganda. East African fine artists present works having significance to the topic of Women's Empowerment, specifically, the Uganda Women's Movement. Accompanying each image, participating artists explain and interpret visual elements within their work relating to impacts, changes, and developments for women, both personal and societal, in East Africa and beyond. Over a dozen new original artworks were created specifically for this event by such artists as Lilian Nabulime (Uganda), Yvonne Muinde (Kenya), David Kibuuka (Uganda), and Stella Atai (Uganda). Visiting this page will place you among the first to view them.

VIRTUAL EXHIBITION GENOCIDE MONUMENT

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/8348

Visit http://www.vmcaa.nl/genocide for a virtual exhibition of artwork by the Ghanian sculptor Kofi Setordji. Accra based Setordji worked two and half years on this work of art, which consists of about 300 pieces. Setordji made a travelling monument from wood, metal, clay, waste materials and paint, that consists of a number of sculpture groups and objects. The artwork, that weighs more than a ton, depicts the victims, refugees, politicians, judges and eyewitnesses. The directness of the imagery speaks to the conscience of the viewer. Rows of numbered terracotta faces painfully depict the anonymity of the thousands of victims: the monument was created in memory of the more than 800,000 direct and indirect victims.
17 June 2002
Dear Friends,
I am pleased to inform you that we put online the virtual exhibition
Genocide Monument with the stunning artwork of Ghanaian sculptor Kofi
Setordji. http://www.vmcaa.nl/genocide

1) VIRTUAL EXHIBITION GENOCIDE MONUMENT
Accra based Setordji worked two and half years on this work of art which
consists of about 300 pieces. Setordji made a travelling monument from
wood, metal, clay, waste materials and paint, that consists of a number of
sculpture groups and objects. This artwork that weighs more than a ton,
depicts the victims, refugees, politicians, judges and eyewitnesses. The
directness of the imagery speaks to the conscience of the viewer. Rows of
numbered terracotta faces painfully depict the anonymity of the thousands
of victims: the monument was created in memory of the more than 800,000
direct and indirect victims.

On the website ( in English and Dutch) the images of the work, information
on the monumental project and a biography of Setordji; an infocentre about
the Rwanda genocide and other genocides.

Genocide Monument is the most recent production of the Virtual Museum of
Contemporary African Art- an initiative of foundation Africaserver.
www.africaserver.nl
Feel free to make a link. We appreciate to be informed.

2) The DOCUMENTARY "Genocide Serenade" (28 minutes)
A special section on the abovementioned website has been created with
information about the newly released documentary "Genocide Serenade".
Three fragments of the video can be watched.

When Kofi Setordji saw the television images of a bulldozer shovelling
hundreds of bodies into a ditch in Rwanda in 1994, as if they were no more
than waste, he decided it was time to act. He considered it his duty as an
artist to show the world what had happened. For two and a half years Kofi
Setordji worked on his monument, which consists of 300 pieces.

He posed himself questions like: What is it that is making man waking up
one day, deciding to exterminate a whole group of people? What is the role
of the international community and of politicians.

Dutch filmmaker Maarten Rens, followed Kofi Setordji for several weeks in
February 2002.
The intensive collaboration resulted in the creation of an extraordinary
documentary.

One comment on the film by Fleur van Dissel (filmmaker):
'The strong sculptures of the perpetrators and victims of this horror stare
at you in a penetrating manner. As a viewer, you are taken to the world
behind these masks as Maarten Rens follows Kofi with his camera in close
proximity, zooming in on these human-like sculptures. If you ignored the
interpretation, you would be able to allow the emotional release that is
experienced to break through even further. This is a meeting between two
creators in which you feel that fundamental curiosity and engagement
triumph.'

For more in formation for viewing or obtaining the vhs tape
contact the producer: Foundation Africaserver
+31-20- 531 8499 or e-mail: info@africaserver.nl
With kind regards,
Fons GEERLINGS, director
www.africaserver.nl
www.vmcaa.nl

With kind regards,
Fons Geerlings, director

DRC: Sexual Violence Rampant, Unpunished in DR Congo War

2002-06-20

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/drc/

Forces on all sides in the Congo conflict have committed war crimes against women and girls, Human Rights Watch says in a new 114-page report. The report documents the frequent and sometimes systematic use of rape and other forms of sexual violence in the Rwandan-occupied areas of eastern Congo. "War continues to rage in eastern Congo. Within that larger war, combatants carry out another war -- sexual violence against women and girls," said Alison Des Forges, senior advisor to the Africa division of Human Rights Watch.

east africa: States to Promote Women in Business

2002-06-20

http://allafrica.com/stories/200206180047.html

The three East African Community (EAC) states have expressed their commitment to ensuring that women become active participants in trade. Kenya's minister in charge of EAC affairs, Nicholas Biwott, said each partner state had committed itself to the goal of advancing women in all spheres of development, both at the national and regional levels.

kenya: 'Don't Ignore Gender Issues'

2002-06-20

http://allafrica.com/stories/200206140091.html

LOCAL governments have been urged to ensure integration of gender concerns into their budgeting and planning, for effective utilisation of the Local Government Development Program (LGDP) funds.

kenya: Allow more women MPs, states told

2002-06-20

http://www.nationaudio.com/News/DailyNation/19062002/News/News14.html

Governments in East Africa have been told to facilitate the inclusion of more women in politics to enhance their participation in governance. An MP in the East Africa Assembly, MP Betty Amongi of Uganda, said her country was ahead of Kenya and Tanzania in that respect. It had embraced a scheme that ensured many women made it to Parliament.

kenya: Gender Parity Still a Mirage

2002-06-20

http://www.nationaudio.com/News/DailyNation/18062002/News/News110.html

Universities have been told to do research on the low number of girls at all levels of education and recommend remedies to the government. It was not enough to sit back and complain that only a small percentage of female students managed to make it beyond secondary school, says educationist Eddah Gachukia.

kenya: Government Acts to Boost Education for Girls

2002-06-20

http://allafrica.com/stories/200206190071.html

The Ministry of Education has allocated over Sh 540 million for the school bursary scheme, with a strong focus on promoting girl-child education. The Permanent Secretary, Mr Japheth Kiptoon, said a policy has been adopted to ensure that all girls attend school. "All Provincial and District Education Officers have strict instructions to have all disadvantaged girls taken to classrooms," said Kiptoon.

nigeria: Woman a Cruel caricature of the HIV age

2002-06-20

http://champion-newspapers.com/features/teasers/

With women contributing 55 per cent of HIV positive adults, gender inequality has become a key variable in the incidence of HIV and AIDS.

south africa: Women Need More Land

2002-06-20

http://allafrica.com/stories/200206190120.html

Rural women produce more than three-quarters of the world's food and play a crucial role in fighting the 'evil twins' of poverty and hunger, says Mpumalanga premier Ndaweni Mahlangu. Speaking at a conference to promote women's access to land in the province, Mahlangu said land redistribution urgently needed to be fast tracked so that women could participate in mainstream farming.

TOGO: New HIV/AIDS project targets vulnerable women and girls

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/wgender/8399

Poor and illiterate women and girls in Togo will soon be helped to learn how to avoid HIV/AIDS infection and care for those infected in a joint project between the UN and the Togo government.
TOGO: New HIV/AIDS project targets vulnerable women and girls

JOHANNESBURG, 19 June (PLUSNEWS) - Poor and illiterate women and girls in Togo will soon be helped to learn how to avoid HIV/AIDS infection and care for those infected in a joint project between the UN and the Togo government.

According to a UN Development Programme (UNDP) statement, the infection rate among boys aged 15 to 19 is eight percent, while the rate for girls is 30 percent. The rate of infection among adults in Togo more than tripled between 1997 and 2001, rising from two percent to seven percent, the statement said.

Studies have found that more than 90 percent of Togolese know how HIV/AIDS is transmitted and how to prevent infection, but poverty and illiteracy are obstacles to effective prevention.

Welcoming the project, Akouavi Assagbavi, representing an organisation of women market porters in Lomé, said: "No one is concerned about our well-being, and we are exploited because many of us are illiterate."

The project will help her organisation's members advance their own interests and open access to loans and better jobs, she said. It would also help those infected with HIV/AIDS, who face poverty and neglect, regain self-esteem.

In addition to poverty and illiteracy, other risk factors for women and girls in the country include low social and economic status, migration from rural areas and prostitution, the statement noted.

According to UNDP, the project will increase awareness of risky behaviour and help vulnerable groups find alternatives by mobilising civil society to help improve social, political and cultural attitudes.

UNDP is allocating US $100,000 for the project, being implemented in partnership with the Ministry of Social Affairs, Promotion of Women and Child Protection.


[ENDS]

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World Food Summit Side Event Pays Tribute to Women

2002-06-20

http://www.whrnet.org/news.html

The World Food Summit: Five Years Later held from June 10 to 13 in Rome, Italy has been criticized for giving the same speeches as five years ago. Most wealthy nations sent low-level delegations. Marked by calls from the United States to support biotech research, activists feared that the Summit took a leap backward in the fight against hunger. In spite of shortcomings, however, side event discussions were noteworthy for continually recognizing women's contributions and strategic importance in world food production and security.

Africa: anti-union repression

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/8273

Obstruction of union work, intimidation, arrests and even deaths of strikers again characterised the very sombre picture of anti-union repression in Africa in 2001. Zimbabwe alone accounted for the three dead workers on the continent and for 223 of the 282 cases of injured trade unionists throughout the 37 African countries covered by the new ICFTU Survey.
ICFTU Survey 2001: 223 trade unionists assassinated
worldwide

Africa: anti-union repression
toughens

Obstruction of union work, intimidation, arrests and even
deaths of strikers again characterised the very sombre
picture of anti-union repression in Africa in 2001.
Zimbabwe alone accounted for the three dead workers on
this continent and for 223 of the 282 cases of injured trade
unionists throughout the 37 African countries covered by
the new ICFTU Survey.


Brussels, 18 June 2002: On 8 August 2001, at the Zimbabwe
Iron and Steel Company (ZISCO) collective bargaining was at a
standstill. Since they were no longer able to discuss the issues of
wages and benefits, thousands of workers at the factory
followed traditional union procedures and went on strike. The
army opened fire and two of the strikers, Samuel Masivatsa and
Never Daniels, were shot dead. A third worker also hit by
bullets, J. Zimba, died shortly afterwards.

In addition to such extreme acts of violence perpetrated by the
public authorities, the ICFTU Survey denounces the huge
increase in other forms of repression in the region. The
techniques used to bully workers and their representatives have
ranged from brutality (282 cases listed in 2001) to arrests (185
cases listed), and have included many sackings of trade unionists
(4067 cases listed).

Leading exponents of repression: Zimbabwe and Swaziland

Zimbabwe accounts for a total of 223 of the 282 cases of
injured and assaulted trade unionists listed from the 37 African
countries covered by the Survey. Members of the ZCTU
confederation, which has incurred considerable governmental
wrath owing to its desire for reforms and opposition to the
regime, have been the main victims. Swaziland also heads the
states which are particularly reluctant to introduce reforms and
democracy (tendencies represented by the unions in certain
African countries). In this small despotic kingdom in Southern
Africa, the king and his puppet government have continued to
undermine the SFTU, whose General Secretary Jan Sithole, the
"bête noire" of the regime, has received constant death threats.
On 18 January, six leaders including the SFTU General
Secretary were accused of contempt of court for having
organised a strike on 12 November 2000 in order to present a
petition to the Prime Minister. The authorities had banned the
action but the strike went ahead. Their trial, which began in
March, continued throughout the year.

Flouting of union rights

There is a long list of countries guilty of bullying, arrests and
sacking of trade unionists. Amongst the "worst pupils" is
Malawi. Here, the right to organise does exist, registered unions
may strike, collective bargaining is recognised in law and labour
legislation is applicable in export processing zones. However, in
practice, only 10% of workers are in formal jobs and thus
covered by labour legislation. The authorities have sacked
workers who go on strike (such as 350 workers from the water
company Lilonwe) along with their union reps and suspended
the President of the Malawi Railway Workers Union (RWU).

In Morocco the same hypocrisy prevails: the main rights of
workers are very poorly respected in practice by employers,
with the tacit endorsement of the authorities. Some of the worst
culprits are multinationals. For instance, when a union was set up
in November 2000 in a subsidiary of the Irish group "Fruit of the
Loom" in the town of Salé - where the company employs over
1200 people - a whole array of anti-union tactics was deployed.
When the UMT reported the matter to the governor he
announced that he did not want any unions in his "prefecture".

Bad legislative trends

In addition to the growing gulf between what is stipulated in
labour codes and the actual application of such legislation, trade
union activity had also been severely impeded by the negative
trends in legislation in certain countries. In Senegal, for
example, the new Constitution adopted in January 2001
seriously undermines the right to strike. Workers from the Cape
Verde transport firm Sotrac, who demonstrated in order to get
the severance pay they had been promised, suffered the effects
of these changes: several were seriously wounded when the
police intervened to disperse the demonstration they had
organised in front of the President's palace. In Uganda in
August, the government announced to all trade unions a
unilateral ban on all general meetings, thereby denying the right
of members to elect their leaders, draft policies or determine
their activities. The General Secretary of the public employees
union was also stripped of his post by the government. What is
more, at the end of the year the government had still not replied
to a request for registration presented by the Ugandan teaching
unions back in 1997.

Ubiquitous repression

Many African trade unionists are continuing to live under
constant threat of reprisals. That has been the case in Sudan,
Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea and Libya, where independent
unions are simply banned. In Sudan, members of the only union
tolerated (SWTUF), which is controlled by the State, were even
forced to work "underground" in 2001 and report that they live
in constant fear.

Elsewhere, such as Chad or Nigeria, where the unions are
"tolerated", infringements of union rights have increased. In the
State of Borno in Nigeria, the police used tear gas and real
bullets to disperse demonstrators protesting against wage
reductions. In Ethiopia, nothing has really changed as regards
the repression against the teachers' union (ETA), which is no
longer operational.

Job losses and wages arrears

According to the Survey, the cumulative impact of the declining
economic situation and the structural programmes supported by
the IMF and the World Bank caused huge losses of jobs and
several months of salary arrears in many countries throughout the
year. In Togo, where these arrears amount to anything from 8 to
15 months for some teachers, the government even issued a
series of decrees ordering that teachers joining strikes protesting
against non-payment of wages would not be paid during their
absence from work.

When international solidarity makes a difference

The only glimpse of hope in this gloomy picture is international
trade union solidarity. An example of this was provided in the
Central African Republic, where the leader of the USTC,
Théophile Sony Colé, was arrested by the authorities on 17
June, at Bangui airport, on his return from an ICFTU (AFRO)
meeting in Nairobi. The international reaction was immediate.
ICFTU-AFRO alerted a maximum number of regional and
global players, who proceeded to condemn the arrest. This
pressure was key to the liberation of the union leader. In Ghana
the mobilisation by the international union movement, especially
through the International Federation of Building and
Woodworkers (IFBWW), also enabled the successful outcome
of the conflict between the Ghanaian union CBMWU and Zoe
Royal Company Ltd.

For the 132 countries and territories covered by the 2001
edition of the annual Survey, the ICFTU lists a total of 223
murdered or "disappeared" trade unionists (i.e. 14 more
than in 2000), with a terrifying record figure of 201
assassinations or "disappearances" in Colombia alone.
The worldwide figures report some 4,000 arrests, 1,000
injuries and 10,000 sackings of trade unionists.

* Embargo - June 18 - 00.01am *


The ICFTU represents 157 million workers in 225 affiliated
organisations in 148 countries and territories. ICFTU is also a
member of Global Unions: http://www.global-unions.org

For more information, please contact Louis Belanger ICFTU
Press Officer on +32 2 224 0232 or +32 476 62 10 18
(Mobile).

CAMEROON: Amnesty International, Survival protest Mbororo arrests

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/8281

Two global human rights watchdogs, Amnesty International (AI) and Survival have protested the arrest of four activists of the Mbororo ethnic group in Cameroon's North West province, and launched a campaign for their release. All the four suffered various types of torture, AI and Survival said, adding that the arrests were part of human rights abuses against the Mbororo Fulani of the North West Province.

U N I T E D N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)

CAMEROON: Amnesty International, Survival protest Mbororo arrests

YAOUNDE, 17 June (IRIN) - Two global human rights watchdogs, Amnesty International (AI) and Survival have protested the arrest of four activists of the Mbororo ethnic group in Cameroon's North West province, and launched a campaign for their release.

AI said on Thursday that it was concerned over the safety of the detained activists who had been held without charge and faced further risk of torture or ill-treatment. The military, Survival added, arrested Ousman Haman, Ahmadou Hassan, Adamu Isa and Yunusa Mbagoji in April and May on the orders of a member of the ruling Cameroon Peoples' Democratic Movement.

Ousman Haman was arrested near Sabga in Mezam judicial division. Under the law he could only be charged within Mezam, where English Common Law is in force. Instead he was taken to Bafoussam in another province to be tried by a military tribunal under French-based Cameroonian law.

Ahmadou Hasan, Adamu Isa and Yunusa Mbagoji were arrested in the city of Douala for an alleged crime that occurred near Sabga in Mezam judicial division. They were transported first to Bamenda and then to Bafoussam to be tried in a military tribunal, the organizations said.

All the four suffered various types of torture, AI and Survival said, adding that the arrests were part of human rights abuses against the Mbororo Fulani of the North West Province. The government had neither explained the reason for their arrests nor allowed them access to lawyers and their families.

"Several weeks after their arrests, no charges have been brought against [them]. The four were arrested in relation to a dispute over grazing land. At no time since Cameroon gained independence in 1961 has any dispute over grazing land been taken to a military tribunal. The detention of the Mbororo men suggests a wider campaign of intimidation against this politically marginal ethnic group," Survival said.

In 1986 a prominent businessman and a member of the ruling party central committee established two cattle ranches in the Boyo and Menchum divisions and reportedly forced some Mbororo out of their land without compensation, which made him the largest single private landowner in the province, AI said.

"The Mbororo Social and Cultural Development Association which was established on 1992 to protect Mbororo rights and promote development has been a particular target," it said.

Survival is a London-based organisation that supports tribal peoples by campaigning for their rights. It helps to protect the lives, lands and human rights of the minority tribes.

Details of the campaign are available at: http://www.survival-international.org


[ENDS]

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Tel: +225 22-40-4440
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Email: IRIN-WA@irin.ci
[This Item is Delivered to the "Africa-English" Service of the UN's IRIN
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of the United Nations. For further information, free subscriptions, or
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Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2002

CENTRAL AFRICA: Countries pledge to promote human rights

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/8280

Justice ministers and Supreme Court presidents from the Economic Community of Central African States have signed the "Yaounde Declaration", in which they pledge to promote human rights in their respective countries. Signed at the end of a two-day meeting in Yaounde, Cameroon, the declaration calls on each country to prioritise the promotion and respect for human rights.
U N I T E D N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)

CENTRAL AFRICA: Countries pledge to promote human rights

YAOUNDE, 17 June (IRIN) - Justice ministers and Supreme Court presidents from the Economic Community of Central African States adopted on Friday the "Yaounde Declaration" in which they pledged to promote human rights in their respective countries.

Signed at the end of a two-day meeting in Yaounde, Cameroon, the declaration calls on each country to prioritise the promotion and respect for human rights. The countries are also required to operationalise ratified international treaties and endorse those they have not yet ratified.

The meeting recommended that each country in the 11-member community publish reports on its state of human rights. Member states acknowledged that, for various reasons, they had failed to inform their citizens and the international community on their human rights situation.

The Chadian justice minister told the conference that years of instability, ignorance of ratified treaties, and lack of personnel and technical material had hindered the publication of the reports. Jeannette Dethoua, high commissioner for human rights in the Central African Republic, said political upheavals had placed the country in an "exceptional situation where respect of human rights has been lukewarm."

Burundi's minister of institutional reforms, Alphonse Barancira, said: "In a situation of war it is difficult to promote and truly guarantee human rights. War, and its political, economic and social consequences, has thus been the major obstacle Burundi's ability to abide by its international engagements."

Member states appealed to Robinson's office and the international community for financial and technical support to advance human rights. They also requested assistance to train human rights specialists and personnel who could draft national human rights reports.

The regional meeting was held during a two-day official visit by Mary Robinson, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, who inaugurated a sub-regional center on human rights and democracy. She promised that UNHCHR would assist the countries to achieve the objectives of the declaration.
[ENDS]

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EQUATORIAL GUINEA : TORTURE MARKS EQUATORIAL GUINEA TRIAL, SAYS AI

2002-06-20

http://www.newafrica.com/news/articlepg1.asp?ID=48178&countryid=20

Amnesty International has called on authorities in Equatorial Guinea to retry fairly within a reasonable period of time or release the nearly 70 people who received unfair and heavy sentences last Sunday. The accused were sentenced on the sole basis of statements extracted under torture during detention while they were deprived of communication.

EQUATORIAL GUINEA: EU demands firm action against the government

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/8400

Ahead of the European Union heads of state and government meeting in Spain on 21-22 June, EU parliamentarians have called for "utmost firmness" against the government of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema in Equatorial Guinea for human rights violations.
U N I T E D N A T I O N S
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EQUATORIAL GUINEA: EU demands firm action against the government

ABIDJAN, 19 June (IRIN) - Ahead of the European Union heads of state and government meeting in Spain on 21-22 June, EU parliamentarians have called for "utmost firmness" against the government of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema in Equatorial Guinea for human rights violations.

The parliamentarians met EU foreign ministers on Tuesday in Luxembourg to emphasize an urgent resolution passed on 13 June in Strasbourg, that condemned recent arrests of opposition leaders in Equatorial Guinea, an EU statement reported.

They told the ministers the EU should propose to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights to re-appoint a Special Rapporteur on Torture in Equatorial Guinea. EU member states, they added, should also closely monitor the situation in the country.

" Days before the EU meeting and the G-8 in Canada on 26 June when G-8 leaders will assess proposals for the New Partnership for Africa's Development, [EU MPs] warn Nguema to honour his undertakings to the international community and the EU to initiate a genuine process of democratisation, call free elections and guarantee full respect for human rights," the statement added.

The European Council and Commission should "show the utmost firmness in demanding that these undertakings be honoured, and urges both Institutions to apply the democracy clause set out in Articles 96 and 97 of the Cotonou Agreement unless a genuine process of democratisation is initiated," the parliamentarians said.

The 13 June resolution said that since March, dozens of Nguema's opponents had been arbitrarily detained and condemned "the sentencing of 68 opposition leaders to terms ranging from 6 to 20 years [in] political trials that are unfair and in total disregard of the most fundamental rights of defense". Journalists covering the trials had faced insidious pressure on a daily basis, they added.

Arrests of opposition leaders and some members of their families were detailed in the resolution. It said detainees were prevented from contacting their families or lawyers and subjected to brutal acts of torture and ill-treatment. The trial, the parliamentarians demanded, should be annulled and all the prisoners immediately released. "The hounding of members of the opposition parties and their families should cease, " it added.

The EU parliament instructed its president to forward the resolution to the Council, the Commission, the co-Presidents of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly, the OAU and the Government of Equatorial Guinea.

Last week, Amnesty International and the Olof Palme Foundation called on authorities in Equatorial Guinea to conduct a new trial of the jailed opposition leaders within a reasonable time or release them.

A court in the capital, Malabo, passed the sentences on 8 June following the trial of 144 defendants for reportedly plotting to topple Nguema. Some 76 defendants were freed. Among those jailed were Felipe Ondó Obiang (20 years), Guillermo Nguema Elá (14 years) of the opposition Fuerza Democratica Republicana and Placido Miko, secretary general of the main opposition party, Convergencia para la Democracia Social who received 14 years.

An oil-rich country of 500,000 people, Equatorial Guinea is made up of two islands, Bioko and Annobon, and a stretch of mainland called Rio Muni. It is bordered by Cameroon, Gabon and the Gulf of Guinea.
[ENDS]

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GAMBIA-GUINEA-BISSAU: Government shocked by Guinea-Bissau coup claims

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/8284

The Gambian government has described as "untrue and unfounded" reports by Guinea-Bissau's president, Kumba Yala, that the Gambia was involved in two reported plots to overthrow the Bissau government.
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GAMBIA-GUINEA-BISSAU: Government shocked by Guinea-Bissau coup claims

BANJUL, 18 June (IRIN) - The Gambian government has described as "untrue and unfounded" reports by Guinea-Bissau's president, Kumba Yala, that the Gambia was involved in two reported plots to overthrow the Bissau government.

Yala threatened to invade the Gambia during a meeting with foreign diplomats, civil society and NGO representatives on 11 June. Yala said that he could "crush" the Gambia unless its government stopped "supporting subversive acts against the Bissau government". The Gambia, he added, had been involved in coup attempts against his government in November 2001 and on 20 May, news agencies reported.

In a strongly-worded statement on Monday, the Gambian ministry for foreign affairs said President Yahya Jammeh and his government received the reports with "consternation".

"The government of the Gambia categorically refutes the allegations as untrue, unfounded, misconceived, regrettable and totally contrary to the spirit of good neighbourliness that the Gambia has been promoting and nurturing," the statement said.

The Gambia, the statement added, had instead been involved in peaceful mediation during Guinea-Bissau's power struggle between former President Joao Bernardo "Nino" Vieira and the late army chief-of-staff General Ansoumane Mane from June 1998 to May 1999.

According to the Gambian foreign ministry statement, "the Gambia also serves as coordinator of the "Friends of Guinea- Bissau Group' at the United Nations in New York", which mobilizes international support for the reconstruction of Guinea- Bissau.

Apart from the Gambian government, opposition parties in Guinea- Bissau have also criticized Yala's threat to invade the Gambia. The Guinea- Bissau Resistance party called the Guinean leader's outburst an "obsession", whilst the former ruling African Party for the Independence of Guinea- Bissau and Cape Verde, also criticized it.

Meanwhile, a journalist was arrested in Guinea-Bissau, over comments made to a private radio station about Yala's threats to the Gambia, the Portuguese news agency, Lusa, reported on Tuesday.

Joao de Barros, owner of the Diario de Bissau newspaper which was closed down by the government last year, was detained on Monday after taking part in a program on Radio Bombolom. The journalist had been invited to comment on the rejection in parliament that day of the state budget proposals, Lusa reported. Barros, Lusa added, told the radio that the threats to use military force against the Gambia were "pathetic".

Barros had been arrested before for being critical of the government.


