The United Nations is assisting at least 8,000 people on the outskirts of Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo, who were displaced in October by instability. Many of the IDPs, who started to flee "lawless conditions" in the Pool region in mid October, had arrived in Brazzaville in "poor conditions", the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported last Friday.

The impact of Zimbabwe's controversial fast-track land reform programme has rippled through the economy, but it has been the country's once robust agro-industries that have been the hardest hit.

Several thousand Eritrean ethnic Kunamas who sought refuge in Ethiopia during the 1998-2000 border war may be exempted from a UN ruling ending refugee status for Eritreans living in exile, UN sources have told IRIN.

Despite the almost complete withdrawal of Rwandan and Ugandan forces from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in recent weeks, fighting has intensified throughout eastern regions of the country where most of the over 2.27 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) are located, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) as at August 2002.

Dumping – or exporting at prices below production costs – is causing serious damage to domestic markets in developing countries, says an Oxfam paper which recognises the negative impact that European Union agricultural subsidies have on the economy and livelihoods of developing countries. The paper says the consequences of these subsidies are over-production, export dumping and a decrease of the prices of key commodities such as sugar, dairy and cereals.

HIV/AIDS is an enormous development crisis and debt repayment represents a remarkable obstacle to the fight against it, says a 2002 paper by Oxfam. HIV/AIDS claims more than one million lives each year in heavily indebted countries, says Oxfam, but half of the countries receiving debt relief under the Enhanced Heavily Indebted Countries Initiative are still spending 15 percent or more of government revenue on debt repayment.

The Liberian rainforest is threatened by destructive logging operations, according to the first Liberian nongovernmental report on the forest industry released by La Fondation pour la Sauvegarde de l’Avenir (SAMFU)in September. This Liberian nongovernmental organisation was founded in 1987, but remained dormant during most of the 1990s because of the civil war in Liberia.

Key issues that impact women’s access to justice were discussed at a UNIFEM workshop in Somaliland. Participants identified challenges such as aspects of Somali culture that restrict women to the home and family sphere; differing interpretations of judicial regimes, like sharia, secular and customary law; and the absence of women within the judicial system. The workshop was held as part of the ongoing UNIFEM peace and security project.

Harare executive mayor, Elias Mudzuri, has been denied entry into the Hatfield Municipal Hall, where about 500 Zanu PF supporters were distributing maize meal on a partisan basis.

The discourse of sustainable development will become enshrined in political exchanges alongside the norms of democracy, economic justice, human rights and participation. This process has already begun via democratic demands for accountability and transparency in the private sector, according to a report by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), which provides an outline and analysis of the outcomes of the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD).

While the government has retained ownership of forests centrally, at the local level people have used forest resources without restriction, leading to the over exploitation of many forest resources and a lack of sense of ownership and responsibility among forest communities. This is according to a paper produced by Tanzania Online, which also examines government plans to transfer management rights for forests while retaining tenure centrally and confusion over how the division of rights can occur legally.

HIV/Aids is changing the environment in which we operate. It will have effects as serious as the plague in medieval Europe and we do not know how to deal with it. In effect there is a complete poverty in planning which will result in considerable impoverishment and misery in much of Southern Africa. One new way to assess the situation would be through developing scenarios.

Some residents recently uprooted from their homes by fighting between rebels and forces loyal to the government in the capital have started to return from village refuges along the 80-km road leading north to the town of Boali, an official of the UN Children's Fund told IRIN on Sunday.

The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, Africa's "major free trade bloc," has applied to the World Trade Organization for permission to manufacture generic versions of patented antiretroviral drugs, Reuters reports.

Billions of naira are being lost annually to capital flight through the activities of various government officials and influential Nigerians who stash away illegally-gotten funds in foreign accounts.

