PAMBAZUKA NEWS EDIÇÃO EM PORTUGUÊS 95: Insegurança humana em Moçambique | Angola "rende-se" ao FMI
PAMBAZUKA NEWS EDIÇÃO EM PORTUGUÊS 95: Insegurança humana em Moçambique | Angola "rende-se" ao FMI
Norway on Tuesday challenged the G-7 countries to follow its example and significantly increase their commitments to education initiatives in the developing world. Hilde Johnson, Norway's Minister for International Development, said this would be the only way of meeting the Dakar Declaration commitments, through which the international community undertook to ensure that no country that attempted to provide education for all its citizens would lack the resources to do so.
Technical committees discussing core issues of the Somali conflict should conclude their work this month, Kenya’s special envoy for Somalia Elijah Mwangale announced on Tuesday. This means that the power-sharing phase of peace talks should start early next month, he told a news conference in Nairobi.
Wolimata Thiao is a towering, one-woman, tour de force. She has mobilised the women of Popenguine and surrounding villages, north of the Senegalese capital, Dakar, to reclaim and protect nature. The dynamic village women of Popenguine, Popenguine Serere, Kiniabour 1 and 2, Guerew, Thiafoura, Soro Hassap and Ndayane, persevered and proved their critics and detractors wrong. Slowly, they won over their husbands, and other villagers, proving that they could regenerate and conserve their environment, encourage eco-tourism, ensure reforestation and the survival of both flora and fauna.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has launched a programme in the Central African Republic (CAR) to train 50 refugee women in professional skills and provide another 550 with income-generating possibilities.
Justice Department spokesperson Paul Setsetse says South Africa will consider extraditing millionaire Cyril Kern of Cape Town, if there is evidence that he was involved in money laundering. Kern's gift of R15 million to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is being used as political ammunition against him in the Israeli general election.
Former Zambian Finance Minister Katele Kalumba, who has been on the run from his country's authorities since last October, has been arrested by police in connection with investigations of the plunder of national resources. Kalumba was arrested Tuesday in the northern border town of Chiengi, near the Democratic Republic of Congo.
A sum of R30 000 allocated to Whittlesea's anti-Aids campaigners for capacity building by the National Development Agency (NDA) in 2001 has not reached the activists. The money was supposed to be deposited into the bank account of the Whittlesea Anti-Aids Youth Campaigners (WAAYC) on April 2, 2002. WAAYC is an NGO educating people infected and affected by the virus, and also provides home-based care to those living with the virus.
Editor-in-Chief Abdoulie Sey and Managing Editor Alagi Yorro Jallow, both of the Banjul daily Independent newspaper have received a series of death threats from unknown persons, who vow to eliminate them in retaliation for reports published by the paper.
Names of contracted artists have been released for the exclusive music concert organised to raise awareness and much needed funds for the fight against AIDS, the City Press reports. The concert will be held at Robben Island on February 2, 2003. Musicians from the US, Europe and Africa have been billed to perform in the Mandela SOS Aids benefit concert which will be globally broadcasted.
In response to the recent upsurge of violent and sexual crimes, Themba Lesizwe this month approved R5 million in funding to over 35 non-governmental and community based organisations providing victim empowerment services to poor communities. The funding was made available by the Embassy of Ireland through their development cooperation programme with South Africa.
The lives of tens of millions of people around the world are threatened by conflict, ethnic violence, drought and natural disaster. But the response to those needs varies tremendously. For example, Toby Porter, an independent consultant, has calculated that in 1999 the United Nations spent $207 for each person in need in Kosovo, but only $16 per person in Sierra Leone and $8 per person in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Refugees International (RI), a DC-based refugee and IDP advocacy organisation, has launched a new initiative entitled "Forgotten People" about humanitarian emergencies around the world.
About 90 000 houses are to be built for needy South Africans thanks to a R200 million deal between the National Reconstruction and Housing Agency (Nurcha) and an American investment company, Nurcha announced. The money, made available by the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (Opic), would be used by Nurcha to underwrite the loans of emerging housing developers and contractors borrowing money from partner banks and micro-financing organisations.
The U.N. Security Council demanded Wednesday that rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba, whose forces have been accused of cannibalism, rape and massacres, ensure an immediate halt to human rights violations in eastern Congo. The council statement was issued shortly after a U.N. investigation confirmed a horrifying campaign of atrocities against civilians in the forests of northeast Congo, with children among the victims.
