Just how challenging moves to have media houses adopt gender policies is going to be emerged at the GEM Summit when participants expressed concern over the cold reception the idea gets from media owners and managers across Southern Africa. Some participants who have been approaching media houses for information on women and men employees and employment practices within their newsroom, with a view of helping them develop a gender policy, are having a rough time.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has called on the Sierra Leonean government to conduct an investigation into the assault by police on reporters by security personnel attached to the State House. “This is unacceptable police behavior that cannot be ignored,” said Gabriel Baglo, the Director of the IFJ Africa office. “We condemn this brutal and deliberate assault and call on the government to conduct an investigation to bring those responsible to justice and to make sure such an incident does not happen again.”

The MDC leadership have had their travel documents returned, after they were confiscated on Thursday afternoon to block them from travelling to South Africa. President Morgan Tsvangirai, Secretary General Tendai Biti and Secretary for Foreign Affairs Professor Elphas Mukonoweshuro were heading to Johannesburg to attend the SADC summit this weekend, when they were prevented from boarding their flight by immigration officials.

The health department has withdrawn two widely-dispensed tuberculosis (TB) drug combination batches after preliminary investigations revealed the drugs became unstable under long-term storage, ultimately placing patients at risk of not receiving their optimal dosage.

The uptake of second-line antiretroviral treatment in developing countries is `stagnant` according to a survey by the World Health Organization presented at last week’s XVII International AIDS Conference, despite substantial cuts in drug prices over the past 18 months.

The role of input subsidies in stimulating growth and addressing food security and poverty alleviation objectives has re-emerged as an important debate in agricultural policy. Sharp increases in world food and fertiliser prices in 2007 and 2008 have created a sense of urgency in meeting productivity and social welfare goals, and have put fertiliser subsidies high on the list of options for government and donor responses to the crisis.

Tanzania said on Friday that a strike by civil servants planned for later this month over delays in salary payments was illegal as there was no dispute in the first place. The Trade Union Congress of Tanzania (TUCTA) has called a three-day strike by government workers from August 25 over what it says are delays paying wages arising from an average 24 percent pay rise that was backdated to January.

Research predicts that vast amounts of land in East Africa will be converted from grasslands to ploughed fields over the next 40 years, as wetter conditions caused by climate change attract crop farmers to grazing grounds. "The transformation of natural ecosystems into croplands will be the biggest contributor to global warming in East Africa," says Pius Yanda, director of the Institute of Resource Assessment at Dar es Salaam University in Tanzania.

In a bid to cope with tragic situation in north and south Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo, International Confederation of Red Cross (ICRC) has nearly doubled aid to people affected by internal armed conflict in the region. Head of ICRC's economic security unit in DRC, Ian Byram, says two types of economic assistance programmes are being implemented to address people's needs.

Petrol tankers parked nose-to-tail line the five-kilometre stretch of road from the southern Nigerian town of Eleme to its refinery, waiting to fuel up and begin their long journey home. If the trip runs smoothly, a tanker leaving the big cities of the north at dawn should arrive at Eleme, in the troubled oil-rich delta region, by early evening.

Antiretroviral (ARV) drugs are free in Mozambique, and access to them is relatively easy, but for many HIV-positive Mozambicans the real challenge is a far more basic problem of finding enough food. ARVs are powerful drugs that need to be taken with nourishment. Regular and nutritious meals are also needed to help the body's own defences fight the opportunistic infections associated with AIDS.

The Committee to Protect Journalists is dismayed by the failure of the Egyptian authorities to shed light on the disappearance of a prominent journalist, five years ago, in one of the most secure districts in Cairo. Reda Helal, a senior editor at Egypt's leading state-owned daily "Al-Ahram," mysteriously vanished on August 11, 2003, on his way home from work in a heavily guarded area in the center of the Egyptian capital.

A new series of clashes in Somalia have claimed lives of at least 18 people as daily fighting continues on the Horn of African country. At least seven Somali soldiers were killed in the fighting with Lower Shabelle region forces in Merka town, Press TV correspondent said on Thursday.

Ghana would need over US $1.4 billion to combat climate change if bad environmental practices persists, a senior official of the West African country's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said. William Abaidoo, Public Relations Officer of the agency said climate change has been fast becoming a global problem, which devastates the planet earth.