[ENDS]

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kenya: Fury over possible poll delay

2002-06-20

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_2052000/2052393.stm

Kenya's political opposition has reacted furiously to a proposal by the country's ruling party to extend the term of President Daniel arap Moi and the current parliament by up a year. Opposition leaders threatened to call for mass protests if the government party tried to push through the change.

NIGERIA: Niger Delta groups allege new attempt to cheat region

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/rights/8391

Two leading activist groups in Nigeria's volatile Niger Delta oil region have accused President Olusegun Obasanjo's government of aggressively developing offshore oilfields in order to abdicate its responsibilities to the region's impoverished people.
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NIGERIA: Niger Delta groups allege new attempt to cheat region

LAGOS, 19 June (IRIN) - Two leading activist groups in Nigeria's volatile Niger Delta oil region have accused President Olusegun Obasanjo's government of aggressively developing offshore oilfields in order to abdicate its responsibilities to the region's impoverished people.

The Ijaw National Congress (INC) and the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) represent, respectively, the biggest and the smallest of the ethnic minority groups that inhabit the region.

In a joint statement on Wednesday, the two groups accused the government of conniving with major oil producers to source most of Nigeria's oil from offshore fields and abandon onshore fields where restive locals often disrupt operations to protest government neglect.

"The INC and MOSOP view the proposal to rely on offshore oil as ill-conceived, unjust and at odds with the interest of the Nigerian nation," said the statement signed by Kimse Okoko for INC and Ledum Mitee for MOSOP.

"Apart from being an ignoble retreat from its responsibilities to the people of the Niger Delta, we see this as a proposal for the economic strangulation of the Niger Delta until we are ready to submit to the government and oil companies on their own terms," it added.

In April the federal government had won a suit it filed at the Supreme Court against states in the oil region, which gave it exclusive control over revenue from offshore oil resources.

This has aggravated tension in the troubled oil region, where impoverished inhabitants accuse the government of cheating them out of the wealth pumped from their land while leaving them to live with the environmental degradation brought by oil activities.

On taking office in 1999, Obasanjo had authorised a new round of oil exploration licences, most of which covered offshore and shallow water oil leases. All the major oil multinationals in Nigeria have in recent years announced sizable finds, indicating that in a couple of years much or even all of the country's export quota would be met by offshore production.

INC and MOSOP allege that a presidential committee on security in the oil region, comprising top military and security chiefs and representatives of oil companies, had advised that concentrating on offshore oil production would be an effective way of containing the frequent cases of disruption, violent protests and hostage-taking that have characterised onshore production in the last decade.

"We contend that the security solutions to the situation in the Niger Delta lie in dealing fairly with the development and environmental problems of communities with a fraction of the cost of maintaining a militarised presence in the region," the groups said.


[ENDS]

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nigeria: president off the hook for now

2002-06-20

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_2053000/2053349.stm

A behind the scenes deal between senators has derailed an opposition attempt to force President Olusegun Obasanjo to give details of the whereabouts of millions of dollars of public funds.

rwanda: TRIAL FOR EX-RWANDAN MINISTER OPENS

2002-06-20

http://www.internews.org/activities/ICTR_reports/ICTR_reports_current.htm#0617c

Eliezer Niyitegeka, a former information minister, "went about gunning down, raping and murdering" ethnic Tutsi during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the prosecution claimed this week when the trial opened before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).

south africa: Victims of apartheid to sue justice minister

2002-06-20

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?newslett=1&click_id=13&art_id=ct20020617105545793M350469&set_id=1

Apartheid victims are to take legal steps against justice minister Penuell Maduna in a last-ditch effort to get access to the state's draft reparations policy. Shirley Gunn, chairperson of the Khulumani Victims Support Group's Western Cape branch said the action was decided on after several attempts to see the draft legislation, and to become involved in discussions on reparations, failed.

ANGOLA: Interview with Kamel Morjane, UNHCR Assistant High Commissioner

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/8323

Angola's peace process has spurred preparations for the eventual return of 470,000 Angolan refugees sheltering in neighbouring countries. The UN refugee agency's (UNHCR) Assistant High Commissioner Kamel Morjane, toured Angola and Zambia last week to assess the conditions for the repatriation of people forced from their homes by close to three decades of civil war.
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ANGOLA: Interview with Kamel Morjane, UNHCR Assistant High Commissioner

JOHANNESBURG, 18 June (IRIN) - Angola's peace process has spurred preparations for the eventual return of 470,000 Angolan refugees sheltering in neighbouring countries. The UN refugee agency's (UNHCR) Assistant High Commissioner Kamel Morjane, toured Angola and Zambia last week to assess the conditions for the repatriation of people forced from their homes by close to three decades of civil war.

Morjane spoke to IRIN about the anticipated spontaneous return of 80,000 Angolans between now and the end of the year. He referred to the "benchmarks" that needed to be in place before UNHCR could assist with a planned repatriation of Angolans from neighbouring countries. Ahead of World Refugee Day on Thursday, he also explained why women and vulnerability was the theme of this year's message.

QUESTION: Angola is the critical issue for Southern Africa in terms of refugees, can you describe what your mission was aimed at achieving?

ANSWER: Our mission was mainly to finalise the operation planned for the repatriation of Angolan refugees from neighbouring countries. Certainly the new developments in Angola are positive and I hope - this is a feeling we got in Angola - that peace is irreversible this time. But it doesn't mean that everything is [in place] and it is clear that the country will face now a huge effort to reconcile and reconstruct to which UNHCR is ready, together with the rest of the UN system, to play a role especially with the repatriation of the 470,000 Angolan refugees mainly from Zambia, [Democratic Republic of Congo] DRC and Namibia. This is in fact what we have been trying to do during this visit together with a technical team sent to the different countries ...

We believe that until the end of the year we will have only spontaneous repatriation because this big operation [of an organised repatriation will take time to] be prepared. We can all imagine the consequences of the war when it comes to infrastructure, when it comes to the socio-economic conditions of Angola. There are places where nobody has been able to visit yet because of the [lack of] roads, the landmines etc. We have to be ready, but we would like to profit from the next six months when we are expecting spontaneous repatriation in order to prepare the organised repatriation that will start early next year. For this year, however, we believe - and this is an assumption - that about 80,000 people will go back on their own ...

Q: What are the minimum conditions that UNHCR would like to see in place before an organised mass return?

A: Certainly the first thing is security. It's obvious there is a need for a presence in the regions to where refugees will be coming back to ... The issue of landmines is also something we are taking very seriously. The community services and infrastructure, all these are necessary in order to take the responsibility and the initiative of encouraging people to go back home or to promote their repatriation. There are certainly some benchmarks we have discussed and that should be taken into consideration. I hope that during these six months we have now at hand, that we can be able to prepare this together with the authorities - because this is also important, because first of all they are Angolans going back to their own country. We have insisted very much to the Angolan authorities [that they] take the lead for that ... [and] the commitment we got from the government was that they welcome their people back, and it's clear they would like to have it, as we do, in an organised manner.

Q: It's a big task for any government to provide all this security and landmine clearance etc, do you foresee the refugees coming back to a central area before being allowed to freely go back to their regions of origin? And will you work with the Angolan government to help raise donor money to assist them?

A: I think both. There are those who will repatriate spontaneously until the end of the year (we have already 15,000 who have repatriated on their own). Of the 80,000 whom we are envisaging, they will go back to their places of origin and certainly it will be difficult to organise, especially when there is nobody there yet to organise them - neither from the government side, neither the humanitarian agencies and certainly not UNHCR. We are just present in the north, in the provinces of Zaire and Uige, but with a very, very light and limited presence because let's face it, I think everybody was taken by surprise with the peace process ... This is why I say for the first period certainly there will not be any kind of organisation and people will go back to wherever they like. The organised repatriation, yes, there will be transport, transit camps and the usual measures we take to make sure that everything works as it should on the operational side.

On the second part of your question, on the resources needed for that, we'll be going to our donors for this operation. We have not yet budgeted since the technical teams are still in the region, they are supposed to go today to Namibia to finalise the repatriation plan for the 25,000 Angolans we have in Namibia. But I hope that by, I would say the first week in July, we will be able to have a [budget] figure for 18 months. Our plan is to prepare something for the period starting from 1 July of this year to 31 December next year. I have no idea how much this will be, but I hope that, for two reasons, [the donors will be generous]. Firstly, because any operation for repatriation is always something positive ... and second, I think with the commitment the Angolan authorities have shown us I hope this will materialise also into a financial commitment from their part, and this will also encourage the donors to contribute generously in order to make this operation possible ... Repatriation will certainly be, in my view, a contribution to the peace and stability of Angola and for more positive action when it comes to the neighbouring countries, and I'm thinking in particular of the DRC.

Q: Are you confident the benchmarks can be met?

A: It's not easy, I'm certainly not over-optimistic about it, I'm quite realistic about it and certainly it needs to be worked out through, in particular, the tripartite mechanisms that have been set up already - and this is another positive element, that we have had already agreements signed sometime ago when we thought that repatriation was about to start in the early 90s. It was good to hear the authorities in Luanda say they considered they are still bound by the agreements that we have signed with them and the neighbouring countries and we can consider this could be a basis for trilateral cooperation with UNHCR and the government of Angola on one side, and the governments of the asylum countries on the other. This will certainly help, and this was decided yesterday that we should go as soon as possible for the first meetings of these three tripartite commissions in order to make sure that we are addressing all the difficulties that could arise, and certainly they are [many] ... It's obvious it will not be an easy operation, it needs a lot of preparation, needs a lot of commitment from all the parties, but I think we have no choice, we have to start.

Q: On your tip to Zambia, talking to the refugees there, what were their impressions?

A: It's clear they are all looking forward to going back home. You can have different views, this is also human, there are some who are more prudent than others. There are some who are saying that this is not the first time and that we have to watch how the situation will be before we decide to go home. Others, and especially those who have come a little late, those who arrived recently during the last two years in particular, maybe they are more inclined to go back immediately. This is why we are considering a certain number who will not even wait for any assistance from UNHCR or any other agency and will go back immediately. But globally, there is a positive attitude, but people are of course waiting to see how the situation will be on the other side - let's not forget that when they are in Zambia or DRC they are getting all the assistance they need. They are getting services, they are getting education and it's certainly necessary to deliver the same kind of services if we want the refugees to go back ...

Q: What sort of assistance on the other side, you talked of schools and health, is this a long term commitment by UNHCR?

A: I think it certainly will not be a long term commitment on the part of UNHCR. Our plan, as I told you, is to have the six months for the spontaneous repatriation from now until the end of the year. And we have a plan for two years from 2003 to 2004 for the organised repatriation which means that our plan is to be there from, I would say two-and-a-half to three years maximum, as we cannot continue to be in a country where the refugees are back. It becomes the responsibility of the government to take care of their nationals especially when it comes to a country like Angola, where we believe the resources that have been used up to now in the war can certainly be used to help the people and the reconstruction - although one has to be realistic, it's not an easy job for them. It will take years.

Q: For World Refugee Day, the main themes are women and vulnerability - what is the message you are trying to get over?

A: I think its obvious that for us, the situation of especially refugee women is a major concern for us. It's been the case for years now, we have been insisting on that and we have been trying when it comes to the protection of women in particular, we have been trying to take all appropriate measures in order guarantee their protection, both when it comes to those who are in the camps as well as those urban refugees. This is why we wanted to have Refugee Day focusing on women, not only because of what we have been doing, but for the role we want women to play in the refugee situation because usually they have to take care of the whole family. They have to play sometimes the role of both the mother and the father, and I think this is also a kind of recognition of their role, and what they have been facing ... Refugee Day itself is certainly an occasion to sensitise national and international opinion about the situation of refugees today, and the need for additional effort by everybody in order to alleviate their suffering. Of course, when it comes to Africa, we all know the role UNHCR is playing, and the fact that Africa for us is a priority. This is where we have the majority of our programmes and our staff, and this is where also, I must say, we have the most generous attitude when it comes to asylum, when it comes to hospitality for refugees. This is why its important for us to underline all these elements during this day.

Q: The sexual exploitation scandal that emerged in camps in West Africa - was it a wake up call not just to UNHCR but the humanitarian community as a whole?

A: I think yes, this was something that shocked us. We knew that there were certainly sexual abuses and exploitation, as everywhere in the world, it's not only West Africa. In many places where there is needs and vulnerability [exploitation] is linked to that. We were shocked by the fact that the report concluded that humanitarian workers are involved in this exploitation, we knew that there was exploitation, what we didn't know was the fact that humanitarian workers [were implicated]. I think we have taken all the measures, both when it comes to the prevention in the future, not only in West Africa, but we have enlarged this to all our programmes all over the world and involved all our managers all over the world. We are ready and expecting the investigation to be over and if there is any indication [of impropriety] all disciplinary measures will be taken and I think the [UN] Secretary-General did announce it, and the High Commissioner for Refugees did announce it - there will certainly be zero tolerance for any kind of abuse if it has been committed by any one of our staff members ... But this certainly should not in any case suggest that all humanitarian workers [are involved] ... We have to recognise that thousands of our people all over the world ... continue to work very very hard to assist and to help people - they are doing it in God knows what kinds of conditions, and sometimes they pay with their lives for that. One should certainly not forget this, even if we can have here and there a few cases [of misconduct], I think we have to make the distinction ...


[ENDS]

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BOTSWANA: Canadian group protest Basarwa plight

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/8322

The worldwide campaign for the Bushmen of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana, received a publicity boost on the sidelines of an international diamond conference in Canada on Monday. Vancouver Island Public Interest Research Group (VIPIRG) demonstrated outside the World Diamond Conference because they believe the real reason the Basarwa are being removed is because of the government's mining interest in the reserve.


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BOTSWANA: Canadian group protest Basarwa plight

JOHANNESBURG, 18 June (IRIN) - The worldwide campaign for the Bushmen of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana, received a publicity boost on the sidelines of an international diamond conference in Canada on Monday.

Vancouver Island Public Interest Research Group (VIPIRG) demonstrated outside the World Diamond Conference because they believe the real reason the Basarwa are being removed is because of the government's mining interest in the reserve.

About 700 people are contesting their removal from the reserve - which they consider their ancestral land and burial grounds - to resettlement camps.

VIPIRG member Jessica Asch told IRIN: "We wanted to add our voice to the growing concern about the impact these forced removals will have on the indigenous people and their way of life. We are determined to stand in solidarity with the Bushmen. We want the people of Botswana to know that although they are on the other side of the world, we are concerned and will continue to highlight their plight."

The Botswana government says it can no longer afford to provide the infrastructure the Basarwa to live in the park and want them all removed to the camps.

Since 1985 the authorities have relocated thousands of Basarwa people to settlements outside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

A recent court challenge against their removal was dismissed on a technicality, and activists are currently trying to raise money to return to court.

Officials say the programme is for the Basarwa's own good and have provided water, health and education services in the 63 resettlement villages, where most of the Kalahari people have already been moved.

Lobby group Survival International, which helps raise awareness of threatened peoples across the world, placed an advertisement about them in Canada's Vancouver Sun to coincide with the opening of the conference there.

"[Mining company] De Beers denies its interest in the park but according to our sources, they have already undertaken several studies and although they won't admit it, they have found one of the most fertile sites in the Kalahari in recent years," said Survival International spokesperson Miriam Ross.

Botswana, as the world's largest producer of diamonds, has the highest per capita income in Africa. The government says its aim in resettling the Bushmen is to help them benefit from this wealth, by providing schools, healthcare and job training. It also says it wants to give the reserve over to wildlife conservation that it claims has been thwarted by the Basarwa's hunting activities.

A successful land claim by the Basarwa might make it more difficult for the government to exploit any mineral finds.

Survival International has launched a worldwide campaign to persuade Botswana's government to reverse its policy. It is holding weekly vigils outside Botswana embassies, and publishing adverts around the world.

Meanwhile, less than 50 people remain in the reserve, refusing to move even though their basic services have been cut off and their hunting licences taken away.

[ENDS]

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drc: refugees in Burundi refuse transfer

2002-06-20

http://www.newafrica.com/news/articlepg1.asp?ID=48433

Burundi authorities have suspended the dismantling of Ngagara refugee camp, north-west of Bujumbura after the 1,500 DR Congo settlers of the camp, refused to be transferred to eastern part of Burundi Tuesday.

GLOBAL: UNHCR releases refugee statistics

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/8393

The number of refugees globally remained unchanged at 12 million in 2001, with half a million people fleeing their countries during the year and nearly as many returning home, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR, said on Tuesday.
U N I T E D N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)

GLOBAL: UNHCR releases refugee statistics

ABIDJAN, 19 June (IRIN) - The number of refugees globally remained unchanged at 12 million in 2001, with half a million people fleeing their countries during the year and nearly as many returning home, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR, said on Tuesday.

In a 2001 refugee report, UNHCR said refugees from Afghanistan and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) were the largest groups fleeing their country that year. In Africa there were a number of new, large-scale movements with some 188,000 people fleeing to neighbouring countries, the report said.

It said the main outflows concerned refugees from Angola, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Somalia, Burundi, Liberia, Rwanda and Senegal.

At the same time, however, some 267,000 African refugees were able to return home, including to Sierra Leone, Somalia, Eritrea, Burundi, Rwanda, Angola, Ethiopia and Sudan.

In addition to refugees, UNHCR also works on behalf of returned refugees, asylum seekers, certain groups of internally displaced persons (IDPs), stateless persons and others affected by war and conflict, it said.

It noted that although the number of IDPs of concern to the agency dropped by more than 800,000 during the year, there were some worrisome developments involving new internal displacements in 2001.

Besides Afghanistan and Colombia, other major displacements during the year occurred in Liberia, where there were 112,000 newly displaced, and FYROM, with 74,500 but by the end of the year 58,200 of those in FYROM had gone home, the report said.

For full 2001 statistics see http://www.unhcr.ch/statistics
[ENDS]

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kenya: 12,000 Refugees to Be Moved

2002-06-20

http://allafrica.com/stories/200206170609.html

Thousands of Somali refugees will be moved from camps in north eastern Kenya to Kakuma, near the Sudanese border. The movement of 11,860 refugees from Ifo, Dagahley and Hagardera camps on the border with Somalia will be the largest movement of refugees inside Kenya in a decade. The camps are run by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

NIGERIA: 85,000 IDPs resettled in central region, says Red Cross

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/8324

More than 85,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) have been resettled in their home villages in Nigeria's central region in the past two months, Red Cross officials said on Tuesday. The IDPs, mostly of the Tiv ethnic group, had fled ethnic and communal clashes that wracked the states of Nasarawa, Plateau, Taraba and Benue between June and November 2001.

U N I T E D N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)

NIGERIA: 85,000 IDPs resettled in central region, says Red Cross

LAGOS, 18 June (IRIN) - More than 85,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) have been resettled in their home villages in Nigeria's central region in the past two months, Red Cross officials said on Tuesday.

The IDPs, mostly of the Tiv ethnic group, had fled ethnic and communal clashes that wracked the states of Nasarawa, Plateau, Taraba and Benue between June and November 2001.

"Since April at least 85,000 people have returned to Taraba State from Benue State," Alhaji M.D. Lawan, the Red Cross official overseeing the central region, told IRIN. "Most of the people in camps set up in Taraba have also left," he added.

According to Lawan, the Taraba State government provided transport to move most of the displaced who were settled in camps in Ibi, Dan Anache and Gosun local government areas. He said though the IDPs lacked adequate shelter and food, their discomfort was reduced by the Taraba government which provided them transport to their respective places.

"Most are now back in their farms planting with the rainy season now underway," he added.

During the fighting which pitted Tivs against their Jukun neighbours, four camps were also set up by the Taraba government at Bali, Mutum-Biu, Wukari and Jalingo. But Lawan said all these camps have now been vacated by IDPs.

However, Benson Attah, another Red Cross official who recently visited camps in Benue State, said about 5,000 IDPs were still staying at Daudu and Ukpiam, while a third camp at Agache had been vacated.

Most of the people at these two camps, he said, fled clashes last year in Kwam Pam and Shendam in Plateau State as well as fighting between Tivs and Hausa-speaking Azeris in Nasarawa State. "Those left are people who have lost their homes and do not feel safe enough to go back," Attah told IRIN.

He said the Nigerian Red Cross and the Catholic Relief Services had provided relief assistance until April. "Since then no assistance had been forthcoming until our recent intervention two weeks ago when we provided food rations and gave health and sanitation assistance," he said. "We have launched an appeal on their behalf and are still awaiting response," Attah added.

More than 1,000 people died and hundreds of thousands were displaced in the communal violence which swept Nigeria's central region last year. The situation was aggravated after the military became embroiled in the Tiv-Jukun conflict when 19 soldiers were killed by a Tiv militia. Reprisal attacks were launched against several Tiv settlements by soldiers during which at least 200 people were killed, scores of houses destroyed and tens of thousands of people forced from their homes.

[ENDS]

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sierra leone: 25,000 Liberians have fled to Sierra Leone since January

2002-06-20

http://www.newafrica.com/news/articlepg1.asp?ID=48452

Around 25,000 Liberians have crossed into neighboring Sierra Leone since Janaury, seeking to escape a civil war in their West African home, a U.N. official said Wednesday. Liberia's rebels have stepped up attacks recently against President Charles Taylor's government, and fighting has been reported in five of the country's 15 counties.

siERRA LEONE: Refugee day to be celebrated

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/8320

The UN agency for refugees, UNHCR, has planned a series of activities in Sierra Leone to celebrate this year's world refugee day, the agency reported in a statement. The activities are scheduled for 20-27 June, it said.

U N I T E D N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)

SIERRA LEONE: Refugee day to be celebrated

ABIDJAN, 17 June (IRIN) - The UN agency for refugees, UNHCR, has planned a series of activities in Sierra Leone to celebrate this year's world refugee day, the agency reported in a statement. The activities are scheduled for 20-27 June, it said.

A photo exhibition at the country's museum on women/children refugees and UNHCR general activities in the country will run throughout the week. A promotion and sale of handicrafts made by refugee women will also take place.

Two videos "We were there" and "Don't look back", will be shown continuously the statement said. The first film features a historical overview of UNHCR's first years and includes comments by high profile partners, UNHCR said.

The second film shows the courage of the refugee women and why they need help. A two-day seminar entitled "Spring board for action" will take place in the southern town of Bo on the 20 and 21 June and will be hosted by the Centre for Human Rights and Peace Education.

The Liberian refugee community in the capital Freetown is launching in collaboration with UNHCR a campaign named "Rescue the Liberian Refugees" and a series of event while other activities are scheduled to take place at their Waterloo refugee centre, 25 km south of Freetown, UNHCR said.

Apart from media campaigns, a football tournament in the eastern district of Kenema between male and female staff of various agencies and refugees, a week-long refugee children/girls centred activities, and a workshop on refugee women returning to rebuild their areas of origin will take place in the eastern town of Koidu in Kono District.
[ENDS]

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SIERRA LEONE: Refugees International on regional mission

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/refugees/8319

Refugees International (RI) is sending a mission to the United Nations mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) to gain an understanding of why it "succeeded and analyze the implications of its success for other missions", RI reported on Monday. "RI embarked on this mission because of its concern about the refugee outflow from Liberia and the lack of stability in the region. These countries are most affected by the refugee outflow. Liberia was not chosen because of the security situation and difficulties in access," an official of RI in Washington told IRIN.

U N I T E D N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)

SIERRA LEONE: Refugees International on regional mission

ABIDJAN, 17 June (IRIN) - Refugees International (RI) is sending a mission to the United Nations mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) to gain an understanding of why it "succeeded and analyze the implications of its success for other missions", RI reported on Monday.

"RI embarked on this mission because of its concern about the refugee outflow from Liberia and the lack of stability in the region. These countries are most affected by the refugee outflow. Liberia was not chosen because of the security situation and difficulties in access," an official of RI in Washington told IRIN.

The two-man team of Sayrce Nyce and Cliff Bernath, will travel later this month to meet UNAMSIL officials and visit some battalions in central and eastern Sierra Leone, the statement said. In early July, it will visit Guinea and Cote d'Ivoire.

The team hopes to identify the humanitarian needs of the Liberian refugees, and to monitor the return and reintegration process. It will also investigate the conditions for the recently arrived Liberian refugees in southeastern Sierra Leone and follow-up on its previous investigation into the return process for Sierra Leoneans, RI added.

In Guinea and Cote d'Ivoire the team will assess the conditions for Liberian refugees. According to UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Guinea is now hosting 100,000 while Cote d'Ivoire hosts some 130,000 refugees from Liberia.

The team will then travel to London to discuss UNAMSIL activites with British officials, the statement added, noting that the British military played a major role in stabilising the situation in Sierra Leone.

"The organisation views the whole refugee return process in Sierra Leone as a success and so it wants to understand what the reasons behind the success are," the RI official added.
[ENDS]

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africa: Africa looks to clamp down on corruption by political heads

2002-06-20

http://www.bday.co.za/bday/content/direct/1,3523,1107816-6098-0,00.html

African leaders plan to propose a convention to the international community under which money stolen by corrupt leaders is returned to the continent, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has said. "We are working to get an international convention by which money stolen by corrupt African leaders and stashed abroad is repatriated," Obasanjo told members of civil society organisations gathered in Addis Ababa for a conference under the aegis of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU).

angola: us says more must be done to end corruption

2002-06-20

http://www.namibian.com.na/2002/june/africa/0268BCD1A6.html

The United States will assist Angola's national reconciliation process, but the oil-rich African country must do more to reform its economy and fight corruption, a senior US official says. "As Angola faces the simultaneous transitions from war to peace and from a war-constrained polity to a more open political system, it will have to address pressing economic and social issues," Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Walter Kansteiner told a congressional panel.

EAST AFRICA: Rise in fraud blamed on poor economy

2002-06-20

http://www.transparency.org/cgi-bin/dcn-read.pl?citID=35758

Economic pressures and sophisticated criminals have been responsible for the increase in cases of fraud in East Africa, a new survey indicates.

