The World Bank will assist the Angolan government in the resettlement of 1,500,000 people in their respective areas of origin, the government-owned news agency reports.

Despite a one-day extension of voter registration, reports from across the country at the close, indicated that millions of eligible Nigerians, could still not register.

The main aim of the event is to bring together private sector, government and civil society groups interested in mobilizing ICTs as a tool for development and mapping out a vision and strategy to stimulate growth and development in Sierra Leone.

Concerned at high levels of corruption costing the country millions of dollars and threatening the economy, members of the public have joined civil society's call for a national audit in order to bring perpetrators to book.

Food aid for famine-stricken Zambia will come to a halt by early October unless the country lifts its ban on donations of genetically modified (GM) maize, the United Nations' World Food Programme (WFP) announced this week.

A dissenting group within Kenya's ruling party Kanu has threatened to form its own party if open elections are not held to choose the presidential candidate.

Oxfam GB is implementing integrated programmes (food assistance, livelihood support and public health) in response to the food crisis in Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe. To ensure effective and accountable operations, Oxfam requires Logisticians across the region.

The World Bank and other international financial institutions (IFIs) should reassess their continued backing for mining projects in poor countries, says a report released Monday by Oxfam America. Contrary to what the report calls "folklore" propagated by the IFIs and the global mining industry, mining never acted as a major spur to development in the United States, Canada, or Australia, the three countries often held up by the IFIs as examples for development that mineral-rich poor countries could follow.

The Kenyan Community Abroad (KCA) has expressed its "concern and distress" over the disturbing political events taking place in the country. "Officially sanctioned violence seems to have become a standard prelude to our general and presidential elections," the organization said in a statement.

As a regular receiver of your newsletter, I find each edition logical, educative and entertaining in some cases. But particularly I want to specifically commend the Pambazuka News 77 edition. The editorial on the article "The Missionary Position: NGOs and Development in Africa" is simply superb. (See for the editorial and full edition.) It encouraged me to download the complete article from the Internet and I must say I am thrilled by the quality of work done.

With their lands facing the prospect of devastating floods, droughts and other disasters linked to global climate change, participants from 46 of the world's 49 least developed countries met at a workshop last week in Dhaka, Bangladesh, to hone national plans to alleviate such crises and seek international support for these efforts.

Researchers measured the impact of maternal syphilis on pregnancy outcome in the Mwanza Region of Tanzania. Women with high-titer active syphilis were at the greatest risk of having low-birth-weight or preterm live births, compared with women with other serological stages of syphilis. Among unscreened women, 51 percent of stillbirths, 24 percent of preterm live births, and 17 percent of all adverse pregnancy outcomes were attributable to maternal syphilis.

Warnings are being sounded that the withdrawal of Rwandan, Ugandan and Zimbabwean forces from the Democratic Republic of Congo could leave behind instability and factional conflict.
Related Link: http://www.africaonline.com/site/Articles/1,3,49657.jsp

Most of the world's refugees are uprooted by warfare but never cross an international border, says a survey published today. Some 25 million people are now internally displaced due to conflicts that have spread since the Cold War, according to a major new survey. "The 2002 Global IDP Survey confirms two worrying trends: first, that large numbers of innocent civilians are being forced from their homes by increased insecurity in the world; and secondly, that many of these people remain officially neglected by government authorities," said Elisabeth Rasmusson, head of the Global IDP Project.

The Institute of International Education (IIE), Open Society Institute, and the Scholars at Risk Network announce the autumn application cycle for fellowships from IIE's Scholar Rescue Fund, supporting scholars who are threatened by violations of their fundamental human rights including threats caused by displacement, discrimination, censorship, harassment, intimidation, or violence.

The UN World Food Programme on Tuesday warned that it is running out of food aid to assist more than 91,000 Eritrean refugees living in camps in Sudan.

President Bakili Muluzi of Malawi has lashed out at European countries who have called for broad national consultation before the government introduces a constitutional amendment to allow him to run for a third term. "This country is not controlled by donors. Never! You must understand that I am a president of this country. Yes, we are poor. But we want to be poor with our heads up, not with our heads down. And nobody, as long as I'm a president, nobody will control me," Muluzi told a rally.

Thousands of Sudanese refugees staged a mass walkout from an Ethiopian-based refugee camp after learning of a visit by a high-level Khartoum government delegation, humanitarian sources told IRIN on Monday.

Sparks are set to fly between the African National Congress (ANC) government and its tripartite alliance partner the Congress of South African Trade Union (Cosatu), if the trade union's planned anti-privatisation strike goes ahead on October 1 and 2.

The Federal Government and the governments of Ghana and Togo have reaffirmed their commitment to rejecting any action that would lead to unconstitutional change of government in any part of West Africa.

The Kenyan cyber-cafe market is overcrowded. Too many cyber-cafes are chasing customers by offering unsustainable access rates. Last month five cafes closed, one of which operated a major facility. Cafe operators who want to survive are now having to look to providing something other than low price internet access. Russell Southwood spoke to Irene Mkwenda of Nairobi Business Cyber.com about the problems operators face in a tight market.