Sudan's government has launched a major offensive against rebel bases in the far north of Darfur, two rebel factions have said. A commander from a faction of the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA) said about 270 vehicles and 500 Janjaweed fighters were involved in the attack.

There is no explicit gay scene in Nigeria, but in the Ibiza bar in the capital, Abuja, the action on the packed dance floor seems a little more exclusively guy-on-guy, a little bit raunchier than may be considered "normal".

Shocking statement? Maybe so, but the name of the new campaign against sexual harassment in Egypt means to grab people's attention. The campaign kicked off in the streets of Cairo, where the problem is most prevalent. Speaking directly to men, the campaign hopes to urge the male population to renounce sexual harassment.

While researchers and advocates at the International AIDS Conference this week urged donors and governments to rapidly scale up male circumcision programmes, others raised concerns about what this would mean for women. In March 2007, the World Health Organisation and UNAIDS issued recommendations that gave the green light to male circumcision as an HIV prevention strategy, after studies in Kisumu, Kenya and the township of Orange Farm in South Africa showed that it could reduce the risk of infection by up to 60 percent.

Civil society organisations have been and continue to meet in South Africa in the run up to the 4th Annual SADC Summit due to take place at the Sandton Convention Centre, Johannesburg, South Africa on 15-17 August 2008.

For three years running, with your help, Pambazuka News was voted one of the top 10 who are changing the world of Internet and politics. Pambazuka News has once again been shortlisted amongst the top 25 – and once again the only Africa-related website to have been shortlisted. “This prestigious award seeks,” the judges write, “to recognize the innovators and pioneers, the dreamers and doers who bring democracy online. This year marked the toughest year ever in choosing the top 25 finalists.” This year the competition is really tough, so we need you and all your friends to vote! With Pambazuka News approaching its 400th issue, it would be wonderful if we were once again to be voted one of the top 10. With your help, we can. Please . The deadline for voting is September 8, 2008. ONLY A COUPLE OF WEEKS AWAY -- DON'T DELAY!!!

Sexual and gender based violence (SGBV) is a scourge on Africa; a pandemic that has undermined women and girls’ rights to autonomy, bodily integrity, human dignity, sexuality, security and tranquillity. SGBV has, and continues to be a major hindrance to rights and justice. It is prevalent in all our societies across the continent, including non-conflict situations. It is repeatedly used as a weapon against girls and women in conflict/crisis situations. SGBV, including intimate partner violence, is a leading factor in the increasing "feminisation" of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa.

The inadequacy of our societies’ responses has cast SGBV as an abuse we are willing to live with. Women and girls, regardless of their race, age, social and economic status, live in perennial fear of violation.

We, the delegates of say ENOUGH.

This study provides a window into the lives of ordinary South Africans more than ten years after the end of apartheid, with the promises of the democracy movement remaining largely unfulfilled. Catherine Besteman explores the emotional and personal aspects of the transition to black majority rule by homing in on intimate questions of love, family, and community and capturing the complex, sometimes contradictory voices of a wide variety of Capetonians.

Graham Thom died in his home in London on 10 July 2008.

Graham a graduate from Cambridge University, made a significant contribution to developing a vibrant and strong civil society sector both in England and in Africa, and was much loved and respected by his colleagues for his creativeness, his passion and boundless compassion. Graham co-founded Link Community Development and became its first Director. He went on to lead the Transform Programme, a consortium of Oxfam, Christian Aid, Education Action International and CAFOD, providing capacity building services for NGOs in Southern and East Africa. Graham also worked as Chief Executive of the Back-Up Trust, a charity working with people with Spinal Cord Injury, overseeing the growth of the organisation. He also worked as Director of Fundraising for Haven House. At the time of his death, Graham was Director of Fundraising at Computer Aid International. It was Graham’s dream to bring greater stability and sustainability for the civil society sector, particularly in Africa, as this sector continues to strive for social justice for citizens, in an ever increasingly hostile and resource starved environment. His work has not gone unnoticed,

Graham is survived by his wife Rajani, parents Denis and Jane and sister, Caroline.

Biofuel production is certainly one of the culprits in the current global food crisis. But while the diversion of corn from food to biofuel feedstock has been a factor in food prices shooting up, the more primordial problem has been the conversion of economies that are largely food-self-sufficient into chronic food importers. Here the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO) figure as much more important villains.