KENYA: Government may confiscate ill-gotten properties

2002-06-20

http://allafrica.com/stories/200206190082.html

The Head of the Anti-Corruption Police Unit (ACPU), Swaleh Slim, says legislation is already in progress to ensure that those guilty of corruption not only get the sack but will also not enjoy their ill-gotten wealth after coming out of jail.

kenya: Graft Blamed for City Hall Money Woes

2002-06-20

http://allafrica.com/stories/200206180630.html

Corruption has been blamed for the Nairobi City Council's Sh20 billion debt. Mayor Dick Waweru said the worst hit departments were the water and rates sections, where the council was losing millions of shillings monthly due to non-payment of bills by the public, who collude with council staff.

malawi: New political party established aimed at fighting corruption

2002-06-20

http://www.transparency.org/cgi-bin/dcn-read.pl?citID=35729

A new opposition political party was launched Sunday in Malawi, and its founders - a group of businessmen, intellectuals, and civil rights activists - said it aimed to squash corruption in this southern African country. The new party, Malawi Forum for Unity and Development, was formed to combat what party spokesman Levsion Ganzia described as government corruption, food insecurity, and political intimidation.

nigeria: Secret debate adds to farce of Nigeria's war on graft

2002-06-20

http://www.transparency.org/cgi-bin/dcn-read.pl?citID=35812

Concerns about lack of financial transparency are resurfacing in Nigeria. The senate yesterday voted to debate in secret allegations that the government mismanaged finances, including almost $100m (ý68.4m) of stolen money recovered from the family of General Sani Abacha, the late dictator.

south africa: Corruption limits investment, says Heath

2002-06-20

http://www.transparency.org/cgi-bin/dcn-read.pl?citID=35718

South Africa will be unable to overcome the obstacles restricting foreign investment into the country if it does not acknowledge their existence, consultant and former special investigating unit head Willem Heath says. Speaking at the annual meeting of the Institute of Directors' Western Cape branch, Heath said there was a lack of political will to tackle issues such as corruption, which he estimated to involve about R10bn a year in SA.

TANZANIA: UNDP lends support to Isles anti-graft drive

2002-06-20

http://www.transparency.org/cgi-bin/dcn-read.pl?citID=35727

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has agreed to give Zanzibar 385,000 US dollars to finance a good governance programme in the Isles which will also involve provision of expert advice on the campaign against corruption.

ZAMBIA: Government sets up police complaints, anti-money laundering authority

2002-06-20

http://allafrica.com/stories/200206190289.html

Home affairs minister Lackson Mapushi has announced the formation of a police complaints authority and an anti-money laundering authority to check executive excess by police or drug enforcement commission officers.

100m more must survive on $1 a day

IMF and World Bank told to stop peddling discredited policies

2002-06-20

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4436498,00.html

More than 100m people in the world's poorest countries will be dragged below the basic subsistence level of a dollar a day by 2015 as they become ensnared in globalisation's poverty trap, the UN has warned. An in-depth study into the world's 49 least developed countries rejects claims that globalisation is good for the poor, arguing that the international trade and economic system is part of the problem, not the solution.

africa: Critique of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative

2002-06-20

http://www.africaaction.org/docs02/debt0206.htm

When the leaders of the world's richest countries meet for the annual G8 summit in Canada later this month, they will devote unprecedented attention to a discussion of Africa's development challenges. At the top of their agenda should be a commitment to addressing the overwhelming burden of the continent's foreign debt. Africa's debt remains the single largest obstacle to poverty reduction efforts and the fight against HIV/AIDS. Recent reports from the World Bank reveal that the current debt relief plan, the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative, has failed to resolve the debt crisis even by its own measure. While Africa Action notes the new legislative initiative in The U.S. Congress that seeks to further reduce the debt stock of HIPC countries ("Debt Relief Enhancement Act of 2002" - S.2210 and H.R. 4524), we believe that the time has come for an immediate moratorium on poor country debt payments to lay the foundation for full debt cancellation.

africa: The Primacy of Land Conflicts

2002-06-20

http://www.id21.org/urban/Insights41art11.html" http://www.id21.org/urban/Insights41art11.html

Peri-urban areas in Southern and East Africa are characterised by: rapid change and spiraling socio-economic polarisation; divergent claims, competing interests and identities; and conflicts, disputes and tensions concerning the access, control and use of land resources. Research by South Bank University and African partners in the Urban and Peri-Urban Research Network (Peri-NET), shows that land resource based conflicts are critically important in peri-urban transformations – whether in Kampala, Lusaka, Nairobi, Durban or Johannesburg.

G7 Finance Ministers Confirm Sticking Plaster for Debt. Now it's Up to G8 Leaders

2002-06-20

http://www.jubileedebtcampaign.org.uk/default.asp?action=article&id=199

As expected the meeting of the G7 Finance Ministers in Halifax last week confirmed that they will offer little more than a $1billion sticking plaster for the HIPC debt relief initiative. This is in response to recent official evidence that debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC) is not delivering a lasting exit from debt for those countries that qualify.

GLOBAL: Guinea-Bissau among leading regressing economies

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/8394

Economic growth in least developed countries has increased from levels seen 10 years ago, but 13 countries led by Guinea-Bissau and the Solomon Islands had "regressing economies".
U N I T E D N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)

GLOBAL: Guinea-Bissau among leading regressing economies

ABIDJAN, 19 June (IRIN) - Economic growth in least developed countries has increased from levels seen 10 years ago, but 13 countries led by Guinea-Bissau and the Solomon Islands had "regressing economies".

In its Least Developed Countries 2002 Report released on Wednesday, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, UNCTAD, said Guinea-Bissau recorded a real per capita GDP growth of -7.5 percent in 1997-2000.

The UN agency said because commodity prices continued their downward trend, the dependence of LDCs on commodities had hurt their economies, except for oil-exporting countries like Equatorial Guinea, which led in GDP growth, registering an average annual rate of 16.2 percent.

UNCTAD added that an "international poverty trap" afflicts many LDCs. But rapid sustained growth was possible in such countries through more effective use of poverty reduction strategy papers, it added.

The number of people living on less than $1 a day would reach at least 420 million by 2015 if current economic trends continue, UNCTAD said adding that extreme poverty in the least developed countries had doubled over the past 30 years.

"The idealistic impulse to improve the standard of living of the poor is the right one," UNCTAD Secretary General Rubens Ricupero said. "But unless actual policy solutions are well grounded in a deep understanding of the causes of poverty and how those causes have been, and can be effectively addressed, they could end up with worse results than in the past," he added.

The report said international policy "needs to give more attention to breaking the link between primary commodity dependence, pervasive extreme poverty and unsustainable external debt" and that "policies to counter the increasing polarization of the global economy are necessary in order to reduce the socioeconomic marginalization of the poorest countries."

Details about the report: "Escaping the Poverty Trap" can be obtained from:
http://www.unctad.org
[ENDS]

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South Africa: CORPORATE-FREE UN

Delegates Prep for Johannesburg Earth Summit

2002-06-20

http://www.corpwatch.org/campaigns/PCD.jsp?articleid=2734

"What are we going to do about the United States?" It's a blunt question for a UN diplomat, but it was on the minds, the lips, and in some cases the T-shirts, of many of the thousands of delegates who recently gathered in Bali for last preparatory meeting before the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) to be held in Johannesburg in late August. Kenny Bruno was at the Bali "Prepcom" and says despite the many roadblocks erected by Washington, many delegates are still optimistic that "another UN is possible."

SOUTH AFRICA: Presidency Dismisses Gaddafi NEPAD Report

2002-06-20

http://allafrica.com/stories/200206170086.html

The South African presidency has dismissed reports that Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi believed President Thabo Mbeki's New Partnership for Africa's Development was a project of former colonialists and racists. Rumours that South Africa is involved in talks about a possible arms deal with Libya have also been played down.

south africa: Will the bigwigs buy into Jo'burg summit?

2002-06-20

http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.jsp?a=11&o=4919

With only 69 days to go before the start of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, concern is mounting over whether heads of state from several key industrialised nations will attend the event.

Tanzania - sale of air traffic control system a "waste of cash"

2002-06-20

http://www.jubileedebtcampaign.org.uk/default.asp?action=article&id=198

According to reports from the BBC and The Guardian, the latest World Bank investigation into the sale of a British air traffic control system to Tanzania is a "complete waste of money". The report confirms the fears of campaigners that, coming so soon after Tanzania received partial debt write-offs, the sale would squander funds better spent on poverty reduction.

WTO Agreement on Agriculture: Suitable Model for a Global Food System?

2002-06-20

http://www.fpif.org/briefs/vol7/v7n08ag.html

The Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) is a product of the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) negotiations (1986-94). The AoA provides the rules governing international agricultural trade and, by extension, production. It bans the use of border measures other than tariffs, and it puts tariffs on a schedule of phased reduction. Under the AoA, domestic support programs are categorized as either acceptable or unacceptable, with the latter also scheduled for reduction, and export subsidies, while effectively legalized by the agreement, have also been disciplined and slated for reduction. The content of the AoA reflects the shared agenda of the U.S. negotiating team and the non-European Union (EU) grain exporting countries (known as the Cairns Group) to push for as much liberalization of agriculture as possible.

WTO chief targets multinationals

2002-06-20

http://www.observer.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,738106,00.html

The incoming leader of the world's most powerful trade body wants to introduce tough rules to clamp down on any lobbying by multinationals aimed at influencing the world trading system. The proposal from the World Trade Organisation's director-general designate, Dr Supachai Panitchpakdi, has shocked international governments and multinational firms, which have mounted a campaign against the plans.

AFRICA: Ensure access to health supplies, governments urged

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/hivaids/8310

Governments in developing countries should ensure access to reproductive health supplies and strengthen policies to facilitate access to such supplies, a statement from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) said on Thursday.
U N I T E D N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)

AFRICA: Ensure access to health supplies, governments urged

ABIDJAN, 18 June (IRIN) - Governments in developing countries should ensure access to reproductive health supplies and strengthen policies to facilitate access to such supplies, a statement from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) said on Thursday.

The recommendations were made by an expert meeting held in Cote d'Ivoire's capital, Abidjan, from 10- 13 June.

Noting that reliable access to contraceptives and other commodities was a fundamental requirement for reproductive health, the experts pointed out that millions of women and men in developing countries went without these essentials.

The situation left them vulnerable to unwanted pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections including HIV/AIDS, and the risk of childbirth without basic medical supplies, the experts said.

The experts said that the need for reproductive health products was rising but donor support was declining. During the 1990s, governments and individuals provided 60 percent of contraceptive costs worldwide, while donors covered 40 percent. "Donor support has since declined to around 27 percent of the total," they noted.

"In this situation it is urgent to take measures to help developing countries' reproductive health programmes become self-sustaining and to help them ensure that the reproductive health supply and distribution chain work efficiently," they said.

The regional workshop on Reproductive Health Commodity Security (RHCS) was organised by UNFPA as part of its support for countries' efforts to increase access to these products, UNFPA said.

The workshop's objective was to translate UNFPA's global RHCS strategy into national action plans. It brought together staff from 25 UNFPA country offices in francophone Africa, their international counterparts, global reproductive health experts, donor and NGO representatives and the fund's regional technical support team in Dakar, Senegal.


[ENDS]

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africa: preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV in developing countries

2002-06-20

http://www.id21.org/health/h5mln1g1.html

Nearly half of the estimated 32 million adults living with HIV worldwide are women of childbearing age. Mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) during pregnancy, delivery and breastfeeding is the primary source of HIV infection among young children. 1600 new infections occur each day, mostly in developing countries. What is the best way to reduce MTCT in regions such as sub-Saharan Africa, where breastfeeding is central to infant health?

africa: un envoy urges action over aids

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/hivaids/8398

Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for HIV/AIDS in Africa, Stephen Lewis, has delivered a powerful speech in Nairobi to a gathering of African religious leaders from 30 countries, calling for them to fully engage and galvanize the battle against AIDS. He further called for them to take the initiative to fight the racism that lies beyond the developed world's failure to respond with urgency to the crisis.
Address by Stephen Lewis,
Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for HIV/AIDS in Africa
to the African Religious Leaders Assembly on Children and HIV/AIDS
Nairobi, Kenya

10 June 2002

Your Eminences:

I feel entirely privileged to address this meeting; it's actually
the first time that I've ever addressed a large gathering of
religious leaders, and I am appropriately chastened by so
auspicious an occasion. What's more, I want to speak with direct
and sometimes uncomfortable frankness, so I appeal to all of you,
at the outset, to let the milk of human kindness flow through your
veins and to treat me with compassion.

Your eminences, the direct impact of the pandemic on children, in
all its aspects, will be set out for you later this morning by
Carol Bellamy, the Executive Director of UNICEF. She is obviously
the right person to do so. For my own part, suffice to say that
there are now estimated to be 13 million children orphaned by AIDS
in Sub-Saharan Africa, with the number almost certain to double by
the end of the decade. In human terms, in the history and
literature of vulnerable children, there's never been anything like
it. In fact, of course, there's never been anything like the
HIV/AIDS pandemic. Comparisons with the Black Death of the 14th
century are wishful thinking. When AIDS has run its course --- if
it ever runs its course --- it will be seen as an annihilating
scourge that dwarfs everything that has gone before.

What it leaves in its wake, in country after country, in every one
of the countries you represent, are thousands or tens of thousands
or hundreds of thousands or, eventually, even millions of children
whose lives are a torment of loneliness, despair, rage,
bewilderment and loss. That doesn't mean orphan children can't be
happy; it simply means that at the heart of their individual beings
there is a life-long void.

The numbers are overwhelming, the circumstances are overwhelming,
the needs are overwhelming.

Nor do I intend to quote, in a pretend-learned fashion from
religious texts. It would be presumptuous and foolhardy on my part.
That is your collective world, not mine.

Rather, I would wish to suggest to all of you, as religious leaders
drawn from across the continent, that it is time, it is well past
time that you summoned your awesome reserves of strength and
followers and commitment to lead this continent out of its
merciless vortex of misery. There is no excuse for passivity or
distance. No excuse for immobility or denial. No excuse for
incremental steps when you, collectively, have the capacity to
rally both Africa and the world if you choose to do so.

The timing could not be better. Let me tell you why, and bare my
most protected inner thoughts in the telling.

I think we may have reached a curious and deeply distressing lull
in the battle against AIDS. Over the last two years, much has
happened. The political leadership of Africa has come alive to
HIV/AIDS, conferences have been held in profusion, from Durban to
Addis to Abuja to New York to Ougouadougou. PLWAs have raised
powerful and insistent voices, the Global Fund has been
established, goals and targets have been set, drug prices have been
driven down dramatically by generic manufacturers, there are more
data and analysis and reports and commentary and studies and sheer
newspaper copy available than any library on earth could
accommodate, and significant numbers of modest interventions are
being pursued.

So it isn't that things have ground to a halt; it's just a
cumulative feeling of inertia rather than energy, of marking time,
of oh so slowly gathering forces together for the next push, of
incrementalism raised to the level of obsession. The Global Fund
has received no new sizeable contributions for many months. The G8
Summit later this month in my country, Canada, has made it clear in
advance that significant additional money will not be forthcoming.
The NEPAD document --- the new partnership for Africa --- which is
the heart of the G8 discussions, and the centrepiece for the future
of Africa, deals hardly at all with HIV/AIDS. A series of reports
to be released in the near future, just prior to and during the
international AIDS conference in Barcelona next month, will
acknowledge progress made, but at the same time recite
blood-chilling statistics on the situation of youth and children --
statistics which make you wonder whether the world has fallen into
a stupor of indifference.

It's not only that we can't rest on our laurels; it's the fact that
the laurels are fig-leafs. Let me be brutally honest: in the dead
of night, I sometimes think to myself that we're losing the war
against AIDS -- although I do recognize the feeling for what it is:
an unwarranted moment of despair. What we need is another massive
shot of adrenalin to take the battle to the next level, and you,
your eminences, the representative religious leadership of Africa
-- you are the shot of adrenalin, the energizing force, the
catharsis of faith, hope and determination which can propel us
forward.

That's the reason for this conference. As always, children and
women carry the burden of abandonment, vulnerability, stigma,
shame, poverty and desperation. They constitute, for you, the cause
you must lead. You constitute, for them, the meaning of salvation
in terms both spiritual and practical.

Who else, beyond yourselves, is so well-placed to lead? Who else
has such a network of voices at the grass-roots level? Who else has
access to all communities once a week, every week, across the
continent? Who else officiates at the millions of funerals of those
who die of AIDS-related illnesses, and better understands the
consequences for children and families? Who else works on a daily
basis with faith-based, community-based organizations? In the midst
of this wanton, ravaging pandemic, it is truly like an act of
Divine intervention that you should be physically present
everywhere, all the time. I ask again: who else, therefore, is so
well-placed to lead?

So where is that leadership? Dare I say that the voice of religion
has been curiously muted? There are notable exceptions as there
always are. Some of the finest work combating AIDS on the continent
is done through religious communities. But you will admit that,
overall, the involvement of religion has been qualified at best. I
haven't the slightest interest in recrimination or finger-pointing.
My interest, our interest, should only be, where do we go from
here?

I want to suggest, in the strongest possible terms, that you should
resolve, at this conference, in the name of all the children,
infected or affected, to seize the leadership, re-energize the
struggle, and turn the pandemic around. I want to suggest, in the
strongest possible terms, that you leave Nairobi this week, with a
solemn pledge to yourselves, that you will never again tolerate,
even for a moment, lassitude or passivity in the face of so
monumental a catastrophe. I want to suggest that the draft
declaration of the conference, when definitive, be embraced as
though it were legally binding.

All of us, who are your friends, understand the difficulties. We
know that certain of the faiths have problems around sexual
activity and the use of condoms. We know that there are internal
struggles around the leadership roles of women -- not to be taken
lightly when gender is such a visceral part of the pandemic. We
know that the religious leadership at all levels of society needs
training, in order to do an effective job in educating your
adherents. We know that even amongst religious leaders, there are
numbers who are HIV-positive, and have themselves felt the lash and
pain of stigma from colleagues. Religious leaders are human; they
face the same challenges and foibles as other mortals.

But religious leaders invoke a higher level of morality; that's why
every contentious issue must be treated afresh. The sacred texts,
from which all religion flows, demand a higher level of morality.
And if ever there was an issue which bristles with moral questions
and moral imperatives it's HIV/AIDS. The pandemic, in the way in
which it assaults human life, is qualitatively different from all
that has gone before. There is no greater moral calling on this
continent today than to vanquish the pandemic.

No one expects you to do it, one faith at a time. Somehow, you must
come together, in a great religious partnership, so that everyone
is involved, at every level. You should formalize the arrangement;
you should create an actual structure. Your draft plan of action
mandates the World Conference on Religion and Peace to make it
happen. Let it be done.

Nor can you do it by faith alone. You have to extend the
partnership to representatives of civil society, to associations of
PLWAs, to the UN family, to women's groups everywhere, to the
private sector and to government itself. The pandemic demands that
you move beyond the protective insularity of religion. It is often
argued that there must be a separation of church and state, that is
to say, the religious and the secular. But AIDS puts the argument
to the rout. If the church or the mosque or the temple don't work
in concert with the state, then death is the victor.

Let me take it further. There should be a series of targeted
interventions. Religious communities provide vital care to the ill
and the dying at village level. Somehow, the individual projects
must be taken to scale across the countries themselves. Religious
leaders can confront stigma from every religious podium in every
community, changing the values of the community through repetition
and education, week in and week out. Religious leaders should lead
a campaign to abolish school fees throughout the continent, because
whether it's fees, or the costs of registration, books, or
uniforms, vulnerable and orphaned children, invariably penniless,
are denied the right to go to school. You want a moral issue: why
should a just society, a society which has ratified the Convention
on the Rights of the Child, allow such a state of affairs? One
visit to the slums of Kabera, here in Nairobi, will reaffirm the
sorry consequences for children. It is entirely consistent
therefore, that religious leaders should throw themselves behind
the Hope for African Children Initiative because there is no
dilemma more urgent, more demanding, or more intractable than the
dilemma of orphans.

Let me take the argument further still. Religious leaders must do
something about the mothers who are infected and are dying
prematurely, leaving behind those orphans who the wander the
landscape of Africa, soon to be an entire generation seething with
resentment and fear. May I strike a personal note? The thing I
find by far most emotionally difficult as I travel through Africa,
is meeting with young women, stricken by AIDS, who know they're
dying or soon to die, with two or three young children, and they
ask me, frantically, 'what's going to happen to my children when
I've passed -- who will look after them?' And then, in an
understandably accusatory tone, they say to me 'What about us'?
And then they add, without using these exact words, but the meaning
is clear: 'You Mr. White Man, you have the drugs to keep us alive,
but we can't get them. Why? Why must we die'? And I want to tell
you: I don't know how to answer that. I have never in my adult life
witnessed such a blunt assault on basic human morality. In my soul,
I honestly believe that an unthinking strain of subterranean racism
is the only way to explain the moral default of the developed
world, in refusing to provide the resources which could save the
mothers of Africa.

But right now, as I stand before you, I want to know: what will the
religious leaders do about it? Surely, in the face of such a
violation of fundamental moral tenets, you have an obligation to
intervene.

And that takes me to my final proposition. In the last analysis,
religious leaders are the best chance to influence the political
leadership of the North as well as of the South. You have contacts
everywhere. You have brother and sister churches and mosques and
temples on all the continents. They support you, they often fund
you, they show solidarity with you. Your religious sway is not just
Africa, it's the world. And what politician would refuse to meet
with you? Who turns down a request for a meeting from a religious
leader? You have an entry to the citadels of secular power that
none of the rest of us enjoy.

What does it mean? It means that you should have a say in the
Global Fund -- you should storm the rhetorical ramparts and demand
that the major OECD countries contribute the money which they have
promised --- the famous .7% of GNP --- but never delivered. You
should have some sort of collective standing or voice at the G8
meeting. You should have a separate session at the Barcelona AIDS
conference in July. You should have a presence in international
decisions, wherever those decisions are made. You want a
precedent?: the Vatican has observor status at the United Nations,
and often speaks, including at the UNICEF Executive Board; no
government on that Board, at least while I was there, ever took
exception to the Vatican's right to participate.

Religious communities historically have followed one of two tracks.
There was the religious leadership which successfully fought for
the eradication of slavery in the Congo; the eclectic leadership
which supported the conscientious objectors in the Vietnam War and
helped, thereby, to bring that foul war to an end; the Islamic and
Hindu leadership which supported UNICEF's immunization campaigns in
Asia and the Middle-East, overcoming the fears of the citizens, and
doubtless saving millions of children's lives; the Judeo-Christian
leadership that resisted the infant formula companies and supported
the right to breast-feeding.

And then there was the other, woeful track; the religious
leadership that supported apartheid; the religious leadership that
was complicit in the genocide in Rwanda; the religious leadership
that was silent during the holocaust.

No one wants a choice between the two. It's simply that when the
history of the AIDS pandemic is written, you want it said that
every religious leader stood up to be counted; that when the tide
was turned, the religious leaders did the turning; that when the
children of Africa were at horrendous risk, the religious leaders
led the rescue mission. It's what all of us beg you to do; I submit
to you that it's what your God, of whatever name, would want you to
do.

angola: CONFLICT EXACERBATES AIDS CRISIS

2002-06-20

http://www.newafrica.com/news/articlepg1.asp?ID=48412

Emerging from three decades of civil war, Angola is up against an HIV/AIDS crisis largely exacerbated by the conflict, health experts and aids agencies point out. "The pandemic is spreading fast, and in some cases threatens whole communities in all regions of Angola," says Haturo Silva, emergency and humanitarian director of the World Health Organisation (WHO).

KENYA: Nationwide anti-measles campaign launched

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/hivaids/8300

A group of five leading global public health organisations have launched a nationwide anti-measles campaign in Kenya, to be conducted from 17 to 23 June, through vaccinations targeting some 14 million children between the ages of nine months and 14 years, who constitute up to 40 percent of the country's population.
U N I T E D N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)

KENYA: Nationwide anti-measles campaign launched

NAIROBI, 13 June (IRIN) - A group of five leading global public health organisations have launched a nationwide anti-measles campaign in Kenya, to be conducted from 17 to 23 June, through vaccinations targeting some 14 million children between the ages of nine months and 14 years, who constitute up to 40 percent of the country's population.

In a joint statement released on Thursday, the five organisations comprising the partners in the campaign, called the Measles Initiative - namely the United Nations Children's Fund, World Health Organisation, American Red Cross (ARC), the United Nations Foundation and Centres for Disease Control and Prevention - said it was aimed at preventing 18,000 child deaths occurring in Kenya annually.

Vaccination is the most cost-effective intervention against measles - the leading vaccine-preventable childhood killer in the world.

"This effort could be considered one of the most significant public health campaigns in the history of Kenya in terms of the scope and impact on children's health," Mark Grabowsky, a senior health adviser with the international service of the ARC, noted in the statement. "Our goal is to provide measles vaccines to 100 percent of the country's at-risk children to make sure that each child is protected from this deadly and easily preventable disease."

Measles, a highly contagious disease, each year kills at least a million children - of whom 450,000 are in Africa - either directly or by weakening their immune systems, thereby rendering the patient susceptible to a host of other infections, according to the joint statement.

Visible signs of the disease, which "affects virtually all African communities", include fever, rash, running nose, cough, red eyes, red lips, peeling of the skin and breathing difficulties. However, the disease was "completely" preventable through the administration of a vaccine, costing less than a dollar per child, it added.

The Measles Initiative partners launched the programme in February 2001, as a long-term commitment aimed at vaccinating some 200 million children in Africa, where most measles-related deaths occur, over a five-year period.

Kenya is on one of nine countries to benefit from the Measles Initiative this year, which aims at vaccinating some 44 million children. In 2001, when the initiative was launched, about 20 million children in eight African countries, comprising Uganda, Tanzania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo, Cameroon, Ghana and Benin, were vaccinated. This year's campaigns, target Kenya, Ghana, Benin, Cameroon, Tanzania, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Swaziland, according to the joint statement.

Preparations for the nationwide measles campaigns, the cost of which officials have placed at US $15 million, began much earlier in the year.

Josephine Lesiamon, who heads the measles programme at the Kenya Expanded Programme for Immunisation - the body charged with coordinating immunisation programmes within the Ministry of Health - told IRIN in February that the ministry was making preparations for the campaign with a number of organisations. "We are working with various organisations which are undertaking activities pertaining to their capabilities. We also have a group involved with social mobilisation," she said. See IRIN report on: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=20667&SelectRegion=East_Africa

Abbas Gullet, head of the Kenya Red Cross Society, which has a national network of volunteers, told IRIN that his organisation would contribute towards the measles awareness effort. "The Red Cross has been enlisted, because it is a civil society with a network of branches everywhere," he said. "Our volunteers will be doing the door to door campaigns, but our role is to complement and supplement the efforts of the government."

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has also contributed towards the preparation work for the campaign, by organising workshops in which focal individuals who are to supervise and monitor the volunteers received training, according to Federation's programme released on Wednesday.

