KABISSA-FAHAMU NEWSLETTER 18

I really appreciate the work that you do in bringing all sorts of things that we need to know in and about Africa to our attention. So I'm sorry to contact you with a grouse, but NIGERIA was mentioned in two items in this newsletter, and the stories seemed to have nothing to do with Naija. The first, on request for famine relief, was actually about NIGER - indeed, wouldn't it have been obscene for the Nigerian government to call for famine relief? The second was about a South African HIV/AIDS report - if we don't have the links to the Internet, we might not be able to see any connection.

Despite this, please keep up the good work - It's not always possible to read ever issue down to the ground, but when one does, it is rewarding.

OUR RESPONSE: Thank you for writing. We appreciate your encouraging feedback, and of course also for pointing out the items incorrectly associated with Nigeria. How embarassing! These have now been corrected for the online edition.

CLO can help us to make sure Nigeria is better represented in the newsletter. Please make sure that relevant news and information that CLO produces or comes across is submitted to our editor ([email protected]). You can also help to spread the word about the newsletter by announcing it in CLO publications and e-mailing information about it to your colleagues.

And finally, CLO can take better advantage of its Kabissa membership - you may not know it, but CLO was one of the first members of Kabissa! It was set up as a result of the OMCT Internet project in 1999 that I was also involved in. You have a free Internet account on Kabissa, including an e-mail mailbox and web space, which you are not using. You are also eligible for automated mailing lists on Kabissa in case CLO wants to set up an automated newsletter. Let me know if you are interested in starting to use these free services.

Seventy-five women in northern Benin have vowed to give up female genital mutilation (FGM) following an awareness campaign initiated by a group of NGOs.

Clashes within the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists (ZUJ) deepened yesterday as journalists intensified verbal assaults against each other over the issue of local media ownership.

Public protests in South Africa and throughout the world have resulted at last in the shaming, humiliation, and climb-down of the unholy alliance of the pharmaceutical giants who thought they could prevent the South African government from ensuring that cheaper alternatives to brand drugs can be made available for the treatment of HIV/AIDS. Had they gone ahead with their court challenge, these multinationals would have had to reveal their pricing policies, profit levels and extent of funding of research into anti-AIDS drugs. Clearly, they were reluctant to reveal such details, and decided not to proceed with the case.

This victory is important. It is a tribute to the outstanding campaign led by the South African Treatment Action Campaign. It is an illustration of that old saying - "Don't agonise - organise". Public protest can succeed against the might of the multinationals. It also shows that the deals quietly sown up at the World Trade Organisation in the interest of the multinationals can be challenged. The refusal of the South African government to be cowed by the WTO provides an important lesson for other third world governments. And it is a tribute to people living with HIV/AIDS who have refused to sit back as passive "patients", but shown the power of organising.

It is also, in a small way, an illustration of how the internet can be used for organising around socially useful programmes rather than being merely a tool for profiteering. The Kabissa-fahamu Newsletter was one of many electronic newsletters that helped to spread the word!

Thousands of children as young as six years old are trafficked across borders into slavery in West Africa to work as domestic servants, on farms and in markets in the region's wealthier countries. Most work long hours in harsh conditions and receive little or no pay.

Let us call upon all SANCO members to join us in our celebration of conquering the powerful Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association by forcing them to withdraw the case against our government...This, the third National Conference of SANCO, is an extremely important event that will definitely find itself in the history book of our revolution when we account to the next generations.

New strategies for developing newspaper advertising revenues and market share will be featured in a major session of the World Newspaper Congress in Hong Kong (3-6 June 2001). As the growth in global advertising slows, the session will focus on how newspaper companies can exploit their unique strengths to win more advertiser budgets.

Progress on human rights issues related to HIV/AIDS has been disappointing in the 20 years since the epidemic began, the United Nations has said.

The Africa Bureau's Office of Sustainable Development and the Global Bureau's Center for Human Capacity Development are pleased to announce the publication of the DHS EdData Education Profiles for Africa, a series of country education profiles that uses cross national comparable data from USAID's Demographic and Health Surveys. This first edition contains data for Benin, Ghana, Guinea, Malawi, Mali, Namibia, Nigeria, Uganda, and Zambia. The data is used to characterize children's participation in primary and secondary schooling and adults' schooling attainment and literacy.