Whether in Latin America, Asia, or Africa, the story has been the same: the destabilization of peasant producers by a one-two punch of IMF-World Bank structural adjustment programs that gutted government investment in the countryside followed by the massive influx of subsidized U.S. and European Union agricultural imports after the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture pried open markets.

African agriculture is a case study of how doctrinaire economics serving corporate interests can destroy a whole continent’s productive base.

FROM EXPORTER TO IMPORTER

At the time of decolonization in the 1960s, Africa was not just self-sufficient in food but was actually a net food exporter, its exports averaging 1.3 million tons a year between 1966-70. Today, the continent imports 25% of its food, with almost every country being a net food importer. Hunger and famine have become recurrent phenomena, with the last three years alone seeing food emergencies break out in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Southern Africa, and Central Africa.

Agriculture is in deep crisis, and the causes are many, including civil wars and the spread of HIV-AIDS. However, a very important part of the explanation was the phasing out of government controls and support mechanisms under the structural adjustment programs to which most African countries were subjected as the price for getting IMF and World Bank assistance to service their external debt.

Instead of triggering a virtuous spiral of growth and prosperity, structural adjustment saddled Africa with low investment, increased unemployment, reduced social spending, reduced consumption, and low output, all combining to create a vicious cycle of stagnation and decline.

Lifting price controls on fertilizers while simultaneously cutting back on agricultural credit systems simply led to reduced applications, lower yields, and lower investment. One would have expected the non-economist to predict this outcome, which was screened out by the Bank and Fund’s free-market paradigm. Moreover, reality refused to conform to the doctrinal expectation that the withdrawal of the state would pave the way for the market and private sector to dynamize agriculture. Instead, the private sector believed that reducing state expenditures created more risk and failed to step into the breach. In country after country, the predictions of neoliberal doctrine yielded precisely the opposite: the departure of the state “crowded out” rather than “crowded in” private investment. In those instances where private traders did come in to replace the state, an Oxfam report noted, “they have sometimes done so on highly unfavorable terms for poor farmers,” leaving “farmers more food insecure, and governments reliant on unpredictable aid flows.” The usually pro-private sector Economist agreed, admitting that “many of the private firms brought in to replace state researchers turned out to be rent-seeking monopolists.”

What support the government was allowed to muster was channeled by the Bank to export agriculture – to generate the foreign exchange earnings that the state needed to service its debt to the Bank and the Fund. But, as in Ethiopia during the famine of the early 1980s, this led to the dedication of good land to export crops, with food crops forced into more and more unsuitable soil, thus exacerbating food insecurity. Moreover, the Bank’s encouraging several economies undergoing adjustment to focus on export production of the same crops simultaneously often led to overproduction that then triggered a price collapse in international markets. For instance, the very success of Ghana’s program to expand cocoa production triggered a 48% drop in the international price of cocoa between 1986 and 1989, threatening, as one account put it, “to increase the vulnerability of the entire economy to the vagaries of the cocoa market [1]." In 2002-2003, a collapse in coffee prices contributed to another food emergency in Ethiopia.

As in many other regions, structural adjustment in Africa was not simply underinvestment but state divestment. But there was one major difference. In Latin America and Asia, the Bank and Fund confined themselves for the most part to macromanagement, or supervising the dismantling of the state’s economic role from above. These institutions left the dirty details of implementation to the state bureaucracies. In Africa, where they dealt with much weaker governments, the Bank and Fund micromanaged such decisions as how fast subsidies should be phased out, how many civil servants had to be fired, or even, as in the case of Malawi, how much of the country’s grain reserve should be sold and to whom. In other words, Bank and IMF resident proconsuls reached into the very innards of the state’s involvement in the agricultural economy to rip it up.

THE ROLE OF TRADE

Compounding the negative impact of adjustment were unfair trade practices on the part of the EU and the United States. Trade liberalization allowed low-priced subsidized EU beef to enter and drive many West African and South African cattle raisers to ruin. With their subsidies legitimized by the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture, U.S. cotton growers offloaded their cotton on world markets at 20-55% of the cost of production, bankrupting West African and Central African cotton farmers in the process [2].

