The Centre of West African Studies announces its third annual resident fellows’ programme and workshop built around a current theme in African Studies. Two to three fellows will be appointed to participate in a two-month schedule of seminars and discussion groups, culminating in an Interdisciplinary Conference in May 2006. One aim of the Fellowship scheme is to assist new scholars to develop a research paper and bring it to publication, and it is expected that the conference papers will form the basis of an edited book or a special issue of a journal. Fellowships will cover return air-fare, accommodation and living costs for a period of up to ten weeks. The deadline for applications for fellowships is 1 December 2005.

Shifting M+E from being a chore or externally-driven necessity to an insightful learning experience for your organisation. What is the true value (or not) of your work? Are you making a difference?

During August, two historical events are commemorated, both of which had a major impact on the destiny of millions of people and changed the face of the world forever. The first, remembered on August 6 and 9, is the horrific nuclear bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 that killed hundreds of thousands of people. The second, marked on August 23, reminds us of the abolition of the slave trade, a system that devastated African societies for hundreds of years. What is the nature of the system that allows for atrocities such as these and countless others? Jacques Depelchin goes to the heart of capitalism and finds a system gone mad.

Capitalism has been so genocidal that it is worthwhile to posit that it cannot do otherwise, despite attempts to humanize it. How it came about, how it has been portrayed (by friends and foes) over the centuries but especially now, reinforces the idea that it cannot be done away with. How and where it has slaughtered in massive and horrific ways should be understood as only the smallest manifestation of its genocidal nature - not just against one group of people, but against all human beings. Could it have been otherwise?

Those who are convinced that capitalism can be humanized shall argue yes. Unfortunately, the data are so skewed in their favor that to argue the opposite is as huge an obstacle as the challenge faced by the slaves who rose up against slavery in Haiti in 1791. If the above question is going to be discussed adequately, capitalism and its history must no longer be treated as if, by definition, it is immune from evil. The hypothesis is that the principles which have sustained it, propagate death. Capitalism kills everything it touches, especially when it claims to do otherwise. It has devised as many ways of killing as there are declared and undeclared worshippers.

Capitalism and how victims of genocides become killers

Self-appointed certifiers of evil can easily be blind to their own actions. For former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the death of half a million children in Iraq as a result of US imposed sanctions was considered "worth" the effort. Yet, why does it seem easier to accept the description of a Hutu machete-wielding genocider as beyond barbarism? It is as if certain epithets and words can only be linked to certain peoples. Yet, victims of genocides can easily become killers; more easily than can be imagined. In its history of always imposing its principles, rules and laws, capitalism shall eventually face the very practices it has attributed to its enemies.

As capitalism inaugurated itself, about 500 years ago, so it has continued to reproduce itself, modernizing its ways and refining how it sells itself. The current occupation of Iraq is a modernized, updated visual illustration of how Amerindians were stripped of their land and how Africans and Asians were yanked from their homes and land by what came to be known initially as The System - meaning slavery and all that grew out of it.

There is a tendency, even among the most critical voices (e.g. Howard Zinn's History of the United States), not to see the connections between what could be described as the inaugural homelessness of the Amerindians and the Africans, Hitler's lebensraum, today's homelessness in the richest countries of the Planet and the same phenomenon in the streets of Fallujah, Palestine and South Africa. At this rate, for how long will humanity be able to call Planet Earth home?

I do not claim to say anything new. Many have said it before, more eloquently, forcefully and inspiringly (e.g. Fredy Perlman, Against His-tory, Against Leviathan; Bertram Gross, Friendly Fascism). The tradition of resisting the system did not just start from 19th century Europe, as it included those who left no writings, but screamed and fought like hell against their kin predators. It has included the survivors of certified and uncertified holocausts. It must include the voices which continue to be silenced because their suffering did not register on the Richter Scale of genocidal certification, and remain stubbornly unacknowledged. Repetition, in different multiple ways, can be helpful in strengthening resistance to capitalism, in its terrorizing and/or user-friendly forms. For example, the well-known genocidal sequences of the twentieth century have been identified (and certified) in ways which, in one stroke, exempt and anonymize the real culprit from closer scrutiny.

Why ‘Never Again’ has always been applied selectively

And, if the famous ‘Never Again’ should really be stood by, it is necessary to look at capitalism with less benevolent, opportunistic eyes simply because the pillars of power today (military, economic, political, juridical, cultural and religious) have been molded by the manner in which capitalism emerged and sees itself as angelic, in triumphal colors. One of the measures (and by no means the only one) of how total the triumph has been, can be seen, most recently, in how the current US administration is forcing the nation-state signatories of environmental and international criminal laws to retreat from signed agreements, whether in Geneva, Kyoto or Rome. But then, this ignoring of international conventions and covenants is not new, as, for example, can be seen today by how the Convention Against Genocide (1948) has been ignored by the signatories.

Globalization as being portrayed today by the G8 has been sold in the same fashion over the last 500 years: through a combination of military conquests, territorial occupation, minimal social and humanitarian programs, corruption, severe and protracted punishment for those who, collectively or individually, do not submit (e.g. Haiti, Cuba, Grenada, Nicaragua, Lumumba, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu Jamal, to only mention a few).