This practical guidebook is directed at smaller-scale local partners in Clean Development Mechanism projects -small businesses, non-governmental organisations and community based organisations - to empower them to put forward project ideas, particularly ideas with a development focus.
Fighting between the Burundian army and two rebel groups has displaced more than 30,000 people in two provinces, officials and aid workers said Wednesday. For two weeks, the Tutsi-dominated army has been fighting Hutu rebels of the National Liberation Forces, or FNL, in Bujumbura Rurale province, forcing more than 20,000 to flee their homes, said Ignace Ntawembarira, the province's governor.
The Lesotho Red Cross Society has distributed 265 metric tons of maize seeds and 410 metric tons of fertilizers to orphans. The distribution also covered the aged and the disabled in the districts of Berea, Butha-Buthe and Leribe. Seventy metric tons of maize seeds were distributed in the Mokhotlong district.
The technical problems which have been brewing in Zimbabwe’s email system for months came to a head this week, with widespread failures affecting subscribers at almost all internet service providers in the country. People outside Zimbabwe reported that email sent to Zimbabwe email addresses were returned with the message "user/domain unknown". Those sending email from Zimbabwe to international addresses had messages bounced back to them, and access to Zimbabwean websites from outside the country has also been difficult, or impossible at times, reports ZWNews.
A KwaZulu-Natal Aids charity has been excluded from the list of recipients of the R1.8-billion grant from the United Nations' Global Aids Fund - for the second time. In May last year, the Enhancing Care Initiative was prevented from receiving R712-million of the R1.8-billion grant after Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang lambasted the group for not making its application through the state's South African National Aids Council.
In a move that signals the beginning of the harassment and arrests of publishers and journalists over non-compliance with the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, officers from the Criminal Investigations Department visited the publisher of The Sun newspaper, and requested that he produce his registration certificate.
Several NGOs this week lobbied the United Nations Security Council at its open debate on children and armed conflict to take immediate action to protect children's security and rights in armed conflicts around the world. "The lives and futures of millions of children are at stake everyday in 35-armed conflicts worldwide. The major challenge for the Council is to ensure respect for international law and commitments to protect children in specific situations," the organisations said.
The Associated Newspapers Group has lodged a constitutional challenge of sections of the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act. This requires media houses to be registered by the Media and Information Commission appointed by the Minister of Information.
The EU has launched an initiative to break the current WTO deadlock on developing countries' access to affordable medicines. WTO members failed to meet the end of a 2002 deadline to find a solution for developing countries without manufacturing capacities, namely given the disagreement over the disease coverage. In a letter addressed to all WTO Trade Ministers, EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy proposes a multilateral solution which is workable, sustainable and legally secure, based both on the Doha mandate and on the chair's compromise text of 16 December 2002.
The current famine in Lesotho is further compounded by HIV/Aids as many young and able-bodied people who cultivate the fields succumb to HIV/Aids related complications. According to the United Nations Resident Representative, Scholastica Kimaryo, the current famine that has left many families destitute has an incestuous link with the high prevalence of HIV/Aids, which has put Lesotho amongst the top four countries worst affected by the pandemic in the world.
To counteract the difficulties facing their many dispersed and remote communities across the southern African region regarding land rights, human rights, capacity-building and development, the San decided to establish a regional organisation that could represent them at all levels, hence the establishment of the Working Group of Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa (WIMSA) in 1996.
The European Union has donated 170 million euros (Sh13.8 billion) to rehabilitate the country's dilapidated road network.The money will be used to rehabilitate the Sultan Hamud-Mtito Andei section of the Nairobi-Mombasa Highway and Mai Mahiu-Naivasha-Lanet road. Roads around Mt Kenya will also be upgraded under the five-year project.
The free primary education programme has received a boost from a United Nations agency. Unicef is to give $2.5 million for learning and teaching material for the lower classes in eight districts and in Nairobi. Some 450,000 pupils in Standards One to Three are expected to benefit from the grant.
The fraud and corruption trial of former African National Congress chief whip Tony Yengeni and businessman Michael Woerfel was set to resume in the Pretoria Commercial Crimes Court on Thursday.
