KABISSA-FAHAMU NEWSLETTER 20

In this Issue: Educational Websites; New Workshops and Available Training Dates!; Adobe Activeshare: Free software for sharing photos online; Cool idea for Parent Teacher conferences.

Italian authorities are investigating the multi-million dollar trafficking of radioactive waste to north and east Africa in an exercise which could lift the lid on a colossal 'North-South' business linked to money laundering and gunrunning, say lawmakers and activists.

Liberian President Charles Taylor has reacted angrily to the United Nations sanctions imposed on his country on Monday, describing it as "unfortunate and not in the best interest of Liberia and the entire sub-region." He said: "We know that certain countries are bent on seeing that this government leaves office, but the Liberian people will stand united." But how long this "unity" will hold is anyone's guess.

More than 150 indigenous leaders from throughout the world meet this Monday through Friday in Panama to hash out strategies in defence of their rights and discuss integration processes like the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The international conference will draw up a declaration to present to the UN World Conference Against Racism and Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, slated for September in South Africa.

Brian Wilson, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Minister of State, on 4 May met representatives of the Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana governments as well as from the cocoa and chocolate industry on the issue of slave labour in the cocoa industry.
The meeting has resulted in agreement to establish a task force comprising government, industry and trade, and non-governmental organisations to address the issue of forced labour in West African cocoa production.

Nelson Mandela, Kofi Annan and Thabo Mbeki - all three helped to find a dignified way out for the pharmaceutical giants. The finale on 19 April 2001 was described as an "amicable settlement." For some of those following the case closely, the end was a sort of anti-climax. It took the pharmaceutical industry three years to withdraw a case it had filed in the first place. There was no judgement. But had there been a judgement, which many expected to be in favour of the government, the world would have had an opportunity to examine what exactly the government had to say in defence of its TRIPS-compliant public health action and the arguments that industry advanced to protect its patents, an international right conferred by the WTO's Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement.

One of the world's major pharmaceutical companies, which stopped making the only safe medicine for the late, fatal, stage of sleeping sickness because it could not make a profit from it, has agreed to donate the drug, following a public outcry over shortages of medicines in Africa.

The role of free press in combating racism by dispelling stereotypes and casting a harsh light on the evils of discrimination emerged as a major theme yesterday at a panel discussion in New York that brought together United Nations officials and media practitioners to mark World Press Freedom Day.

Despite two previous United Nations conferences to tackle the problems facing the world's poorest States, the "least developed countries"remain poor, the coordinator of the group of least developed countries (LDCs) said. Speaking at a press conference on the Third UN Conference on Least Developed Countries (LDCs), which will be held in Brussels, Belgium from May 14 to 20, Anwarul Karim Chowdhury, Bangladesh's top representative at the UN, said that the lack of success was because the previous conferences had not had "any worthwhile implementation." The upcoming event would be a chance to make a difference, he said.

A new study has found that some 2.5 million people have been killed in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, since the outbreak of fighting in August 1998. The International Rescue Committee says the situation this year is worse than last year with a high mortality rate especially amongst children. The death-toll is set to rise if victims in the country's western parts are included.

When democracy came to South Africa, those who fought in the guerrilla war against apartheid may have expected to return home as conquering heroes. But almost a decade after returning from exile, many are still struggling to find a constructive role for themselves, or even jobs. Neighbouring Zimbabwe, where war veterans have turned their anger on white farmers and opposition parties, has shown how frustrated ex-combatants can become a major source of instability.

Combating the spread of infectious diseases, especially HIV/AIDS and the spread of poverty, are of primary concern, financial officials said at the close of the spring meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Briefing reporters after the final session of the Development Committee, World Bank President James Wolfensohn said there was "warm recognition both of the Bank's role and of the partnership which exists between the Bank and the Fund with poverty at its center."

The Transparency International Integrity Awards 2001 are open for nominations. The awards were created to recognise outstanding courage in the face of corruption, and the deadline for nominations is 30 May 2001.

Tagged under: 20, Contributor, Corruption, Governance

THE Land Bank's commitment to weed out corruption in its ranks was illustrated last Friday when the Scorpions anticorruption unit arrested the bank's former Tzaneen branch director, Sydney Khando, for alleged fraud involving R24m.

Denmark will not increase aid before the government makes significant improvement on governance and the fight against graft, it announced last week.