The United Nations has produced an information booklet for UN staff on HIV/AIDS. It can be downloaded from the UNAIDS site.

Media Update # 2001/15 Monday 9 April to Sunday 15 April 2001.

A son of President Moi and two others have been allocated forest land in Nairobi, Prof Anyang Nyong'o (Nominated, SDP) claimed yesterday.

A cabinet minister in Kenya was arrested on corruption charges this week, minutes after identical charges against him were dropped because the body that preferred them had been disbanded.

The interior ministry in Mozambique has dismissed thirty-five police officers after investigations into their conduct concluded they were corrupt.

Failure by the Eastern Cape government to report widespread fraud and corruption outlined in a private investigator's report involving the Mount Ayliff municipality has angered and shocked Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi.

Tagged under: 18, Contributor, Corruption, Governance

Following the events in Benin, where a ship allegedly carrying 250 child slaves docked safely in Cotonou, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions has urged its affiliates in West Africa to step up the pressure on their governments to end child slavery. The call comes just as the ICFTU has launched a new global campaign to end child labour.

The aim of this list is to announce updates to our website and forthcoming events hosted by the Science, Technology and Innovation Program, a joint activity of the Center for International Development at Harvard University and the Science, Technology and Public Policy Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University.

The decision by the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers
Association (PMA) to withdraw their court case against the South African government is an historic victory of good over evil. Every South African can be proud that we have won this battle against such powerful and wealthy opponents. All of us together made this possible.

The International Secretariat of OMCT requests your URGENT intervention in the following situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The International Secretariat of OMCT has been informed by the African Association for the defense of Human Rights (ASADHO), a member of the OMCT network, about the arbitrary arrest, incommunicado detention and the subsequent placement under house arrest of Brazilian Pastor Carlos Rodrigues and an aide, Mrs. Christine.

News, reports, resources and opinion. Featuring content from over 650 media-issues groups worldwide.

After years of fighting Africa’s most complex contemporary war, the armies of six nations disengaged March 29 and allowed U.N. observers to deploy in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Contingent upon the complete disengagement of the estimated 60,000 foreign troops, the deployment marks the first substantive step toward ending the country’s nearly three-year-old war.

Welcoming the withdrawal of a case by pharmaceutical companies against the Government of South Africa, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today expressed hope that this development would help increase access to AIDS medicines for those in need.

Welcoming the end to yesterday's aborted coup attempt in Burundi, Secretary-General Kofi Annan today said the incident served to highlight the need for efforts to bring calm to the country.

More than 10,000 Somali refugees have arrived in the Kenyan border town of Mandera in the past two weeks, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said today.

About one third of the more than 26,000 cases of abduction recorded to date in Uganda involved children under the age of 18, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said today in Geneva. Mary Robinson said that if there was no change in the situation, hundreds of children, both boys and girls, would be abducted by a rebel movement in the country known as the "Lord's Resistance Army" (LRA). "Many of them," she said, "will ultimately perish in the bush, either as a result of the harsh living conditions or at the hands of other captives."

The top United Nations peacekeeping official today confirmed the establishment of a Temporary Security Zone (TSZ) in Ethiopia and Eritrea along the countries' common border. Briefing the UN Security Council on developments in the region, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Marie Guéhenno called the TSZ's establishment, which was announced yesterday, an "important milestone in the peace process."

A continent-wide plan for fighting AIDS in Africa will be endorsed by next week's Summit meeting on infectious diseases in Abuja, Nigeria, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) announced today.

Over the years, a lot of commitments have been made by Member States in attempts to control these diseases. However, most of the commitments have not been translated into concrete actions and the diseases continue to constitute a big challenge for the continent. Stakeholders have also realized that leadership, commitment, resources and poverty alleviation are the key to control of infectious diseases in Africa. In this light, OAU Heads of State and Government at their annual ordinary assembly at Lome, Togo in July 2000; took a decision to hold an African Summit on HIV/AIDS, TB and related infectious diseases and accepted Nigeria’s offer to host it.

Journalists Against AIDS (JAAIDS) Nigeria, in cooperation with the Summit Secretariat, has begun a build-up to the African Summit on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and other Infectious Diseases organised by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and hosted by the Federal Government of Nigeria.