Pact's Community REACH team is pleased to announce the release of Request for Applications (RFA) #03-C-1. Under this RFA, Pact anticipates awarding on a competitive basis between five to seven subgrants focusing on Reducing Stigma and Discrimination through Innovative and Proven Effective Approaches for a total of US$ 750,000. The purpose of the RFA is to disseminate information about Pact's Community REACH Project for the management of HIV/AIDS sub-grants to prospective PVO and NGO grant recipients in order to provide them with a fair opportunity to submit applications for funding.
The African Women's Media Center has announced that its parent organisation, the International Women's Media Foundation, has received a $1.5 million, three-year grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a campaign to enhance the quality of healthcare coverage in the African media with responsible, accurate and relevant media messages.
Judge Augusto Paulino has set Friday 31 January as the date for the verdict and sentencing of the six men accused of the murder of Carlos Cardoso. The final day of the trial ran into the early evening, as the three prosecution lawyers and five defence lawyers gave their final statements, and three of the defendants also gave final statements. Carlos Cardoso was murdered "because he was a journalist who denounced abuses, who did not shut up, who would not forget any matter, who insisted on following what he regarded as most important, and who would not allow any of the illegalities he had written about to fall into oblivion," declared the Cardoso family lawyer, Lucinda Cruz, in her final statement.
A famine is raging through southern Africa--a famine that Doctors Without Borders has called among the worst in Africa in the past decade. The international relief organization CARE reports that the famine "is largely the result of one of the worst droughts in a decade" and that "severe hunger--even starvation--threatens millions, particularly among the most vulnerable: children, the elderly, and pregnant and nursing women" in Angola, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe. This is occurring against the backdrop of an AIDS epidemic in Africa that has claimed 25 million lives and counting, leaving behind about 14 million orphans. It's a tragic story, full of suffering, especially of children; it's also a story of the heroism of those who relentlessly struggle against the odds under the harshest conditions. But it's not good television, apparently, shows this analysis of how major news networks have covered the story.
Is social security, designed to provide protection against various contingencies, well suited to the elimination or redress of large-scale, endemic poverty? This article attempts to contribute to the debate surrounding social security systems in South Africa, as the basic income grant system is now considered not viable.
Special U.N. envoy to combat AIDS in Africa Stephen Lewis warned at a January 8 press conference in New York following a trip to Southern Africa that the behaviour of rich countries towards AIDS in Africa could be summed up as "mass murder by complacency". Lewis stressed the sluggish response of industrialised nations to the Global Fund for HIV, TB and Malaria, and warned that a war against Iraq would "eclipse" every other international human priority, leaving people with AIDS among its greatest sufferers. He said: "What is required is a combination of political will and resources," he said. "The political will is increasingly there. The money is not." Read the full press briefing by clicking on the link below.
Redistributive land reform in Namibia is widely regarded as a precondition for sustainable rural development and poverty alleviation. This paper briefly discusses the development of thinking on land reform and the development of land reform models prior to Independence. It refers to progress on land redistribution since 1990 and discusses some of the problems experienced, concluding that land reform in Namibia has progressed at a very slow pace.
UNHCR and its partners are currently providing protection and assistance to some 20 million people around the world, including refugees, internally displaced persons and others of concern. Each year, numerous dedicated individuals make enormous personal sacrifices while working to assist these people. The Nansen Refugee Award recognises and honours this spirit and dedication. The Award was instituted in 1954 and named after Fridtjof Nansen, the first League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the 1922 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. It is awarded annually to an individual or a group of individuals, whose support for the refugee cause has been demonstrated through an innovative approach to refugee protection or assistance. The deadline for submitting nominations to be considered for the 2003 award is 31 January 2003.
Women living with HIV/AIDS face obstacles in receiving reproductive health care. Ipas, a non-profit agency focusing on reproductive health, has completed a report summarizing the available information concerning the discrimination HIV-positive women face in exercising their sexual and reproductive rights. Authored by Maria de Bruyn, "Reproductive Choice and Women Living with HIV/AIDS" is based on an extensive literature review and interviews with key informants in Australia, India, Kenya, South Africa and Thailand.
Amnesty International is seeking a Program Director and two Deputy Program Directors to manage the Africa Program of its International Secretariat, responsible for research and campaigning on human rights issues in Africa. The Africa Program has around 50 staff based in London, Kampala, Dakar, Paris and Pretoria. Each of these positions requires an experienced manager with a proven track record in motivation of staff and in the provision of the direction, support and systems to enable them to perform to their full potential. You should bring astute political judgement, a clear vision of how the human rights agenda can be taken forward in Africa and the ability to communicate this persuasively to individuals and groups at all levels.