By definition, capitalism carries within it an unrelenting need for total control not just of the market, but of everything, of life and death. There is no other morality or ethics but the triumph of the power principle "might is right". ‘Never Again’ cannot just apply to the WWII Holocaust, but must be linked to the genocidal sequences unleashed by capitalism, otherwise, ‘Never Again’ will never apply (or ever so selectively as has been the practice).

From slavery until today, the system has been regularly updated and modernized. In times of crisis, when its real nature is difficult to hide, capitalism takes on a reformist mantle as it did through the abolition of slavery, or in other transitional phases, such as from colonial rule, or from Apartheid in South Africa.

To those who argue that what we are seeing is no different from how previous empires have come and gone, one can only say that it is the first time in history that humans have mastered the capacity to instantly destroy all life on the Planet. From the end of World War II, or more precisely, since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, efforts have been made to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Those efforts have failed, are failing and shall continue to fail unless the deep, rarely acknowledged causes which led to WW I, WW II, WW III (The so-called Cold War) and WW IV (Worldwide Structural Adjustment Programs which have come full circle to the US via the attempt to do away with social security) and WW V (the current war, without end, against terror) are looked at without complacency. As of now it is possible to argue that nuclear power is to the physics world or to nature as capitalism is to economics: both are untamable.

The submission/integration to capital has now reached an unprecedented level: geographical, political, ideological, legal, cultural and religious. In an analysis of the crisis of political leadership in the DRC, Ernest Wamba dia Wamba (2005) pointed out that the state (as fashioned in Africa by capital, from colonial to post-colonial times) appears as genetically coded to be at the service of capital, regardless of geographical borders. Capital has no allegiance and can be truly described as "sans foi ni loi" (faithless and lawless), rewriting rules and laws as it spreads, facilitating its never ending expansion. All and everything is fodder to its insatiable appetite. Could it ever have been emancipatory as envisaged at one point? What can be answered with certainty is that, from how it has unfolded, humanity must extract some sort of emancipatory breathing space, while avoiding falling into the very same practices of seeking power by any means necessary.

What if evil had always been at the core of capitalism?

The process of definitively extricating ourselves from its shackles will require applying the following principles: resist its further spread through constant and systematic non-violence against all of its manifestations wherever and whenever they are seen and understood. Affirm the mortality of capital by upholding the immortality of the human.

‘Unrealistic’ will say some. When millions of human beings on earth are faced with living off less than 5 dollars a day, the only realistic position ought to strive to change it as urgently as possible; maybe under the form of ‘A Declaration Against Capital as Genocidal’ which could signal the beginning of a truth procedure toward rendering capitalism and its sustaining structures obsolete.

The genocidal nature of capital is hidden from view, in great part, because the rules for identifying a genocide are written in such a way that capital is safely disconnected from responsibility. In that process basic notions like justice lose their universal integrity because the system has become extremely adept at justifying and rationalizing the most unacceptable, the most unjustifiable crimes. The very history of the WW II Holocaust has preferred to focus on the personalization of the culprits while, at the same time, trying very hard to erase or downplay corporate responsibility. But even at the level of corporate responsibility, personalizing evil by actually naming corporations which benefited from the Holocaust is not very helpful from the perspective of determining with as much precision as possible what is responsible for the inability, reluctance and refusal to identify the most intractable source of evil.

It is obvious why capital, its history and all of the structures which have grown out of it should not be considered as the ultimate source of evil in today's world. Most people, even among those who suffer the most from capital's impact world wide, are willing to give capital the benefit of the doubt, if only on account of a list of "positive things" which are associated with capital. Yet, if given a real viable choice, most people would certainly prefer to be able to feed themselves without having to rely on charity.

The convergence and concentration, through and thanks to corporations, of military, economic, financial, political, scientific and religious power in the hands of very few individuals worldwide, is unprecedented. Sometimes it looks as if WW II never really ended, and that the fight for world supremacy was reconfigured for the benefit of the one capable of frightening the rest of the world into submission because its military arsenal had the demonstrated capacity to destroy life on Earth. This capacity is easy to understand when referring to the nuclear armament industry and militarism, but most advocates of peace on earth are not willing to confront the system which, according to them, sustains both the positive and the negative; because the unstated assumption is that capitalism, by definition, cannot be evil, cannot lead to evil behavior. Thus, such evil institutions as The Gulag cannot be associated with the US in any way, as Amnesty International found out upon publishing its latest annual report in which it compares the prison networks maintained by the US to the Soviet Gulag. Entertaining such comparisons, thoughts and hypotheses would undermine the basis upon which the triumphal histories of the so-called most advanced nations have been written.

Global capital vs. US capital to capital vs. all the peoples of the world?

Sometimes the proof that something no longer works takes several failures to be accepted, but what if capital has no way of recognizing failure? Capital can no longer impose itself through wars of conquests, even if some continue to think that owning the biggest military machine in history gives them the right to keep re-conquering the Planet, over and over.

Just recently (June 20-24), Beijing was flexing its muscles in a bid to buy one of the US oil companies, (UNOCAL). As if this was not enough of a sign of the changing times, Mr. Greenspan, Head of the US Federal Reserve Bank, has warned the Bush administration against trying punitive measures against Chinese imports because such a move would not help increase jobs in the US market. However, neither Greenspan's proposed remedy (among other things, specializing in "smart jobs" as once advocated by Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor under the first Clinton Administration) will not work because, across the board, from India to China, via Malaysia, Taiwan and South Korea, blue and white collar workers have become smarter and more productive than their US counterparts. Mr. Greenspan's thinking is typical of a believer in the global capitalist system, joining hands with the CEOs of IBM, Intel, financiers, bankers, etc. who look at the Chinese market as the ultimate promised land.