Applications Are Now Being Accepted for Global Development Awards 2001! Following the popularity and success of last year's awards competition, GDN is pleased to announce Global Development Awards 2001 with cash prizes and travel expenses valued at more than $400,000. Researchers and development practitioners can apply in 3 award categories: Outstanding Research Award, Research Medals, Most Innovative Development Project.

The Instant OnlineFundraiser: a one stop E commerce solution for raising money online and selling your campaign's merchandise.

I wish to thank you for regularly sending me copies of your informative newsletter.

Thank you for your newsletter and all the hard work that undoubtedly goes into keeping us informed. I would like to make a suggestion. Could you possibly distribute the newsletter as a word attachment? This is because it loses all its's formatting when you send it directly as a message. This makes it extremely difficult to read or even to skim, as words are broken up by = signs and new paragraphs are formed mid sentence. I appreciate that you will then face the challenge of different word versions and indeed different hardware, but there may be some simple way of overoming this. I hope so. Best wishes for the future!

OUR RESPONSE: Thank you for your suggestion. We send it as plain text precisely because usually it displays best - in your case it appears that the "MIME" settings in your e-mail software are configured incorrectly. On the other hand, not all of our subscribers have software to read attachments or Word documents. You might wish to speak to the technical support people at Oxfam who will be able to advise you on the settings you should use. If you still have difficulties, why not retrieve the web page using our www4mail server - you will get the newsletter in all its glory as it appears on our website! You can always get the current newsletter by writing to [email protected] with only the URL below in the body of the message:

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And while you are doing that, we hope that you will be encouraging Oxfam's partners in Africa to get their free subscription to the Kabissa-fahamu Newsletter.

It is a wonderful resource - thank you again.

KABISSA-FAHAMU NEWSLETTER 19

As of the end of March, more than fourteen thousand scientists from 130 countries have joined in signing the open letter in support of the Public Library of Science initiative. With your help in informing your colleagues about this effort, and encouraging them to support it, the open letter can be published in May with the signatures of 50,000 scientists.

Tagged under: 19, Contributor, Education, Resources

The African delegation to the International Conference on Racism in August will highlight issues of poverty, racism and gender, the SA National Non-Governmental Coalition said on Monday. After a meeting to start a joint civil society preparatory initiative, Sangoco president Mercia Andrews said: "It will be a very difficult conference because it is about the underbelly of our society at the moment. "Poverty in South Africa has a certain face... very much a rural women's face. Racism is very much tied up with economics here."

The prospect of a new international treaty on forced disappearances is the top achievement of this year's United Nations Commission on Human Rights, which ends April 27 in Geneva, Human Rights Watch said today.

Monday 16 April to Sunday 22 April 2001. The government’s campaign to encourage Zimbabweans to celebrate Independence Day – and the event itself - dominated the state-owned media in the week. Zimpapers and the ZBC both quoted government officials and sympathetic analysts as interpreting the enthusiastic response as an expression of the people’s faith in the President, the ruling party and the government’s fast-track land seizures.

International experts representing private sector forest industries involved in paper and wood products will meet this week with their FAO counterparts to discuss issues related to climate change and the paper and wood products industry, and review recent progress made in forestry and forest products certification, FAO said.

Gary Comstock claims that the precautionary principle commits us at the same time to two contradictory courses of action, that we should develop GM crops and that we should not. He concludes that the principle is therefore 'incoherent'.

COSATU’s Central Executive Committee (CEC) at its meeting today welcomed Zackie Ahmet and Mark Heywood, Chairperson and Secretary of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) for a discussion on how to take forward the campaign for affordable treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS. The CEC agreed that last week’s court case victory against the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (PMA) was a critical step toward establishing a legal framework for making medicines in South Africa affordable. It was also an important victory of activists, poor people and people with HIV/AIDS over corporate abuse of power.

Could television be a valuable tool in the fight against HIV? Who is most likely to watch television shows about AIDS? Researchers from Population Services International (PSI) investigated the impact of a soap opera dealing
with AIDS in Côte d'Ivoire.

In malaria endemic areas, pregnant women are more likely to be infected with malaria than other adults, particularly during the first pregnancy. They may not have symptoms of malaria, but infection can lead to severe anaemia and low birthweight, increasing maternal and infant mortality. What can health services do to lower the risk for pregnant women?