Estimant avoir réuni les éléments d'une infraction à la législation en vigueur, les juges Courroye et Prévost-Desprez, chargés de l'affaire des ventes d'armes à l'Angola, ont demandé, jeudi 12 avril, d'enquêter sur le parti de Charles Pasqua.

Tagged under: 18, Contributor, Corruption, Governance

I am writing to express my great concern that public comments and policy statements in recent years by your new appointee for Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, Walter H. Kansteiner III, could be a harbinger of a nightmarish U.S. foreign policy for the resolution of the tragic war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I hope that this is not the case and I respectfully request your immediate and most forceful assurances that these statements do not reflect your view on the resolution of the current crises in Congo.

The Resolution on "Securing observance of the Principles of International Law in the interest of world peace and security" adopted by the 105th Inter-Parliamentary Conference on April 6th in Havana, Cuba welcomes the "progress toward the establishment of the International Criminal Court.

New website under development to promote open source software for use in developing country situations. We are launching at the end of May and are looking for software and other material like articles, links and case studies. If you are an open source developer, do you have any software you would like to post on the site, or links to software, pages and articles of relevance?

SVTG has received confirmed information that 54 people were arrested on 10 April 3, 2001 in Green Square, Khartoum following the cancellation of an Easter ceremony on April 10. More than 50 Christian protesters - almost all from the predominantly Christian south - convicted of taking part in the demonstration against the government order were beaten.

Background papers for the World Food Summit Goals
Committee on World Food Security (27th Session)
Rome, Italy, 28 May - 1 June 2001 are now available online: Fostering the Political Will to Fight Hunger, Mobilising Resources to Fight Hunger and New Challenges to the Achievements of the World Food Summit Goals.

Tagged under: 18, Contributor, Development, Resources

Sub-Saharan Africa's massive external debt is the single biggest obstacle to the continent's development. The $300 billion which African countries owe to foreign creditors represents a crippling burden which fundamentally hampers progress in every sector. The All-African Conference of Churches has called this debt "a new form of slavery, as vicious as the slave trade". As such, it is both a cause and a symptom of the structural inequality in the international economic system.

The African Growth and Opportunity Act was perhaps the most widely-discussed initiative in U.S. policy toward Africa in many years. The Africa-America Institute undertook a project entitled "African Perspectives." The objective was to elicit the opinions, insights, and recommendations of a broad cross-section of Africans on the bill and its underlying principles.

The Civic Alliance for Social and Economic Progress (CASEP), a network of civic organisations working in a wide range of social sectors and representing hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans, condemns in the strongest terms the Broadcasting Services Act rushed through Parliament by Government on April 4th.

The Chairperson of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) was assaulted and two lawyers working for the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum narrowly escaped in ZANU (PF) instigated violence in the Chikomba constituency on April 7.

The United Nations has warned that nearly thirty million people face food shortages in sub-Saharan Africa this year. In a report on Monday the FAO said it needed US $140 million to help revive agriculture in the region hit by adverse weather and armed conflicts. It said all countries of eastern Africa and the Great Lakes region as well as Angola, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone need continued food aid.

Asylum seekers not in possession of permits issued under a new refugee act will be treated as illegal immigrants from next month, the South African government has announced. In a joint communiqué with UNHCR, South Africa's department of home affairs said decisions would be made by the end of April on the thousands of asylum seekers in the country. Those successful would receive a new refugee identity card, unsuccessful applicants would be treated as illegal aliens, the communiqué added.

The malnutrition figures just in from Kasika, near Bukavu, had Claude Jibidar and his World Food Programme (WFP) team in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) more than a little confused. Like many parts of the DRC they had had little or no access to Kasika since war began in the DRC 32 months ago. "We didn’t know quite what to expect not having had access to the area for so long," said Jibidar, "but we certainly didn’t expect what we found."

Jonathan Moyo, Zimbabwe's Minister of State in the President's Office responsible for Information and Publicity, has lost a court bid to prevent the 'Zimbabwe Independent' from publishing details of allegations of fraud at the Ford Foundation in Kenya, the 'Daily News' reported on Wednesday. Moyo was seeking a court order to prevent the weekly newspaper from reporting details of the proceedings against him in the Kenyan High Court.