These dismal outcomes were not accidental. As then-U.S. Agriculture Secretary John Block put it at the start of the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations in 1986, “the idea that developing countries should feed themselves is an anachronism from a bygone era. They could better ensure their food security by relying on U.S. agricultural products, which are available, in most cases at lower cost [3]."

What Block did not say was that the lower cost of U.S. products stemmed from subsidies that were becoming more massive each year, despite the fact that the WTO was supposed to phase out all forms of subsidy. From $367 billion in 1995, the first year of the WTO, the total amount of agricultural subsidies provided by developed country governments rose to $388 billion in 2004. Subsidies nowaccount for 40% of the value of agricultural production in the European Union (EU) and 25% in the United States.

The social consequences of structural adjustment cum agricultural dumping were predictable. According to Oxfam, the number of Africans living on less than a dollar a day more than doubled to 313 million people between 1981 and 2001 – or 46% of the whole continent. The role of structural adjustment in creating poverty, as well as severely weakening the continent’s agricultural base and consolidating import dependency, was hard to deny. As the World Bank’s chief economist for Africaadmitted, “We did not think that the human costs of these programs could be so great, and the economic gains would be so slow in coming [4]."

That was, however, a rare moment of candor. What was especially disturbing was that, as Oxford University political economist Ngaire Woods pointed out, the “seeming blindness of the Fund and Bank to the failure of their approach to sub-Saharan Africa persisted even as the studies of the IMF and the World Bank themselves failed to elicit positive investment effects [5]."

THE CASE OF MALAWI

This stubbornness led to tragedy in Malawi.

It was a tragedy preceded by success. In 1998 and 1999, the government initiated a program to give each smallholder family a “starter pack” of free fertilizers and seeds. This followed several years of successful experimentation in which the packs were provided only to the poorest families. The result was a national surplus of corn. What came after, however, is a story that will be enshrined as a classic case study in a future book on the 10 greatest blunders of neoliberal economics.

The World Bank and other aid donors forced the drastic scaling down and eventual scrapping of the program, arguing that the subsidy distorted trade. Without the free packs, food output plummeted. In the meantime, the IMF insisted that the government sell off a large portion of its strategic grain reserves to enable the food reserve agency to settle its commercial debts. The government complied. When the crisis in food production turned into a famine in 2001-2002, there were hardly any reserves left to rush to the countryside. About1,500 people perished. The IMF, however, was unrepentant; in fact, it suspended its disbursements on an adjustment program with the government on the grounds that “the parastatal sector will continue to pose risks to the successful implementation of the 2002/03 budget. Government interventions in the food and other agricultural markets…crowd out more productive spending.”

When an even worse food crisis developed in 2005, the government finally had enough of the Bank and IMF’s institutionalized stupidity. A new president reintroduced the fertilizer subsidy program, enabling two million households to buy fertilizer at a third of the retail price and seeds at a discount. The results: bumper harvests for two years in a row, a surplus of one million tons of maize, and the country transformed into a supplier of corn to other countries in Southern Africa.

But the World Bank, like its sister agency, still stubbornly clung to the discredited doctrine. As the Bank’s country director toldthe Toronto Globe and Mail, “All those farmers who begged, borrowed, and stole to buy extra fertilizer last year are now looking at that decision and rethinking it. The lower the maize price, the better for food security but worse for market development.”

FLEEING FAILURE

Malawi’s defiance of the World Bank would probably have been an act of heroic but futile resistance a decade ago. The environment is different today. Owing to the absence of any clear case of success, structural adjustment has been widely discredited throughout Africa. Even some donor governments that once subscribed to it have distanced themselves from the Bank, the most prominent case being the official British aid agency that co-funded the latest subsidized fertilizer program in Malawi. Perhaps the motivation of these institutions is to prevent the further erosion of their diminishing influence in the continent through association with a failed approach and unpopular institutions. At the same time, they are certainly aware that Chinese aid is emerging as an alternative to the conditionalities of the World Bank, IMF, and Western government aid programs.