The World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) says it has received information about the beatings and rape of women involved in protest against oil companies operating in the Niger Delta. The OMCT said on August 8 Itsekiri, Ijaw and Ilaje women had engaged in a peaceful protest against these oil companies, claiming environmental degradation as well as substandard employment and contractual policies. Army and Navy forces had been called on to disperse the protest. Tear gas had been used and some of the women had allegedly been beaten and raped. "The information received further notes that several pregnant women had miscarriages as a result of the beatings and that one woman's breast was chopped off," said the organisation in a statement. OMCT is urging concerned parties to write to the Nigerian authorities and multi-national companies requesting that the safety of the women be guaranteed.

Keeping pure grade cattle is not an option 60-year-old North Sakwa farmer, Odiengi Nyaugu, would still prefer. His North Sakwa counterparts in western Kenya wouldn't either. "Pure grade cattle is very expensive to keep. They also fall easily to disease thus discouraging us from keeping them. Again, very few of us can afford the cost of buying one," he says as we take a walk in his shamba. Ever since the Kenya government decided to privatise Artificial Insemination (AI) services and withdrew subsidies for the running of village cattle dips - mainly due to pressure from donor institutions - the main extension challenge for rural areas has been to come up with rural cooperatives that can fill in the gap.

The Central Executive Committee of SAMWU, meeting on 13/15 November 2002 in Johannesburg, has issued the following statement on the arrest of John Pape: The members of SAMWU were shocked to learn of the arrest of John Pape on 8 November relating to charges of 'terrorism' allegedly committed in the USA and dating back to the 1970's. The John Pape(real name James Kilgore) we have come to know -through his work for ILRIG, his involvement in the Municipal Services Project and in general education work within and beyond SAMWU is not the same person that the media has attempted to portray as a violent terrorist with no regard for human life or property. The use of terms like gangster and terrorist by the media show a genuine lack of understanding of who John is and what he stands for. It is nothing but sensationalist journalism. John has always come across as a genuine friend of the poor and a strong advocate of social justice.

Africa needs to set realistic priorities in health research, and also to develop its own capacities and alternative ways for solving its health problems, according to Ali Mohamed Shein, Vice-President of Tanzania. Addressing a meeting of 700 health experts, policy-makers and donor agencies from about 85 countries, Shein said that African countries needed to remind themselves that it was their "own duty and responsibility” to lead the fight against diseases which were weighing them down.

A study of children in Kenya and Tanzania has identified a gene mutation that can significantly cut the risk of becoming seriously ill with malaria. Researchers led by Brice Weinberg of the Veterans Affairs and Duke University Medical Centers in Durham, North Carolina, United States, found that children with the mutation were nearly 90 per cent less likely to develop severe forms of the disease.

IFES is seeking a resident Project Manager to implement an elections assistance project in Sierra Leone. This project is an extension of current IFES and IFES Ltd work in Sierra Leone which focuses on building the institutional and technical capacity of the National Electoral Commission of Sierra Leone and in preparing for future elections.

The Sudanese government and southern rebels agreed on Monday to extend a cessation of hostilities agreement until next March, but failed to reach full accord on the sharing of power and wealth.

Professor Jonathan Moyo, the minister of State for Information and Publicity has attacked the private media for what he called its "anti-nation" and "anti government" reporting. Moyo, who was addressing army officers in Harare on 18 November, said that the private media, especially The Daily News, was being used by Western powers to attack the government, the country's values and traditions.

Former military ruler General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida will contest the 2003 presidential election on the ticket of the newly registered National Democratic Party.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said in Entebbe, Uganda, at a meeting of the Commonwealth Regional Health Community for East, Central and Southern Africa that HIV/AIDS and malaria are stressing Uganda's health ministry and costing the country more than $1 billion in lost wealth each year, the Associated Press reports.

Statement to the SADC-EU Ministerial Meeting, from the SADC-EU Civil Society Conference, 3-5 November 2002, Copenhagen, Denmark and the Civil Society meeting in Maputo 5-8 November:

We, members of Southern African and European civil society, have gathered in Copenhagen and Maputo in two interlinked civil society conferences on the eve of the SADC-EU Ministerial meeting in Maputo, Mozambique on 7-8 November 2002.