Balancing Act’s News Update covers connectivity developments in Africa and this week goes out to 5496 subscribers in government, the private sector, civil society and education. It has subscribers in almost all African countries and its web site has regularly recorded over 8000 individual visits a month. Visit their web site for the current issue, back issues or if you would like to subscribe.
Aid Workers Exchange is a weekly e-mail bulletin for knowledge sharing amongst field personnel working in humanitarian relief and international development. It covers a wide variety of topics with the format alternating between questions/responses and short, practical articles. Visit their web site if you would like to join.
In mid-December, in the midst of the controversy over racist remarks by Senator Trent Lott, Bush administration officials intimated that a presidential trip to Africa in January would demonstrate the U.S. president's sensitivity to African American concerns. If President George W. Bush had followed through on his plan to visit five African countries, Africans would have posed hard questions. Is your policy "just another trip"? Or are you willing to commit real resources to responding to the deadly threat of AIDS, and to other urgent African priorities?
An answer of a sort came just before Christmas, when a White House press release curtly announced that the trip was postponed. Later Secretary of State Colin Powell also called off plans to fill in for President Bush at the U.S. -Africa consultation being held in Mauritius this week. Heading the U.S. delegation instead would be U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, who will tout the benefits to Africa of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (which mandated this second consultation), and pitch other U.S. policies for promoting free trade.
Both the reduced U.S. presence in Mauritius and the exclusive focus on trade accurately reflect the realities of U.S. Africa policy. Washington policymakers are offering band-aids for the continent's gaping wounds, while pushing policies that add to the damage and deprive Africans of resources to fight back. This is evident in the U.S. willingness to use Africa as a military staging ground for war in the Middle East, while ignoring Africans' concerns for their own human security.
It shows up as well in the stingy U.S. contribution to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, amounting to only a tiny fraction of the $ 3.5 billion a year that would be the fair U.S. contribution, Meanwhile, the administration proposes handing over some $36 billion a year to rich investors by abolishing the tax on dividends. Last week U.N. Special Representative Stephen Lewis called rich countries' failure to respond to the AIDS pandemic "mass murder by complacency."
The administration brushes off findings that current "debt relief" programs leave desperately poor countries paying more to foreign creditors than they spend on the health needs of their people. And Bush refuses to act positively on global issues from women's reproductive rights to global warming, on which the penalty for failure falls most heavily on Africa.
Bush's balance sheet is also deeply in the red even in the realm for which the U.S. claims most credit: trade policy. It is true that AGOA has opened some additional opportunities for textile exports from African countries. But the benefits from this are estimated at only about $100 million to $140 million a year, and only go to a few countries. An International Monetary Fund study estimates that these benefits could have been five times greater if the U.S. had not imposed extremely restrictive rules of origin for the materials used in exported textiles. Meanwhile, African exports to the U.S. continue to be dominated by oil.
In December Washington stood alone to block a World Trade Organisation agreement to allow export of generic medicines from one developing country to another. African and other developing countries were outraged. The New York Times commented that Washington's position was "so obviously influenced by the drug companies that America is alienating nations whose support it needs on other trade issues."
As African countries face the combined impact of famine and AIDS, they also see their agriculture devastated by another killer: agricultural trade subsidies in the U.S. and Europe. Last year's U.S. farm bill, for example, added some $83 billion in new subsidies for rich U.S. farmers, whose exports already undercut developing country farmers who produce rice, maize, and other food crops. Such subsidies also undercut African exports. In a report last fall, for example, Oxfam calculated that U.S. cotton farmers received subsidies of $3.9 billion. Oxfam estimated the damage to African cotton producers from these subsidies at about $300 million a year.
Most official speeches in Mauritius will undoubtedly extol the potential mutual benefits of expanded U.S. -African trade. But that potential stands little chance of being realized with the current business-as-usual policy. When and if President Bush does visit Africa, he may seek to avoid answering the question of whether he values African lives. Two years into his administration, the policy record leaves little doubt that the answer is "no".
* William Minter is a senior research fellow at Africa Action, the oldest U.S.-based advocacy group on African affairs. This commentary was originally published in Le Mauricien (http://lemauricien.com), January 15, 2003.