Is it bio-technology (life) or thanato-technology (death)?

The US ruling establishment has convinced itself and a great part of the world that its monopoly of weapons of mass destruction is the safest protection against evil, even though the 500 year build-up to this supremacy demonstrates the opposite. And the situation is getting worse. One of the most important indicators of how much more lethal capital has become, is the privatization of the US Army and the flow of profits to the corporations. This domination of the military industrial and prison complex is complimented by domination in the entertainment/sport/leisure industry (which includes the food industry, the film and advertising industries) whose combined function is to prevent the citizens from thinking, or better to have the illusion of thinking, under the sedation of the entertainment industry. Thinking outside the box is only meant for profit, for increasing consumption, not for solving social issues. Outside of the box is actually within an already prepared larger box. Empowerment within the pyramidal configuration of the existing power structure can not help but reproduce that structure when what is called for is its dissolution in favor of the sphere (as beautifully shown by Ayi Kwei Armah in his last novel KMT: In the House of Life, Per Ankh, 2002) where the emphasis is away from competition and confrontation and toward cooperation and harmony among people and with nature.

The emphasis on competition has been so severe that it has transformed, for example, the meaning of words like healing. As practiced today in the US, the health industry is not about healing, it is much more about how, as the popular phrase goes, to "make a killing" by looking for (and selling) the miracle cure or the miracle medical technical procedure. The market reigns supreme in the collective and individual minds. Its relentlessness so completely blinds those who should be served that it has acquired a life of its own as though nothing can be done to dampen or control its most destructive features. Simple, common sense understanding of the relationship between one's health and what is eaten and drunk as the best and most effective way of maintaining health is losing credibility, thanks to skilful advertising.

Primitive accumulation is no longer about separating the producers from their means of production, but about stripping human beings of their capacity to think. This divisive mechanism has been so refined, so internalized, that individuals are instinctively more concerned about the survival of the system which is killing them rather than about the survival of their bodies.

Which way forward?

A criminal running away from the crime ends up committing more and more horrendous crimes in order to cover up the previous ones, and so it has been and continues with capitalism. Since the crimes have never been acknowledged as such, runaway genocidal sequences continue and are getting worse despite ethics courses being taught in law, business and medical schools, and despite the proliferation of human rights organizations. When the G8 and their formal and informal acolytes vow to fight for Africa and make poverty history it sounded like previous pious vows about abolition. The source of poverty is greed. Capitalism thrives on greed, poverty, violence, warfare and injustice. Why not make capitalism history?

A system which has been genocidal cannot help but seek to reproduce itself through what it perceives as "having worked" even though the price is becoming less and less acceptable. Given the economic, financial and legal system, conviction will never happen and could only happen if people battle for another world on the basis of principles framed by a higher law, a law which is not framed by the dictates of capital, but by the principles of solidarity, cooperation, justice and peace with all peoples of the Planet.

Every year on August 6th and 9th, the Hibakusha (survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), along with nuclear abolitionists and supporters try to remind the world, anxiously, that no one should ever suffer what they went through. Should it not be obvious that the triumphant managers of capitalism and their millions upon millions (generation after generation) of nameless victims are generic Hibakusha, before their time, of a system gone mad.

The anxiety in the voices of the Hibakusha from Hiroshima and Nagasaki comes from wondering what will happen when they die. But one is also encouraged by the inexhaustible fidelity to what is best in humanity, exemplified by Haitians from 1791 to 1804 and through to today (2005), by survivors of the WW II Holocaust battling for Palestinians, by anti-apartheid militants who have refused to cash in on their dues because, as they saw the seamless slide from South African to global apartheid, their conscience called on them to continue in the spirit of those who, in 1791, in Haiti, faced unimaginably worst odds.

* Jacques Depelchin is Executive Director of the Ota Benga Alliance for Peace in the DRC.

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Drought and famine are not normal conditions for any group of human beings, but what is normal is people in the west being lied to about the causes, writes Judith Amanthis, who lists various IMF policies as being responsible for the food crisis in Niger.

The IMF and the World Bank, and the EU as well, are killing Africans in their thousands in Niger, Mali and throughout the Sahel region of Africa. By August this year in Niger alone, three million are threatened with death from starvation. Up to 800,000, especially children, have already died. Niger is the second most impoverished country on this earth. Starvation, according to one aid agency, is normal there.

Drought and locusts destroyed crops, it's true, but the rains were down only 11% from normal. There is some food in Niger. The problem is that large numbers of people, especially in the rural areas, are just too poor to buy it when their crops fail. Why? First, subsistence farming in Africa doesn't bring in much money, or any money. It has no western financial backers. Second, in March 2005 the Niger government, having secured Highly Indebted Poor Country status for Niger, implemented an IMF condition on further loans: it put a 19% VAT on basic grains whose price had risen by up to 89% over the past five years. Traders naturally sell to the highest bidder. In this case they sold grains to other West African countries. The free market knows no borders, colonial or otherwise.