This is an updated compilation of documents from PAHO/WHO. It has been revised to address the needs of health professionals, particularly those involved in health facility planning, operation and maintenance. It focuses on problems in areas of high seismic risk. It introduces vulnerability assessments and practical measures to mitigate damage in hospitals, including structural and nonstructural aspects, and administrative and internal organisation.

As democratic governance in Nigeria approaches its second anniversary, the activities of the media, believed worldwide to have a significant bearing on the successful prosecution of the form of government, is once again coming under scrutiny. Media Rights Agenda, working with ARTICLE 19, the Global Campaign for Free Expression, based in London, this month begins a Media Monitoring Project in Nigeria.

Resources on malaria from the Multilateral Initiative on Malaria (MIM). MIM is stimulating collaborative research to answer the needs of public health programs in malaria-endemic countries, modernizing communication systems used by the African research community, and strengthening research capacity and human resources where malaria takes its greatest toll --sub-Saharan Africa.

Partners fight internet fraud. E-mailing our lives away. Nigeria: Atlantic Bank Opens Shop for Internet Banking. Nigeria: Nitel's Privatisation. Gambia: Gambians Abroad May Vote in October Elections.

"Say Yes for Children" is an unprecedented attempt to rally people everywhere behind 10 overarching actions and principles needed to improve the lives and protect the rights of children and young people. A series of national and regional launches are planned for the campaign, and the international launch takes place today in London. The campaign aims to collect pledges worldwide using both the Internet and paper pledge forms. The results of the campaign will be presented to world leaders at the UN Special Session on Children in September 2001.

We hereby invite you to participate in a massive demonstration and protest against Shell and other allied companies. We have within the past months
received and collated a list of over 5,000 supporters appending their signature and disgust against the environmental award given by WEC to Shell for polluting and destroying Ogoniland.

Reverend Leon H. Sullivan, convener of the 6th African-African American Summit and world leader on Africa and related issues has succumbed to leukemia, announced his daughter, Hope Sullivan Rose.

April 24, 2001 Volume 7, Issue 17.

A British scientist has been banned from Bui National Park in Ghana, which is due to be flooded by a hydroelectric dam on the Black Volta River. University of Aberdeen zoologist Daniel Bennett says he is the only living scientist to have conducted biological research in the 1,800 square kilometer (700 square mile) reserve, which he says contains, "the last pristine wilderness in the entire Volta System."

The prototype of a new tool to help policy makers and the public visualize and track progress towards sustainable development will be unveiled today at United Nations headquarters. "The Dashboard of Sustainability" is a unique new way to present indicators of sustainable development as gauges similar to the control panel of an aircraft or car. The instrument turns a complex array of economic, social and environmental performance indicators into a simple graphic representation of a country's current position relative to an agreed consensus about sustainability.

For the latest job openings for environmental professionals.

Updates and coverage of the African Summit on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and other Related Infectious Diseases, meeting in Abuja, Nigeria this year with the mandate to find solutions to the crisis.

Koffi Annan: "Dear friends, This is a conference about Africa's future. The incidence of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases is higher on this continent than on any other. Of course, this fact is connected to Africa’s other problems. Africans are vulnerable to these diseases because they are poor, undernourished, and too often uninformed of basic precautions, or unwilling to take them. Many are vulnerable because they have neither safe drinking water nor access to basic health care. They are vulnerable, in short, because their countries are underdeveloped. And therefore the best cure for all these diseases is economic growth and broad-based development."

Malaria in Pregnancy Advocacy Brochure now available in French.

3 May 2001 will be the tenth edition of World Press Freedom Day. The World Association of Newspapers once again calls on media to make a major effort to give impact to this important occasion and by doing so to remind the enemies of a free press that they must account for themselves on the international stage.

Multimedia newsrooms are no longer a vision or a controversial challenge. They have become an existing model, to be researched and pursued. More than ever, editors need to get connected to this new reality without losing their core values on the way. The WEF Hong Kong Conference will focus on the fascinating opportunities that the new century is opening up to newspapers and at the same time insist on the discussion on how quality content can be maintained and developed while seizing the new technological opportunities.

Only a free press, they believe at the World Bank, can check abuses, promote accountability and insure more transparency — all prerequisites for better functioning markets, which they expect will reduce poverty and improve the quality of life.

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

Consult and download most of our free publications through the publications webpage of STEP.