We share a common vision of an equitable society that cares for all its members, that strives continuously to enhance their socio-economic rights and political freedoms, and that places people not profit or power first. We also share a common vision of SADC-EU relations, in which the people and governments of the two regions meet in a partnership of equals, not shackled by exploitative relations.

We see development, a people-driven and a people-centered process, as the central objective of SADC-EU relations. We struggle for this development in the context of severe inequalities of economic and political power inherited from previous colonial relationships and the damage done to regional development and integration by apartheid. This adverse context also includes non-democratic governance, lack of media independence and limitations in the freedom of the civil society in some countries in the SADC region.

We believe that these unequal relations have been perpetuated by international institutions such as the IMF, World Bank and WTO and economic structures of dependency, including the debt trap and unfair trade relations that bind the SADC region to Europe. We believe that they are being abused to secure the unilateral imposition of trade liberalisation, privatisation and maximum repayment of debts. These processes undermine regional efforts to define alternative development frameworks, to pursue regional integration and to address structural problems of production and sustained resource management.

We note with concern, since our last meeting in Gaborone in November 2000, the emergence of a number of developments in SADC-EU relations which impede the achievement of an equal partnership. The current famine in Southern Africa demands an urgent response from European governments. Assistance must be provided with due sensitivity to the danger of reinforcing policy pressures and dependence. In the longer term, lessons must be learned about the local and international policy failures, which have contributed to the famine. The right of developing countries to pursue policies aimed at securing food security must be defended against inappropriate international policy advice.

Our vision is for African unity and equitable regional integration. We fully support regional initiatives to end African civil wars. We believe that a public peer review mechanism for African leaders should be compulsory and not voluntary, and that this should include all aspects of governance. The dominance of the economic aspects of NEPAD, particularly in engagements with Northern institutions, causes us to issue a warning: internationally supervised adjustment has failed to promote African development. This has been exacerbated by mismanagement of official development assistance by SADC governments, poor domestic governance of assets and the corrupt practices of public and private officials associated with development projects.

Any African recovery plan must clearly identify the failures of past conditions attached to aid, loans and investment and adopt African proposals for people-centered development. However, NEPAD replicates these failed frameworks and risks crowding out the rich tradition of Africa's own alternative thinking on development. NEPAD is mainly concerned with raising external resources, appealing to and relying on external governments and institutions. In addition, it is a top-down programme driven by African elites and drawn up by the corporate forces and institutional instruments of globalisation, rather than being based on African peoples experiences, knowledge and demands. A legitimate African programme has to start from the people and be owned by the people. We note particularly past plans such as the 1980 Lagos Plan of Action, the 1989 African Alternative Framework to Structural Adjustment Programmes, the 1991 Arusha Declaration on Popular Participation and Democracy and the 1994 Kampala Declaration on Security and Peace.

The HIV-AIDS pandemic
Of all the people living with HIV/AIDS in the world, just under half live in Southern Africa. The 1990s saw massive strides forward in access to effective treatments in Europe but millions continue to die in Africa due to the lack of affordable access to treatment. Because HIV/AIDS affects women with household responsibilities and the young and economically active sections of the population, the epidemic has devastating implications on production and economic growth. It is already putting an unbearable burden on social services and reversing hard-won development gains. The HIV/AIDS pandemic represents an immense obstacle to reaching the national poverty reduction targets and development goals agreed upon at the United Nations Millenium Summit.

We call on EU Governments to:
- provide increased bilateral and multilateral funding, in particular for the Global Fund. They should make a contribution proportional to their share of global GDP, aimed at meeting the target of 10 billion dollars per annum;
- support calls for the resources of the Fund to be allocated proportionately to countries (according to their domestic resources) which carry the heaviest disease burden
- ensure that the implementation of the Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health improves access to affordable, high-quality medicines in SADC;
- support Africa Group proposals for an interpretation of Article 30 of the TRIPS Agreement which would enable other countries to export medicines and other inventions to meet the health needs of Africa,;
- significantly increase their public investment in research into the development of AIDS vaccines and ensure equal and affordable access.