Many of the rural people in the Sahel region are nomadic livestock farmers. In Niger the market in livestock has slumped. Farmers who would have sold cattle and other stock to bring in money to buy food are now unable to sell starving animals on a glutted market where prices have fallen by 25% over the past five years. Many villages are now almost entirely women, children and the old, because the men have gone to the urban areas or other African countries in search of food, work and money. African women and children are as usual forced onto the front line.

But the western picture of starving peasant women and their children is one-sided. In March hungry women and men in Niamey, Maradi and Tahoua came out in protest against food prices. Placards read, 'We're hungry. Help us'. So there are angry urban dwellers and workers as well, who are well-organised and prepared to risk imprisonment - the government's response to the protest, according to one source - to get what they need. The pattern is similar throughout Africa. The people's struggle to survive and pressurise their governments into acting for them rather than for the western powers gets left out of the news altogether.

One of the IMF's most shocking acts of war against Africans in Niger has been to demand another condition on aid: the sale of emergency grain reserves. Over the past five years, this policy has contributed to famines in other parts of Africa, notably Malawi in 2002 and again this year. In fact famine stalks large swathes of central Africa. The rationale? Cheap grain is not to flood the market before harvest time. For this reason, the Niger government’s ‘cheap’ grain came on the market too late and too expensive.

Long term drought and famine can never be normal for any group of human beings. What is normal is people in the west being lied to about the causes of Africans' suffering and what Africans are doing about it.

Western oil and forestry companies who have created climate change are as implicated as well. Western Europe and the US are responsible for 50% of the world's carbon emissions, and forestry multinationals are destroying the earth's 'lungs', including the great Congo River Basin forest, at 26 hectares a minute (37 football pitches). Greater heat and erratic rain in the Sahel region means the Sahara Desert is creeping south. Areas like northern Nigeria and Senegal are drying up as well. In erratic weather, locusts breed more heavily, but since the mid 1980s, the West African regional organisation, OCALAV, which was set up at independence in the early 1960s to control locust swarms and other plagues has been restructured. Its funding has been cut. African governments which have restructured entire economies to make life easier for multinationals can no longer pay for services vital to the people's survival.

These same governments - eight throughout the Sahel and West Africa - have welcomed US military personnel into their armies so that young African men can be trained to protect western imperialism in the 'war on terror'.

As for cross border and selective use of pesticides, first, it's unaffordable by African governments, and second, it's unmanageable. Inter-governmental co-operation has broken down in the age of G8 grotesqueries. Live 8 put money in western multinational and individual bank accounts, period. Killing locusts at the hopper stage, before they take flight - often across colonial borders – and devour people's crops, is essential. Whatever the pros and cons of using pesticides to control locust swarms, ordinary Africans have, over a period of hundreds of years, had control of their environment stolen from them, and with genocidal consequences.

In June this year, President Tanja of Niger met with George Bush. As well as the Sahel region’s strategic importance in the ‘war on terror’, Niger is the world’s third largest uranium exporter. A new generation nuclear arsenal is in the US pipeline and Tanja is handing Africa’s uranium to US arms manufacturers on a plate.

In early August, Tanja was vilified in the western media for denying that millions of people were starving and for complaining that only a fraction of the promised aid from the west had arrived. At the same time the UN congratulated the government of Mali for dealing better with the imminent death by starvation of millions more Africans. The argument is clear: if some African governments are efficient enough to keep the lid on wholesale famine, the problem must be down to an individual, to who holds presidential office. What wasn't mentioned was that the free food handed out by the UN and the government to people in Mali was, according to a BBC World Service report, only obtainable in one particular area if you worked for an Oxfam water development project. The reporter asked a woman who was digging a hole to conserve rain water if she was happy to be getting food. She and everyone else working with her laughed uproariously.

* This article is from Kilombo, the African Liberation Support Campaign Network's journal.

* Please send comments to [email protected]

EDITORIAL: Capitalism has presided over some horrific genocides, notes Jacques Depelchin
COMMENT&ANALYSIS:
- Shola Oshodi discusses gender and development
- People in rich countries are being lied to about the causes of African famine, says Judith Amanthis
- Indigenous communities must be recognized in Africa, argues Angela N. Khaminwa
LETTERS: On Zimbabwe’s debt, making poverty history, in support of Chidi Anselm Odinkalu and the other side of John Garang
PAN-AFRICAN POSTCARD: Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem asks why Nigeria can’t get its act together
BLOGGING AFRICA: A roundup of commentary from African blogs
BOOKS AND ARTS: Chenjerai Hove says freedom of expression should also mean freedom after expression
GLOBAL CALL TO ACTION AGAINST POVERTY: The GCAP coalition is mobilizing for the United Nations Millennium +5 review
CONFLICTS AND EMERGENCIES: Links to news about DRC, Niger, Sudan and Zimbabwe
HUMAN RIGHTS: Remembering the slave trade and the international day of the disappeared
REFUGEES AND FORCED MIGRATION: UN endorses new guidelines on property rights of displaced persons
WOMEN AND GENDER: SADC summit presents many challenges for gender equality
ELECTIONS AND GOVERNANCE: UN reform unlikely, plus links to news on Egypt, Kenya, Liberia and Nigeria
DEVELOPMENT: African civil society speaks on the road to Hong Kong
HEALTH AND HIV/AIDS: Nestle hammered over breast milk substitutes; responding to the health workforce crisis in Chad
MEDIA: "Idiots like you will be killed one by one" Ivory Coast newspaper editor told
AND…Sections on Advocacy, Internet, Fundraising, Courses and Jobs.