Beyond Africa, even former supporters of adjustment, like the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington and the rabidly neoliberal Economistacknowledged that the state’s abdication from agriculture was a mistake. In a recent commentary on the rise of food prices, for instance, IFPRI asserted that “rural investments have been sorely neglected in recent decades,” and says that it is time for “developing country governments [to] increase their medium- and long-term investments in agricultural research and extension, rural infrastructure, and market access for small farmers.” At the same time, the Bank and IMF’s espousal of free trade came under attack from the heart of the economics establishment itself, with a panel of luminaries headed by Princeton’s Angus Deaton accusing the Bank’s research department of being biased and “selective” in its research and presentation of data. As the old saying goes, success has a thousand parents and failure is an orphan. Unable to deny the obvious, the Bank has finally acknowledged that the whole structural adjustment enterprise was a mistake, though it smuggled this concession into the middle of the 2008 World Development Report, perhaps in the hope that it would not attract too much attention. Nevertheless, it was a damning admission:

Structural adjustment in the 1980’s dismantled the elaborate system of public agencies that provided farmers with access to land, credit, insurance inputs, and cooperative organization. The expectation was that removing the state would free the market for private actors to take over these functions—reducing their costs, improving their quality, and eliminating their regressive bias. Too often, that didn’t happen. In some places, the state’s withdrawal was tentative at best, limiting private entry. Elsewhere, the private sector emerged only slowly and partially—mainly serving commercial farmers but leaving smallholders exposed to extensive market failures, high transaction costs and risks, and service gaps. Incomplete markets and institutional gaps impose huge costs in forgone growth and welfare losses for smallholders, threatening their competitiveness and, in many cases, their survival.

In sum, biofuel production did not create but only exacerbated the global food crisis. The crisis had been building up for years, as policies promoted by the World Bank, IMF, and WTO systematically discouraged food self-sufficiency and encouraged food importation by destroying the local productive base of smallholder agriculture. Throughout Africa and the global South, these institutions and the policies they promoted are today thoroughly discredited. But whether the damage they have caused can be undone in time to avert more catastrophic consequences than we are now experiencing remains to be seen.

*Walden Bello is a senior analyst at Focus on the Global South, a program of Chulalongkorn University's Social Research Institute, and a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org) where this article first appeared under the title, "Destroying African Agriculture."

*Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Notes:

1. Charles Abugre, “Behind Crowded Shelves: as Assessment of Ghana’s Structural Adjustment Experiences, 1983-1991,” (San Francisco: food First, 1993), p. 87.

2. “Trade Talks Round Going Nowhere sans Progress in Farm Reform,” Business World (Phil), Sept. 8, 2003, p. 15

3. Quoted in “Cakes and Caviar: the Dunkel Draft and Third World Agriculture,” Ecologist, Vol. 23, No. 6 (Nov-Dec 1993), p. 220

4. Morris Miller, Debt and the Environment: Converging Crisis (New York: UN, 1991), p. 70.

5. Ngaire Woods, The Globalizers: the IMF, the World Bank, and their Borrowers (Thaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), p. 158.

“The elevation of an agricultural people to the condition of countries at once agricultural, manufacturing and commercial, can only be accompanied under the law of free trade, when the various nations engaged at the time of manufacturing industry shall be in the same degree of progress and civilization; when they shall place no obstacle in the way of the economical development of each other, and not impede their respective progress by war or adverse commercial legislation.” - Friedrich List, in the National System of Political Economy

People often say when Africans argue for an integrated national African economy, they are self-indulgent entertaining nothing but a futile illusion. They claim that to argue that Africa must unite economically, ‘knowledge-ically’, politically, and ’society-ically’ is to day-dream and to give in to fantasy. They assert that Africa does not exist in anything, form or shape other than as a geographical accident.

Of course, they would hardly say this of the USA, for example, where 'the tribes of the whole world’, and people have united under one constitution and national flag, and right now seemingly poised to electing an African –American with a father from Kenya! To claim more than a geographical reality to Africa is often condemned and reproached. The pursuit of African integration is said to be a too pie in the sky dream, fantasy, utopian, unrealistic, which distracts from taking realistic incremental actions. Thus, going for unity on a big scale is pronounced dangerous!

INTRODUCTION

Is the criminal justice system in Kenya well equipped to protect women from gender-based violence? This a critical question because in July this year, the (SOA) is celebrating two years of existence having came into force on 21 July 2006.

It has been lauded as an evolutionally piece of legislation that provides for the prevention and protection of all persons from harmful and unlawful sexual acts. It expanded the definition of rape to comply with jurisprudence that is evolving from the international arena and introduces new crimes that did not exist in the previous legal framework.