The Natali Prize for West African Journalism - Applications Sought from West African Print Journalists. Celebrating Journalism in the Struggle for Fair and Just Development.

COSATU’s Central Executive Committee today, at its scheduled meeting of 24-26 April, discussed the serious implications of recent allegations made by the Minister of Safety and Security in connection with alleged threats to the safety of the President, and its linkage to processes of contestation over political leadership
positions in the ANC.

Health Systems Trust publishes a monthly newsletter called UPDATE, which is also accessible via the internet. This month's issue deals with Telemedicine.

Following Court Victory, AIDS Activists Shift Focus on South African Government AIDS Drug Policies; AIDS Crisis Has Spurred Public Relations Challenges for Pharmaceutical Industry, Wall Street Journal Reports; After South Africa Court Case, 'Unified Strategy' on HIV/AIDS May Be Difficult to Find.

President Yoweri Museveni has said the Government is to extend financial grants to all private universities because of their role in economic growth of the country.

Venture Philanthropy 2001: The Changing Landscape highlights a number of issues that characterize the emerging field of venture philanthropy. One of the most compelling is that there is no commonly shared definition for what venture philanthropy is and how it is put into practice.

Course number: X12.9226 Tuition: $340 Sec. 1: Thurs. 6.20-8.25 p.m. May 24-July 12 (8 sessions)
Taught by Maria Green, lawyer and director of the International Anti-Poverty Law Center. Held in New York, USA.

Lettre d'information 16/2001

I ask leaders of nonprofit organizations if they have an email strategy and their usual response is something on the order of "huh?" They are spending enormous amounts of money and staff time on their web sites and it's the rare exception that the organization even has enough of an email strategy to have a newsletter. They are wasting their money. I'm serious.

CompassPoint Nonprofit Services, the largest nonprofit consulting and training firm in the US, and SmarterOrg, the first e-learning provider focused exclusively on the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors, announced a partnership today to develop and deliver online learning courses for nonprofit organizations.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) today warned that Tuberculosis (TB) cases in Africa will likely double over the next decade as a consequence of the increased spread of HIV and the under-funding of strategies effective in curing TB.

The Health Ministry of the Somali Transitional Government has currently undertaken a health program aimed at orientating the public towards the dangers of AIDS for the human being.

Six workers for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have been killed in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the organisation says.

Zambia's vice president and 10 government ministers are to boycott a special ruling party congress meeting called to extend President Frederick Chiluba's rule.

A Rwandan bishop who was arrested in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on Thursday has been charged with genocide and conspiracy to commit crimes against humanity by a UN tribunal in Tanzania.

Zimbabwe Information Minister Jonathan Moyo has dismissed reports that President Robert Mugabe's governing party has suffered a setback in the High Court. The court nullified the result of last year's election in two constituencies on Thursday, including one contested and lost by the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai.

Thousands of Liberian troops have been sent to the country's troubled northern border with Guinea where the rebels control a number of towns. Officials said the troops had launched simultaneous counter-attacks on the rebel held towns of Foya, Kolahun, Vahun, Voinjama and Zorzor.

Leading members of South Africa's ruling African National Congress party have criticised the investigation into three of its members in connection with a plot to oust President Thabo Mbeki.

Twenty members of the Tutsi Parena party in Burundi have been arrested after they visited their colleagues in prison. The group were detained when they went to give food and other supplies to two senior Parena party officials who had been arrested in connection with an attempted coup in Burundi earlier this month.

High level talks on the Kyoto climate protocol at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York over the weekend have confirmed global opposition to America's decision to abandon the deal in its current form.

Please advise us of the existing options for NGO funding within Kabissa. Our very much needed programme campaign for reading culture suffers greatly from under capitalisation of programme activities. Please reply soonest.

OUR REPLY: Kabissa is not a funding organisation. We're glad to provide you with space on the Kabissa site to promote your programmes. This is what Kabissa membership is for. You may want send a submission to the Kabissa-fahamu Newsletter, which is widely distributed among funders. See for details or send your submission to [email protected]. We can include up to 500 words in the newsletter and as much text as you need on the newsletter website.

One of the first decisions that George W Bush took when he reached the White House was to announce that the US aid programme would not fund family planning programmes with any element of abortion. Now one of the best known fundraising operations in the UK - which has raised 115 million of pounds for development programmes carried out by British NGOs in Africa - has capitulated to pressures from the right-wing lobby and the Catholic Church.