* Send your comments for publication in the Letters and Comments section of Pambazuka News to
Celebrations at the Armed Forces Remembrance Day climaxed with the first meeting in public of President Olusegun Obasanjo, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate in the 2003 presidential elections, with his rival, All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP) presidential candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari. Clad in white flowing agbada, Gen. Buhari caused a stir when he entered the venue after the national anthem had been played and as President Obasanjo was about to march forward and lay his wreath on the tomb of the unknown soldier.
PAMBAZUKA NEWS EDIÇÃO EM PORTUGUÊS 94: Moçambique: As saias das alunas têm machismo pintado
PAMBAZUKA NEWS EDIÇÃO EM PORTUGUÊS 94: Moçambique: As saias das alunas têm machismo pintado
An international scheme has been launched to try to stop the proliferation of "blood diamonds". The Kimberley Process aims at cracking down on the multi-billion dollar trade in the gemstones which have been mined in war zones.
Recent claims by Sudanese rebels accusing the government of violating a peace agreement have raised fears of a resumption of hostilities between the two sides and cast a cloud over ongoing peace talks. Under the terms of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), signed in November, the parties agreed on a cessation of hostilities. The agreement was to last until the end of March 2003. Peace talks are due to resume in the Kenyan town of Machakos later this month.
Central African Republic (CAR) President Ange-Félix Patasse has called on France to send troops to help a regional African force restore peace in his country. A French military presence would boost the current presence of some 231 CEMAC soldiers, all of them Gabonese. Patasse said a French presence would also enable CAR to exploit its oil-rich northern area.
Fighting has again broken out around the villages of Jadid and Qararsoor in the Qardho area, some 260 km south of Bosaso, the commercial capital of the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland, with between 30 and 40 people reported to be killed, according to local sources.
Related Link: Puntland says Somaliland supporting dissident forces
http://irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=31564
The last vestiges of the independent media in Zimbabwe face new pressure as the government prepares for next week's launch of a repressive new licensing system which will give it the power to close any newspaper and to stop any journalist working.
Parliament in Togo has changed the constitution, removing clauses that would have forced the president to step down before elections next year. President Gnassingbe Eyadema seized power in a coup in 1967, making him Africa's longest-serving head of state.
One of the most wanted war crimes suspects in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda is believed to be living in Kenya under the protection of Government officials, a senior US official said on Tuesday. Felicien Kabuga, an alleged financier of the genocide, has been using his personal wealth to buy protection from Kenyan authorities, said Pierre-Richard Prosper, ambassador at large for war crimes.
Reporters sans frontières (RSF) has protested the closure of the independent daily newspaper "Al Watan", which the authorities say was shut down based on national security and state of emergency regulations. RSF also protested that the editions of two other independent newspapers, "Al Horriya" and "As Sahafa", failed to appear after having received threats from state security officials.
Zimbabwe's leading independent daily newspaper, the Daily News, is back on sale after a 10-day strike. The Daily News has been a strong critic of President Robert Mugabe's government, and is the best selling newspaper in the country.
The leaders of three rival militias groups fighting along the Isiro-Beni axis of northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) signed a ceasefire agreement on Monday, which could, if respected, allow for the provision of humanitarian assistance. The agreement, reached in the northern town of Gbadolite on Monday, became effective immediately.
The definitive implementation of a ceasefire between government and rebel forces in Burundi has been delayed from its scheduled date of Monday, government and rebel officials said. "It was not possible (to implement the accord on Monday) because the ceasefire depended on the arrival of the African Mission, the setting up of a joint ceasefire commission, and the cantonment of belligerents," Foreign Minister Therence Sinunguruza said.
Hundreds of plant and animal species around the world are feeling the impacts of global warming, although the most dramatic effects may not be felt for decades, according to new research from a Stanford University team. They predict that a rapid temperature rise, together with other environmental pressures, "could easily disrupt the connectedness among species" and lead to numerous extinctions.
Parliamentarians from more than 20 African and Asian countries meeting recently in Bangkok, Thailand, called for stepped up efforts to adopt legislation and policies for equality between women and men, one of the Millennium Development Goals.
In order to "save Africa from two catastrophes" -- the HIV/AIDS epidemic and famine -- "we would do well to focus on saving Africa's women," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan writes in a New York Times opinion piece.