Even though I do not advocate for anarchy and individuals taking the law in their hands, the statement in, is well said: "Feminists are not calling for the castration or emasculation of men. Our position is a lot simpler than that. If men decide to use certain parts of their anatomy as weapons of mass destruction to wage wars on the bodies of women and girls, they will be disarmed and demobilised." I pray to God for His help and forgiveness of the evil doers, help them to return from their evil ways, and put their energy to serve and protect all people.

Also, I say let us support Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi, the Executive Director of the African Women's Development Fund. It is important to understand that success breads success and others' success is our success.

I agree, . If your arm causes you to sin cut it off - isn't it? If they wont cut it off themselves we should help them.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/392/HAIlogo.jpgAgeing is a triumph of our times, yet over 100 million older people live on less than a dollar a day HelpAge International works to ensure everyone knows how much older people contribute to society and must enjoy their rights to healthcare and social services and the economic and physical security they need. Established in 1983 our global network today spans more than 70 affiliate organisations in 50 countries.

Our Africa Regional Development Centre (ARDC) has grown rapidly over the last few years. It works with a range of partners across Africa to deliver programming in a number of key areas: HIV/AIDS; social protection and social pensions; emergency response and disaster risk reduction; rights of older people; and livelihoods.

You will be responsible for leading and guiding HAI strategic planning in Africa and expanding its programmes and network. You will also lead a highly skilled influencing and advocacy team working to raise the ageing agenda in the continent. You will provide strategic management support to ARDC staff and HAI country offices and be responsible for the financial and budgetary controls of the organisation.

To celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) is holding a photo competition based on the theme - ‘Dignity and justice for all of us’.nThe theme reinforces the vision of the Declaration as a commitment to universal dignity and justice, and reinforces how human rights are an inextricable part of our lives – for everyone, everywhere, everyday.

Greetings from Betty Makoni Director and Founder of Girl Child Network as well Local Lead focal Point Person for Grassroots Organisations Operating Together In Sisterhood (GROOTS Zimbabwe)

I am now in Mexico and am shocked with the news that the French authorities allegedly deported two grassroots women from Zimbabwe who were on their way to Mexico for the AIDS conference taking place until 9 August 2008

Last week our staff members went to the French embassy and insisted that we needed transit visas for France and the French authorities in Harare told them and insisted that there was no need for transit visas for Zimbabweans and that the two women could leave and would not have problems.South African Airways cleared the two women at the Harare International Airport and the two women were even allowed to travel all the way to France on Air France on Thursday last week only to be deported back to Johannesburg on Friday .

What has left us shocked is the unlawful kind of detention of the two women at the Johannesburg airport and the interrogation they have been subjected to by authorities at the French International airport.The two women cannot speak French or English and they have letters from our organisation and AIDS Conference organisers and GROOTS International requesting for assistance and the letters are very clear that they are part of a grassroots women team attending the AIDS conference to share their experiences

What has pained me most is that for one of the women she is handicapped having suffered polio as a child.She cannot walk and she was coming here to join sessions on HIV and AIDS and the handicapped and also she wanted to speak to the world about the struggles of poor rural women and the daily struggles they go through.The world is still waiting to hear from her here in Mexico .For me to understand that the French authorities denied her a transit visa entry for a life time opportunity is the most painful story in my life

Now the other issue is that despite all the required papers the two women have ,they have disappeared and we cannot locate them.The last time some people saw them they were at the Johannesburg airport and my appeal to authorities of France and the two airlines is that there is no need for them to punish the women holding them like semi slaves after denying them a life time opportunity to be at a conference where they could have gained a lot and even taken such opportunities to other women in the world.We plead with all men holding these women to set them free and return them to Zimbabwe .My appeal is that they stop harassing them because they were not going to France but to Mexico and since they have lost so much please set them free because right now they are at the Johannesburg airport

Please can anyone in the world appeal to French authorities in Paris ,we want them to know such treatment of women passing through their borders to important conferences like the AIDS conference taking place in Mexico deserve better treatment especially if the women are handicapped