Apparently desperate to get money at any cost, Comic Relief has set up a separate bank account for funds that will not be used for projects working on sexual and reproductive health.

In its defence, Comic Relief said less than 3% of all funds spent has been allocated to projects with a family planning component.In a continent ravaged by HIV and AIDS, this statistic is shocking enough, casting doubt on the extent to which Comic Relief's funds are being used to meet Africa's priorities. Any serious analysis of poverty and its solutions will conclude that the involvement of women in the development process is fundamental. Their involvement, their health and that of their children, is intimately linked to their ability to make choices, including their ability to make informed decisions about family size.

For Comic Relief to bow to the pressures of the right effectively reduces the already small amount it devotes to work on sexual and reproductive health in Africa. It sets a precedent for other rightwing pressure groups to ask for their donations to be ring-fenced. What will Comic Relief say when that lobby says it wants none of its money to be used to help blacks?

Many NGOs in the UK have circulated protest letters to Comic Relief. Such protests come in the wake of growing criticism of the way in which Africans are portrayed in television programmes produced by Comic Relief for its fund-raising work. Many believe that these programmes portray African people merely as passive recipients of white benefactors instead of as people who fight against poverty, exploitation and injustice.

Tagged under: 19, Contributor, Features, Governance

Six of the world leading pharmaceutical companies have agreed to make retroviral drugs for HIV/Aids affordable in developing nations, Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General said yesterday. "We agreed that they will reduce the prices quite considerably and some have cut it back by 80, 90%," Annan told a news conference in Nigeria on the sideline of a two-day African Summit on HIV/Aids, malaria, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases.

Those of us seated here represent some of the poorest countries in Africa which have had long relationships with the Bretton Woods institutions, especially in regard to the fight against poverty. We are committed to growth in our countries, through which we can effectively combat poverty, and to that extent, we are carrying out in various degrees of progress programs with the Bretton Woods institutions aiming at essentially combating poverty through action programs better known as PRSPs.

I thought about going to the Quebec Summit of the Americas, but I lost my gas mask so I decided to go to Africa instead. It's interesting listening to Africans talk about globalization. While the protesters in Quebec were busy denouncing globalization in the name of Africans and the world's poor, Africans themselves will tell you that their problem with globalization is not that they are getting too much of it, but too little.

International Center and Liberia Institute of Journalism. Reporting on Human Rights, Democracy & Development. Vol.1 No.17, 27 April, 2001.

The Council’s mission to the Great Lakes region of Africa will monitor the progress made by the parties in adopting the provisions of Security Council resolution 1341, on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which urges respect for the ceasefire, cooperation with the UN Mission on the ground and the disengagement of forces to agreed positions. The mission will also encourage the parties to commit themselves to the next steps in the peace process.

A Policy Research Report by the World Bank focusing on gender issues and their broad economic and social implications in developing and transitional countries. The report examines the conceptual and empirical links between gender, public policy, and development outcomes and demonstrates the value of applying a gender perspective to the design of development policies.

In every region, populations are getting older. Moreover, ageing is a gendered phenomenon: women live longer, they have fewer resources, and they are expected to care for elderly relatives as well as young children. The causes are familiar: lower - or nonexistent - pay for 'women's work' and breaks in earnings history add up to lower pension income, while social and cultural norms assign women to take care of both young and old, regardless of the costs to themselves. In many places, women are the community caregivers, yet their own need for care goes unmet.

A top Rwandan minister said on Wednesday that he would take legal action against the United Nations for mentioning his wife in a report on the looting of the Democratic Republic of Congo's mineral wealth.

The National Survey of Human Rights Education in the United States has been completed and preliminary results are available for input and feedback. The initial results are based on the 20 states who responded that human rights education is mandated and/or part of their state educational standards.

Nigerian Nobel Prize winning author Wole Soyinka has an Earth Week message for the world about his homeland - at least a third of the entire country is polluted in some way.

The email and web network from THE COMMUNICATION INITIATIVE partnership. Covering communication for development activities.

A former Eritrean Government minister has openly criticised the president. It is the first time in Eritrea that a leading politician has dared speak out against President Isaias Afewerki.

Monetary penalties should be used as the primary tool for enforcing trade agreement provisions, including workers' rights protections, Human Rights Watch said in a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick.