[ENDS]

[This Item is Delivered to the "Africa-English" Service of the UN's IRIN
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of the United Nations. For further information, free subscriptions, or
to change your keywords, contact e-mail: Irin@ocha.unon.org or Web:
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Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2002

nigeria: Female circumcision and obstetric complications

2002-06-20

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12065141&dopt=Abstract

Of 1,851 women interviewed in three Nigerian hospitals, 45% were circumcised. Circumcised women had significantly higher risks of tearing and stillbirths when all pregnancies were analyzed.

south africa: Bold Men Opening HIV/Aids Township Debate

2002-06-20

http://allafrica.com/stories/200206140208.html

The news that young people in the Western Cape are not practising safe sex, sending infection rates spiralling in their age group, is a challenge a group of young men in Gugulethu are preparing to face head-on. The group believes their best hope of contributing to an end to the HIV pandemic is for men to stand together as examples of how "real men" behave in a healthy community.

south africa: HIV-Aids Link Is Inherent In South Africa's Policies, Says Health Director

2002-06-20

http://allafrica.com/stories/200206180592.html

The South African government has relented, and some say completely reversed itself, with an unexpected April announcement that it would make anti-retroviral drugs available for rape survivors. The government's U-turn on drugs has been widely applauded inside and outside of South Africa. But the Director-General of Health, Dr. Ayanda Ntsaluba, says the government isn't so much changing course as moving to where the evidence takes it.

South Africa: Mpumalanga Finally Agrees to Anti-Retrovirals

2002-06-20

http://allafrica.com/stories/200206100259.html

Anti-rape volunteers in Mpumalanga gave health MEC Sibongile Manana a pat on the back this week for the first time in two tense years. The MEC announced on Thursday that the department was finally preparing to dispense antiretroviral drugs to all of the province's 27 hospitals, and that care rooms would be set aside for emergency help for rape survivors.

south africa: politics hinder aids treatment

2002-06-20

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/162/science/In_South_Africa_politics_hinder_AIDS_treatment+.shtml

In most of the mud-brick houses perched above the starkly beautiful gorges of the Tugela River, someone is dying. In one house, a truck driver stretches his bony legs on a mattress; he has come home from Johannesburg to die. Just down the dirt road, a thin young man lives with his mother and sister in a single room. They own nothing, not even a chicken. The young man has not yet told his sister that he has AIDS. This is the province of KwaZulu-Natal, epicenter of South Africa's epidemic, where HIV positive rates are estimated at more than 30 percent.

uganda: UNICEF, Uganda Expand Mother-To-Child Prevention

2002-06-20

http://www.unfoundation.org/unwire/2002/06/14/27041

UNICEF and Uganda are expanding a project under which pregnant women with HIV receive drugs preventing mother-to-child transmission of the virus, New Vision reports. The project is to become part of routine prenatal care across Uganda, with all women attending prenatal clinics receiving counseling, testing and, if they are found to have HIV, free drug doses.

zimbabwe: Excess Capacity and the Cost of Adding Services At Family Planning Clinics in Zimbabwe

Research Paper

2002-06-20

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/2805802.html

Reduction of provider downtime (time absent from the clinic, time spent unoccupied, or time not otherwise used productively) at family planning clinics in the developing world could increase capacity to provide services with a minimal rise in costs. Poorly paid providers, however, may require financial incentives to increase their workload.

AFRICA: OAU head says more must be done for children

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/education/8313

The head of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) has said that the continent is still "failing" its children. African governments had "not lived up to our undertakings" after setting up a continent-wide charter to protect children, OAU Secretary-General Amara Essy said on Sunday.
U N I T E D N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)

AFRICA: OAU head says more must be done for children

ADDIS ABABA, 17 June (IRIN) - The head of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) has said that the continent is still "failing" its children. African governments had "not lived up to our undertakings" after setting up a continent-wide charter to protect children, OAU Secretary-General Amara Essy said on Sunday.

Essy said that despite a decade having elapsed since the adoption of the charter, "our overall performance to achieve our promises to children has not been satisfactory".

"The situation of most African children remains critical and their rights continue to be violated," he said in a speech to mark Day of the African Child. "They still remain the most vulnerable and disadvantaged group in relation to the many socioeconomic problems ravaging our continent. A great deal more needs to be done for our children if we want to fulfil our promise to them."

Essy, who took up his post as head of the OAU last September, stressed that more needed to be done to inform children of their rights.

He said more countries should sign up to the charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, and African governments should adopt a new approach to the issue. "We must talk with the African child, give him the floor, in such a way that the experience of the adults and the expectations of the child combine to produce the fruitful future of action and the attainment of his rights for a better world," he said.

"As we commemorate the Day of the African Child, we should remind ourselves that the African child deserves a lot more - a better tomorrow and a brighter future in the next decade and beyond," Essy added.

The charter was adopted by the OAU in 1990 in addition to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It finally came into being in 1999. The OAU said the African charter should take into account the socioeconomic, political and cultural differences of Africa. But so far, only 26 countries of the 54 OAU member states have ratified it.

[ENDS]

[This Item is Delivered to the "Africa-English" Service of the UN's IRIN
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of the United Nations. For further information, free subscriptions, or
to change your keywords, contact e-mail: Irin@ocha.unon.org or Web:
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ANGOLA: More funds needed to help children

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/education/8390

The United Nations Children's Fund has launched an appeal for additional funding to help Angola's children, as the true scale of the country's humanitarian tragedy unfolds.
U N I T E D N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)

ANGOLA: More funds needed to help children

JOHANNESBURG, 19 June (IRIN) - The United Nations Children's Fund has launched an appeal for additional funding to help Angola's children, as the true scale of the country's humanitarian tragedy unfolds.

Since the war torn country was "opened up" by a ceasefire in April, early assessments show that at least three million people need help as they struggle to rebuild their lives after decades of upheaval.

Organisations like UNICEF are recording shocking findings: Angola has one of the highest under-5 child mortality rates in the world; 45 percent of the country's children suffer from stunting and at least 750,000 children have lost one or both parents.

At least 70,000 children need urgent supplementary and therapeutic feeding for their very survival, a UNICEF report said. Recent rapid assessments in previously inaccessible areas, notably in Huambo, Bie, Malanje and Huila provinces, reported an average global acute malnutrition rate of 30 percent and an average severe malnutrition rate of 10 percent.

"Recent developments have provided us with access to large populations who have been cut off from humanitarian assistance for years and who are in urgent need of assistance in terms of nutrition and immunisation interventions," UNICEF Angola representative Mario Ferrari said in a statement.

To continue and to expand upon current interventions throughout the country, including the newly accessible and quartering and family areas (QFAs), the organisation needs more funds, he said.

Last week it was reported that the number of troops in the quartering areas had reached over 79,000 and the number of family members with them had reached 230,000 - far more than expected. United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, sent his Special Advisor on Africa, Ibrahim Gambari, to assess what more the UN could do to assist.

UNICEF needs extra funds to provide for more therapeutic milk for severely malnourished children and the establishment of a network of supplementary feeding centres throughout Angola to help moderately malnourished children, pregnant women and lactating mothers. It also wants to expand its immunisation programmes.

It is already supporting the treatment of moderate and severe cases of malnutrition in children and mothers through milk, high-protein biscuits, essential drugs, and equipment for supplementary feeding centres in the country.

A supplementary feeding centre is where malnourished children and their mothers are given food rations to take home but if they are too severely malnourished they are admitted to nutritional rehabilitation units for round the clock care until they have regained their strength.

Support has recently been provided to the Ministry of Health's nutrition rehabilitation unit at the Huambo Provincial Hospital, and to therapeutic and supplementary feeding centres in eight provinces. These centres include four run by the Ministry and other centers run by various NGOs including: Concern, Catholic Relief Services and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

From April to June, UNICEF also provided the World Food Programme (WFP) with 60 mt of high protein biscuits, making up a balanced supplementary feeding ration which benefited over 30,000 malnourished children around the country.

The organisation has also embarked on the provision and administration of measles and polio vaccines, Vitamin A, syringes and equipment for vaccination campaigns.

Measles is one of the leading killers of malnourished Angolan children. While the measles fatality rate in developed countries is 1 in 1,000 cases, in Angola, the measles fatality rate is almost 100 in 1,000 cases.

UNICEF is also gearing up to launch a nation-wide measles campaign targeting 6.8 million Angolan children in the coming months.

From 21 to 23 June, 3.9 million Angolan children are being targeted through a polio immunisation campaign, including children in newly accessible areas and QFAs.

Since the signing of the ceasefire, over 200,000 children have been vaccinated against measles and over two million children have already been vaccinated against polio.

Essential drugs kits to treat the top three leading causes of child mortality in Angola - malaria, diarrhoeal disease and acute respiratory infections - are also being distributed to 10 provinces with UNICEF support and to all QFAs. This will benefit 250,000 Angolans at the QFAs over the next few months.

An additional 105 essential drugs kits are being distributed to QFAs through the Angolan Armed Forces, and health personnel at all QFAs are also being re-trained in vaccination techniques and the correct use of essential drugs, the statement added.

For more details go to: http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/

[ENDS]

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BURUNDI: Vaccination of 3.9 million against measles, polio begins

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/education/8315

A campaign to vaccinate some 3.9 million Burundian children against measles and polio has been launched, with UN agencies appealing to parties at war in the country to observe "days of tranquillity" to ensure health workers can conduct their work in safety, UNICEF announced.
U N I T E D N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)

BURUNDI: Vaccination of 3.9 million against measles, polio begins

NAIROBI, 17 June (IRIN) - A campaign to vaccinate some 3.9 million Burundian children against measles and polio was launched on Monday, with UN agencies appealing to parties at war in the country to observe "days of tranquillity" to ensure health workers can conduct their work in safety, UNICEF announced.

It said the UN Humanitarian Coordinator and the heads of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and World Health Organisation country offices had also called on the warring parties to ensure safe movement of health workers during the second immunisation campaign, to be conducted from 23 to 26 July.

For the 11-day effort beginning on Monday, some 3.3 million children between the ages of nine months and 14 years will be vaccinated against measles, and 627,720 between 0-59 months against polio. Another 1.2 million children will be given vitamin A supplements. A second dose of polio vaccine will be administered to the 627,720 children in July. UNICEF said eight provinces targeted in this year's vaccination campaign included those prone to insecurity and those bordering the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

UNICEF said 400,000 African children were dying from measles each year. In Burundi, it added, the decline in routine measles immunisation coverage to below 50 percent in 1999 had led to a serious epidemic the following year, "with over 20,000 children contracting the disease with a high rate of death".

The current immunisation drive targeted three times the number of children as in 2001, UNICEF said. Health workers would make door-to-door visits, and at least 4,000-community workers would reach the most remote and insecurity areas to ensure high coverage rates, it added. A very broad range of national and international NGOs, teachers and religious and community leaders would also be involved in mobilising the public and organising vaccination centres.
[ENDS]

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EAST AFRICA: Little to celebrate as ILO focuses on child labour

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/education/8311

The East African region joined the rest of the world in marking World Day Against Child Labour for the first time last Wednesday, but the region remains far from meeting targets aimed at reducing child labour and exploitation, and at ensuring that all its children have access to education.
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EAST AFRICA: Little to celebrate as ILO focuses on child labour

NAIROBI, 14 June (IRIN) - The East African region joined the rest of the world in marking World Day Against Child Labour for the first time on Wednesday, 12 June, but the region remains far from meeting targets aimed at reducing child labour and exploitation, and at ensuring that all its children have access to education.

"This first World Day Against Child Labour is intended to help spread the message that child labour remains a serious problem, and that we must do more to combat it," said ILO Director-General Juan Somavia in a statement released on Wednesday.

The launching of the global day follows the recent release of an ILO report entitled, A Future Without Child Labour. According to this, about 246 million children globally (one in every six children aged between five and 17 years) are engaged in various forms of child labour, while some 179 million (one in every eight children) remain exposed to the most damaging forms of it.

In East Africa, poverty is considered the biggest factor driving many children to work. The 2001 Situation Analysis of Children in Tanzania recently released by the United Nations Children's Fund painted a depressing picture, noting that while the country had maintained relative stability and improved its economic performance, this had not translated into real improvements in the lives of children. [see
<http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27708>]

"Tanzania has not met 2000 targets, and is far from being on track to meet 2015 international development targets," the report stated. "Instead, virtually every critical measure of child wellbeing stagnated or declined through the 1990s."

And a recent report based on a rapid assessment by the ILO in June last year found that child labour was "common" in Zanzibar, an island chain constituting a semi-autonomous region of Tanzania, with prostitution, fisheries and seaweed farming among the "most hazardous" sectors involving children.

The assessment had also found evidence of child labour on clove plantations in the islands, and in the hotel and tourism industry, although the levels of child labour in these sectors were classified as "moderate".

In Kenya, a new government study on child labour reflects the tough economic realities which, combined with the negative effects of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, are causing an unprecedented rise in poverty levels among Kenyan households, according to a leading child rights activist.

The 92-page document, which outlined the results of an extensive survey carried out by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) of the Ministry of Finance and Planning on the state of child labour, placed the number of children working in Kenya at any one time at 1.3 million.

Of Kenya's estimated 10.9 million children aged between five and 17 in 1999 (based on 1989 population census projections), 3.5 million were out of school and/or working, according to the CBS report.

Some of the 7.9 million in school were also found to be working. Children were being used as a source of cheap labour in all the sectors in which they were found. They are being made to carry heavy loads, especially in sisal estates, sand and salt harvesting, stone cutting and on horticultural farms, according to the report.

Inspectors from the Ministry of Labour found that, although Kenya had no reported cases of child slavery or recruitment for armed conflict, many were engaged in both the "worst forms of employment" and "hazardous" work, characterised by harsh environments and lack of protective clothing in both the manufacturing and agricultural sectors.

Phillista Onyango, who heads the Kenya-based African Network for the Protection and Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, told IRIN that the report confirmed preliminary findings by various establishments on the "alarming" extent to which children in Kenya were forced to work.

"The key findings of the report show a large number of kids are out of school," Onyango told IRIN. "This can be explained by the poverty levels in the country. There are too many AIDS orphans."

The level of family income was found to have a strong bearing on child labour, with 56.7 percent of working children belonging to households with monthly incomes of less than US $80, while 21.3 percent came from very poor households with incomes of less than $30, it said.

In Uganda, child labour is also common but has been worsened by insurgent activities, mainly in western and the northern parts of the country, where, respectively, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) and Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebel groups have been abducting people, including children, and forcing them into slavery as labourers, soldiers and, in the case of the LRA, for forcible sex

According to a 1999 Country Report on Human Rights Practices released by the United States Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour in February 2000, inability to afford schooling has also correlated highly with the occurrence of child labour in rural areas, despite the government's efforts to bring primary education to all children.

"Most working children are employed in the informal sector, often on the subsistence farms of extended family members or as domestic servants. In urban areas, children peddle small items on the streets, are involved in the commercial sex industry (particularly in border towns and in Kampala), or beg for money," the report noted.

According to the ILO, the new global day (to be observed each year) aims at "intensifying support" for the global campaign against child labour, as well as to serve as a catalyst for enhancing the growing worldwide movement against child labour.

"We are asking everyone to join together in working towards a world where no children will be deprived of a normal, healthy childhood, where parents can find decent jobs and children can go to school," Somavia said. "Our goal is a world free from child labour."

[ENDS]

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ethiopia: ABOUT 250,000 ETHIOPIAN CHILDREN LIVING WITH HIV/AIDS

2002-06-20

http://www.newafrica.com/news/articlepg1.asp?ID=48317&countryid=2

An Ethiopian health official has disclosed that about 250,000 Ethiopian children are living with the HIV/AIDS due to mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of the virus.

ETHIOPIA: Call for better access to clean water

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/education/8316

Almost half of Africans have no access to clean running water, an international conference in Addis Ababa heard last week. Some 300 million people on the continent also have no access to sanitation facilities, a conference held by the Water and Sanitation Programme (WSP) was told. It means that millions of people are at risk from serious diseases and infections such as cholera and dysentery.
U N I T E D N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)

ETHIOPIA: Call for better access to clean water

ADDIS ABABA, 18 June (IRIN) - Almost half of Africans have no access to clean running water, an international conference in Addis Ababa heard last week.

Some 300 million people on the continent also have no access to sanitation facilities, a conference held by the Water and Sanitation Programme (WSP) was told. It means that millions of people are at risk from serious diseases and infections such as cholera and dysentery.

The WSP is an international partnership, administered by the World Bank, which aims to improve water and sanitation facilities around the world.

Experts at the conference argued that a massive increase in investment - some 70 percent - was needed to improve water and sanitation supplies. Concern is also mounting that unless urgent action is taken now, by 2020 some 400 million Africans will lack safe drinking water and about 600 million will be without hygienic sanitation.

Jamal Saghir, the director of energy and water at the World Bank, told the conference that the key to addressing the problems was through a public and private partnership. "Water and sanitation directly contribute to poverty reduction and growth," he said. "But increasingly, clients and partners are viewing water and sanitation through the prisms of improved health, and a better quality of life."

Saghir also warned that action had to be taken to meet the UN's Millennium Development Goals by 2015. One of the goals states that by 2015 the number of people without access to safe water should be halved.

Ethiopia's Minister of Water, Shiferaw Jarso, told the conference his government had been unable to tap the country's massive water reserves due to financial constraints. In Ethiopia, just 13 percent of the population has access to clean water facilities.


[ENDS]

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KENYA: Big push for nationwide measles campaign

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/education/8367

Kenya launched a countrywide measles vaccination campaign on Monday in what is considered the first major step towards eradicating the highly contagious childhood disease, which kills an estimated 18,000 children a year in the country.
U N I T E D N A T I O N S
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KENYA: Big push for nationwide measles campaign

NAIROBI, 19 June (IRIN) - Kenya launched a countrywide measles vaccination campaign on Monday in what is considered the first major step towards eradicating the highly contagious childhood disease, which kills an estimated 18,000 children a year in the country.

The week-long campaign, supported by five international donors, is intended to reach some 14 million Kenyan children between the ages of nine months and 14 years. As the campaign entered its third day on Wednesday, organisers reported that they had begun to record success in mobilising the public to participate in the immunisation exercise.

Abbas Gullet, Secretary-General of the Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS), told a news conference in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, that indications were of a fairly good turnout in both rural and urban areas.

"We had to do social mobilisation," he said. "It has not been easy in some places. We trained volunteers beforehand on how to conduct a door-to-door campaign in the districts - and the feedback is good."

The vaccination campaign is being administered by the Ministry of Health, through its Kenya Expanded Programme for Immunisation (KEPI), in conjunction with KRCS, which has fielded 10,000 volunteers across the country to get people to bring their children for vaccination.

At least 6,000 Red Cross volunteers have been sent, in addition to health workers, to six especially difficult districts known to have had low previous immunisation coverage for varied reasons.

These include Machakos, with a vast rural area southeast of Nairobi, and the remote Tana River area, in eastern Kenya; Rachuonyo in the west, where a high number of cases of neonatal tetanus infections is also being targeted; Nyeri in central Kenya, which has pockets of resistance; the largely nomadic northeastern district of Garissa; and the Kibera slum area of Nairobi, according to KRCS.

Current measles immunisation coverage in Kenya stands at between 60 and 70 percent, but coverage needs to be at least 95 percent to bring the disease under control, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

Although the number of severe measles infections has fallen in the past 10 years, Kenya has continued to record measles outbreaks among children of older age groups and even adults.

Nicholas Alipui, the UNICEF country director, said on Wednesday that the campaign, which came barely a month after the UN Special Session on Children launched, was a "historic" event in Kenya, aiming at reaching children even in the most remote parts of the country.

"It is unacceptable that any child should die of a preventable disease," Alipui said. "Measles is a preventable disease. At a cost of one dollar per child, the measles vaccine is the most cost-effective primary health-care intervention a country can make."

"The right to good health is the entitlement of every child," Alipui added. "We are aiming at 100 percent coverage to meet our obligation as duty-bearers to each and every child - including those in hard-to-reach pastoralist communities, those in refugees camps and children who live on the streets."

The KEPI manager, Stanley Sonoiya, told the same news conference that Kenya was confident of success in the measles campaign, which has drawn lessons from the successes recorded on previous mass immunisation campaigns - the first aimed at eradicating smallpox in 1977 and, more recently, those aimed at eradicating polio.

After the latter campaigns, there has been no single recorded case of wild polio virus in the country since 1984, according to Sonoiya. "We are confident that Kenya and its partners will be equally successful and focused in tackling the National Measles Control initiative as part of the national plan of action," he added.

Peter Ariki, country representative of the World Health Organisation (WHO), told the news conference that Kenya had strong routine immunisation and disease surveillance systems that made measles control and eventual elimination in the country possible.

"We can affirm that this mass vaccination campaign is, indeed, the beginning of the countdown to the end of measles in Kenya," he said.

All partners in the initiative have emphasised the need for the public to be involved if the goal of measles eradication is to be achieved, and campaign organisers have American actress Jane Seymour in-country this week to try to raise its profile among ordinary Kenyans.

Seymour, celebrity cabinet member of the American Red Cross, travelled to Kenya with a group of eight American students (aged 11 to 14 years) to participate in the campaign, and urged all the country's parents, guardians and teachers to bring children under their care for vaccination.

"As a mother of six, it saddens me greatly that so many vulnerable children are dying needless deaths from a disease that can be so easily prevented," she said.

"In America, where measles has been eliminated, mothers no longer have to worry about their children getting sick and dying from this extremely contagious and deadly disease. We aim to make to make Kenya measles-free as well," she added.

[ENDS]

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NIGERIA: Adopt laws on children's rights, UNICEF urges

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/education/8314

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has urged the Nigerian government to take steps to domesticate international conventions on children's rights and create the proper environment to protect those rights.
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NIGERIA: Adopt laws on children's rights, UNICEF urges

LAGOS, 17 June (IRIN) - The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has urged the Nigerian government to take steps to domesticate international conventions on children's rights and create the proper environment to protect those rights.

In a special message to mark the 16 June Day of the African Child, the UNICEF Representative in Nigeria, Christian Voumard, congratulated the government for signing international protocols on children's rights, UNICEF said in a statement on Sunday.

He added, however, that there was need now for those conventions to be domesticated by way of ratification, the statement said.

The international documents relating to the rights of children include the Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). They are further complemented by the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. While Nigeria has signed these protocols, its parliament has not yet passed laws to make them operational.

Signatories are obliged to provide educational and health facilities for all children. In addition, children are to be protected from all forms of abuse, violence and exploitation while creating the environment for parents, the extended family and others who care for children to fulfill their responsibilities to the children.

Voumard said committed leadership by the Nigerian government had enabled its partnership with international organisations to achieve some notable results. These include the provision of Vitamin A supplement to over 70 percent of children under five years and the attainment of the 98 percent mark in households using iodized salt.

More children, in particular girls, he said, were starting and completing school; polio was on the verge of being eradicated; there was increased use of insecticide treated nets to prevent malaria; and a sustained awareness campaign was beginning to have impact on the spread of HIV/AIDS.

But significant challenges remained, Voumard said. Among these were the fact that at 5.6 percent prevalence, HIV/AIDS had reached epidemic proportions. There was also need to establish "child-friendly policies" and to devote more resources to ensure the survival, protection and development of children.

"A major challenge for Nigeria is the need to pass into law a Children's Bill," said the statement.

More efforts were also required to improve school enrolment especially for girls, strengthen a weak primary health care system where acute shortages of drugs and equipment were the norm, and curtail the negative effects of malnutrition on children.

[ENDS]

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nigeria: World Bank Lists Abuja With Greatest Children Not in School

2002-06-20

http://allafrica.com/stories/200206170005.html

Nigeria is among five countries in the world with the largest number of children not in school, a World Bank statement, released in Abidjan, has said. The statement said that the five countries accounted for 50 million of the estimated worldwide total of 113 million children out of school and that the World Bank and donors would collaborate with them to address areas that needed to be resolved for them to be eligible for Education For All (EFA) grant financing support.

south africa: 5,7m SA children could be Aids orphans by 2015

2002-06-20

http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.jsp?a=11&o=4819

At least 5,7-million children in South Africa, roughly a third of those under 18, would have lost one or both parents from Aids by 2015 unless there were major interventions, the Medical Research Council (MRC) has warned.

TOGO: US support for anti-trafficking initiative

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/education/8395

Togo and the United States launched on Tuesday a FCFA 1.376 billion (US $2 million) initiative against child trafficking. Officials said the project would help attract and retain children in schools.
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TOGO: US support for anti-trafficking initiative

LOME, 19 June (IRIN) - Togo and the United States launched on Tuesday a FCFA 1.376 billion (US $2 million) initiative against child trafficking. Officials said the project would help attract and retain children in schools.

Titled 'Child Labor Education Initiative' (CLEI) and funded through the US labour department, the project aims to remove children from the labour market and offer them educational opportunities. Particular attention will be paid to girls who are most vulnerable to traffickers.

The project, which US Ambassador Karl Hoffman said was a first in West Africa, will focus on strengthening national and communal capacity, ensuring support for children rescued from traffickers. It will also support the Togolese government to enforce anti-trafficking measures.

Funding will be disbursed from 1 October. Proposals from NGOs and other humanitarian groups that would like to participate in the project are now being accepted.

Togo, along with Benin, last month begun to create local anti-trafficking committees to educate people living in rural areas about child trafficking. The seven-member committees are already operational in the districts of Assoli, Bassar, Kloto, Wawa, and others.

The signing ceremony was held in the capital, Lome, and attended by US Deputy Under-Secretary of Labour, Michael Magan, and Togo's Minister for Social Affairs, Irene Ashira Assih.

Hoffman told the audience that the new initiative could be extended to other countries in the region.
[ENDS]

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west africa: Ecowas develops child protection strategy

2002-06-20

http://allafrica.com/stories/200206190293.html

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has developed strategies to be implemented in its campaign for the protection of the rights and privileges of the West African child.

ZAMBIA: Free schooling under scrutiny

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/education/8389

President Levy Mwanawasa's decision to scrap cost sharing in Zambian schools and re-introduce free education has run into controversy over whether the government can afford adequate levels of funding to the country's neglected schools.
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ZAMBIA: Free schooling under scrutiny

LUSAKA, 19 June (IRIN) - President Levy Mwanawasa's decision to scrap cost sharing in Zambian schools and re-introduce free education has run into controversy over whether the government can afford adequate levels of funding to the country's neglected schools.

Mwanawasa argued that the reason for poor enrolment rates and a general decline in education standards was a result of high school fees. The government has since banned financial "contributions" from parents through the Parents-Teachers Associations (PTAs) - viewed by some campaigners as a hidden tax on already poor households - and announced a return to universal free primary education.