At least 130,000 people had been displaced around the towns of Beni and Lubero, northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, the United Nations Mission in the DRC (known as MONUC) said on Thursday.
With the deadline for the cessation of refugee status for Eritreans expiring on 31 December, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) says thousands are seeking continued refugee status, while others have asked to be taken home or have applied to remain as immigrants.
United for Peace is a new national campaign that brings together a broad range of organisations throughout the United States to help coordinate work against a U.S. war on Iraq. At an initial meeting in Washington, DC on October 25, more than 70 peace and justice organizations agreed to form United for Peace. United for Peace invites you to join and become part of this new effort.
In a dark storeroom in the Kruger National Park lies the booty of a massive environmental war: South Africa's ivory collection. Many conservationists would view the room as a ghastly chamber of horrors. South Africa says it needs to unlock the value of its stockpile for badly needed conservation projects.
Not many people might know that the Zimbabwe Cricket Union's (ZCU) official letterhead, has 'PATRON: HIS EXCELLENCY THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF ZIMBABWE, CD R.G. MUGABE' printed proudly at the bottom of it. Curious that this branding hasn't "slipped" off the bottom over the last ten years of letterhead re-prints. Also curious that the ZCU haven't been brave enough to remove Mugabe's violent fisted presidential posters (tatty as they are) that adorn the entrance to Harare Sports Club, the official Harare venue for the World Cup Cricket matches. Perhaps their reluctance to do so is on account of the machine gun, bayonet-toting presidential guards that strut menacingly up and down the road adjacent to Harare Sports Club.
Related Links:
* Ministers warn of Zim violence
* Veteran of apartheid era says do not go
http://sport.guardian.co.uk/cricket/story/0,10069,871003,00.html
* Don't play here, say Zim players
The refusal of the publicly owned but state controlled Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) to broadcast paid adverts of a major opposition party, the National Rainbow Coalition, in the run up to the December 27 national elections, has been condemned by the organisation CREDO for Freedom of Expression and Associated Rights.
By the time police swept into the poshest suburb of Malawi's capital and surrounded the high red walls of house number 159 it was too late. Peter Wang had disappeared, leaving behind a family, a criminal empire and a gaping hole in what was supposed to be a triumph over elephant poaching.
Hopes rose in 2002 that some of Africa's deadliest and most intransigent conflicts could soon be resolved, with peace deals or cease-fire agreements reached in six war-torn countries. Sierra Leone, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Somalia and Burundi - countries that for much of the past decade have been a byword for strife - each made significant strides toward peace over the past year. But observers say the real test will be whether the deals signed on paper will translate into peace in practise during 2003.
Understanding of budgets and government expenditure has long been the preserve of government officials and a few academics. The documents that relate to it are typically inaccessible and clouded by technical language. Yet it is here that government policy is translated into action and outcomes. It is important that NGOs engage with public expenditure issues both to strengthen their policy advocacy and to improve government transparency and accountability.
The Kenyan body politic is so severely affected by bribery and corruption that it is not realistic to expect it to ever recover without the application of drastic remedies. You can hardly find a public official on whom two people agree is clean. Everyone in public life is expected to be corrupt. Everything that anyone has got is seen as corruptly acquired. Public figures are believed to be corrupt and those who have property are thought to have acquired it corruptly.
We are writing on behalf of the World Association of Newspapers and the World Editors Forum, which represent 18,000 publications in 100 countries, to express our serious concern at the closure of the independent daily newspaper Al Watan and the censoring of two others. According to reports, the director-general of the internal security police ordered Al Watan to shut down on 28 December along with its publishing company, Compagnie de la Corne de l'Afrique. State security officials reportedly burst into the newspaper's offices and ordered staff to leave.
AIDS advocates from the National Association of People Living with HIV/AIDS have ended a hunger strike that started on Christmas day outside the Midrand offices of GlaxoSmithKline in Gauteng province, after the South African Department of Social Development urged the protestors to call off the second stage of the strike, the South African Press Association reports. The strike -- the original phase of which ended on Tuesday -- is part of the group's "Black Christmas" campaign that demands that pharmaceutical companies and the South African government provide antiretroviral drugs free of charge; that banks and insurance companies cease discriminating against HIV-positive people; and that the government allocate social grants more uniformly.