SAY NO TO POVERTY

Support the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP). Text ‘NO TO POVERTY’ and your comments with your name and surname to

+27 82 904 3425

Your message will be posted on the website and used to demonstrate support for the GCAP movement.

Your Excellencies,

Ahead of the UN World Summit in September, we the following fifty national, African and international organizations and networks working in all four corners of Africa write to set out our expectations for the summit on poverty, peace and security. We write under the umbrella of the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP), an alliance of millions of people and organisations united in the belief that 2005 offers an unprecedented opportunity for change.

Five years after your office signed the Millennium Declaration and the Millennium Development Goals, we are in serious danger of failing to achieve even these, the most minimalist of targets.

To achieve the MDGs, we believe that your Government must actively demand better terms for Africa on aid, trade justice and debt cancellation.

* Access the full letter and media release by clicking on the link below.

The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) is a worldwide network of judges and lawyers united in affirming international law and rule of law principles that advance human rights. The ICJ’s international secretariat in Geneva is seeking to recruit a Legal Officer to lead its recently established work on sexual orientation and gender identity.

A massive increase in demand for tin caused tin prices to rise dramatically in early 2004, and tin ore is now being used by military groups to fund themselves in Eastern parts of the Democratic Republic Congo (DRC), according to a new Global Witness report. "There are no international mechanisms in place to regulate this trade, therefore allowing various armed factions, many with appalling human rights records, unfettered access to world markets, in order to generate funds," says the report.

This Humanitarian Policy Group briefing note highlights some of the questions that will need to be answered in order to explain the slowness of the international response to the 2005 famine in Niger. It argues that this is not just a case of donors failing to provide resources quickly enough. Questions also need to be asked about the quality of early- warning and assessment analysis; the capacity of humanitarian actors to respond; the appropriateness of the proposed responses; and the preparedness of development actors for what should have been a predictable crisis. In addition to all of these questions, the authors highlight that the scale and extent of food insecurity and possible crises in Mali and Mauritania must continue to be closely monitored.

Outside the immediate political implications of the death of John Garang, the challenges of reconstruction may offer some insight into the sustainability of the peace process in Sudan, says this situation report from the Institute for Security Studies. "These include a complete lack of infrastructure in large parts of the south; a high degree of militarization of communities; the world's lowest indicators for health and education; and, last but not least, deeply entrenched suspicion between communities of the North and South. Not surprisingly, southerners often point out that what is needed in South Sudan is construction rather than reconstruction."

The International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition is celebrated on 23 August of every year. The night of 22 to 23 August 1791, in Santo Domingo (today Haiti and the Dominican Republic) saw the beginning of the uprising that would play a crucial role in the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. The International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition is intended to inscribe the tragedy of the transatlantic slave trade in the memory of all peoples.
Related Link:
The empire pays back
http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/O/origination/reparations.html

On the occasion of International Day of the Disappeared (30 August), the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances issued the following message: "The United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) is deeply concerned that the phenomenon of enforced disappearances persists around the world. Since its inception in 1980, the WGEID has transmitted some 50,000 individual cases of enforced disappearances to Governments of more than 90 countries."
* Related Link
Vlakplaas Commemoration of International Day of the Disappeared: August 30, 2005
http://www.khulumani.net/

I read with great discomfort my friend Chidi's letter that the Nigeria State Secret Service (SSS) arrested two of his professional colleagues and is currently looking for him in connection with his work challenging Charles Taylor's asylum in Nigeria ( Pambazuka News 218, We are not fugitives, Charles Taylor is). That is indeed very frightening news knowing how much Chidi means to so many of us Africans, Pan-Africanists, human rights activists and Afro-optimists. Although I have known Chidi since 1999, I had the opportunity of meeting him in January 2004 when he was Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School. I took Chidi's class, which was one of my best classes in my entire graduate studies program.

Chidi is indeed an "African Child" and one of the heavy brains that Africa is so gifted to have. He is an inspiration to so many of us committed to advancing our scholarly activism for the human security of Africa. Those who know Chidi would agree that he is as well a very cordial person, whose multitude of achievements have never stopped him from being humble and accommodative of even those junior or in opposition to him. I guess that is why he now gets into trouble with a government he seeks to engage with daily but which is opposed to his work. So, I wanted to write this letter to Pambazuka News, if Chidi is reading, to let him know how much we are thinking about him through this difficult moment, as well as his family and colleagues. I would also like to call upon everyone to please send a message of support or take a moment to offer your internal support to Chidi.

First of all, thank you for your humanitarian development newsletter. Secondly, as AIDSOM we are realy grateful with your last new plan for the Pambazuka newsletter. The two parts and their schedules are highly appreciated.

Kenya's former president, Daniel arap Moi, has rejected a draft new constitution, saying it would cause animosity and mistrust among Kenyans. The proposals, to be voted on in a referendum in November, are dividing the political establishment. Five cabinet ministers have broken rank with President Mwai Kibaki, calling for a 'No' vote in the referendum.