EasyScience is a popular science magazine aimed at senior primary school children, especially in communities where science teaching has been lacking in the past. This colourful magazine is filled with science material that covers and supplements the school curriculum.

Try out Google's funky new News search with this url - it points to a search for news on the Slapper worm which attacks linux systems. If you're running Apache or a linux server on the web, you need the latest on this.

As US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair up the rhetoric over an attack on Iraq, so worldwide protest against any military action is growing. In the next week protests are scheduled for London and Washington, while a score of web sites are campaigning against an attack on Iraq. Visit the link below for details of the Washington and London marches and to find out about various forms of online activism.

The commission of inquiry into alleged corruption in the Uganda Revenue Authority has found that corrupt officials are not penalised. "Tolerance of corruption is what has made URA what it is today," an official said.

Between 3000 to 4000 children mostly from developing countries die every day in the world because their mothers are not empowered or supported to breastfeed their babies, a global meeting on Challenges of Breastfeeding in the 21st Century was told in Arusha.

Poachers in Rwanda have killed two of the world's last remaining mountain gorillas, a critically endangered species, in an attempt to capture and sell their young, Rwandan wildlife conservation officials said.

The President of the Ivorian National Assembly, Mamadou Koulibaly, suggested Tuesday that the government launch a complaint at the UN Security Council and the African Union about what he alleged was a terrorist attack in Cote d'Ivoire involving neighbouring countries.
Related Links: Related Links: http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.jsp?a=37&o=9439 and http://irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=30015

Do African adolescents know enough about AIDS to protect themselves against infection? What is the best way to educate them about the risks of HIV? A report from Population Services International evaluates a peer-led HIV prevention programme in a secondary school in Zambia.

The 1990 World Summit for Children pledged to provide universal access to safe water by the end of the century. Why then do 2.2 million people still die each year from preventable diseases associated with a lack of safe water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene?

Two years ago this week Secretary General Kofi Annan issued a call for "an independent panel of experts not unduly influenced by creditor interests" to reassess the debt burden of developing countries and the international measures taken to date to deal with them. His report noted that the HIPC (Heavily Indebted Poor Countries) initiative had proved inadequate even for the countries included, and that there were many debt-burdened countries not included in the initiative. As the IMF and the World Bank gather for their annual meeting two years later, the evidence of failure of the creditors' HIPC initiative is even more overwhelming. So is the damage in lost lives and devastated economies caused by the failure to address the issue. The evidence is also clear that when money is saved by debt cancellation, it does go for productive investment in health, education, and other urgent needs.

The UN military mission in Sierra Leone will continue for at least another eight months. The Security Council has agreed unanimously to extend the mandate for the forces by six months and has said that measures to reduce the size of the 17,300 member force will begin after eight months.

The Cabinet's April 17 statement on HIV/Aids policy -- widely hailed as a crucial change of heart -- is looking increasingly threadbare. Was it, as some maintain, merely a tactical manoeuvre to deflect international condemnation in advance of the G8 meeting in Canada due to consider the New Partnership for Africa's Development?

The UN World Food Programme has warned that it is running out of food aid to assist more than 91,000 Eritrean refugees living in camps in Sudan. The agency has already been forced to cut by almost half the amount of food being distributed, and may have to suspend the operation altogether if donations dry up.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is gravely concerned about the safety of journalists covering the ongoing military crisis in the Ivory Coast. According to several sources in the capital, Abidjan, at least one local journalist was badly beaten by troops loyal to the government of President Laurent Gbagbo, who have been fighting mutinous soldiers variously described as rebels, foreign mercenaries, and "terrorists" by the state media.

Angolan women politicians, deputies and social organization representatives started Monday a seminar on basic conflict resolution techniques being run by Angolan Women Network.

We note with concern that a number of women have called our offices to register their displeasure with the practice by the Registrar General requiring them to first change their surnames from their maiden ones to their married ones before they can be issued with birth certificates for their children or new passports. We would like to make it clear that there is no legal basis for this practice.

The International Rescue Committee is responsible for overseeing the implementation, monitoring and supervision of the IRC's health/child survival program, which operates in the Kibungo region.

Corruption and the systematic looting of the state is the focus of this in-depth analysis of Nigeria from 1960 onwards, by one of Nigeria's leading writers on political matters. The author reveals the methodical way in which the state has been plundered over forty years, giving particular attention to General Abacha's regime and personality. The financial scandals of the government of his successor, General Abubakar, are also examined.

Improving the status of women not only betters the lives of billions worldwide, but also creates many social and environmental benefits, reports a new study by the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization. This review of projects from around the world shows that policies that improve women’s lives can enhance human rights as well as produce a handsome harvest of other effects, such as lower population growth, reduced child mortality, better management of natural resources, and healthier economies.

There has been a growing corpus of literature tracking the ANC’s adoption of neo-liberal economic policies. However very little has been written on the reaction of communities who face the consequences of this rightward shift that manifests in evictions, electricity and water cut-offs effected at gunpoint under the guise of cost-recovery. Across South Africa community movements have arisen to confront these attacks on the poor. This article focuses on one such movement in Cape Town, the Mandela Park Anti-Eviction Campaign (MPAEC) with particular emphasis on the militant forms of direct action undertaken in defense of “rights” to water, electricity and shelter and the response of the post-apartheid state to these struggles.