We call on the SADC Governments to:
- publicly acknowledge and address, at the Head of State level, the existence of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and that its rapid spread is fuelled by gender inequality and sexual violence;
- develop and implement comprehensive, gender-sensitive national HIV/AIDS plans with legally binding policies on prevention, treatment and care;
- develop and implement a regional plan to address the pandemic;
- ensure that national and regional plans include strategies aimed at the full attainment of the Millenium Development Goals and at mitigating the development impact of the pandemic on households;
- meet their Abuja Commitments to allocate 15% of their national budgets on health care;
- build unified positions towards the WTO and the Global Fund.

Debt and reparations
Southern African debt repayments are having a crippling effect on the ability of Governments of the region to implement development programmes, invest in health and education and cope with the devastating impact of the HIV/AIDS crisis. In addition current international policies, supported by the EU, such as the HIPC initiative and Poverty Reduction Strategies, are woefully inadequate and continue the failed policies of the structural adjustment programmes. They also do not provide a framework to tackle the special nature of Southern Africa's debt.

Apartheid-caused debt
The apartheid regime not only oppressed its own people – it waged a full-scale war against neighboring states. Faced with a sudden loss of income and the need to protect their people, the governments of the region borrowed heavily from international financial institutions, like the IMF and the World Bank. Despite the United Nations declaring apartheid a crime against humanity, private European banks continued to bankroll the apartheid regime, keeping apartheid alive longer than it would otherwise have survived. Apartheid as a system has to be understood as being both political and structural in nature.

Given that these apartheid caused debts served a criminal system we call on the EU Governments to:
- Accept that all apartheid caused debt is illegitimate and illegal;
- Recognise that their corporations and banks have aided and abetted apartheid and have reaped profits from it;
- Recognise that the peoples of Southern Africa therefore are entitled to full cancellation and reparation for apartheid-caused debt.

Structural adjustment caused debt
We call upon the EU to recognize that dependency by SADC countries on international financial institutions is caused by falling commodity prices of African exports, lack of access to markets in the EU and the USA because of protectionism and agricultural subsidies, and reductions in official development aid.

Reparations
Based on the premise that the apartheid-caused debt is illegal, then profits taken and received are also illegal. The profits are as odious as the debt itself. We call on the EU Governments to:
- Recognize that debts incurred by Southern African countries, supporting the legitimate struggle against apartheid, should be written off by the international public and private creditors. This act should be seen as the first step in addressing the social damages resulting from the regional destabilisation effected by apartheid. It is a pre-condition for starting a programme of regional reconstruction and development.

Management of debt
We call on SADC Governments to acknowledge and recognize that part of the unmanageable debt crisis is directly attributed to a complete lack of transparency and accountability in procurement, disbursement and management of loans by SADC governments. We call on each SADC government to implement transparent, accountable and public participatory processes as part of the procurement, disbursement and management of loans taken out on behalf of its citizens.

Privatisation
We believe that access to essential services, such as health, energy and water, are basic human rights and should not be subject to privatisation and profit, thus falling outside public control. The privatisation of such services and needs only serves to widen the gap between the rich and the poor, to increase the gender gap and to impact unfairly on women and girls who are the first to lose education and health services when user fees are introduced. Privatisation ignores the question of people's ownership and control of African resources, while benefiting European capital.