Zimbabwean human rights activists condemned sweeping constitutional amendments approved by parliament on Tuesday, arguing the government has undermined basic freedoms. Describing the proposed changes to the constitution as the "worst piece of legislation yet", Joseph James, president of the Law Society of Zimbabwe, said lawyers "across political and ideological lines" had, for the first time, taken a stance against the new legislation.
Related Link:
Serious concerns over ammendment bill
http://www.zlhr.org.zw/media/releases/aug_04_05.htm

The United Nations summit next month on promoting the millennium development goals could end up delaying progress, a leading British charity says. The UN summit has been called at its headquarters in New York September 14 to 16 to review action on the millennium development goals (MDGs). A draft declaration for a UN text on the MDGs was produced Aug. 5 following proposals made earlier in June by China and other developing nations. "Very few of those amendments were incorporated in the draft text," Peter Hardstaff from the World Development Movement (WDM) told IPS. The review summit next month will now consider several amendments from the United States ''which sound like a complete reversal of even what is in the draft declaration,'' Hardstaff said.

The Justice Initiative and INTERIGHTS has called on Angola to comply with its international human rights obligations, following the expiry of a UN-imposed deadline on the southern African country to act to protect freedom of expression. The open letter to Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos followed a March 2005 decision of the UN Human Rights Committee that Angola had violated journalist Rafael Marques de Morais' freedom of expression, by jailing him in 1999 for writing articles critical of dos Santos. The Committee gave the Angolan authorities 90 days to compensate Marques and take steps to prevent similar violations in future. No such steps have been taken to date.

The day after a dissident army leader in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) called for an insurrection, the 53rd Army Battalion and four companies of the 2nd Mixed Battalion in the east of the country went missing. Last Thursday, a 17-page communiqué attributed to a dissident army general, Laurent Nkunda, was secretly distributed in Goma. The communiqué called for the renewal of hostilities against the government in Kinshasa. However, evidence that the troops deserted to join Nkunda’s insurgency remains circumstantial.

An increasing number of Zimbabweans are turning to traditional healers for inexpensive medical care as health costs continue their upward trajectory. Under-resourced state hospitals and clinics charge around Zim $20,000 (US 8 cents) per consultation, but the cost at better-equipped private hospitals is around Zim $500,000 (US $20) and patients can quite easily run up a bill of Zim $15 million (US $615) in a week.

African Bullets and Honey (http://bulletsandhoney.blogspot.com/) reports on a Times of London article on “The Love Affair Between the Maasai and the English!”.
The language of the article is blatantly racist and mimics something out of a 19thCentury travel journal through “darkest Africa” to serve the tables of Victorian Britain in the construction of race and racism!

“The Masai embodied everything the English yearned to believe about primeval Africa; they were tall and slender and handsome, noble savages who looked the part, brave to the point of foolishness, peerless hunters and trackers...The only mammalian bipeds allowed to walk through the vigorously wardened spot are the Masai, who follow their bony cattle to waterholes and salt licks, lean ruminatively on their lion-killing lotus-bladed spears, and generally pretty up the place in their red togas, muddy punk hairdos and elaborate jewellery.”

Ghanaian blogger Life of David (http://davidmends.blogspot.com/) exposes corruption and misdeeds by the British government’s Department of International Development (DFID) in which some £18million in aid to Ghana was “blown” away.

Sticking with the theme of “corruption”, Nigerian blogger Grandiose Parlour (http://grandioseparlor.blogspot.com/) reminds us that corruption in Nigeria is still alive and kicking this time in the form of Vice President Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.

"…Nigeria Vice President Atiku Abubakar broke the laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria on December 1, 2000. This is one and a half years after becoming the Vice President of Nigeria. On that day, he and his wife, Jennifer, bought a mansion in Maryland for $ 1,750,000. The house, a two storey building was constructed in 1988. The land area is about 2.3 acres. Today, that house is valued at over two million dollars.”

The VP has since had his home in the US searched by FBI agents but of course he is already denying any wrong doing saying:

"You see, I went to the US when I was in exile, when Abacha hunted us out, when we asked him to handover to a civilian government, then I have been having a home in that place and of course my wife has been having a home in that place since 1994. So what are you talking about?”

Nothing much has changed then has it?

A refreshing story from Inside Somaliland (http://insidesomaliland.blogtales.com/) on Somali music and instruments in which she focuses on “Dararamle, a very well known Somali singer/composer in the country”. Some great pictures here as well.

Exactly one year ago 10 people died in an explosion at a Sasol petrochemical plant in Secunda, South Africa. Mzansi Afrika (http://mzansiafrika.typepad.com/mzansi_afrika/2005/08/sasol_watch.html) reminds us the multinational Sasol, has done everything in its power to hamper the enquiry into the murderous blast.

“For one thing, the petro giant has refused to make their own internal inquiry into the accident public, for another they have paid minimal compensation to the families of those killed or injured. Many of those affected by the incident were contract workers, and because they were not directly employed by Sasol, the corporation was able to avoid paying any compensation other than covering hospital bills and funeral costs.”

Standing underneath a huge shade tree in Yari, south Sudan, António Guterres told villagers that the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is doing its best to help with schools and health centres so that people who fled 21 years of civil war between southern rebels and the Khartoum Government can come home and stay home. But more international funds are needed to develop the desperately poor region, he said. He drew a clear link between development aid, economic growth and peace for a long-tortured region where even today landmines still deface the landscape and claim lives.