"The reintroduction of free education is not a bad idea in itself, but it must be viable before it is employed. As things stand, it has only meant that schools no longer have enough money to run smoothly," a school teacher, who asked not to be named, told IRIN.

Perhaps the most striking thing about Lusaka Basic School is its ordinariness. Its well-trimmed gardens, paved walkways and sterile corridors evoke the tedious air of academic serenity that is the expected mark of learning institutions all over the world.

However, it stands in marked contrast with the average public school in this impoverished southern African country. For less well off pupils, school campuses usually comprise little more than rundown buildings set in ill-tended grounds.

Understandably, members of Lusaka Basic's PTA are proud of the way they have maintained the school's high standards despite a slowdown in government funding to the education sector. This, they say, has been made possible by the prudent use of the PTA fund - a scheme under which pupils in virtually all schools in the country hitherto supplemented public funding through individual contributions.

"This school has always been able to supplement government funding to the tune of 70 million kwacha [about US $16,000] per year on average. That has always gone a long, long way," a Lusaka Basic schoolteacher explained.

But the government's concern about cost sharing in schools seems justified. A recent study by the Lusaka-based Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection's (JCTR) and Oxfam established that, on average, Zambian households spend twice as much on primary education as the government does. It also established that public funding of primary education is "highly erratic", with actual expenditure being only a small percentage of authorised expenditure.

The report, entitled, 'Will the Poor go to School: Cost Sharing in Education in Zambia', said cost sharing had seen a marked drop in the number of children attending school, and a deterioration of teachers' salaries and living conditions, "with a resultant negative effect on education".

Ministry of Education statistics corroborate the report. For example, only 28,000 of the 111,000 students who sat for final Grade 9 examinations last year made it to Grade 10. The 88,000 children who were sieved out of the education system joined tens of thousands of others who failed their final Grade 7 examinations last year, and countless more who were forced out of the system by prohibitive school fees.

Mwanawasa has made the campaign for universal free primary education one of his government's priorities. It is a key element of the government's Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) - making clear the link between education and development - which will govern the country's economic policies over the next several years.

Both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have endorsed the PRSP and said it forms "a sound basis" for International Development Association (IDA - the World Bank's soft loan window) and IMF support. However, the IMF, which earlier expressed doubts about the country's capacity to provide free education, has said that some aspects of the PRSP may be unrealistic.

"Some of the core goals and targets of the PRSP appear too ambitious. Targets and indicators need to be refined further to ensure that they are realistic and can be monitored within the allotted time frame," said IMF resident representative Mark Ellyne. He did not elaborate.

While development campaigners in general welcomed the reintroduction of free education early this year, schools in the capital are already feeling its ill effects.

The lack of finance has forced many schools in and outside the capital to venture into unorthodox fundraising initiatives, such as chicken rearing and tailoring, to meet their running costs.

"Most government schools have engaged in private projects to raise money to acquire basic teaching equipment. Previously, the government, through the ministry of education, used to provide teaching equipment," the state-run Times of Zambia reported after a survey of Lusaka schools last week.

Schools have also had to cut spending on general maintenance and supplies. For example, Lusaka Basic has laid off three workers in the sanitation and maintenance departments to cut its wage bill.

"The results can already be seen. The grounds are not as clean as they used to be and the toilets are getting filthy," the Lusaka Basic teacher said.

However, some influential development campaigners insist that, the apparent teething problems aside, free education can be made sustainable if the government adopts more creative ways of using its limited resources.

"It may seem impossible if one takes a cursory look at the problem of mobilising resources in our current situation to meet the challenge of providing free education. However, a deeper look shows that there are ways through which Zambia can and should mobilise resources towards providing free education," argued Muweme Muweme, coordinator of the Economic and Social Development Research Project of the JCTR.

"There are indeed steps, such as reducing wasteful utilisation of public resources, curbing corruption, increasing government funding to the education sector, that can be taken ... to change for the better the current disastrous education situation if there is the political will to do so," he added.


[ENDS]

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south africa: Apartheid victims sue Western banks and firms for billions

Lawyer who championed those who suffered in the Holocaust fights for South Africa's oppressed

2002-06-20

http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,738404,00.html

The American lawyer who won compensation for Holocaust victims is about to launch legal claims for billions of pounds against companies, many of them British, that benefited from apartheid.
The first action will be announced at a press conference tomorrow by Dorothy Molefi, mother of the most famous casualty of the 1976 Soweto student uprising, Hector Petersen, who at the age of 13 was the first student shot dead by police in 1976. The photograph of his bloodstained body cradled in the arms of a friend, with his tearful sister running alongside, came to be the symbol of student resistance.

south africa: Poet admits race song went too far

2002-06-20

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_2049000/2049515.stm

Nelson Mandela has met a controversial South African poet and song writer whose latest song has been branded "racism and hate speech". After meeting the former president, Mbongeni Ngema said the debate he had hoped to raise had gone the wrong way and he would not object if the song was banned from sale.

AFRICA: Conference on marine environment opens in Abuja

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/environment/8335

A three-day conference on the protection and development of the coastal and marine environment in sub-Saharan Africa opened in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, on Monday.
U N I T E D N A T I O N S
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AFRICA: Conference on marine environment opens in Abuja

LAGOS, 17 June (IRIN) - A three-day conference on the protection and development of the coastal and marine environment in sub-Saharan Africa opened in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, on Monday.

Organised under the auspices of the African Ministerial Conference on Environment (AMCEN), its agenda was to work out a programme for a partnership conference to be held at the World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD) to be held in South Africa in September.

The conference was jointly organised with the Super Preparatory Committee of the African Process for the Development and Protection of the Coastal and Marine Environment (APDPCME).

A statement by Nigeria's Ministry of Environment said the conference would seek to "integrate socio-economic as well as scientific and technical considerations into proposed interventions for addressing leading causes of degradation in the marine and coastal environment" in Africa.

Participants in the proceedings, declared open by Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo, included Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme, Klaus Topfer, and representatives of African governments and international organisations.

During the meeting, approval of 33 projects proposed to deal with problems of coastal and marine environments in Africa is to be considered. The projects were identified during the final deliberations of the working group of APDPCME in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire, in May. They cover pollution, modifications to the ecosystem, climate change, over-exploitation of fishery resources and eco-tourism.

[ENDS]

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africa: Global Climate Shift Feeds Spreading Deserts

2002-06-20

http://ens-news.com/ens/jun2002/2002-06-17-03.asp

Over the next 20 years some 60 million people in northern Africa are expected to leave the Sahelian region if desertification there is not halted, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said. June 17 is the day set aside each year by the UN as World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought, twin problems that must be solved if world hunger is to be relieved, Annan said.

africa: Protecting Africa's medicinal plants

2002-06-20

http://www.scienceinafrica.co.za/2002/june/pelarg.htm

Traditional healers and South African hunter-gatherers have long known that the root of the plant Pelargonium reniforme can cure stomach ailments. But the unsustainable and indiscriminate removal of indigenous plants, such as Pelargonium, and the export of these plants abroad, is threatening their survival. New laws are needed to protect traditional knowledge and indigenous plants in South Africa &#8212; and to allow Africa to harness its biodiversity for Africa.

africa: U.S. Food Aid Runs into Biotech Resistence

2002-06-20

http://ens-news.com/ens/jun2002/2002-06-14-02.asp

The controversy over genetically engineered crops is disrupting U.S. efforts to provide food aid to starving people. The government of Zimbabwe and citizens groups in Bolivia, Guatemala and Nicaragua are resisting U.S. supplied foods that contain transgenic corn, or maize.

africa: WEST'S POLLUTION 'LED TO AFRICAN DROUGHTS'

2002-06-20

http://www.africantimes.com/articlepg1.asp?ID=48193

Scientists in Australia and Canada say that pollution from western countries may have caused the droughts which ravaged Africa's Sahel region in the 1970s and 1980s. Other Sahelian countries, from Senegal in the west stretching east to the Red Sea, were also devastated by the lack of rain and the southwards spread of the Sahara desert. The research says that sulphur dioxide from factories in Europe and the United States has cooled the Northern Hemisphere, driving the tropical rain belt south away from the Sahel.

ETHIOPIA: Interview with leading conservationist Stuart Williams

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/environment/8366

Stuart Williams is a leading British conservationist spearheading the fight to save two of Ethiopia's rarest animals, the Ethiopian Wolf and the Grevy Zebra, both of which face imminent extinction. Williams, who lives in the Bale Mountains, speaks of the importance of Ethiopia's wildlife, the role of its national and protected parks, and how sustainable development within the country is intertwined with conservation efforts.
U N I T E D N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)

ETHIOPIA: Interview with leading conservationist Stuart Williams

ADDIS ABABA, 18 June (IRIN) - Stuart Williams is a leading British conservationist spearheading the fight to save two of Ethiopia's rarest animals, the Ethiopian Wolf and the Grevy Zebra, both of which face imminent extinction. Williams, who lives in the Bale Mountains, speaks of the importance of Ethiopia's wildlife, the role of its national and protected parks, and how sustainable development within the country is intertwined with conservation efforts.

QUESTION: How significant is Ethiopia in terms of biodiversity?

ANSWER: Ethiopia harbours an astonishing diversity of plants and animals that are found nowhere else in the world. Ethiopia's uniqueness is linked to two principal 'centres of endemism'. These are the arid areas of the Horn of Africa and the highlands. In both areas, plants and animals have evolved to result in a suite of species found nowhere else on the globe. The fauna and flora, because it is unique, is therefore of international importance. When one delves into the
less known groups of organisms, there are many that have yet to be described. Unlike other African countries, Ethiopia's fauna and flora has not been thoroughly described - many species have yet to be discovered.

Q: Why is the environment important to Ethiopia - a country facing severe problems like extreme poverty and massive food insecurity?

A: The environment is central to the problems that Ethiopia faces today, more so, perhaps, in some areas than others. The rate of exploitation of the natural resources in the country is not sustainable. Without a significant consideration of alternatives and of how the expanding population is going to live in the future, there will be even more serious problems once the resources are depleted. Ethiopia may yet prove to be the test case of what happens when a human population overtakes the natural resources available to it.

Second and by extension, it is necessary to find alternatives to agricultural and livestock production that has been the focus of food security in the country to date - or at least diversify away from them. Clearly, the focus on the agricultural and livestock production sectors is problematic; already they do not provide for all the people in the country. The environment sector, I believe, offers the most viable sector for diversification to generate foreign revenue. Tourism is one, if not the only, industry with the potential for real growth in the next few years.

Q: How vital is the role played by the national parks in the country?

A: Their role in protecting some vestiges of the natural resources of this country cannot, I believe, be overemphasised. This is primarily linked with their international, national and regional importance for the biological diversity that they harbour...The areas covered by the national parks in Ethiopia are the very minimum required to protect some of the most important species. I believe that many of the long-term problems that the country faces - primarily food insecurity - are, in part, linked to the environment and the overexploitation of the natural resources. This is particularly true in the lowlands of the southeast of the country.

Q: What is the current situation of the parks?

A: At present, the overall picture of the national parks is poor. The government is not placing the environment - particularly protected areas - on its agenda and as a result the protected areas are chronically under funded. This has led to low staffing levels, and what staff there are, are poorly equipped and not at all motivated. The wildlife populations in all the parks have been and continue to be depleted as a result. Without a radical change in the management of wildlife in this country - thus, radically improving the management of the parks and ensuring that wildlife populations outside of protected areas can be sustained - the wildlife will cease to exist in meaningful numbers.

Q: What more can be done to improve conservation work in the country?

A: The environment - and not just the protected areas - needs to be moved onto the agenda from the highest levels including the federal and regional governments, and the donor community. National Parks and tourism should be included in the Poverty Reduction Strategy - which would include satisfying the precondition of facilitating external private investment in the tourism sector. Give recognition to the fact that there is a place for pristine places in Ethiopia - not only to attract tourists or to protect natural resources on which people are dependent, but also as part of the unique heritage of the country.

Much of the wildlife does exist outside of the protected areas. The wildlife - as with land - is owned by the government and not by local people. Empowering local communities by passing the
legislation to allow them to own the resources in the area in which they live makes a lot of sense. Then attaching a value to the wildlife by showing that it can generate revenue.

Q: Are there any estimates on the loss of wildlife or plants etc that has occurred over the last 10-50 or 100 years?

A: The knowledge about the natural resources in Ethiopia is tiny. We know little of what there is out there, let alone what has or is disappearing. Although the analysis has not been formally done, Ethiopia sticks out as being one of the least explored countries in the world. The focus of what has been done has been on birds, a few large mammals and identification of the plants. Many species live close to extirpation in Ethiopia.

Q: What has caused this?

A: We can only make informed guesses at what has caused the depletion of wildlife populations in Ethiopia. Overall, the landscape is transformed by humans, directly or indirectly, and wildlife populations decline as a result. About a century ago, Ethiopia was the main trading route for ivory and possible rhino horn going to Asia. Thus, the elephant and rhino populations were depleted long ago. What has happened in the agricultural areas of the country will be debatable. The transformation of the land to agriculture has an obvious and irreversible effect on the wildlife.

Q: What role do the Bale Mountains play in Ethiopia?

A: Bale is the pearl of national parks in Ethiopia. It is 2,200 sq. km and includes the largest area of Afro-alpine habitat on the continent. The park is the source of perennial water for the critical arid lowlands to the east and southeast of the Bale massif - including the Ogaden and Somalia. The importance of this in terms of water catchments and river flow regulation cannot be underestimated but when badly managed can end up with a highland-lowland imbalance that results in loss of perennial water in the lowlands. Already there are seasonal water shortages resulting from bad management of the water flowing from the Bale Mountains catchment area.

The Bale massif also plays a crucial role in climate control in the region. The Herenna Forest, at the south of the park, is the second largest moist tropical forest remaining in Ethiopia. If the exploitation of Bale continues at its present rate, and it ceases to exist as a pristine area, more species of mammal will become extinct than any other place of an equivalent area in the world.

The park contains over half the global population of Ethiopian wolves (Canis simensis), which are found only in suitable Afro-alpine habitats in Ethiopia. With less than 500 remaining individuals, the Ethiopian wolf is the rarest canid in the world and is listed as critically endangered by the Species Survival Commission of the World Conservation Union. The park contains the largest population of the endemic mountain nyala (Tragelaphus buxtoni) - the 1,500 individuals are estimated to be approximately half the global population. The park contains the entire global population of the giant molerats (Tachyoryctes macrocephalus).

Q: What work are you carrying out in Bale Mountains?

A: Bale is the base for the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme (EWCP). The EWCP does anything that may have a positive impact on Ethiopian wolves, whether in the short- or long-term. This includes working to assist with the development and management of the Bale Mountains National Park and to promote tourism within the area. At present, we are in the process of trying to get the donor community to engage in Bale - first, to develop the park and second, to establish an
endowment trust fund that will ensure the park's management is financed in perpetuity.

Q: If things continue as they are now what will happen in Bale?

A: First, the second largest forest block in the country will disappear. This should be considered in the context that less than 3 percent of the country is forested - when less than 40 years ago, the country's forest cover was about 25 percent. With the forest would go some of the only remaining wild genetic stock of coffee.

Second, the vegetation of the Afro-alpine area of the mountains will change through expansion of agriculture into the marginal lands and overgrazing by domestic livestock. Both of these will undermine the livelihoods of the people who are dependent on those resources and they will become chronically food insecure.



[ENDS]

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ghana: Communities protecting water

2002-06-20

http://www.id21.org/urban/Insights41art9.html

The Kumasi peri-urban area is characterised by high rates of conversion of agricultural land to private housing. Kumasi, Ghana, is also situated across a major drainage divide, resulting in a range of water quality and supply problems. Collaborative DFID-funded research by Royal Holloway, University of London, with government and NGO partners in Ghana, aims to develop and pilot a sustainable co-management approach to peri-urban watersheds.

kenya: Localising Agenda 21

2002-06-20

http://www.id21.org/urban/Insights41art7.html

Nakuru, the fast growing capital of the Rift Valley Province, Kenya, is a good example of a town which serves as an urban centre for a predominantly rural area. It demonstrates rural-urban linkages and shows the need for ecological protection of its own natural environment. The Localising Agenda 21 programme promotes practical measures to improve urban governance, combining the use of strategic structure plans with urban pacts to create a process of vision, action and communication.

NIGERIA: Focus on pollution in Lagos

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/environment/8426

The clouds of smog that daily blur the skyline of the central business area of Nigeria's commercial capital, Lagos, are the most obvious signs that air pollution is a major problem in one of Africa's biggest cities. Less obvious is the increasing toll on the health of the city's 12 million residents.

NIGERIA: Focus on pollution in Lagos

[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]


LAGOS, 20 June (IRIN) - The clouds of smog that daily blur the skyline of the central business area of Nigeria's commercial capital, Lagos, are the most obvious signs that air pollution is a major problem in one of Africa's biggest cities. Less obvious is the increasing toll on the health of the city's 12 million residents.

According to medical sources, respiratory ailments due to air pollution have become one of the leading problems encountered in the city's hospitals. At the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, the leading health institution in the city, about one-fifth of all ailments reported by the hospital's patients in the past two years were related to various degrees of respiratory problems, officials said.

"Most of the ailments present either as pneumonia or bronchitis," Festus Ezeobi, a medical consultant, told IRIN. "But generally they are inflammations of the air passages caused often by chemical pollutants or bacteria." In two decades he has observed such cases increase ten-fold, he said.

Medical experts do not find the development surprising considering that Lagos is a city of cars and electricity generators. One of the few large cities of several million people in the world without an intra-city rail system, it is solely dependent on road transportation. Residents who do not own cars depend on privately-run taxis and buses. It is estimated that there are at least two million vehicles in the city, with up to half plying the city's roads everyday.

"Out of this number over two-thirds are more than 10 years old," Taiwo Olamide, an official of the ministry of transport told IRIN. Another third of the total vehicle population of the city are more than 15 years old, he said. According to him most of these vehicles would not pass standard emission tests in the developed countries. Yet they are to be seen daily on the Lagos roads emitting dark, poisonous fumes into the atmosphere.

Irregular electricity supply by the state-owned power company, has made Nigeria one of the biggest markets for electricity generators in the world. Every skyscraper in the city is usually serviced by at least four giant standby generators. And once there is a power cut, which is quite often, they roar into life, puffing thick, dark smoke into the atmosphere. Most homes also use generators, all contributing noxious fumes to the atmosphere.

Recent studies carried out by the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (FEPA) show a moderate to high concentration of pollutants - such as carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, organic acids and hydrocarbons - in the atmosphere. Most of these come from automotive engines and industries.

Older people who lived in Lagos in the 1950s and 1960s still idealise what was then an orderly and uncongested city. Until the early 1970s, there were barely one million people living in less than 15 percent of the space the city occupies today. The massive influx of people into the city coincided with Nigeria's oil boom years from the mid 1970s. Much of the country's oil wealth spent in the cities, particularly Lagos, which was then the capital, made it a major attraction for the hordes of rural-urban migrants.

With the great proliferation of cars that came with oil wealth, successive (mainly military) governments responded with a massive construction of new roads, including ring roads and flyovers, to overcome the consequent traffic congestion. More people flooded into the city at a rate which would not permit orderly expansion and settled on the outskirts. Soon the outskirts became city centres as more and more people found homes in the peripheries. A new, sprawling Lagos was created.

The decision in 1976 to move the capital from Lagos to Abuja in the centre of the country, was also aimed at dealing with the problem of congestion. But it remains the country's commercial capital and a major attraction for migrants from all over Nigeria and different parts of Africa, seeking improved fortunes.

An intra-city rail tube system planned by the civilian government in power between 1979-83 was scrapped by the military regime that ousted it from power. A new system has yet to get off the ground since then.

Today, Lagos lacks a central sewage system and has no refuse incinerators. Sewage is still emptied into the lagoon while household refuse is collected by the waste authorities at a central dump to the north of the city, where it is burnt, sending plumes of acrid smoke into the sky at all times.

According to Nigeria's junior minister for environment, Imeh Okopido, the country's marine environment, especially around Lagos, is being increasingly degraded by pollution from sewage, industrial effluents, radioactive substances, heavy metals, oils and litter. In April he set up a special task force to develop the framework for a national plan of action to halt further degradation of the environment.

But already there is the danger that some of these chemicals are finding their way into the food chain and doing as yet inestimable damage. Fishing communities which abound in Lagos depend on the lagoon and the sea around the city - the main recipients of the pollutants - for much of their catch consumed by the same city residents.

Beginning this year, President Olusegun Obasanjo banned the importation of cars more than five years old into Nigeria. While no other specific measures, such as checking emissions levels of cars and electricity generators, have been put in place to deal with air pollution, curtailing the influx of very old cars into the country is expected to have a positive effect with time.

Efforts to rejuvenate the electricity company and end power cuts, if successful, will cut down on the emissions from the hundreds of thousands generators now in service in the city.

But according to a FEPA document: "The paucity of data, inadequate monitoring...lack of operational national contingency plan for hazardous chemicals, as well as a national register and tracking system for toxic and hazardous chemicals, are gaps that need to be filled soon."

[ENDS]

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[This Item is Delivered to the "Africa-English" Service of the UN's IRIN
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TANZANIA: New effort to address key environmental issues

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/environment/8365

While many Tanzanians marked World Environment Day on 5 June with localised tree-planting and cleanups, environmental activists have drawn attention to what they say is a weak legal and institutional framework for environmental management and protection in the country.
U N I T E D N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)

TANZANIA: New effort to address key environmental issues

NAIROBI, 19 June (IRIN) - While many Tanzanians marked World Environment Day on 5 June with localised tree-planting and cleanups, environmental activists have drawn attention to what they say is a weak legal and institutional framework for environmental management and protection in the country.

"This legislation is not coordinated, and we don't have an agency with a final word on environmental matters. Nor do we have the essential environmental management tools that are recognisable," says Rugumeleza Nshala, president of the Lawyers' Environmental Action Team (LEAT), which is acting as the secretariat for the Environment Coalition, a collection of civil society organisations involved in environmental management in Tanzania.

He cited Environmental Impact Assessments as an area where there are fundamental problems, since EIAs were only legally demanded in the Mining and Marine Parks and Reserves sectors. Neither was there any agency to monitor the quality of assessments and, as a result, EIAs were carried out merely as a matter of procedure, rather than being geared towards ensuring sound environmental management in the country, he added.

In its study of the state of the environment, the Institutional and Legal Framework for Environmental Management Project (ILFEMP) has listed land degradation, environmental pollution and deforestation, deterioration of aquatic systems, loss of wildlife habitats and biodiversity, and the lack of accessible, good quality water as the major environmental problems affecting Tanzania and its people.

"Striking examples of the extent of this degradation are that between 130,000 and 500,000 hectares of forest are destroyed each year and approximately 65 percent of the nation's coral reefs have been blown up, resulting in the deterioration of aquatic systems," the agency added in a recent report.

Environmental campaigners argue that while the right to a healthy environment is enshrined in the Tanzanian constitution and there are various laws that protect the environment through sectoral legislation, different approaches are not harmonised and the effort to establish a more coherent legal framework for environmental management must be stepped up.

The process to address this and the many other issues has been initiated through ILFEMP, and its objectives are to enable the government to make a decision on an institutional structure (Phase I), draft a bill (Phase II) and put together a National Environmental Management Programme (Phase III).

The study phase (Phase I) has been completed, but campaigners say it confirmed many prior concerns, including poor inter-sectoral coordination and linkages between local and national government, weak institutional linkages, conflicting mandates and a lack of implementing capacity.

Critics also say that there are those within the existing system who fear effective change, because people would lose positions and power in the streamlining of institutions. They say conflicts between different institutions and duplication of activities by them typify the problems.

Local media reports have also said there is confusion over environmental management projects, but Dr Palamagamba Kabudi, a lawyer who has been involved in ILFEMP from its inception, told IRIN that a draft paper had been prepared, and it was now up to the cabinet to decide what institutional framework the country should adopt and when the law should be drafted.

"The process might be taking time, but for me what it important is the process, not the product," he said. "I could come up with a draft in two weeks, go to the parliament and we would have a law - but it will have no legitimacy if it does not involve the people in the process."

"We need a law that doesn't only deal with institutions," Kabudi said. "We don't just need a prescriptive law, but a law that also deals with normative principles and which provides tools for management irrespective of which institution will be given the mandate to manage the environment. We need also to encourage incentives and voluntary compliance, which comes from awareness and empowerment."

While Tanzania might be the last of the East African countries to enact an environmental law, it was, for the same reason, now in a position to learn from their mistakes, Kabudi added.

According to Angelina Madete, acting director of the environment division at the Vice-President's Office, the process is, indeed, taking time and there have been problems with elements of the project. However, she does not believe that there are any serious hitches, and says the process will effectively tie together some 80 existing pieces of legislation relating to the environment.

Gertrude Liatu from the environment division of the United Nations Development Programme in Tanzania also thinks the country is on the right track to fill in existing gaps.
"I think the government has made tremendous steps to look into those areas that are missing and address areas where regulations are lacking," she said.

Despite the scepticism of some activists, those involved seem optimistic that, through public meetings - with representation from a broad mix of governmental and nongovernmental agencies - the environmental management process in Tanzania can result in a sound and cohesive environmental law and policy.

[ENDS]

[This Item is Delivered to the "Africa-English" Service of the UN's IRIN
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of the United Nations. For further information, free subscriptions, or
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Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2002

BURUNDI-TANZANIA: Promoting reconciliation through radio cooperation

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/8407

Two independent radio producers, one based in Tanzania and the other in Burundi - respectively Studio Ijambo and Radio Kwizera - are to collaborate in order to use radio as "a tool of conflict prevention, and reconciliation". The collaboration would include programme-sharing, co-productions, exchanges of journalists and a correspondent network, a statement issued on Thursday said.
U N I T E D N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)

BURUNDI-TANZANIA: Promoting reconciliation through radio cooperation

NAIROBI, 13 June (IRIN) - Two independent radio producers, one based in
Tanzania and the other in Burundi - respectively Studio Ijambo and Radio
Kwizera - are to collaborate in order to use radio as "a tool of conflict
prevention, and reconciliation".

The collaboration would include programme-sharing, co-productions, exchanges
of journalists and a correspondent network, a statement issued on Thursday
said.

The collaboration aimed to provide accurate, balanced and objective
information on both sides of the Burundi-Tanzania border as the facilitated
repatriation of Burundi refugees from camps in western Tanzania continued,
said the statement. "This collaboration will open up dialogue, through the
radio programmes, between Burundians in Burundi and those in the camps,"
said Lena Slachmuijlder, the director of Studio Ijambo.