The coup attempt in Burundi by a group of junior army officers is over and the perpetrators have surrendered, Defence Minister Cyrille Ndayirukiye announced on Thursday. A group of about 30 soldiers, led by Lieutenant Gaston Ntakarutimana, briefly took over the state radio and television station on Wednesday and announced that the hitherto unknown Front de la Jeunesse Patriotique (FJP) had taken control of the country. President Pierre Buyoya was away in Gabon at the time, but has since returned to to Burundi.

Rebels of the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD-Goma) have reversed a decision to block UN peacekeepers from deploying in the city of Kisangani. The UN announced that the deployment of 120 Moroccan peacekeepers - due to have taken place last Sunday - would now go ahead on Friday.

The trial of a former Rwandan minister began at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania, on Tuesday. According to a press release from the Tribunal, the former higher education minister under the interim government of April-July 1994, Jean de Dieu Kamuhanda, appeared before judges Laity Kama, Mehmet Guney and William Sekule. His charges include genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide and crimes against humanity.

The Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) have finalised a programme under which thousands of soldiers, including senior officers, will be demobilised as a way of modernising the institution, the 'Sunday Monitor' reported.

In objection to what it said was the pursuance of wrong economic policies, Britain announced it was cancelling a US $5 million package that would have financed operations at Zimbabwe's privatisation agency.

It sure was great while it lasted, the free Internet. Consumers could spend hours online, chatting, gathering information, all for next to nothing. Investors who bought Net stocks early even profited from the Internet–way back when tech stocks soared. Now the free ride is over. The Nasdaq crash has wrecked more than financial portfolios; it's also changed the Internet forever.

Technology-driven innovation has for decades forced legislators to revisit intellectual property law. But in the past 12 months, Napster and its peer-to-peer brethren have made the distribution and protection of intellectual property in a digital world the most contentious legal debate in recent memory. As co-director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, professor Pamela Samuelson sits at the academic center of that discussion.

Call for the establishment of the Global Dot Org Alliance. Current working title: Health Internet Society (HISOC).

Beninese police yesterday questioned the children found on the MV Etireno, a vessel originally believed to be carrying 250 enslaved children, the police agency said. While it is now believed that the Etireno did not transport slaves, the incident has drawn attention to the problem of child slavery in other African nations.

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press for IFPRI. 275 pages,paperback $21.95 ISBN 1-8018-6604-9,hardcover $51.95 ISBN 1-8018-6603-0 Agricultural research and development will be key to increasing the quantity and quality of the world's food in the 21st century. This book examines the changes affecting agricultural science policy, including issues such as the environment, genetic diversity, food safety, poverty,human health, public versus private responsibilities, and intellectual property rights.

Read about IFPRI's recent work on: Thinking through Globalization; Mapping the World's Agricultural Land;Climbing out of Poverty in South Africa; and Agricultural Market Reform in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The US Internet Council State of the Internet Report 2000 finds that high connection costs, low incomes, poor infrastructure, illiteracy, lack of trained personnel, disinterest and a failure to understand the benefits of Internet access continue to slow the expansion of computer penetration and Internet use in Africa.

The latest collection of snippets from the world of Telematics and Development.

Still pictures of African wildlife appear everywhere. There is a voracious interest in wildlife in the developed world and animals are used in adverts to exemplify product characteristics. This trade in images is now conducted largely digitally over the internet. The "new economy" was supposed to enable businesses to cut out "the middle man". For African wildlife photographers things turned out to be a little more complex. Russell Southwood uncovers a tale that has all the best ingredients of an internet content story: financial pressures in a falling market, monopoly providers and an oversupply of the key commodity.

South Africa's Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang "dropped a bombshell" yesterday when she announced that the government had "no immediate plans to use the landmark legal victory" to obtain antiretroviral drugs.

The restoration of relative calm in southwestern Guinea has enabled the World Food Programme (WFP) to provide emergency food rations to 25,000 refugees in Kolomba camp, located in the Parrot's Beak, WFP said in a communique on Thursday.

Global: Dotcoms start charging for services; North Africa: Local language domain names selling rapidly; Global: Worldwide competition forum to be created.