We call on the EU and SADC Governments to:
- recognise that access to health, energy and water are basic human rights and that it is undermining democracy if they are not under public control;
- stop using privatisation as a pre-requisite for granting development assistance and access to trade, especially as applied to the conditionalities imposed through the activities of the IFI's and the WTO;
- do away with the in-built modalities of privatisation, such as outsourcing, divestiture and management contracts, that are presently an integral part of NEPAD;
- ensure that any implementation of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) remains under public control and ownership, and ensures access to affordable services by the people;
- stop using development funds to promote private sector delivery of services;
- commit to pursuing, with the full involvement of civil society, comprehensive economic and social impact assessments prior to the implementation of any privatisation initiative;
- explore alternative strategies to upgrade public services, including gender budgeting, while keeping them under public control that is accountable and transparent;
- examine the hidden costs of privatisation in gendered impact assessment studies; these include higher user fees, loss of quality jobs and loss of public income;
- scrap failed cost-recovery policies on basic services and implement cross-subsidisation and budget subsidies;
- recognise that privileged elites, companies and countries are driving and benefiting from privatisation.

* For further statements on trade and agriculture, democracy and human rights, and workers rights and the labour market, please click on the "Further Details" link provided below.

Women Affairs and Child Welfare Minister Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah has spoken out in strong defence of the Bill on Combating Domestic Violence and criticised her male colleagues for trying to ridicule the draft law. The minister did not spare ruling party MPs, saying those who had opposed the Bill were acting against the Swapo constitution, which condemns sexism.

The Aiding Youth for Life Country Coordinator (CC) position is an internship that will last 6 months and is dependant upon funding. The candidate will be operating centrally out of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The CC will act as the central representative of the AYL Board of Directors in Tanzania, and will be required to host governments, and international and national organisations; develop new programs; manage security and personnel.

The director will be responsible for ensuring the centre fulfils its three main designed functions: 1. Operational research in reproductive health care, 2. training in reproductive health, 3. knowledge base and network hub. Chichewa and English fluency preferred.

Changes in ownership within South African media has placed many challenges on up-coming broadcasting companies and authorities.

There is widespread belief in South Africa that the number of non-citizens has escalated dramatically since 1990. Is it true that the country is drowning in a 'flood' of aliens? What is likely to best serve its needs in terms of immigration policy?

Many young people in southern Africa engage in AIDS-related migration. What are the patterns of this migration? What are the difficulties facing these children and how do they cope? What can be done to make it easier for them? Research conducted with urban and rural-based children in Lesotho and Malawi revealed that children are commonly sent to live with relatives resident elsewhere. They move in order to receive care, to care for others, or to support their own livelihoods.

Vigilante violence, which has already spiraled out of control since the return of civilian rule in Nigeria three years ago, stands to turn increasingly political - and even more dangerous - as the country approaches presidential, state and local elections in April 2003, Amnesty International has warned in a report released this week.

What are the challenges that African countries face in adopting plant variety protection through intellectual property rights regimes? What lessons can African countries draw from the Indian experience? Africa Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS) research suggests that the introduction of monopoly rights is not appropriate for most sub-Saharan countries. What plant variety protection regime would be suitable?

A Daily News crew of reporter Henry Makiwa, Photographer Gally Kambeu and
driver Trust Maswela was arrested on 19 November 2002 when they were
covering a demonstration by parents and students who were protesting against the
alleged rape of a girl by a deputy school head in the suburb of Marimba in Harare.

This is an extraordinary first novel by a Tanzanian women writer. The central character, Doreen, tells her story in the first person narrative. Born into a women-headed household in a rural area, her inner life and development mirror her life's passage: education, career, the town, marriage and motherhood. Whilst not didactic nor impinging on beautifully crafted writing, the novel deals with gender politics from a local level rather than a western oriented feminist stance. Both fatalism and seperatism are rejected and the book is imbued with insights and touchstones about the female condition.