Fear of antiretroviral drugs meant that most patients at one of the country’s oldest HIV/AIDS treatment clinics waited until they were desperate before seeking treatment. According to hospital staff, many patients had heard bad stories about ARV treatment and were either incredibly sick or needed much encouragement from their family or employers, before they would take the drugs.

In a significant step forward for IDPs’ rights to restitution, the Principles on Housing and Property Restitution for Refugees and Displaced Persons were endorsed by the UN Subcommission on Human Rights at its annual session held in Geneva in August. The Principles reflect standards of international human rights, refugee and humanitarian law. They also take stock of best practices developed in previous post-conflict restitution policies and programmes. The Principles emphasise the right to restitution and envisage compensation in certain circumstances, in particular where restitution is factually impossible or when peace settlements provide for a combination of the two.

The EU is advocating the creation of refugee regional processing centres in North African countries. Foremost amongst countries being recruited to enforce European border controls is Libya. A report that first appeared in the Italian newspaper L'Espresso on 24 March 2005 looks at how Libya treats refugees and documents the grim fate awaiting those returned to Libya from Italy under a recent migration accord.

Swazi King Mswati III has announced he will abandon a campaign meant to combat the spread of HIV by urging virgin girls to remain abstinent, coinciding with the release of a Ministry of Health and Social Welfare study showing that 29% of Swazi teens are HIV-positive, the SAPA/Independent reports. No official reason was given as to why the campaign is ending a year ahead of schedule, but it was considered unpopular among young people, according to BBC News.

Operatives of the US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) have searched the US home of Vice President Atiku Abubakar as part of an international anti-corruption probe, according to reports. US State Department spokeswoman, Joanne Moore, said the search of the house located in an upscale Maryland suburb of the US capital took place on August 3, but declined to provide details. "All inquiries about the search of the United States residence of Nigerian Vice President Atiku Abubakar should be directed to the Department of Justice," Moore said.

Nestle has a serious image problem because of its on-going aggressive marketing of baby foods, according to a report by the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN). "Instead of making changes required to bring its practices fully into line with international marketing standards, Nestlé invests heavily in Public Relations (PR) initiatives intended to divert criticism. But Nestlé makes demonstrably untrue claims which have resulted in further damaging publicity." National groups have launched boycotts against Nestlé in 20 countries because of its unethical and irresponsible marketing of breastmilk substitutes, says the report. Nestlé is singled out for boycott action because independent monitoring conducted by the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN) finds it to be the largest single source of violations of the World Health Organisation's (WHO) International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes and subsequent, relevant World Health Assembly Resolutions worldwide.

Despite the fact that trade between China, India (Asian Drivers) and Africa has grown significantly since 1990, it is only recently that attention has been paid to their impact on the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. Additionally, China and India have also emerged as sources of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). This paper published by the Southern African Regional Poverty Network (SARPN) focuses on the impacts that these links have on poverty in sub saharan Africa. Through analysing 21 African countries (accounting for four-fifths of the total population of Sub-Saharan Africa) it aims to set the context for the poverty implications. The authors argue that the likely impact of trade changes on the poor will partially depend on the types of goods involved and the conditions under which they are produced.

Walden Bellow from Focus on the Global South writes that civil society groups that regard the coming WTO Ministerial in Hong Kong as condemned to producing a deal that can only be detrimental to the interests of developing countries were cheered by the failure of the recent World Trade Organization (WTO) General Council meeting in late July to arrive at substantive agreements in any of the critical areas of negotiations: agriculture, non-agricultural products, and services. Indeed, most observers, including the media, have largely characterized the inability to produce the "July Approximations" as a significant setback to securing a successful ministerial in Hong Kong in December, he writes.

Globally, the lack of access to clean water and sanitation facilities results in the deaths of 3,900 children daily. The importance of water and sanitation is recognised in the Millennium Development Goals. What will it take to expand water supply and sanitation coverage to the extent necessary to achieve them? How can water use be optimised to achieve the rest of the Goals?

Public-private partnerships have been hailed as a new way to conduct state business and harness the funding and expertise of the private sector. But a new study by the South African Institute of International Affairs shows they fail unless government plans well and fixes its chronic problems of non-transparent politically-manipulated procurement. African governments face a cash and capacity crunch. They need to dramatically improve public services but lack money and the technical and management capacity to deliver new roads, improved ports, efficient electricity plants, effective schools and desperately needed health services.

"There is a direct and critical link between environmental degradation and rural poverty. Our groups on the ground and the communities they work with can also bear witness to the fact that neoliberal economic globalization has increased environmental devastation and poverty among natural resource dependent people." This is according to a new Friends of the Earth report that looks at the role the environment can play in dealing with poverty.

"Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) notes with grave concern that over 1500 families previously at Caledonia Transit camp, Hatcliffe Extension and Porta Farm were forcibly relocated to Hopley Farm along the Masvingo Road on the understanding that they will be allocated stands and become beneficiaries of the government’s purported “Operation Garikai”. For the past one week or more the families have gone without a decent meal, clean water and sanitary facilities, or temporary shelter; they have had to resort to using nearby bushes for purposes of relieving themselves. They have been subjected to the most dehumanising conditions in total disregard of the instructive and critical findings of the United Nations Special Envoy on Human Settlements Issues in Zimbabwe." - August 05 press release from Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights.