The United Nations said last Thursday that all Rwandans who fled to Tanzania after the 1994 genocide had now returned home. Tanzania, which is host to more than one million refugees, has said it cannot cope with the influx of people escaping regional wars.
The landlocked African kingdom of Swaziland is believed to have the world's highest rate of HIV, with almost four out of 10 adults infected with the virus which causes Aids. In a new year's address, the prime minister, Sibusiso Dlamini, said the official rate of infection had risen to 38.6% from 34.2% in January 2002.
Parts of Africa such as Liberia, Western Sahara and Burundi remained deeply troubled, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in its review of 2002. The UNHCR said there had to be "fundamental improvements" in the way millions of Africans were treated by the rest of the world.
President Thabo Mbeki will interrupt his leave to go to the African National Congress' headquarters in Johannesburg on Monday to discuss a looming legislative crisis in Kwazulu-Natal with the party's leadership.
Tundu Antiphas Lissu, a Tanzanian human rights lawyer and outspoken advocate for an independent international inquiry into the evictions at Bulyanulu in August 1996, was detained by police on December 23 in Dar Es Salaam, and held for over 24 hours in an underground jail known as "The Hole."
The United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) has launched an initiative to link African ICT entrepreneurs living in Africa with those living in the Diaspora. The goal of the programme is to help bridge the digital divide in Africa by providing women with access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) to help improve their livelihoods. It works by fostering and supporting collaborations to strengthen African women entrepreneurs and their use of ICT.
The International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) will convene the fourth HELINA conference in South Africa from 13 to 15 October 2003, focused on communication and information technologies (ICT) in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa. The International Medical Informatics Association and the South African Health Informatics Association will organise the conference, in partnership with Harvard Medical International (HMI) and the National Library of Medicine (NLM) in the United States, the South African Medical Research Council (MRC), and the Centers for Disease Control and Preven-
tion (CDC) in the United States. Additional partner organisations are being sought for this exciting and challenging initiative, which forms part of the drive by IMIA to stimulate the development of Health Informatics activities in Africa.
I'm a human right activist and I like issues reported in PAMBAZUKA.
Dr Nneka Nora Osakwe - Language Intervention Associates, Enugu ,Nigeria
A combination of bad weather and late delivery of seeds and fertiliser could condemn Lesotho to another disastrous harvest this year, World Food Programme officials say.
The conference promises to close the loop between research and practice, revealing what has actually been achieved in Africa using information and communication technologies (ICTs) for development. It will focus on key emerging themes such as alleviating poverty through ICTs, schoolnets, telecentres, policy issues and innovation. Entitled "Networking Africa's Future", the event will be held in rural South Africa at the Kwa Maritane game lodge, and will feature a state-of-the-art Internet satellite system as the platform for a website covering the discussions.
Sierra Leone's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) must start serious work if it is to avoid losing the confidence of civil society and international donors. There are still considerable problems with management issues, funding and, in particular, the performance of the commissioners and its partner, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Statement takers have been sent out this month to begin collecting stories from all citizens who wish to come forward, but this is just a first step. Civil society also must be brought back into the process to assist with education, to act as a watchdog and to encourage popular participation in the TRC, says the International Crisis Group.
This one year full-time (or two years part-time) Programme in Understanding & Securing Human Rights is open to graduates of any discipline who seek training in human rights. This inter-disciplinary course, which has now been running for almost a decade, is based in Central London & consists of three written papers and a dissertation. Speakers come from international agencies & the academic community.
This new one year full-time (or two years part-time) Programme in Globalization & Development is open to graduates of any discipline who seek training in globalization, governance, human development & human security. This specialist inter-disciplinary course is based in Central London & consists of three written papers and a dissertation. Speakers come from international agencies & think tanks as well as the academic community.
As the next round of talks aimed at ending 19 years of conflict in Sudan draws near, Sudan's warring parties are still reluctant to take the necessary decisions leading to conditions for peace in the country, a UK-based think tank has said. Justice Africa, an organisation which works on peace and security issues on the continent, has urged the Sudanese government and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) to heed the consolidated pressure for peace in order to reach a lasting solution to the conflict.
Some 35,000 people fled heavy artillery fire around Makeke, on the western edge of Ituri region in North Kivu Province of northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, to Beni on 31st December 2002, according to Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF).