Half way into his journey through Africa, Paul Theroux is standing by the roadside in northern Kenya, looking, by his own account, a little down-at-heel. Pushing 60, he has a hole in his jacket and a tough journey through Ethiopia behind him. The truck he arrived on has a broken spring and isn't moving. So he asks a couple of passing Americans in a gleaming white aid agency vehicle for a ride. And they refuse. I'm not an aid worker, but I was working in Kenya myself at about the time Theroux passed through. And I have a four-wheel drive, though it's neither new nor shiny. Would I have given him a ride? Maybe. But if he started ranting on about aid workers the way he does in this book, I would have had to suggest that he quieten down and do some research.

The Board of Amani Trust, Zimbabwe expresses its deep concern at the statement in Parliament on Wednesday 13th November by Cabinet Minister July Moyo, wherein he referred to Amani Trust as an "illegal organisation". The statement made reference to an advertisement in "The Herald" newspaper in September 2002, requiring all non governmental organisations to register in terms of the Private Voluntary Organisations (PVO) Act, Chapter 17:05.

The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers has released a 195-page report listing those governments and groups that use and recruit child soldiers, in advance of an upcoming United Nations Security Council debate on children and armed conflict. "This report is a 'list of shame' for the armed groups and governments using boys and girls in their conflicts in defiance of international standards," said Casey Kelso, Coalition Coordinator.

The Sudanese government has withdrawn its permission for a Ugandan army offensive against Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels in south Sudan. The charge d'affaires at the Sudanese embassy in Nairobi, Muhammad Ahmed Dirdeiry, confirmed to IRIN on Wednesday that the Uganda People's Defence Force (UPDF) would not be allowed to continue its 'Operation Iron Fist' against LRA targets on Sudanese territory. "They have been given enough time to do this job," he said.

About 170 street children on the Simukai Street Youth Programme in Mutare have been reunited with their families since January following a successful rehabilitation exercise.
Simukai is an outreach partnership between Family Aids Caring Trust (FACT) in Mutare and Scripture Union Eastern Region. It is a joint venture formed in January 2000 to look into the welfare and plight of the children.

As the dust settles over the celebrations of the new Children Act, which came into operation in March this year, it is emerging that Kenya's Juvenile Justice System has for a long time been based on an adversarial and punitive model that does not appropriately deal with child offenders.

The Delta Steel Company, Ovwian-Aladja, was forcibly shut down this week when a mob of over 5,000 women besieged its gates to protest alleged marginalisation of the host communities by the consortium of companies involved in the rehabilitation of the steel plant.

The Progressive Teachers' Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) has written to the Public Service Commission (PSC), threatening strike action next month if the government does not heed its demands for a salary increment. This could disrupt classes and the writing of forthcoming national examinations.

Amnesty International has condemned efforts by the Zimbabwean government to silence human rights defenders. Recent statements by government ministers signal intensified scrutiny and intimidation of NGOs who have spoken out about the deteriorating human rights situation in Zimbabwe. "Human rights organisations who expose human rights violations and are perceived to be critical of government policy are coming under increasing attack," Amnesty International said.

Mohammed Abacha, son of Nigeria's late military ruler General Sani Abacha, who was recently released from three years in prison on charges of money laundering and corruption, has instructed lawyers to retrieve millions of dollars he says are rightfully his. Banks in Europe have frozen accounts holding money allegedly siphoned off while General Abacha ruled Nigeria from 1993 to his death in 1998.

A new paper "State of disaster: Causes, consequences & policy lessons from Malawi" finds that, as with other famines, a combination of 'technical' issues and 'political' problems has conspired to create a humanitarian crisis. The paper is available at www.eldis.org, where a wide range of links on the current crisis in Malawi can also be found.

Angered by perceived biased reporting of the ethno-religious crises buffeting Plateau State, North-Central Nigeria, the governor, Joshua Dariye, has threatened to declare "persona non grata," journalists who write "negative reports" on the State.

The president of Ivory Coast, Laurent Gbagbo, has announced that a referendum will be held next year on changing the constitution. Correspondents say Mr Gbagbo's move is significant as on the same day, the rebels seemed to soften their demand for his resignation when they submitted their peace proposals to West African mediators.