Women journalists in Eastern and Central Africa have launched their own news Web site to counter what they see as bias in Western and male-dominated news.

Women produce 60 to 80% of the food in most developing countries and this percentage is growing. In 1950 women performed almost 40% of agricultural work, today the figure is close to 50%. In sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean, women provide 80% of staple foods, in Asia they perform 90% of the work in rice fields.

Human Rights Watch urged the United Nations Security Council today to take action against the looting of resources by foreign troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo and address the devastating human rights abuses being committed by the same troops.

Global opinion won in South Africa, but will it triumph when the US fights Brazil's cheap Aids medicine? The drugs industry's court case against the South African government will go down in history alongside Shell's embarrassment by Brent Spar as one of the great corporate PR disasters of all time.

The International Secretariat of OMCT requests your URGENT intervention in the following situation in Rwanda. The International Secretariat of OMCT has been informed by Agir Ensemble pour les Droits de l'Homme, a member of the OMCT network, of the disappearance of Mr. Olivier Mubiligi, since the beginning of March, 2001, following death threats allegedly made by the Rwandan Patriotic Army.

Improving living standards in the developing world without destroying the environment is a challenge explored in a new interactive CD-ROM offered by the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs (JHU/CCP).

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has announced that it will post most of the ingredients of its courses on the World Wide Web. Lecture notes, assignments, video lectures, course outlines, test questions and reading lists will all be there for anyone to use free of charge. It will apparently cost them 100 million dollars over the next 10 years.

Tagged under: 18, Contributor, Education, Resources

The Department of Education in the Ministry of Youth, Education and Sports is currently under the magnifying lens of the Anti-Corruption Commission as a group of investigators stormed the offices early this week.

The Zimbabwe International Book Fair, the largest and most important book fair in Sub-Saharan Africa, is held annually during the first week of August in the beautiful Harare sculpture gardens. This year's theme: Transformation.

Aid agencies in Kenya have warned that the international community is responding inadequately to a drought crisis. They say that despite more than four million Kenyans being at risk of starvation there have been few pledges of aid to an appeal for $89 million by the Kenyan Government and the U.N.'s World Food Program (WFP).

Reps. Jim Leach (R-Iowa) and Donald Payne (D-N.J.) of H. Con. Res. 102, have called for "Hunger to Harvest: A Decade of Concern for Africa." The resolution calls upon the United States government, along with its international allies, to commit to a global plan to cut world hunger in half by 2015 by increasing funds for poverty- focused development assistance for sub-Saharan Africa.

A Summit of African First Ladies on Global Movement for children in Marrakech, Morocco ended yesterday (Sunday April 22). The summit, which is deliberating on matters affecting the movement of children globally, lasted 3 days. Analysts see this move as a new initiative with the view of attracting the world's attention to the United Nations General Assembly Special Summit on Children, which is scheduled for September this year.

Held in association with Nature. Additional partners: NASDAQ, Business Week, and CNBC. 1st and 2nd July, 2001. London, England (at Imperial College of Science, Technology, and Medicine. Relevant to anyone involved in developing and applying new technologies, investors in such developments, and those with strategic interests in existing and future technologies. The meeting includes sessions designed to help attendees share perspectives and make the most useful contacts.

This is a technical assistance guide for evaluation in the field of human rights education and training. It presents different methods and data collection techniques for HRE programme evaluation, classroom-based assessments, teacher trainings and text field testing, including sample instruments and a bibliography of sources. This evaluation primer is designed for first-time readers and planners in the HRE field.

Provided by the Norwegian Refugee Council/Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Provided by the Council of Europe/Danish Centre for Human Rights, 2000.

Foreign armies and criminal cartels are finding the phenomenal mineral wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) too hard to resist, said a United Nations report on the war that continues to ravage the central African nation.

As pervasive technological change and growing interdependence among countries contribute to restructuring economic activity and shaping everyday life, lifelong learning's value grows. How far have countries progressed toward lifelong learning for all? Who is being left behind, and in what ways? How might schools evolve to address remaining gaps? In this special edition of Education Policy Analysis prepared as background for the 2001 meeting of OECD education ministers, these questions and others are explored.

Tagged under: 18, Contributor, Education, Resources

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