Western diplomats and members of non-governmental organisations met on Thursday to discuss tightening their security after reports that Zimbabwean war veterans were planning to raid foreign missions suspected of funding or supporting the opposition, AFP reported.

The Sudan government has said that it is essential to act quickly on a serious problem of drought in a number of affected regions. In a high-level meeting between government officials, diplomats and humanitarian agencies this week in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, the government called for "swift action domestically and at the international level".

Tanzanian refugees who fled to Kenya from the islands of Pemba and Zanzibar have told UNHCR that they would be ready to return home "if talks between the government and the opposition [Civic United Front (CUF)] lead to a declaration that would ease tensions on the islands".

A wave of fighting between the Burundian army and rebel forces has caused "massive temporary displacement" although most of the victims tend to move back to their homes "when calm returns", humanitarian sources told IRIN on Thursday. The recent wave of fighting started on 24 February in Bujumbura-Mairie and resulted in the temporary displacement of 54,000 people, the sources said.

Angola's Interior Minister Fernando da Piedade has said the country's army intervened in the DRC and also in the Republic of Congo (ROC) because of these countries rights to "legitimate defence against aggressor forces, national judicial fundamentals and respect for international law".

Former South African President Nelson Mandela was scheduled to meet representatives of the Burundian army, leaders of religious groups and socio-professional groups in Pretoria on 4 May, PANA reported on Thursday.

The provincial government of Namibe in southern Angola has appealed to the international community and non-governmental organisations operating in Angola to help victims of new flooding which has left more than 7,000 families homeless and in desperate need of food, shelter and medicines, World Vision reported on Thursday.

The International Secretariat of OMCT is very concerned about the death penalty to which 4 children were condemned by the Military Court (COM, Cour d’Ordre Militaire) of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Military Court is an
exceptional court from which no appeal is possible. In each of these cases the trials have allegedly been carried out summarily.

"Towards an International Criminal Procedure". Christoph Safferling, Assistant Professor in the Law Faculty, University of Hannover. "International Criminal Law A Commentary on the Rome Statute for an International Criminal Court" Edited by Judge Antonio Cassese, Professor of International Law.

The WorldSpace Corporation today launched the world's largest digital audio broadcast system, inaugurating a first-of-its-kind satellite radio service that will transmit a wide array of multilingual radio programming across the entire African continent.

Three Kenyan workers for the United Nations were arraigned Monday on charges of threatening to kill Ambassador Johnnie Carson of the United States, three international UN staff members and an employee of the U.S. Immigration and Nationalization Service in an attempt to cover up an extortion racket.

The Sustainable Development Communications Network
is launching a new initiative to develop training materials for civil society Web managers.

The first Preparatory Committee (Prepcom) Meeting for Financing for Development (FFD), held in the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York from February 12 – 23, seemed unable to move beyond an over simplified equation between development and economic globalisation. It seems clear that unless fundamental changes are brought about in the international financial system, architecture, institutions and governance in favour of poor and developing countries, these countries are likely to pay a far higher price for development than before.

Welcome to a post-mortem of and a critical look at Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) in Africa together with a proposed new recipe to make them better, avoiding their (sometimes now judged clumsy) pitfalls.

Voices in Exile shows how the rights of refugees in Africa to freedom of expression and information are not adequately safeguarded by the UN and OAU Conventions and are often overridden by political or practical considerations. It cites examples of national authorities and UNHCR limiting refugees' expression or punishing them for speaking out, but also emphasizes the increasingly active role being played by African NGOs in supporting refugee rights.

To celebrate this year's May Day, on Wednesday 2 May SANGOCO and Interfund are hosting a debate on the merits of and progress in building an alliance
between labour and community activitists, key elements of civil society. DATE: Wednesday 2 May
TIME: 13h00. VENUE: SANGOCO boardroom, 10th floor Auckland House, 185 Smit Street, Braamfontein.

National Institute for Public Interest Law and Research. In 1997, NIPILAR started a project, which specifically looked at civil society’s awareness of their human rights and constitutional instruments and Institutions that promote democratic practice. This report looks at the local SA system and establishes how people know of these and their functions.

Amnesty International today took note of the presidential decree pardoning 47 people arrested over last Easter and called for an impartial and independent investigation into the shootings, beatings and arrests by the Sudanese riot police on April 11, 2001.

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