"In the absence of dialogue and information, dangerous rumours and
misunderstandings thrive. This collaboration aims to open a space where
Burundians can begin to discover each others' realities, and find a common
understanding of reconciliation," she added.

[ENDS]

[This Item is Delivered to the "Africa-English" Service of the UN's IRIN
humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views
of the United Nations. For further information, free subscriptions, or
to change your keywords, contact e-mail: Irin@ocha.unon.org or Web:
http://www.irinnews.org . If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post
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CJFE Protests Arrest of Journalists

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/8413

Your Excellency, I write on behalf of Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE), a non-profit, non-governmental organization advocating for a free press and freedom of expression in Canada and around the world. CJFE wishes to protest the arrest of Emmanuel Chilekwa, managing editor of the privately-owned newspaper, The People, his assistants Shadreck Banda and Kings Lweendo, and student journalist Jane Chirwa on June 5, 2002. They were all charged with "defamation of the president."
Dear Letter Writers,
>
> Below is a letter of protest on Zambia. You can mail it or fax it at the
> co-ordinates below. Please copy cjfe@cjfe.org
>
> Many thanks
>
> Joel Ruimy, Executive Director
> CJFE
>
> ----text begins----
>
> His Excellency Levy Mwanawasa
> Office of the President
> State House, Cabinet Office
> Box 30208
> Lusaka
>
> Fax +260 1 252 545
>
> Email: state@zamnet.zm
>
> Your Excellency,
>
> I write on behalf of Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE), a
> non-profit, non-governmental organization advocating for a free press and
> freedom of expression in Canada and around the world. CJFE wishes to
protest
> the arrest of Emmanuel Chilekwa, managing editor of the privately-owned
> newspaper, The People, his assistants Shadreck Banda and Kings Lweendo,
and
> student journalist Jane Chirwa on June 5, 2002. They were all charged with
> "defamation of the president."
>
> According to our information, the four were denied bail on June 7 by
Lusaka
> Principal Resident Magistrate Frank Tembo, who told them he will rule on
bail at
> their next court appearance June 25. They remain in custody until then.
>
> At issue is an article published in the May 25-31 issue of Chilekwa's
newspaper
> which alleged that your excellency suffers from Parkinson's disease.
>
> On May 28, Zambian police ordered Chilekwa to report to police
headquarters in
> Lusaka the following day for questioning in connection with the article.
On May
> 31, police picked up Chilekwa and his colleagues and assaulted them during
an
> interrogation about the article.
>
> The police actions follow a complaint by your excellency that your
character was
> being maligned.
>
> "Defamation of the president" under Section 69 of the Zambian Penal Code
makes
> it an offence to "bring hatred, ridicule or contempt to the reputation of
the
> president, to publish defamatory matter, whether in writing, print, word
of
> mouth, or any other form or manner." A conviction carries a jail
> term of up to three years without the option of a fine.
>
> We respectfully urge you to withdraw your complaint and drop the charges.
The
> Zambian Penal Code clearly impedes the right to freedom of expression and
a free
> press. Incarceration of these journalists constitutes a serious
human-rights
> violation.
>
> We further ask that you take steps to improve the state of free expression
in
> your country. We also wish to serve notice that we will continue to shine
a
> spotlight on Zambia until your country shows respect for internationally
> recognized norms of behaviour regarding freedom of expression.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Joel Ruimy, Executive Director
>
> **The information contained in this autolist item is the sole
responsibility of
> CJFE**
>

Kenya: IFJ Condemns Repressive Media Bill

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/8412

The International Federation of Journalists, the world's largest journalist's group, and the Eastern Africa Journalist Association (EAJA), have expressed their strong concern regarding the adoption of a repressive media law in Kenya. "This unequivocal attempt by the government to control the media is appalling", said Aidan White, IFJ General Secretary.
Media Release
>
> June 14th 2002
>
> IFJ Condemns Repressive Media Bill in Kenya
>
> The International Federation of Journalists, the world's largest
journalist's
> group, and the Eastern Africa Journalist Association (EAJA), today
expressed
> their strong concern regarding the adoption of a repressive media law in
Kenya.
> "This unequivocal attempt by the government to control the media is
appalling",
> said Aidan White, IFJ General Secretary.
>
> The new regulation provides that the bond executed by media publishers is
> increased from the current Kenya shillings 10,000 (US$128) to Kenya
shillings 1
> million (US$12,820). Failure to comply with the new law attracts a jail
term of
> three to five years, a 1 million shilling fine for first offenders and
> disqualification from owning or publishing a newspaper or magazine for
repeat
> offenders. Publishers must also submit at least two copies of their
publication
> to the registrar of Books and newspapers before going to the streets.
>
> The IFJ denounces this move, which jeopardizes the survival of hundreds of
> publications and puts at stake the very existence of press diversity in
Kenya.
> This situation is much alarming, in the light of the upcoming general
elections.
> The EAJA coordinator, Martin Ocholi, perceives the law as "a deliberate
and
> mischievous move by the ruling party and government to deny millions of
Kenyans
> their rights to free speech". The Kenyan Union of Journalists (KUJ) and
Ugandan
> Union of Journalists (UJU) also condemned firmly the application of the
media
> bill. "It has become a culture for African governments and their
parliaments to
> pass laws which are not only oppressive to the media, but also curtail
press
> freedom", stated the UJU general secretary Stephen Ouma.
>
> "The deteriorating situation of press freedom in Eastern Africa is a
matter of
> great concern", said White. "The Kenyan government too easily took a step
over
> the thin line between media policy and direct oppression", he added. "It
now has
> the duty to step back and protect the press freedom which is guaranteed by
the
> national constitution".
>
> Further information: 0032 2 232 2200
> The IFJ is the world largest organisation of journalists with more than
500,000
> members in more than 100 countries.
>
> **The information contained in this autolist item is the sole
responsibility of
> IFJ**
>

NIGERIA: Babangida in court to stop editor's murder probe

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/8414

A legal battle began on Tuesday between former Nigerian military ruler, General Ibrahim Babangida, and the government over a probe into an unsolved 16 year-old murder of prominent journalist Dele Giwa, which occurred during Babangida's reign. Nigeria's Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission (HRVIC) in its report to President Olusegun Obasanjo last month recommended the prosecution of Babangida and two former intelligence chiefs for the murder of Giwa by parcel bomb in his Lagos home on 19 October 1986.
U N I T E D N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)

NIGERIA: Babangida in court to stop editor's murder probe

LAGOS, 19 June (IRIN) - A legal battle began on Tuesday between former
Nigerian military ruler, General Ibrahim Babangida, and the government over
a probe into an unsolved 16-year-old murder of a prominent journalist Dele
Giwa, which occurred during Babangida's reign.

Nigeria's Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission (HRVIC) in its
report to President Olusegun Obasanjo last month recommended the prosecution
of Babangida and two former intelligence chiefs for the murder of Giwa by
parcel bomb in his Lagos home on 19 October 1986.

Obasanjo last month appointed a special committee to oversee the
implementation of its recommendations. HRVIC was set up by Obasanjo soon
after being elected president, to investigate human rights violations in
Nigeria since the 1960s.

Babangida subsequently filed a suit to stop Obasanjo from "considering or
accepting observations and recommendations" of the commission concerning
him. When the suit came up for hearing on Tuesday, the government filed a
counter suit seeking the authority to act on HRVIC's recommendations.
Hearing was adjourned to 8 July.

But with Babangida widely expected to contest presidential elections
scheduled for next year, the case may have ominous implications for his
political future if the government has its way.

Giwa, who was the founding editor of a leading Nigerian weekly magazine,
Newswatch, was having breakfast in his study when a parcel addressed to him
arrived. Journalist, Kayode Soyinka, who was with him at the time and
survived the blast, reported him as declaring that the package was "from the
President" before it exploded.

Suspicions of government involvement was further fueled at the time by the
fact that Giwa had three days before, been taken in by state security
officers for questioning on suspicions of gun-running and planning to
"foment a socialist revolution". On the morning he died, his wife said the
then director of military intelligence had called to ask from her the way to
the Giwas' residence.

Leading human rights lawyer, Gani Fawehinmi, who had been seeking the
prosecution of Babangida and the two top security chiefs since Giwa's death,
said on Monday he had been invited by the government to be in its legal
team.
[ENDS]

Somaliland government bans privately-owned radio stations

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/8409

On 14 June 2002, RSF called on the government of Somaliland, an autonomous region of Somalia, to reverse its 5 June ban on all privately-owned radio stations. The Information Ministry announced that "no other voice" could be heard on the air except that of government-run Radio Hargeysa, and that privately-owned stations would not be permitted, because of "potential dangers." It warned anyone with transmitting equipment to hand it over to the authorities and warned those who did not do so would be "prosecuted in court." "This move is a serious obstacle to press freedom and the growth of independent and diverse expression in the region," RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard said in a letter to Somaliland President Dahir Riyale Kahin. "The government has taken this step because it knows most of the region's inhabitants get their news from the radio," Ménard added.
ALERT - SOMALIA
>
> 14 June 2002
>
> Somaliland government bans privately-owned radio stations
>
> SOURCE: Reporters sans frontières (RSF), Paris
>
> (RSF/IFEX) - On 14 June 2002, RSF called on the government of Somaliland,
an
> autonomous region of Somalia, to reverse its 5 June ban on all
> privately-owned radio stations.
>
> The Information Ministry announced that "no other voice" could be heard on
> the air except that of government-run Radio Hargeysa, and that
> privately-owned stations would not be permitted, because of "potential
> dangers." It warned anyone with transmitting equipment to hand it over to
> the authorities and warned those who did not do so would be "prosecuted in
> court."
>
> "This move is a serious obstacle to press freedom and the growth of
> independent and diverse expression in the region," RSF Secretary-General
> Robert Ménard said in a letter to Somaliland President Dahir Riyale Kahin.
> "The government has taken this step because it knows most of the region's
> inhabitants get their news from the radio," Ménard added.
>
> The country's only radio station is the official Radio Hargeysa, but
several
> people and opposition parties have applied for broadcasting frequencies.
> Several privately-owned newspapers are published and sold in Somaliland's
> main towns.
>
> Somaliland declared independence from the rest of Somalia in 1991 but has
> not been recognised by the international community. RSF recalls that the
> authorities in Puntland, another autonomous Somali region, shut down the
> main privately-owned radio and television station in May (see IFEX alert
of
> 24 May 2002).
>
> For further information, contact Jean-François Julliard at RSF, rue
Geoffroy
> Marie, Paris 75009, France, tel: +33 1 44 83 84 84, fax: +33 1 45 23 11
51,
> e-mail: afrique@rsf.fr, Internet: http://www.rsf.fr
>
> The information contained in this alert is the sole responsibility of RSF.
> In citing this material for broadcast or publication, please credit RSF.
> _________________________________________________________________
> DISTRIBUTED BY THE INTERNATIONAL FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
> EXCHANGE (IFEX) CLEARING HOUSE
> 489 College Street, Toronto (ON) M6G 1A5 CANADA
> tel: +1 416 515 9622 fax: +1 416 515 7879
> alerts email: alerts@ifex.org general e-mail: ifex@ifex.org
> Internet site: http://www.ifex.org/

Zimbabwe: ASSAULTED AND ARRESTED NEWSPAPER CREW STILL LANGUISHING IN POLICE CELLS

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/8415

Three Daily News staffers arrested on Sunday 16 June are still languishing in police cells and medical attention has been denied to them and a number of other people arrested on the same day. Daily News reporter Guthrie Munyuki, photographer Urgunia Mauluka and driver Shadreck Mukwecheni were arrested while they covered an opposition gathering that the police brutally clamped down on. The three were beaten by the police resulting in Munyuki sustaining a fracture on his right hand wrist. Mauluka's elbow was swollen according to a doctor who was granted access to the three on Sunday. The police have since denied medical attention to the three and many other opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party supporters who were arrested on Sunday.
17 JUNE 2002
>
> ASSAULTED AND ARRESTED NEWSPAPER CREW STILL LANGUISHING IN POLICE CELLS
>
> Three Daily News staffers arrested on Sunday 16 June are still languishing
> in police cells and medical attention has been denied to them and a number
> of other people arrested on the same day.
>
> The Daily News's reporter Guthrie Munyuki, photographer Urgunia Mauluka
and
> driver Shadreck Mukwecheni were arrested while they covered an opposition
> gathering that the police brutally clamped down on. The three were beaten
by
> the police resulting in Munyuki sustaining a fracture on his right hand
> wrist. Mauluka's elbow was swollen according to a doctor who was granted
> access to the three on Sunday. The police have since denied medical
> attention to the three and many other opposition Movement for Democratic
> Change (MDC) party supporters who were arrested on Sunday.
>
> On the day, Mauluka's camera was smashed on the ground by the police and
the
> three were made to lie on the ground were the police took turns to beat
them
> with baton sticks and rifle buts. 85 MDC supporters were also arrested in
> the process and they are also languishing in police cells.
> Speaking on his mobile phone from his cell at Harare Central where he and
> what he estimated to be 44 other men and 40 women were being held, Munyuki
> said also in the cells were Highfield MP Munyaradzi Gwisai and Newton
Spicer
> of Edwina Spicer Productions, a Harare media production house. Munyuki
said,
> also held was Stuart Mukoyi of Kuwadzana 3, who sustained serious injuries
> when he was allegedly assaulted by the police. A doctor was called in to
> examine Mukoyi who, according to Munyuki, was lying motionless on the cold
> cement floor with no blanket last night. It is this doctor who also
examined
> Munyuki in the cells.
> "The doctor examined me 10 minutes ago and has just left," Munyuki said at
> 8.45pm. "He said I sustained a fracture above the right wrist. The whole
arm
> is now swollen and very painful. I cannot move my fingers. After they
> arrested us the riot police ordered Urginia, Mukwecheni and myself to lie
> face down. They assaulted us on the buttocks with rifle butts and batons.
I
> counted six officers who assaulted me. The same was happening to Urginia
and
> Mukwecheni. I tried to block one blow with my arm and received a heavy
blow
> above the wrist."
> Munyuki said Mukoyi had sustained more serious injuries and had been lying
> motionless in the cell.
> "He is stretched on the cold floor and cannot talk, walk or even sit. The
> doctor said he was concerned about him and has gone to see the police
> officers about him." The doctor later spoke to The Daily News on Sunday.
He
> said he preferred not to be mentioned by name for professional and
security
> reasons. He confirmed Munyuki had sustained a fracture and said Mukoyi was
> in a bad condition and was starting to have convulsions. "I suspect Mukoyi
> sustained serious abdominal injuries consistent with severe beating," said
> the doctor late last night. "He is now having convulsions." Munyuki said
he
> was sharing the same cell with Gwisai, Spicer, Mukwecheni and one Alf
> Nyahunzwi, a legal consultant who lives somewhere in the Avenues area of
> Harare. He said apart from Gwisai, Mukoyi and himself, three other people
> had been injured, including another woman who allegedly sustained a broken
> leg. He said the woman was released.
> Trouble started when the riot police descended on the rally organised by
the
> MDC in Africa Unity Square and at the MDC offices in Mbuya Nehanda Street.
A
> total of 60 people, including the journalists, were arrested at the MDC
> offices, while 25 more were rounded up in the square. Eyewitnesses said
the
> police had driven a Puma vehicle, registration number ZRP 316X, into a
crowd
> of about 2 000 gathered outside the MDC offices in Mbuya Nehanda Street,
> causing people to flee in all directions. They said armed riot policemen
> arrived at the MDC offices 20 minutes after the rally started and used
brute
> force to break it up. Learnmore Jongwe, the MDC official spokesman, said
the
> police had fired shots into the air to disrupt the rally, before arresting
> people "most of whom were just passers-by caught in the crossfire". A
> security guard on duty in the area said he counted five gunshots. Munyuki,
> Mauluka and Mukwecheni, who arrived on the scene after the rally had been
> dispersed, were arrested at 1.15 pm.
> "The police said they had known people from The Daily News would come to
> cover the rally because 'your newspaper always acts in cahoots with the
MDC.
> You always lie about the police. After this you can write about real
police
> brutality.'" Mauluka's camera was seized and smashed on the tarmac.
Munyuki
> said the police had recorded the details of the arrested men and women but
> had not formally charged them. "They merely herded us into the cells," he
> said. "They did not even search us or ask us to remove our shoes, as
> normally happens." As a result Munyuki had his cellphone on him last night
> and was able communicate with his office from the third floor of Harare
> Central.
> A police officer said last night that the detained people would be charged
> under Section 31 (c) of the Public Order and Security Act (POSA). The
> section states that: "Any person who, at a public gathering behaves in a
> threatening, abusive or insulting manner intending to prevent the
> transaction of the business for which the gathering is called together,
> shall be guilty of an offence and liable to a fine not exceeding a $50 000
> or two years in jail, or both." Bvudzijena said the police stopped the
rally
> because MDC activists had gone around the city beating up people and
trying
> to provoke trouble. "We had told the organisers they could not hold their
> rally at the Harare Gardens because that venue and the atmosphere in the
> city are not conducive for political gatherings," he told Reuters news
> agency. "We based our decision on POSA but we had agreed that they could
> hold their rally at their offices. We intervened when their people went
> around trying to provoke a situation." Meanwhile in Bulawayo, the police
> dispersed a crowd of about 2 000 people from Stanley Square in Makokoba
> Suburb near the city. They then detained Thokozani Khupe , the MP for
> Makokoba, and Gertrude Mtombeni, a member of the MDC national executive.
> The lawyer for the three daily News staffers, Lawrence Chibwe said that
his
> please to have three surrendered to him so that a private doctor could
> attend to them has fallen on deaf areas and the police insist that a
> government doctor would attend to them.
> "Munyuki, Mauluka and Mukwecheni are a sorry sight. They are actually in a
> state of shock. The police refused to take them to hospital despite my
> pleas," said Chibwe.
> Under the Public Order and Security Act, the police can hold "prisoners"
for
> seven days without preferring any charges.
> END

Zimbabwe: IFJ calls for Journalist's Freedom

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/8408

The International Federation of Journalists, the world's largest organization of journalists, today called for a leading journalist on trial under draconian new press regulations to be freed and for the Government of Zimbabwe to end its "deplorable vendetta against press freedom." The IFJ says the trial of Andrew Meldrum, the Guardian's Harare correspondent, is "victimization of a respected professional."
Media Release
> 13 June 2002
>
> The International Federation of Journalists, the world's largest
> organization of journalists, today called for a leading journalist on
trial
> under draconian new press regulations to be freed and for the Government
of
> Zimbabwe to end its "deplorable vendetta against press freedom." The IFJ
> says the trial of Andrew Meldrum, the Guardian's Harare correspondent, is
> "victimization of a respected professional."
>
> Meldrum, who is accused of publishing a false story under the country's
> spiteful media law, denies the charge. Late last years he was one of a
group
> of journalists accused by government representatives of "supporting
> terrorism".
>
> "This is victimization pure and simple," said IFJ General Secretary Aidan
> White, "The government has adopted an unacceptable pattern of targeting
> certain journalists."
>
> Meldrum is an American citizen who has lived and worked in Zimbabwe for
more
> than 20 years. He is the first journalist to be tried in Zimbabwe under
the
> Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, which has been widely
> condemned by press freedom groups in the region and internationally. He
says
> he did not publish false information deliberately, and has pleaded not
> guilty. He could nevertheless face up to two years in prison or a fine of
> about US$2000 if convicted. Two other journalists, Lloyd Midiwa and Collin
> Chiwanza, have also been arrested in relation to the same report and face
> trial later.
>
> "This about a report based on wrong information is a matter to be resolved
> in the newsroom and not in the courts," says White, "It is absolutely
> unacceptable that honest reporters should be prosecuted in this way. The
> story was written in good faith. The legal process is being used as a
weapon
> to intimidate the whole profession," he said.
>
> "Ethics in the newsroom are matters that should be addressed by
professional
> themselves. They do not need to be directed by the law or by government".
>
> Further information: + 32 2 235 22 00
>
> The IFJ is the world's largest journalists' group with 500,000 members in
> 106 countries.
>
> **The information contained in this autolist item is the sole
responsibility
> of IFJ**
>

Zimbabwe: STATE TRIAL OF JOURNALIST LIKELY TO HIT A BRICKWALL

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/media/8410

The trial of the Guardian Zimbabwe correspondent Andrew Meldrum is likely to hit a brick wall as the state faces the dilemma of proving whether Meldrum published the story in Zimbabwe or not as the article in contention was downloaded from the internet. The defence in the case has amounted the trial to an attempt by the Zimbabwe government to inflict its repressive media laws on the rest of the world. The dilemma that the state finds itself in is based on the fact that the Guardian newspaper is unavailable in Zimbabwe, but the prosecution insists that its criminal courts have jurisdiction over editors and journalists abroad whenever their "falsehoods" are downloaded by intelligence officers who surf the net looking for "law breakers."
ALERT UPDATE
>
> 17 JUNE 2002
>
> STATE TRIAL OF JOURNALIST LIKELY TO HIT A BRICKWALL
>
> The trial of the Guardian Zimbabwe correspondent Andrew Meldrum is likely
to
> hit a brick wall as the state faces the dilemma of proving whether Meldrum
> published the story in Zimbabwe or not as the article in contention was
> downloaded from the internet. The defence in the case, has amounted the
> trial to an attempt by the Zimbabwe government to inflict its repressive
> media laws on the rest of the world
> Then dilemma that the state finds itself in is based on the fact that the
> Guardian newspaper is unavailable in Zimbabwe, but the prosecution insists
> that its criminal courts have jurisdiction over editors and journalists
> abroad whenever their "falsehoods" are downloaded by intelligence officers
> who surf the net looking for "law breakers."
> The prosecution contends that the crime is one of strict liability - i.e.
> that the journalist is guilty if the allegation reported turns out to be
> false, however credible or newsworthy it was at the time of publication.
> The magistrate in the Meldrum case, Godfrey Macheyo, must decide the
crucial
> question of where the website story is published in London, where it was
> uploaded on to the Guardian Unlimited web server, or in Harare, where
> Sergeant Blessmore Chishaka downloaded it last month.
> If the crime of false publication was committed in London, the Zimbabwe
> court should have no jurisdiction. But if committed on downloading in
> Zimbabwe, the court would have jurisdiction to punish not only Meldrum but
> also the editor of the Guardian and anyone else responsible for the
> uploading. Last week the prosecution, which likens the World Wide Web to
> television broadcasting, sought to demonstrate how Guardian Unlimited is
> published in Zimbabwe. The court moved to the business centre at the
> Sheraton Hotel where Sergeant Chishaka quickly accessed Guardian Unlimited
> and called up every article written by Andrew Meldrum - except the
offending
> piece.
> "Possibly it has been deleted," he concluded.
>
> The case resumes on Monday 17 June, with the prosecution relying on a copy
> of the web page downloaded last month. Beatrice Mtetwa, Meldrum's lawyer
> argued last week that the printout that was produced by the state is
> different from the one that was produced at the initial hearing of her
> client on May 2 and therefore did not constitute "admissible evidence" The
> prosecutor, Thabani Mpofu insisted that the document was admissible in
terms
> of the Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act. Mtetwa countered by saying
that
> the document was produced on a site that is neither owned by Meldrum or
one
> he has control of. Mtetwa added that that if the court is to accept the
> document as evidence then the prosecution must demonstrate its originality
> by leading evidence which shows how the document was edited and fed on the
> website. Mpofu however argued that, what was the center of the trail was
> the story not websites and the Internet. The defence proposes to produce
> expert evidence to explain the difference between "push" technologies like
> broadcasting which transmit or direct information to particular areas and
> the "pull" technology of the world wide web, by which information reaches
> Zimbabwe only as a result of an electronic message sent from that
> jurisdiction which pulls the copy off the web server in London - the place
> where, as a matter of common sense, it is made available to the public.
The
> Meldrum case is the first to assert local criminal jurisdiction over
foreign
> web postings.
> MISA-Zimbabwe believes that the prosecution of Meldrum may prove an "own
> goal" for the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act. The
> government claims that its laws are of concern only to Zimbabwe and that
> they provide no warrant for the international community to interfere in
the
> countries internal affairs. But by giving these laws extraterritorial
> effect, asserting jurisdiction over web publishers wherever they may be
> located, Zimbabwe's laws are attacking freedom of speech abroad as well as
> at home. Even on the theory of national sovereignty, this would entitle
> other countries to take action against Zimbabwe to protect the freedom of
> speech of their own citizens.
> END

africa: UN'S African aid plan seriously flawed

2002-06-20

http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/pressrels/180602.html

Save the Children UK says that UN food aid plans to ensure 13 million people in Southern Africa do not go hungry have been compromised by a seriously flawed assumption. The World Food Program (WFP) of the UN is predicting that nearly two million of the three and a quarter million tonnes of grain required in the region will be commercially imported. In reality, commercial importers have the capacity to import only a fraction of this amount - leaving a massive food shortfall if the UN is not prepared to step up its own aid programme.

central africa: SA using mystery man in Congo?

2002-06-20

http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.jsp?a=59&o=4723

Are South African intelligence services using a controversial French businessman in their Congo peace bid? The answer to a recent parliamentary question suggests they may be. The man, Jean-Yves Ollivier, has long been regarded as a frontman for French intelligence and business interests in Africa -- allegedly also serving as a key sanctions buster for apartheid South Africa.

COMOROS: Military remain at key buildings amid power struggle

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/8270

The military continued to surround key government buildings on the main Comoros island of Grande Comore on Monday as a power struggle for control of key ministries continued.
U N I T E D N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)

COMOROS: Military remain at key buildings amid power struggle

JOHANNESBURG, 17 June (IRIN) - The military continued to surround key government buildings on the main Comoros island of Grande Comore on Monday as a power struggle for control of key ministries continued.

Kalula Kalambay, UN Development Programme spokesman in the capital Moroni told IRIN: "It is not a coup. They have a problem with the new political structure."

Under a new political system, the islands of Moheli, Anjouan and Grand Comore now have their own federal presidents. An overall Union president is also based on Grande Comore.

The military activity started last week after newly elected Grand Comore President Abdou Soule Elbak and Union President Azali Assoumani couldn't agree on how they would share rule of the island.

Although the islands have a constitution, it doesn't detail how the separation of powers between the federal presidents and the Union president would work, Kalambay said.

Elbak and Assoumani are based in Moroni but the island doesn't have a local and national government. Initially the two agreed on the control of certain ministries and sharing offices but couldn't agree on the control of the revenue generating departments like finance, budget and customs.