The new South Africa is in the grip of unanticipated social changes. Rainbow Vice depicts the fast growing drug culture, tightly linked to the world of commercial sex and in conflict with a profoundly Christian population. Punchy in style and based on several hundred interviews, the author shows how multifarious the drug scene is.

The US Committee for refugees has written to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers to discuss the refugee situation in Ghana and to inform the High Commissioner of the current condition of UNHCR programs and of the formidable challenges before the agency.

The National Lotteries Distribution Trust Fund is distributing only three cents for every rand that South Africans spend on the Lotto, reports the Sunday Times. It is alleged that the National Lotteries Distribution Fund is also a billion rand behind in payment to charities.

Insufficient information supplied by applicants has led the National Lotteries Board and the Distribution Agency for Arts, Culture and National Heritage to reject a number of applications submitted during the current funding round.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) announced September 23 that it is providing $1 million to the U.N. World Food Program (WFP) to support its regional management and logistics coordination unit in South Africa.

Zimbabwe journalist who wrote an article this month claiming the country's police chief was unwell, has been sentenced to three months in jail under the Police Act, his lawyer said on Thursday.

The editorial by Professor Shivji (PAMBAZUKA NEWS Edition 80) captures brilliantly the dilemmas facing proponents of social justice in developing countries seeking to use the discourse of human rights to advance pro-poor policy choices. This is particularly important in the current global world order, where rights arguments are increasingly being used to justify particular sets of policies imposed, or expected of developing country populations. By locating human rights correctly within a political economy and historical context, the nature of rights as products of social construction enable us to better understand how we can better make use of human rights arguments, and how human rights arguments may be used against us.

Some comments:
1. By understanding human rights as products of contestation, we recognise the role of human rights as essential to contributing (positively or negatively) to struggles around power. Rights can in practice be deployed as much in defence of privilege and the powerful in society, as they can be to advance the interests of poor and marginalised. Witness the way in which corporates are able to use rights machinery (e.g. Freedom of Information) to silence publication of critical research results, to oppose regulation and to threaten and implement litigation to achieve desirable policy goals. Hence, it is not possible to judge the role of human rights in advancing pro-poor choices and social justice, without referring to the integument in which human rights operate. If human rights mechanisms prioritise the needs of the poor and the marginalised, then rights become powerful mechanisms whereby democracy can be advanced. However, if rights mechanisms operate independent of the power imbalances that exist between and within countries, then rights are easily co-optable in the service of those who already benefit from inequity and imbalances of power.

2. So, how do rights mechanisms put the poor first? Only if civil society is able to mobilise to assert itself in structural and institutional ways. South African civil society, though much weaker now than during the heyday of anti-apartheid resistance, has successfully achieved a set of institutional mechanisms which (we hope) are successful at placing the interests of the poor and marginal first - a Constitutional Court operating within a framework of a Bill of Rights, a Human rights Commission that is attuned to the needs of the poorest sectors of society, etc.

3. From the above, flows the implication that not only are human rights strengthened by an active civil society, but human rights mechanisms need to reinforce the opportunities for organisation and mobilisation in civil society. While the Western preoccupation with "good governance" makes a misnomer of what this role should be, it is at the level of public participation that a human rights culture can be sustainable. The success of a human rights approach should be judged not only on the court decisions, on the policies adopted, on the implementation of pro-poor policies, but also on the capacity of human rights instruments to strengthen the agency of the least powerful in society to act in their own interests, individually and collectively.

4. The above throws up a number of difficult, maybe uneasy contradictions:
- How do individual rights and group rights get traded off? It isn't sufficient to argue that they are naturally compatible.
- If rights are about power, is there an inherent incompatibility to talk about individual and collective interests under the rubric of "agency of the least powerful in society?"
- How can strengthening that agency resolve these possible differences? In the health field EQUINET is increasingly seeking to consider how human rights approaches can help to strengthen pro-equity policies in health. How can we ensure that human rights leads to reduced inequalities? A preliminary look at the area is suggesting that the answers lie in resolving these difficult questions.

It is also evident that when different people, agencies or organisations use the notion of human rights, they may be using the term in completely diverse ways:
- as a set of standards derived from international human rights law;
- as an approach to monitoring and analysing policy with a view to holding governments accountable;
- as a lobbying and advocacy tool to mobilise civil society.
While the above are all inter-related, they represent different ways of conceptualising and acting, and all can range on the spectrum from the completely ahistorical to the most dialectic of interpretations. What is clear is that in trying to advance our understanding of human rights and the role it plays, we need to critique rights in the context in which they are to be deployed.

* Leslie London, MD, is Associate Professor, Occupational and Environmental Health Research Unit, Department of Public Health and Primary Health Care, University of Cape Town

* For last week's editorial see

*Would you like to respond to this editorial? Send your views to [email protected] and we will publish them in our Letters and Comments section next week.

With only two cases of polio paralysis to date this year in Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan, the Horn of Africa is extremely close to being polio-free, the World Health Organisation (WHO said on Wednesday.