The office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has urged the Ivorian government to find a new, safer area for thousands of Liberian refugees living some 40km from the frontline between loyalist troops and rebels in western Cote d'Ivoire.
Presidential and legislative elections are to take place on 14 October in Liberia, the chairman of the Liberian electoral commission, Paul Guah, announced on Thursday. Guah said voter registration would be held from 15 to 29 April and the final list of candidates would be published on 20 June, news organisations reported.
The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) is preparing to launch a blanket supplementary feeding programme this month in seven provinces in Mozambique, in collaboration with the World Food Programme (WFP) and development NGOs. The beneficiaries are an estimated 141,000 children aged six to 59 months and 71,000 pregnant and lactating women in 22 of the country's poorest food deficit districts, UNICEF said in a report released on Monday.
Life expectancy among Zambian adults is falling, according to the findings of two new databases, raising concerns over the impact of HIV/AIDS. The recently published Demographic Health Survey and the 2000 Census of Population and Housing have revealed a "significant deterioration in adult survivorship", the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said in a report.
Zambia's over-stretched health facilities are inadequate at the best of times, but the situation is especially grim for the more than 1.2 million people living with HIV/AIDS.
Burkina Faso's government has asked the World Health Organisation (WHO) for help in its fight against meningitis. The request coincides with the start of the 2002-2003 meningitis season.
A US federal appeals court has temporarily blocked the deportation of a Dallas woman who says she and her 3-year-old daughter, who was born in the United States, would be subjected to genital mutilation if she were forced to return to her native Nigeria.
This paper examines the correlates of mistimed and unwanted childbearing in Kenya. The results show that unplanned childbearing in Kenya is associated with a number of factors, including urban/rural residence, region, ethnicity, maternal education, maternal age, marital status, birth order, length of preceding birth interval, family planning practice, fertility preference and unmet need for family planning.
A week-long survey by a newspaper in Tanzania has revealed that despite the enactment of the Sexual Offences and Special Provisions Act of 1998, which states that any person found guilty of enforcing Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is liable to a term of imprisonment of not less than 5 years, FGM is still widely practiced.
COHRED is looking for a Coordinator to lead the organisation into the next phase of its development. COHRED's vision is to attain a system of effective health research as a tool for development, based on values of equity and social justice and targeting the health problems of those most in need. COHRED works with numerous developing countries, research networks, UN agencies and other organisations to advocate for country-driven health research, based on the ENHR approach.
Testing and treating pregnant women for HIV reduces the likelihood of infecting the child. But do women want to know if they have HIV? Researchers with the Medical Research Council programme in Uganda investigated how rural women feel about counselling and testing for HIV during pregnancy. While most women are prepared to undergo testing, they are worried about confidentiality and the behaviour of medical staff.
Organisations representing survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide are unhappy with a plan to free thousands of people who have pleaded guilty to participating in the genocide but have not yet been tried. On 1 January, the government announced that those who had pleaded guilty, along with the elderly, minors and the seriously ill, would be freed on bail until their cases are heard in court. Some 800,000 people, mostly ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus, were killed in 100 days between April and June 1994.
The Daily News, Zimbabwe's leading daily paper has indicated that it would not register under the controversial law, the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act but would instead fight the law in the courts.
There are huge differences in the health of mothers and children living in conflict-ridden poor countries and the predominantly rich countries exporting arms to them, says a study published in the British Medical Journal. The study says trading in arms - both legal and illegal - is highly detrimental to the health of mothers and children in the countries where armed conflict occurs and questions the commitment of powerful arms trading countries to addressing the problems they are responsible for causing.
Two Bills which will clear the way for the resumption of donor aid will be brought before Parliament when it resumes, President Kibaki announced. The donor community had insisted that the two bills - The Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Bill and the Public Service (code of Conduct and Ethics) - be passed by Parliament and implemented by the government as a condition for resumption of aid.
Uganda's new Media Council says it will soon visit media organisations to vet the qualifications of journalists - and order the dismissal of those they deem under-qualified. The state wants staff without formal journalism qualifications barred from working in media houses.
I am interested to learn and share with other people on issues concerning human rights, good governance, democracy and peace building.
This is wishing you all of the best over the festive season, and during 2003. Thanx once again for all the inspiration contained in the weekly newsletters.
Ranjit Purshotam,
Legal Resources Centre, Durban, South Africa