"Elbak has also found that in sharing an island with Assoumani, he doesn't have as much control as the presidents of the other two islands and has unexpectedly found himself negotiating power," said Kalambay. "He feels this will make him weaker compared to the other two presidents."

Elbak, who was elected over Assoumani's choice, Bakari Abdallah Boina, nominated his own people to other ministries but Assoumani objected.

"That is where the conflict started," said Kalambay. "The [Union] President [Assoumani] is used to having full power and doesn't want to give up these things."

Assoumani originally came to power in a coup but stepped down to qualify in the recent vote for a Union president.

Kalambay said that as a precautionary measure the army, controlled by Assoumani, was put in places "where the money is" and have been posted outside the department of finance and the customs building.

The next step, said Kalambay, was for the four presidents to meet to discuss the way forward.

"However, we are safe. There is confusion, but there is still hope. The army is trying to be neutral and we [the UN] continue with our programmes and are free to travel. We keep optimistic," he said.

[ENDS]

IRIN-SA
Tel: +27 11 880-4633
Fax: +27 11 447-5472
Email: IRIN-SA@irin.org.za

[This Item is Delivered to the "Africa-English" Service of the UN's IRIN
humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views
of the United Nations. For further information, free subscriptions, or
to change your keywords, contact e-mail: IRIN@ocha.unon.org or Web:
http://www.irinnews.org . If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post
this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Reposting by commercial
sites requires written IRIN permission.]

Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2002

CONGO: At least 10,000 flee fighting in Brazzaville

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/8269

At least 10,000 people have fled Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo, following two days of fighting between government forces and Ninja militias that began on Friday, the United Nations Humanitarian Coordination Office in the country reported. On Friday, it said, Brazzaville endured two sustained military attacks in the northeastern outskirts of the town. The first was against the military based near the international airport at Maya Maya, and the second targeted a police school and a station of the gendarmerie in the neighbourhood of Moukondo.
U N I T E D N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)

CONGO: At least 10,000 flee fighting in Brazzaville

NAIROBI, 17 June (IRIN) - At least 10,000 people have fled Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo, following two days of fighting between government forces and Ninja militias that began on Friday, the United Nations Humanitarian Coordination Office in the country reported.

On Friday, it said, Brazzaville endured two sustained military attacks in the northeastern outskirts of the town. The first was against the military based near the international airport at Maya Maya, and the second targeted a police school and a station of the gendarmerie in the neighbourhood of Moukondo. Hundreds of rounds of rockets, mortars, and heavy-calibre machine-gun fire were directed on both areas, the UN reported. The Ninja tried repeatedly, in vain, to destroy the government military helicopters at the airport.

On Saturday, the sound of artillery fire, rockets and mortars reverberated around the hills surrounding Brazzaville as government forces attempted to "widen the safety zone" around the capital, Bill Paton, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Brazzaville, told IRIN. At least 10 attackers and three civilians were confirmed dead, he said.

Government operations were continuing in areas surrounding the capital on Monday.

[ENDS]

[This Item is Delivered to the "Africa-English" Service of the UN's IRIN
humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views
of the United Nations. For further information, free subscriptions, or
to change your keywords, contact e-mail: Irin@ocha.unon.org or Web:
http://www.irinnews.org . If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post
this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Reposting by commercial
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kenya: Sudan peace talks opens in Kenyan capital

2002-06-20

http://www.africantimes.com/articlepg1.asp?ID=48318

Talks aimed at finding a lasting solution to the 19-year conflict between the Sudan government and rebels opened in the Kenyan capital Nairobi on Monday with both parties expressing commitment to a ceasefire agreement. The talks are being held under the auspices of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a regional body which groups Kenya, Uganda, the Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia.

Liberia: rebels raids town close to capital

2002-06-20

http://www.newafrica.com/news/articlepg1.asp?ID=48383&countryid=27

Liberian rebels Tuesday raided a town close to the country's capital Monrovia and killed some civilians, according to reports reaching here. The reports said the fighting cropped up in the market town of Gba, some 40 kilometers northwest of the capital, when rebel fighters from Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) encountered the government troops there.

Madagascar: Ravalomanana forms new government

2002-06-20

http://www.africantimes.com/articlepg1.asp?ID=48375

Madagascar's Marc Ravalomanana formed a new government on Tuesday but excluded allies of his arch rival only days after saying he planned a national unity administration. There was no immediate explanation for the apparent about-turn and Ravalomanana's officials gave reporters in the capital Antananarivo the new list of ministers without comment.

MANO RIVER UNION: One of the world's worst crisis, says USAID

2002-06-20

http://www.usaid.gov/hum_response/ofda/manoce_sr3_fy02.html

The sustained conflict in the Mano River countries of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone has created one of the most severe humanitarian crises in the world, and strained political and economic relations between the three states, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) says in a new report.

NAMIBIA: Namibia may be hit by food crisis

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/8261

Southern Africa's disastrous food crisis may spread to Namibia, as it has emerged that 70,000 people in the Caprivi region urgently needed food aid. The World Food Programme (WFP) has already said that almost 13 million people will face food shortages in Southern Africa and so far Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia have declared a disaster.
U N I T E D N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)

NAMIBIA: Namibia may be hit by food crisis

JOHANNESBURG, 13 June (IRIN) - Southern Africa's disastrous food crisis may spread to Namibia, as it was announced on Thursday that 70,000 people in the Caprivi region urgently needed food aid.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has already said that almost 13 million people will face food shortages in Southern Africa and so far Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia have declared a disaster.

Gabriel Kangowa, Deputy Director of the emergency management unit, in the office of President Sam Nujoma, told IRIN that assessment teams in other regions of the country will return to the capital, Windhoek, next week. Their findings will be presented to cabinet and they could seek a declaration of a disaster.

Namibia, normally a dry country, faced erratic rainfall this year and crop damage by animals and birds. In some areas like Caprivi, production could only cover 35 percent of the regional cereal needs.

Kangowa said his unit has already been in touch with the WFP representative in the country. WFP in Namibia currently only focuses on refugees but Kangowa said there would be contact with the nearby office in Luanda, Angola.

As part of the regional response to the crisis, the Southern African Development Community's (SADC) council of ministers met in Gaborone on Thursday with food security topping the agenda.

In addition to the 12,7 million people who need an estimated 1,2 million mt of cereals, a SADC statement also noted that there were other requirements like sanitation, health and education, especially for children who leave school to look for work.

The secretariat said: "It was agreed that the situation has been aggravated by poor policies on food security in the member states, poor macro-economic performance of the affected countries, [the] HIV/AIDS impact and poor coping ability."

It agreed that the WFP's support should continue and said that the WFP would probably be ready to launch an appeal in New York by the end of June.

The member states would also submit a list of requirements to the SADC secretariat within the next two weeks. These would include medium to longer-term needs such as policy strengthening and reforms, infrastructure developments and other "recovery programmes" which are beyond the funding provided by the UN agencies.

SADC member states will meet and consolidate these requirements into a draft appeal which should be approved at a meeting in Mozambique on 5 July. It recommended that a SADC appeal be launched in Geneva where ambassadors are accredited to deal with food crises.

Meanwhile World Food Summit ended in Rome on Thursday with the 183 member states of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reaffirming their political will to halve the number of hungry by 2015, but without a binding decision on how to achieve the target, AFP reported.

The summit was bogged down in controversies ranging from the developing world's battle to access US and European markets, to whether genetically modified food, an aid consignment of which was rejected by Zimbabwe, is the answer to food shortages.

Critics also slammed the cost of the meeting, saying the money could have provided food for 34,500 hungry children for a year.

But as organisations like the WFP battle donor fatique, the German foreign ministry announced that it would allocate an additional US $940,000 this year in urgent food aid for Southern Africa.

[ENDS]

IRIN-SA
Tel: +27 11 880-4633
Fax: +27 11 447-5472
Email: IRIN-SA@irin.org.za

[This Item is Delivered to the "Africa-English" Service of the UN's IRIN
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nigeria: 18 Feared Dead As Cultists Clash At Nsukka Varsity

2002-06-20

http://allafrica.com/stories/200206190387.html

NO fewer than 18 persons have been killed in a violent clash between members of two rival secret cults in the University of Nigeria (UNN), Nsukka. People believed to be secret cult members stormed the university in three vehicles including a Mercedes Benz car and started shooting sporadically at students within the Faculty of Engineering complex.

somalia: HEAVY FIGHTING BREAKS OUT IN SOUTHERN SOMALIA

2002-06-20

http://www.newafrica.com/news/articlepg1.asp?ID=48354&countryid=45

Heavy fighting broke out Monday between rival militiamen in the very fertile Middle Shabelle region of southern Somalia. The fighting is between the supporters of the interior minister of the transitional national government Dahir Dayah and those of warlord Mohamed Dhere controlling Jowhar town, the capital city of Middle Shabelle region.

SUDAN: Nuba ceasefire to be renewed but issues remain

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/8355

The government of Sudan has agreed to an extension of the local ceasefire agreement in the Nuba Mountains region of south-central Sudan from Thursday, and the rebel SPLM/A is set to follow suit, but there are still problems with its scope and implementation.
U N I T E D N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)

SUDAN: Nuba ceasefire to be renewed but issues remain

NAIROBI, 19 June (IRIN) - The government of Sudan has agreed to an extension of the local ceasefire agreement in the Nuba Mountains region of south-central Sudan from Thursday, and the rebel SPLM/A is set to follow suit, but there are still problems with its scope and implementation.

The National Congress government in Khartoum has committed itself to extending the ceasefire agreement for another six months, starting from Thursday 20 June, Republic of Sudan Radio reported on Monday.

And SPLM/A spokesman Samson Kwaje confirmed to IRIN on Wednesday evening that the rebel movement would also agree to an extension of the ceasefire, though he said he did not know the duration or other details because the full results of an SPLM/A-Nuba congress on the matter were still not known.

Additional details would be available on Thursday, when the current ceasefire agreement comes up for renewal, Kwaje added.

For the government's part, foreign ministry under secretary, Mutrif Siddiq Ali Numayri, said the agreement would continue along the lines of the accord reached in January between the government and the SPLM/A-Nuba region, Sudan Radio broadcast on Monday.

Numayri said the government had agreed to extend the agreement because of its importance to the peace and stability of the Nuba Mountains region, Southern Kordofan State, and as a means of promoting its development, the report added.

The government and SPLM/A-Nuba signed the renewable six-month Nuba Mountains ceasefire agreement, covering an area of some 80,000 sq km, on 19 January this year, after six days of closed-door negotiations facilitated by the US and Swiss governments in Burgenstock, central Switzerland.

The agreement has been implemented - and generally adhered to - under the supervision of a Joint Military Commission (JMC), comprising representatives of the government, the SPLM/A and of neutral third parties.

The Nuba ceasefire had, so far, brought "mixed results" for the civilian population of the SPLM/A-controlled areas of Nuba, and needed to translate into the achievement of minimum food aid targets to avert a looming food crisis in the region, humanitarian agencies warned in late May.

On the positive side, they said, many Nuba people had welcomed remission from the threat of military attacks and aerial bombardment, and the unprecedented return of civilians from government-controlled areas.

However, bureaucratic issues and delays had contributed to a "growing erosion of confidence in the ceasefire arrangement", and it was essential to ensure unimpeded humanitarian access and to strengthen the mechanisms required for effective political pressure to be brought to bear on all actors, they added.

Due to difficulties in delivering humanitarian assistance in the Nubas, particularly to SPLM/A-controlled areas, there was "growing evidence" to suggest that the vulnerability of the population had actually increased during the life of the ceasefire, partially due to the earlier than usual exhaustion of household food reserves brought on by the need to support returnees, according to NGOs organisations active in Sudan.

The government agreed in January to "unfettered humanitarian access to Nuba" but had continued to delay and deny flights into SPLM/A-controlled areas until mid-May - just weeks before the rainy season would make airstrips inaccessible there, Roger Winter, Assistant Administrator at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), told a US Congressional hearing on Sudan on 5 June.

In addition, "the government had launched a massive dry-season offensive in the oilfields [including western Upper Nile]... aided by thousands of its forces redeployed as a result of the Nuba Mountains ceasefire," John Prendergast, co-director for Africa of the International Crisis Group told a US Congressional hearing on 5 June.

The importance of the Nuba Mountains ceasefire agreement was that it was "formal and detailed", and included the element of independent verification, which may offer "a small model to look at" for other areas of war-torn Sudan, according to humanitarian and diplomatic sources.

Also, flight clearance was being carried out by the JMC, and not the government, and people were enjoying a new freedom of movement, a start to economic revitalisation and "an overall feeling of optimism", according to Roger Winter. There was now some hope of using this successful initiative as a model for zones of tranquillity in which to assist vulnerable populations elsewhere in Sudan, he added.

Yet, John Prendergast argued at the same Congressional hearing that "well-meaning efforts to secure Days of Tranquillity and localised ceasefires was misplaced", when what was needed was "blanket access for humanitarian aid" and an end to the warring parties' veto over where relief agencies could provide people in need with assistance.

"We have legitimised the veto over and over again, most recently with the focus on the Days of Tranquillity," Prendergast complained, saying that Washington and the UN must re-focus on the fundamental objective of humanitarian diplomacy: the principle of unfettered access.

[ENDS]

[This Item is Delivered to the "Africa-English" Service of the UN's IRIN
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UGANDA: Army bringing pressure to bear on LRA rebels

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/8267

The sustained offensive by the Ugandan army against the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in southern Sudan, code-named Operation Iron Fist, is forcing its leader, Joseph Kony, to release and allow his noncombatant captives to return to northern Uganda, according to a senior army official.
U N I T E D N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)

UGANDA: Army bringing pressure to bear on LRA rebels

NAIROBI, 14 June (IRIN) - The sustained offensive by the Ugandan army against the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in southern Sudan, code-named Operation Iron Fist, is forcing its leader, Joseph Kony, to release and allow his noncombatant captives to return to northern Uganda, according to a senior army official.

The Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) have been in southern Sudan since April in pursuit of the LRA, with the permission of the Sudanese government, which at one time supported the rebel group. Maj Shaban Bantariza, the UPDF director for information, told IRIN that the pressure of the army offensive on the LRA was forcing Kony to "get rid of his excess baggage", mainly comprising young children and weaker women.

The Ugandan media reported on Friday that some 57 children and 43 women had been released by Kony's right-hand man, Vincent Otti, who this week was reported to have crossed the border into Uganda from Sudan with a group of 400 fighters. Most of the ex-captives, who were subsequently interviewed, said their release was effected at Kony's express orders to his commanders to either release or kill those who were "unable to walk", according to Uganda Radio.

"We think he can no longer hold the women and the children, because of pressure. He released them, because it was dangerous for him to keep up with these people [the weaker captives]," Bantariza said.

On Thursday, the international Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children (WCRWC) said thousands of parents in northern Uganda were still desperately trying to find out what had happened to their children who had been abducted by the rebel group, 10 weeks after the launch of the UPDF operation in southern Sudan. The organisation urged the international community to send a team of monitors to southern Sudan to assess the situation of the abducted children and those of them used as soldiers.

"Operation Iron Fist has yielded no results. Parents are concerned that their children have been sacrificed in a war that does not distinguish between hostages and fighters," Alison Pillsbury, the programme manager of WCRWC's project for children and adolescents, said.

Although the Ugandan government had committed a full army division - comprising 10,000 troops - to the offensive, forcing the rebel group to scatter in small bands and flee into a mountainous region in southern Sudan, nothing concrete was known about the fate of the children, according to WCFWC.

In early May, humanitarian agencies in Uganda laid down contingency plans in anticipation of the rescue of at least 3,000 children from rebel captivity expected to result from the UPDF's offensive. There had, however, been "no children emerging, even as prisoners of war", according to the WCRWC statement. "The tragedy unfolding in southern Sudan is a manifestation of the horrors that child soldiers face," Pillsbury noted.

"Thousands of children have been forced to participate in atrocities and military combat outside their control and making. Although children, they are also considered soldiers or even terrorists, and thus are viewed as legitimate military targets, while in reality they are being used as human shields," she added.

The WCRWC's concerns for the child abductees echo those of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), which on 6 June noted in its latest donor update that the situation of relative stability obtaining in northern Uganda - boosted by improved relations between Uganda and Sudan, and the UPDF's subsequent assault on the LRA - had translated neither into reduced displacement in the troubled region nor the return of the children.

Almost 400,000 people were still living in "protected camps" for internally displaced persons in northern Uganda, and the anti-LRA campaign being conducted by the UPDF had not resulted in any significant increase in the numbers of returns from the thousands of the abducted children, it said.

Since 1986, when the insurgency began, the LRA has abducted an estimated 12,000, according to the UNICEF official figure, some of which have been rescued. Some 5,555 children, were still unaccounted for by the time the UPDF began its campaign in southern Sudan, according to UNICEF.

Adding its voice to that of the WCRWC and UNICEF, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in its April/May 2002 humanitarian report that was a broadly held belief that the UPDF offensive had not improved security in southern Sudan, prompting civilian movements across the border.

Responding to these mounting concerns, Bantariza said the UPDF's sustained pressure on the LRA group, which had forced Kony to release some of his captives, was part of the success of the offensive. "If we hadn't done that, it would mean that the children would still be in captivity. If they are looking for any fruit of the operation, then this is one ripe fruit," Bantariza said. "Nothing comes accidentally, there must be some human effort."

[ENDS]

[This Item is Delivered to the "Africa-English" Service of the UN's IRIN
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UGANDA: Government in peace deal with UNRF-II rebels

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/8356

The government of Uganda and the rebel Uganda National Rescue Front (UNRF-II) signed a formal ceasefire agreement in Kuru sub-county, Yumbe District, northwestern Uganda on Saturday, with the aim of paving the way for political dialogue in the West Nile region.
U N I T E D N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)

UGANDA: Government in peace deal with UNRF-II rebels

NAIROBI, 19 June (IRIN) - The government of Uganda and the rebel Uganda National Rescue Front (UNRF-II) signed a formal ceasefire agreement in Kuru sub-county, Yumbe District, northwestern Uganda on Saturday, with the aim of paving the way for political dialogue in the West Nile region.

Minister for Internal Affairs Eriya Kategaya, for the government, and the UNRF-II chairman, Maj-Gen Ali Bamuze, signed the peace agreement in which the parties said they would "mutually and unequivocally" to stop all forms of hostility and belligerence, according to local media.

The agreement followed dialogue between the two sides since 1998 and the announcement in January 2001 of a general amnesty for those rebels who renounced rebellion and surrendered to the Ugandan authorities.

UNRF-II was formed in 1996, after breaking from the West Bank Nile Front (also based in the northwest and predominantly Muslim), to fight the government of President Yoweri Museveni, and led by Bamuze - a former Ugandan army soldier of the deposed dictator Idi Amin, according to a report on major armed opposition groups in the Great Lakes region commissioned by the Forum for Early Warning and Early Response. [www.fewer.org/]

The Ugandan army spokesman, Maj Shaban Bantariza, said in April that UNRF-II largely consisted of ex-soldiers of Idi Amin's regime, which was overthrown in 1979, and who subsequently fought Museveni's government before eventually being "flushed out" of Uganda in 1997.

In the past, the rebel group has abducted civilians and attacked civilian targets, in common with the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) - previously supported by the Sudanese government, in retaliation for Ugandan support extended to the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A).

Bamuze said at the weekend that he had started the rebellion because he and his people "had been hurt" in the past, but decided to abandon the fighting because of pressure from the elders and other stakeholders, and an olive branch extended to him by the government, the independent Monitor newspaper reported on Tuesday. "I have come out with my entire team and we shall put our [demands] on the table for discussion," he was quoted as saying.

Kategaya assured Bamuze and others at the signing of the peace deal, including Attorney-General Francis Ayume, that there would be "no tricks in the implementation of the peace process", the Monitor report stated.

A joint task force has been composed, comprising three representatives from UNRF-II and three from the Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF), to ensure implementation of the agreement, including that the two parties carry out comprehensive documentation of personnel, arms and ammunition
in the possession of the rebel group.

The task force has also been mandated to oversee and coordinate the return of the UNRF II ex-combatants currently based in Juba and Khartoum in Sudan, and to facilitate the return of UNRF-II leaders overseas elsewhere, the Monitor reported.

Returning UNRF-II officers have also been undergoing sensitisation workshops in Yumbe, with inputs on law and order, the constitution and poverty reduction efforts from the ruling National Resistance Movement, Uganda Human Rights Commission, Uganda Amnesty Commission and the UPDF, according to sources in the north of the country.

The return to Uganda in early April of some 1,300 former UNRF-II rebels, who had been sheltering in exile in Sudan, has been generally seen in the context of improved diplomatic relations between the two countries as well as the Ugandan amnesty, regional analysts told IRIN.

By mid-April, some 2,500 UNRF-II fighters and their families had returned to Yumbe - the district in which they had previously been causing serious insecurity - to abandon fighting and negotiate peace with the government, local media reported.

The UNRF-II rebels had taken the chance to return when they realised that the UPDF was serious in its campaign against the LRA in southern Sudan (an operation it is undertaking with the blessing of the Sudanese government) and would hardly be likely to leave another rebel force operating in Sudan, according to Ugandan military sources.

The rebels camped at Koka in Yumbe after their return to Uganda, having previously been based at Roja, north of Kajo-Kaji, on the Sudanese border, according to The New Vision Ugandan government-owned newspaper in April.

Bantariza told IRIN in April that some of the UNRF-II soldiers were still in "good shape" and would be integrated into the Ugandan army. "We cannot do a wholesale integration into the army," he said. "Only some who are capable. A number of them are quite old, which makes them not good soldiers."

Critics of the government, especially from West Nile and Acholiland (the latter comprising Gulu, Pader and Kitgum districts), have argued that Kampala has been half-hearted in its commitment to its amnesty offer and shown greater urgency to pursue military means to end insurgency.

The Acholi Religious Leaders' Peace Initiative criticised the government in late May for sending the army to tackle the LRA in Sudan, saying it was against the spirit of the amnesty the government had offered rebels and dissidents, and seemed to have silenced anybody advocating dialogue and reconciliation.

The peace deal with the UNRF-II rebels may go some way, at least, to mitigating that criticism.

The challenge now, according to humanitarian workers, will be to set up rehabilitation centres in the north and west to help resettle those rebels who return, and to ensure at least some measure of social and economic development for these marginalised areas.

[ENDS]

[This Item is Delivered to the "Africa-English" Service of the UN's IRIN
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of the United Nations. For further information, free subscriptions, or
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ZAMBIA: Two million face food shortages

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/conflict/8331

About 2.3 million Zambians are in need of food aid, a Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) joint assessment has found.
U N I T E D N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)

ZAMBIA: Two million face food shortages

JOHANNESBURG, 18 June (IRIN) - About 2.3 million Zambians are in need of food aid, a Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) joint assessment has found.

The report, based on a crop and food supply assessment mission conducted during May, said the 2002 output of the main staple maize is estimated at 606,000 mt, 24 percent below last year's poor harvest and 42 percent lower than the normal crop of 2000.

The two organisations said the country needed 174,000 mt of food aid in the coming months to feed about 21 percent of the total population.

"Unless relieved by food assistance, the coming months will be very critical for large numbers of low-income households who have exhausted their coping mechanisms as a result of last year's poor harvest," the report said.

The FAO/WFP report added that the most affected area was the Southern Province, where 60 percent of the population is estimated to be in need of food relief.

Irregular rainfall had hampered agricultural activity in the southern parts of the country.

"The 2001/02 rainy season started well. However, from December onwards, rains were insufficient, erratic and poorly distributed, especially in the southern parts where precipitation amounted to only 30-60 percent of normal," the report said.

It recommended that agricultural inputs, such as seeds, should be urgently provided to allow drought-affected farming families to restart their agricultural production during the main planting season of 2002/2003.

The report said the widespread failure of crops meant people in affected regions had to develop coping mechanisms and alternative strategies to get food, such as poaching, fishing and selling charcoal.

"Migration to towns is also increasing in the Central and Eastern provinces. Border communities are engaged in cross border trading and piecework. In Southern Province families collect, sell and consume wild foods. Many families are also reducing daily meals," the two food organisations said.

The report said that the food crisis had already impacted on the young and people living with HIV/AIDS.

"In some areas of Lusaka and the Southern provinces, the hunger situation has made children stay away from school and most of the under five children are so malnourished that their growth and mental development will be impaired.

"Nearly every community assessed by the mission indicated that these people [HIV positive] were the most vulnerable in the village. Communities in Lusaka Province also mentioned that there was a high number of AIDS orphans in the community, which has increased the household size and thus the household level of food security."

Despite recent figures which show an improvement in the economy, the 2001 UN Development Programme (UNDP) Development Report puts Zambia as one of the poorest countries on the continent with about 63 percent of its population living on the equivalent of US $1 or less a day.

Rapid inflation combined with a sharp devaluation of the local currency the kwacha in the last decade, has eroded the purchasing power of households, worsening the food security problem in the country.

[ENDS]

IRIN-SA
Tel: +27 11 880-4633
Fax: +27 11 447-5472
Email: IRIN-SA@irin.org.za

[This Item is Delivered to the "Africa-English" Service of the UN's IRIN
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of the United Nations. For further information, free subscriptions, or
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zimbabwe: Hunger Outbreak Could Be Last Straw

2002-06-20

http://allafrica.com/stories/200206170022.html

The recent warning that six million Zimbabweans face hunger could be the final straw for the country, already reeling from high inflation, daily food shortages and political instability. A regional food assessment puts almost half of Zimbabwe's population at risk of having no food mainly because of a drought and the country's land reform programme.

zimbabwe: Police armed with batons, guns and teargas attack rally

2002-06-20

http://www.zwnews.com/issuefull.cfm?ArticleID=4549

Riot police used teargas and fired shots in the air on Sunday to halt a Zimbabwe opposition rally held to mark South Africa's youth day, arresting more than 30 activists and a freelance television journalist. A freelance journalist at the scene said police armed with batons, guns and teargas attacked the rally of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) 20 minutes after it had begun.

Cross the digital divide, UN tells developing nations

2002-06-20

http://www.africaonline.com/site/Articles/1,3,48296.jsp

UN officials warn many of the world's poorest countries will remain economically backward unless they are "wired" for information and communication technology. Digital experts, communications specialists and government representatives gathered in New York Monday to discuss ways of bridging the digital gap between rich and developing nations.