Please pass on this appeal to anyone you feel will help free the women who have been denied a life time opportunity to be in Mexico .The pain and trauma the women suffered is beyond comprehension.I understand women from Cameroon went through the same and my plea is that HIV and AIDS is no new subject and anyone seeing letters stating women are travelling to do something about HIV and AIDS must be touched and act immediately

Lets all treat women humanely and especially those who are poor,marginalised and handicapped .They cant do much about their situation but honestly we can help!
The two women were denied the right to travel because they are poor and illiterate and many borders have allowed many robbers traffickers etc but for poor harmless women the struggles to travel decently is not allowed

Anyone who can help on this matter please contact me on 52 55 33 0 535 and ask for Limota or Betty Makoni

Africa still relies heavily on expensive satellite connections to gain access to the Internet, according to a report released in July. Over 80 per cent of African Internet use is routed through satellite connections, says the report by the South Africa-based telecommunications analysts BMI-TechKnowledge, who work in 40 African countries.

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has repeated his rejection of the ‘Union for the Mediterranean’, launched last month in Paris on the initiative of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Speaking on a visit to Tunis, Gaddafi, - the only leader to stay away of the 44 invited - claimed the project would seperate North Saharan countries from the rest of Africa. "I do not agree to cutting up Africa for hypothetical prospects with Europe" he added, and went on to characterise the Union as a violation of AU resolutions, a threat to Arab unity, and a return to colonialism.

Ironically however, his fears of ‘division’ had already been mirrored by many of France’s EU partners. As a result the original ambitious French plan for a ‘Mediterranean Union’ has been watered down to the point where it is unlikely to be more than a talking shop, equally incapable of fulfilling either Sarkozy’s dreams or Gaddafi’s fears.

I do thank God for mothers like this one who takes swift sensible response when and where necessary: see, .

I know some will say it will not bring her daughter's viginity back,but at least it will save other children from falling a prey to such animals! As for the man, he should blame the dog for his misfortune!!!

The Global Campaign for Education is looking to recruit someone, to coordinate the development of a large funding proposal for the Education For All Fast Track Initiative. This proposal will be focused on supporting civil society advocacy work on education and creation of national Civil Society Education Funds. It will involve close collaboration with national education coalitions / campaigns across Africa, Asia and Latin America as well as strong partnership with regional education platforms (ASPBAE, ANCEFA and CLADE).Deadline: 3pm GMT 12th August.

African Women’s Day gives us the opportunity to remember that gender-based violence is one of the most serious and widespread violations of the basic rights of women, particularly on the African continent. Gender discrimination is both one of the causes and an aggravating factor of the consequences of violence against women, thus contributing to the perpetuation of impunity of such cases.

The signatory organizations call on African States to ratify the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on women’s rights (the “Maputo Protocol”), harmonize national laws with international standards and take all necessary measures to fight against violence against women by tackling the general context of discrimination which encourages such violations and which perpetuates the marginalization of women, particularly as regards their access to justice.

In this context, the signatory organizations want to draw the African States’ attention to the need to tackle the general environment of discrimination, which leads to such violence against women, generally of a sexual nature, perpetrated by the State but also within the community or in the private sphere.

Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda led the Tanzanian National Assembly in signing onto UNIFEM's Say NO to Violence against Women campaign at a ceremony on 22 July 2008, which was witnessed by UN Deputy Secretary-General Asha Rose Migiro. The Speaker of the National Assembly Samwel Sitta, Deputy Speaker Anna Makinda, leader of the opposition Hamad Rashid Mohamed and all of the other MPs assembled followed the Prime Minister's lead, making the Tanzanian National Assembly the first parliamentary body in the world to offer its full support to the campaign.

The Kenyan government should immediately open an investigation into the recent beating and sexual assault of civil society activists by police, the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) said Tuesday. "We join Kenyan human rights leaders in strongly condemning the police attacks on civil society activists as they prepared to hold a peaceful rally," said Suliman Baldo, Director of ICTJ's Africa Program. "The government must immediately investigate the attacks, as well as end the growing trend of police brutality and intimidation against Kenyan civil society."

As the dust settles over the failed WTO talks in Geneva of the last fortnight, a fact that has been under-highlighted has become more clear. That is the important and even crucial role that the African and other smaller economies played in the mini-Ministerial process. Much of the media publicity has focused on the role of the United States and European Union on one hand, and on India, China and Brazil on the other hand.