Geophysicists Find Sharp Sides to African Superplume

the earth's crust and below

2002-06-20

http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/02/pr0250.htm

Scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have discovered that the African superplume - a massive, hot upwelling of rock beneath southern Africa - has edges that are sharp and distinct, not diffuse and blurred as previously thought. Such sharp, lateral boundaries have never been found in the Earth's mantle before, and they challenge scientists' understanding of the interior. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

GRace Hopper Celebration of Women and Computing 2002

2002-06-20

http://www.gracehopper.org

The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing 2002 is the fourth in a series of conferences designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront. Presenters are leaders in their respective fields, representing industrial, academic and government communities. Leading researchers present their current work, while special sessions focus on the role of women in today's technology fields.

SOMALIA AND CONGO: SOMALI TELECOM - REACHING THE PARTS OTHERS CANNOT REACH

Balancing Act News Update 112

2002-06-20

http://www.balancingact-africa.com/news/current1.html

Somali Telecom's Ed Resor has an interesting story to tell. He helped the Eritreans get international connectivity at the end of the war with Ethiopia and created similar telecomms links for Somalia. He's also recently invested in the Congo (DRC). It sounds like he always invests in former war zones but he assured us in this interview in New York that he's looking for places where people think it can't be done because they are either too small or too difficult.

SOUTH AFRICA: legislative worries around ICTs

2002-06-20

http://allafrica.com/stories/200206180398.html

The issue of control over the .za domain space may be hogging the limelight, but the Electronic Communications and Transactions (ECT) Bill which triggered the dispute contains other provisions more worrying to many IT experts.

Tunisia: jailing of cyber-dissident

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/internet/8288

Tunisia's recent crackdown on cyber-dissidents has taken an ominous turn with the arrest and detention of journalist Zouhair Yahyaoui, founder and editor of the online news site TUNeZINE.
Better known under the pseudonym Ettounsi ("The Tunisian"), Yahyaoui was charged Thursday under clause 2 of Article 306b of the Tunisian criminal code for "knowingly putting out false news" and also for "stealing" Internet connection time at a local cyber caf? where he was working.

Yahyaoui faces up to 10 years in prison if found guilty of both charges. The judge's decision on his case has been deferred until next Thursday.
His arrest is just the latest in a worldwide trend of repressive governments cracking down on Internet journalists[14] and dissidents. Some of the more recent cases have occurred in Jordan and Vietnam [15]. And in 2000, Ukrainian journalist Georgiy Gongadze[16], the founder of feisty political site Ukrainia
n Truth, was found murdered outside Kiev. Yahyaoui is Tunisia's best-known cyber-journalist and his website's mix of politics, satire and free di
scussion has proved particularly popular with Tunisian young people. He was arrested on June 4 at a Tunis cyber caf? by six plainclothes police officers, who showed no cred
entials and gave no reason for the arrest. He was taken to his home, where the police searched his bedroom and seized his computer equipment.
Yahyaoui set up the site in July last year to put out news about the fight for democracy and freedom in Tunisia. He published opposition material online and was one of the first people to circulate a letter from his uncle, Judge Mokhtar Yahyaoui, to President Ben Ali criticizing the country's legal system.
Between May 26 and 28, TUNeZINE[17] organized an online forum on a recent government referendum and the state of the opposition, which drew a large number of participants.
Yahyaoui's supporters believe that it was primarily the circulation of the letter from his uncle that made him a target for Tunisia's state police.
"I really believe it's personal now and that the powers that be want to make an example of Zouhair," said one of his editorial colleagues at TUNeZINE who asked not to be named because of the possibility of
travel restrictions being imposed by the Tunisian authorities on identified dissidents.

"It's clear that they are desperate to find something to charge him with because they know that's the o
nly way they can stop him from criticizing the government's policies and its appalling human rights record," added the spokesperson.
For Sophie Elwarda, spokeswoman for the recently formed Committee for the Liberation of Ettounsi, the battle to clear his name has a strongly personal dimension: She recently became engaged to Zouhair Yahyaoui.

"We first exchanged messages in a discussion forum on the TUNeZINE website and it developed quickly from there," she said. "I became more and more involved in the production of the site and ended up as
one of the main editorial team. I also fell in love with Zouhair."

While Elwarda hopes that next week's ruling will see her fianc? walk free from the courtroom, she, like her colleagues in TUNeZINE, is under no illusions about the summary nature of Tunisian justice.

"They have nothing like what we would consider an independent judiciary," the spokesperson said. "If the president decides that someone is to be punished, then that's pretty much what will happen."

Elwarda, who is based in Paris, sees media coverage as essential to applying pressure on the Tunisian authorities and said that other independent groups had also taken up the case.

The Paris-based organization Reporters Without Borders[18] denounced the charges against Yahyaoui as "outrageous" and said it feared more Tunisian cyber-dissidents would be arrested in coming days.

"He could be given a five-year prison sentence just for putting news on an Internet website," said Robert M?nard, secretary-general of Reporters Without Borders. "This is outrageous. Since the 26 May constitutional referendum, President Ben Ali has committed all kinds of abuses against his opponents. When is this going to stop?"

The TUNeZINE website, which is hosted in France, has been censured by the Tunisian authorities from the outset. But each week a list of "proxy" addresses has been available so Tunisians could get around the blockage and access the site.

A few hours after Yahyaoui's arrest, the site had vanished from the Internet, reportedly because police obtained the access code to it. The site has since returned but access from Tunisia is now extremely difficult for anyone without the high level of Net savvy required to circumvent government filters.

According to Amnesty International[19], all those engaged in the defense of human rights in Tunisia suffer daily harassment, even in their private life. Reporters Without Borders added that over the past six months in Tunisia, one journalist has been jailed, two physically attacked, two publications seized and two others suspended.

For Sophie Elwarda, the long wait until next week's sentencing will be a painful one. "It's very hard but I'm trying to remain optimistic and stay busy by keeping people informed about developments in Tunisia. Whatever happens, I'm going to keep fighting until Zouhair is given back his freedom."

Copyright ? 1994-2002 Wired Digital Inc. All rights reserved.

*** References from this document ***

[orig] http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,53186,00.html
[14] http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,45227,00.html
[15] http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,51960,00.html
[16] http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,44012,00.html
[17] http://www.tunezine.com/
[18] http://www.rsf.org/
[19] http://www.amnesty.org/

UGANDA: ICT-supported education strategy

2002-06-20

http://www.iconnect-online.org/base/show_template_hl?template=1&article_id=831&subcat=107&

When talking about information and communication technologies (ICTs) being used to achieve sustainable development in African countries, what normally comes to mind is the telecommunications and utility service sectors. Charlotte Kawesa describes how the Ugandan government, with support from IICD, is incorporating ICTs in teacher training.

ANGOLA: More aid needed to make peace process work

2002-06-20

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=28415

A senior UN official on Tuesday urged donors to give generously to a US $142 million "bridging" appeal for Angola over the next six months. Commenting after his recent visit to Angola, Ross Mountain, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Assistant Emergency Relief Coordinator, said: "Of particular concern were the 800,000 people only recently within reach of humanitarian aid, following the 4 April signing of a ceasefire between government forces and UNITA rebels."

BURKINA FASO: Netherlands supports poverty reduction

2002-06-20

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=28330

Burkina Faso and the Netherlands government signed an agreement on Thursday, in which the Dutch government would provide 21 billion cfa (US $30 million) to support a three year poverty reduction strategy.

GAMBIA: ADB grants US $1.5 million for water and sanitation

2002-06-20

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=28304

The African Development Bank has approved a grant of about US $1.5 million to finance a water and sanitation study in The Gambia, a news release from the Bank said on Wednesday.

Malawi: Malawi receives $14 million aid donation

2002-06-20

http://www.sabcnews.com/africa/southern_africa/0,1009,36644,00.html

The US government announced that it will make a $14 million aid donation to enable hunger-stricken Malawi to import the staple food, maize. The Unites States Agency for International Development (USAID) said the funds would be used to buy 40 000 metric tones of maize.

RWANDA: US $14 million for HIV/AIDS drugs

2002-06-20

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=28336

The Rwandan government is to spend US $14.64 million pledged in April by the United Nations Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, on antiretroviral drugs, the Rwanda News Agency (RNA) reported on Tuesday.

SOUTHERN AFRICA: AUSAID food security programme

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/fundraising/8422

Australia will provide AUS $10 million (US $5.5 million) for projects to improve food security in Southern Africa, the government's aid arm, AUSAID, said in a statement.
U N I T E D N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)

SOUTHERN AFRICA: AUSAID food security programme

JOHANNESBURG, 18 June (IRIN) -
Australia will provide AUS $10 million (US $5.5 million) for projects to improve food security in Southern Africa, the government's aid arm, AUSAID, said in a statement.

"The projects will be carried out through Australian non-government organisations (NGOs) over the next three years. This was in addition to the AUS $2.5 million (just under US $2 million) announced earlier this month for an emergency feeding programme in central and southern Mozambique and AUS $2 million (US $1.1 million) announced in March for emergency drought assistance in Zimbabwe," the statement said.

Southern Africa is currently facing a severe food shortage, affecting about 13 million people.

NGOs to receive the latest funding include World Vision, Adventist Development Relief Agency, Australian Foundation for the Peoples of Asia and the Pacific, Care Australia, Plan and Austcare.

"These organisations will work with local partners on activities to provide long-term food security, such as diversifying crops, improving crop storage, facilities and techniques, raising community awareness about nutrition and improving market opportunities," the organisation said.

The countries set to benefit include Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia.

[ENDS]

IRIN-SA
Tel: +27 11 880-4633
Fax: +27 11 447-5472
Email: IRIN-SA@irin.org.za

[This Item is Delivered to the "Africa-English" Service of the UN's IRIN
humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views
of the United Nations. For further information, free subscriptions, or
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African Workshop on Science Communication for Sustainable Development

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/courses/8351

SciDev.Net is holding a four-day workshop in Entebbe, Uganda on 29 September to 3 October on Science Communication for Sustainable Development. It will bring together a group of scientists, public relations officers, print and radio/TV journalists along with professionals from academies of science, government departments, science and technology policy institutions and non-governmental organisations. Participants will be mostly from the eastern African region and will explore how capacity for science communication can be enhanced in the region.
African Workshop on Science Communication for Sustainable Development
---------------------------------------------------------------------

29 September to 3 October, 2002
Entebbe, Uganda

Invitation to participate in a workshop on Science Communication for
Sustainable Development

SciDev.Net is holding a four-day workshop in Entebbe, Uganda on Sci-
ence Communication for Sustainable Development. It will bring to-
gether a group of scientists, public relations officers, print and
radio/TV journalists along with professionals from academies of sci-
ence, government departments, science and technology policy institu-
tions and non-governmental organisations. Participants will be mostly
from the eastern African region and will explore how capacity for
science communication can be enhanced in the region.

The workshop will combine presentations from invited speakers (from
Africa, Europe and North America) with a series of practical learning
exercises and structured discussion groups aimed at sharing and
strengthening science communication practices and helping to identify
key resource and training needs. SciDev.Net is organising and running
the workshop with the support of the African Academy of Sciences
(AAS), the Ugandan National Academy of Sciences (UNAS), the Ugandan
National Council for Science and Technology (UNCST), and the InterA-
cademy Panel (IAP).

If you would like to attend the workshop, further details and an ap-
plication form can be obtained from:
http://www.scidev.net/entebbe/invite.html

Participation in the meeting is free, although participants will be
expected to cover their travel and accommodation costs. A limited
amount of funding is available to cover the costs of some African
participants.

CALL FOR APPLICANTS

Adilisha Distance Learning Courses For Human Rights And Advocacy

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/courses/8416

This is the first call for applicants for Adilisha distance learning courses for human rights and advocacy organisations in southern Africa. Fahamu, in association with the Department for Continuing Education at the University of Oxford, will be offering courses specifically designed to meet the needs of human rights and advocacy organisations in southern Africa. Developed together with international and regional experts, seven courses will be run in the course of the next 12 months.
CALL FOR APPLICANTS
Adilisha Distance Learning Courses For Human Rights And Advocacy
Issue date: 2002-06-13

This is the first call for applicants for Adilisha distance learning courses for human rights and advocacy organisations in southern Africa. Fahamu, in association with the Department for Continuing Education at the University of Oxford, will be offering courses specifically designed to meet the needs of human rights and advocacy organisations in southern Africa. Developed together with international and regional experts, seven courses will be run in the course of the next 12 months.

CALL FOR APPLICANTS
Adilisha Distance Learning Courses For Human Rights And Advocacy
Issue date: 2002-06-06

This is the first call for applicants for Adilisha distance learning courses for human rights and advocacy organisations in southern Africa. Fahamu, in association with the Department for Continuing Education at the University of Oxford, will be offering courses specifically designed to meet the needs of human rights and advocacy organisations in southern Africa. Developed together with international and regional experts, seven courses will be run in the course of the next 12 months.

CALL FOR APPLICANTS

Adilisha distance learning courses for human rights and advocacy
organisations

This is the first call for applicants for Adilisha distance learning
courses for human rights and advocacy organisations in southern
Africa.

Fahamu, in association with the Department for Continuing Education at
the University of Oxford, will be offering courses specifically
designed to meet the needs of human rights and advocacy organisations
in southern Africa. Developed together with international and
regional experts, seven courses will be run in the course of the next
12 months:

· Fact-finding and investigation of human rights violations
(applications now open)
· Human rights monitoring and reporting
· Campaigning, advocacy and lobbying
· Leadership and management for change
· Fundraising and resource mobilisation
· Financial management for non-financial managers (applications
now open)
· Using the internet for advocacy and research

Each course will comprise three phases:

Phase One: You will be supplied with interactive learning materials
on CDROM to use at home or workplace. You will be supported via email
by a course tutor. You will be required to complete a series of
assignments over a period of approximately eight weeks.

Phase Two: This will involve an intensive workshop in southern Africa
lasting for about 5 days.

Phase Three: This phase will last about eight weeks and will involve
you carrying out an assignment within your organisation. You will be
supported via email by a course tutor and submit your work for
assessment.

Those successfully completing this exercise will be awarded with a
Certificate of Completion from the University of Oxford.

This project is supported by the European Union, the British
Department for International Development, and the Canadian
International Development Research Centre. Funding is available to
cover fees, travel and accommodation for up to 10 persons per course
from within the SADC region.

Applications for the Financial management and the Fact-finding and
investigation courses are now open. Applications close on 15 July
2002 and applications received after this date will not be considered.
Incomplete applications will also not be considered.

Dates for the other Adilisha courses will be published through a
further call for applications in due course.

For further details and application forms, please refer to our website
(http://www.fahamu.org) or contact anil@fahamu.org.za

HIV/AIDS peer education programme

2002-06-20

http://www.yieldireland.com

Yield (Youth Information Education Learning & Development) has launched a new 10-day HIV/AIDS peer education programme for interested organizations. Yield specializes in providing the highest standards of training and development, internationally in sexual health, relationship and gender based programmes to meet the needs of overseas organizations. The new programme aims to develop networks of peer educators and enable as many young people as possible, with their enthusiasm, creativity, energy and newly acquired knowledge to contribute to the reduction of HIV/AIDS problems in their settings.

THE JOZI SUMMIT FILM FESTIVAL 2002

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/courses/8433

Between August 16 and September 4, an expansive film and audio-visual campaign, The Jozi Summit Film Festival 2002, will occur simultaneously with the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Gauteng. This is the first time ever, that key industry stakeholders, join forces in a local initiative of this nature. The significance of this collaboration is unprecedented.
THE JOZI SUMMIT FILM FESTIVAL 2002

Between August 16 and September 4, an expansive film and audio-visual campaign, The Jozi Summit Film Festival 2002, will occur simultaneously with the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Gauteng. This is the first time ever, that key industry stakeholders, join forces in a local initiative of this nature. The significance of this collaboration is unprecedented.

The Jozi Summit Film Festival 2002 is intended to serve as model for future annual festivals. To be as inclusive as possible, it will be extended to township locations where media penetration is low.

This year's program comprises 682 screenings, 4 key Workshops and 10 Educational/training sessions. Screenings will take place at Ster Kinekor Sandton, NuMetro Village Walk, Ster Kinekor Southgate and Carlton, including NASREC Civil Society Conference Centre, Ubuntu Cultural Village and the Newtown Cultural Centre. A series of exhibitions will be set up at selected tertiary institutions, townships and Rural Multi Purpose Community Centres around Johannesburg (Jozi).

The festival line-up consists of over 100 feature films, documentaries, experimental films and shorts that will showcase thought provoking, entertaining and educative portrayals of matters relating to sustainable development. Film gurus will be in attendance at particular screenings to provide expert insight into and analysis of the films and to lead discussions.

The Jozi Summit Film Festival 2002 forms part of the parallel educational and cultural campaign planned for the World Summit and all screenings will be sponsored by the stakeholders of the festival.

The Festival will use film to ensure public participation and understanding of key summit issues. Secondly, The Jozi Summit Film Festival will communicate the current and existing national and international social development challenges and as well as their potential solutions.

Most importantly, the Jozi Summit Film Festival 2002 while providing a platform to exhibit the best films from the continent, the developing countries and the Diaspora, it intends to consolidate existing theatrical initiatives for African film currently in place (Nu Metro and Ster-Kinekor). In addition, it will convey an important message to all the stakeholders. The message that Africa, the developing nations and the Diaspora want socially and culturally relevant films. Top quality films that tell their stories; reflect their problems; address their needs and concerns, while entertainingly tussling with controversies around sustainable development issues.

The Jozi Summit Film Festival will be hosted by The Film Resource Unit (FRU) in ollaboration with the Johannesburg World Summit Company (JOWSCO), the Business Council for Sustainable Development SA (BCSD), Effect Media, ECOMOV, The Gauteng Film Office (GFO), ohannesburg Metropolitan Council (JMC), Johnnic Communications, The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), Nu Metro Filmed Entertainment, Southern African Communications for evelopment (SACOD), Ster Kinekor, The United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and various other stakeholders from Government, corporate and civil societies across South Africa and internationally.

For more information contact:

Daphne Pooe-Jackson,
Media and Communications Officer
Jozi Summit Film Festival 2002
Email: daphneja@numetro.co.za
Tel: 011 340-9430
Fax: 011 340-9411

End.

web design course in kampala

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/courses/8350

WOUGNET has obtained two spots in a web design course to be conducted July
15-21, 2002 in Kampala. The training is to be conducted by OneWorld Africa - the OneWorld center in Africa. OneWorld is an international non-governmental, non profit making media NGO whose mission is to harness the democratic potential of the internet to promote human rights and sustainable development.
WOUGNET has obtained two spots in a web design course to be conducted July
15-21, 2002 in Kampala. The training is to be conducted by OneWorld Africa
- the OneWorld center in Africa. OneWorld is an international non-governmental, non profit making media NGO whose mission is to harness the democratic potential of the internet to promote human rights and sustainable development.

The Head office is in London and it has about 11 centres around the globe. The OneWorld Africa office is situated in Lusaka, Zambia. To learn more about One World Africa, visit http://www.oneworld.net/africa/

The five days course is being conducted in order to equip NGO staff with the skills to build, develop and promote their websites without hiring an outside helper. The five days training workshop is free of charge to the participants, lunch and teas are provided as well. The only cost the participants incur is transport costs from their respective work places to the training venue for five days.

OneWorld Africa realised that all the happenings in Africa are reported by the Western World and sometimes misquoted. This training is an effort to encourage NGOs to increase the African content on the web, reported by Africans from Africa to the world. The training will take place at the Uganda Global Distant Learning Centre.

The criteria for the two training spots allocated to WOUGNET are:
1) organisation is a WOUGNET member
2) organisation is a non-profit NGO
3) organisation should already have a web site, or planning to build a website in the very near future (indicate when), but lack the expertise.

If you are interested in this training, please send me a note at dokello@wougnet.org as soon as possible. In your message, please also indicate who is being nominated by your organisation to participate in the training. For those without a website, please indicate when you plan to build the website.

Finance Officer

VSO Overseas Division

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/8370

VSO is a leading international development charity that works through volunteers. We are looking for a suitably qualified person to co-ordinate and strengthen the financial information systems used in VSO's overseas programme management.
Finance Officer, Overseas Division
£22,467 pa - Putney based

VSO is a leading international development charity that works through
volunteers.

We are looking for a suitably qualified person to co-ordinate and strengthen
the financial information systems used in VSO's overseas programme management.

You will have experience of producing financial analysis and reports for
internal and external audiences, identifying trends and developing effective
financial and grant management systems.

Closing date: 10 July
Interview date: 22 July

For further details, please send an SAE (41p) quoting the reference FOO to: HR
Dept, VSO, 317 Putney Bridge Road, London, SW15 2PN, or visit
www.vso.org.uk/hr/index.htm

VSO is committed to achieving equality in a diverse world

ORGANISATION AND MANAGEMENT ADVISOR

The National Federation of People with Disabilities

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/8369

The National Federation of People with Disabilities is an umbrella organisation working to support and strengthen local disability organisations. We are looking to recruit a candidate from the Southern Africa region. The adviser will work with building and developing the management and organisational capacity of the Secretariat to work effectively as an effective national support organisation, and provide advice on strengthening its fundraising capabilities. You should be experienced in an organisational development role, and have skills in training, personnel management, fundraising and strategy development. The ability to transfer and adapt skills and knowledge to the context is essential. Due to the nature of this post CIIR is looking to recruit a person from the Southern Africa region who has gained a range of international development experience in the region or beyond.
For over 30 years, ICD has been placing workers in development projects and has 100 skilled professionals working in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and the Middle East.

We are looking to recruit a candidate from the Southern Africa region
ORGANISATION AND MANAGEMENT ADVISOR - National Federation of Disability Organisations, NAMIBIA

The National Federation of People with Disabilities is an umbrella organisation working to support and strengthen local disability organisations. The adviser will work with building and developing the management and organisational capacity of the Secretariat to work effectively as an effective national support organisation, and provide advice on strengthening its fundraising capabilities. You should be experienced in an organisational development role, and have skills in training, personnel management, fundraising and strategy development. The ability to transfer and adapt skills and knowledge to the context is essential. Due to the nature of this post CIIR is looking to recruit a person from the Southern Africa region who has gained a range of international development experience in the region or beyond.

We offer a comprehensive remuneration and benefits package and orientation training.
Only completed ICD applications will be considered. Please do not send CVs only.
To Apply: Job descriptions and an application form can be downloaded from www.ciir.org or send an email to monica@ciir.org or ricardo@ciir.org specifying the title of the post. Alternatively phone + 44 20 7 288 8600 fax +44 20 7 359 0017 or write to Unit 3, Canonbury Yard, 190a New North Road, London N1 7BJ.
Closing date: 12th July 2002
ICD acts to challenge poverty and promote development. ICD is the skillsharing programme of The Catholic Institute for International relations, CIIR. Registered Charity No. 294329.

The Alliance for Children's Entitlement to Social Security (ACESS)

Advocacy Officer

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/8397

The Alliance for Children's Entitlement to Social Security (ACESS) is a national alliance of 80 organisations. Alliance members share a common mission of ensuring that children's rights to survival and development are promoted and protected through the development of a comprehensive and effective social security system. The ACESS task team includes Soul City, Children's Institute and the Children's Rights Centre. In order to fulfil our commitments to ACESS, the Children's Institute is recruiting an Advocacy Officer for this 12-month contract post.
UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN


ACCESS ADVOCACY OFFICER
CHILDREN'S INSTITUTE

The Alliance for Children's Entitlement to Social Security (ACESS) is a national alliance of 80 organisations. Alliance members share a common mission of ensuring that children's rights to survival and development are promoted and protected through the development of a comprehensive and effective social security system. The ACESS task team includes Soul City, Children's Institute and the Children's Rights Centre.

In order to fulfil our commitments to ACESS, the Children's Institute is recruiting an Advocacy Officer for this 12-month contract post.

Responsibilities will include:
· Establish and manage the ACESS website
· Ensure that information on children's social security needs reaches all relevant stake-holders and decision makers by targetting, marketing and distributing ACESS's messages and products;
· Prepare social security policy summaries and presentations for various audiences ranging from community based organisations, to parliamentarians, departmental officials, services providers and the media;
· Liaise with decision makers in government and parliament;
· Organise and facilitate meetings and workshops;
· Facilitate input from ACESS members and draft ACESS submissions on policy and law reform.

Requirements include:
· A good understanding of the major challenges facing children in South Africa and a passion for improving their lives;
· Understanding of the South African political system and the law and policy drafting processes;
· Legal skills and experience;
· Knowledge of social security policy, the legislative framework and service delivery;
· An interest in constitutional and human rights law;
· Proven excellent writing, editing and conceptualisation skills;
· Skills in public speaking, facilitation, communication and advocacy;
· Advanced computer, information management and internet skills;
· Willingness to travel.

The annual package being offered ranges from R120 000 to R140 000 depending on qualifications and experience. The package includes an annual bonus.

Please send a letter of application plus your CV (including the names, postal/email addresses, telephone/fax numbers of 2 referees) to Paula Proudlock, Children's Institute, 46 Sawkins Road, Rondebosch, Cape Town, 7700 (in triplicate) by 1 July 2002; fax: (021) 689 8330; email: lizettep@rmh.uct.ac.za

Please note that only short-listed candidates will be contacted. The Children's Institute reserves the right not to fill the advertised position.

unicef consultancy

social marketing

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/8384

Will conduct rapid assessments in 4 states in Nigeria (in the NW, NE, SW, and SE zones), interacting with consumers, government and its regulatory agencies, the food industry, and key informers at the grassroots.
1. UNICEF
CONSULTANCY - Social Marketing

Will conduct rapid assessments in 4 states in Nigeria (in the NW, NE, SW, and SE zones), interacting with consumers, government and its regulatory agencies, the food industry, and key informers at the grassroots. In close coordination with stakeholders, develop a draft national communication strategy for the social marketing of Vit A fortified foods, consistent with brand marketing promoted by manufacturers.

http://www.comminit.com/vacancy823.html
Contact Chief of Health & Nutrition - Koen Vanormelingen kvanormelingen@unicef.org OR Prof. Frank Onyezili fonyezili@unicef.org

WHO, Regional Office for Africa

TECHNICAL OFFICER - Brazzaville (Congo)

2002-06-20

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/8385

Will serve as Regional Advisor for developing, planning and coordination of the regional emergency preparedness and emergency relief programme.
WHO, Regional Office for Africa
TECHNICAL OFFICER - Brazzaville (Congo)

Will serve as Regional Advisor for developing, planning and coordination of the regional emergency preparedness and emergency relief programme. Developing managerial systems and coordination mechanisms for emergencies; promoting public awareness, public information and community participation in emergency management.

http://www.comminit.com/vacancy833.html
Contact HR mayindous@afro.who.int

Fahamu