International donors should not interfere in Tanzania’s general elections on 30 October, outgoing President Benjamin Mkapa said on Saturday while visiting his country’s politically volatile semi-autonomous island of Zanzibar. "I must stress that our development partners should respect our sovereignty," he told supporters at a public rally in Zanzibar. "They should not take advantage of the assistance they give us to decide which political party and leaders suit us."

The AIDS pandemic is so devastating in some countries that interruptions in the funding of HIV/AIDS services can be seen immediately in the populations they serve. What can we do to prevent these bottlenecks? And while donors are increasing allocations for HIV/AIDS services, they are increasing their expectations of the organizations, large and small, receiving these funds. Small organizations typically lack the capacity to meet those requirements. What innovative or expedited financing approaches can help? Management Sciences for Health (MSH) first Occasional Paper, "Expediting the Transfer of Funds for HIV/AIDS Services," (http://www.msh.org/resources/publications/pdf/funds_transfer_HIV_AIDS.pdf) is a provocative discussion of some of the challenges to the rapid funding of AIDS programs. This paper identifies the major constraints to the rapid transfer of funds and provides options for avoiding or mitigating these constraints. The authors welcome feedback on this paper. Please direct your comments to Sharon Stash ([email protected]).

The responsibility to share the financial or physical burden for global refugee protection outside of a state's immediate territorial or jurisdictional obligation to not return refugees to persecution is recognised in the Preamble to the 1951 Refugees Convention. However, given that "burden sharing" has not been formally recognised as an international legal obligation, the states in the global south, as a result of the "accident of geography" of being closer to areas of conflict or human rights-abusing regimes, have assumed responsibility for hosting the overwhelming majority of the world's refugees.

Global Rights is a non-profit, human rights advocacy organization that partners with in-country activists to challenge injustice and amplify new voices within the global human rights discourse. With offices in 10 countries around the world, we help local activists create just societies through proven strategies for effecting change. A member of the in-country management staff, the Director of Program Performance and Monitoring will take lead responsibility in the areas of financial, grant, human resources, and administrative management of Global Rights’ Nigeria operations.

September 23rd to 25th 2005, the weekend of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund's annual meetings, holds great importance for millions around the world. This year, the Mobilization for Global Justice, a Washington DC-based activist group, will join our allies in the global South, Europe, and the U.S. as well as with those in the anti-war community to demand an end to the international system that uses economic and military might to extract resources and serve corporate interests.

Quite a good edition. Keep it up.

HRIP's mission and work are based on the belief that human rights activists have knowledge and skills, as a result of their day-to-day work, that are important to the success not only of their own work, but the work of other activists and organizations, whether in their own or in other countries and regions. IHRIP seeks to facilitate this exchange through sponsoring professional development and exchange projects for staff of human rights organizations; and the development of written resources focused on specific areas of human rights work.

The University for Peace (UPEACE) affiliated with the UN, the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), the Journal of Peacebuilding and Development, the American University Center for Global Peace in Washington, D.C., the South-North Centre for Peacebuilding and Development are pleased to invite interested institutions or organizations to nominate a representative to submit an application to attend a forthcoming Research Capacity-Building Workshop. The workshop, sponsored by the four partners noted, will be held under the auspices of CODESRIA, in Dakar, Senegal from 23 - 26 October 2005. Only proposals submitted by people who have been nominated by their institutions or organizations will be considered.

Africa Insight reflects thinking on theoretical and practical developments in African studies, and about contemporary affairs on the continent. The Journal aims to provide insight into the processes of change in Africa. With this goal in mind, the Africa Institute of South Africa is planning a special issue of Africa Insight to focus on Youth in Africa over the past 10-15 years. The aim of the special issue is to undertake a wide-ranging assessment of youth development.

The African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) funds local, national, sub-regional and regional organisations in Africa working towards women’s empowerment. The AWDF is an institutional capacity-building and programme development fund, which aims to help build a culture of learning and partnerships within the African women’s movement.

A Nairobi Peace Rally has been organized to coincide with and celebrate the UN’s International Day of Peace. It will culminate in a number of build up activities which have been organized to take place in various parts of Nairobi. This day will also feature the presentation of awards to the winners of the Sing a Song of Peace talent search that has been conducted countrywide by Radio Waumini. Read the press release by clicking on the URL provided.

Armed conflict and natural disasters tear communities apart. Lives are lost, families are displaced and separated, and support systems break down. Opportunities for education often diminish or disappear in environments where they may have already been scarce - over half of the more than 200 million children and young people who have not completed primary school, live in regions devastated by armed conflict. The impact on adolescents and youth is uniquely devastating.

This brief from the Center for Global Development is based on the Report of the UN Millennium Project Task Force on Education and Gender Equality. The paper discusses how both developing countries and donors can foster and support bold action to achieve the education MDG. Developing countries that are falling short can transform their education systems through: a strong national commitment to education; greater local control; more and better quality information about school performance and learning outcomes; and use of special interventions to reach poor children, including girls in rural areas and other marginalised children.

The devastation and chaos left behind by conflict has dramatically slowed the ability of war-torn countries to reach the Education for All (EFA) goals. This is especially true for girls. This research examines which programmes and policies can begin to help countries engulfed by war arrive at EFA objectives, and addresses the roles international actors need to play to support this process.

Reporters Without Borders has voiced outrage at the "perverse methods of intimidation" used against the Lagos-based weekly The Exclusive by Nigeria's intelligence agency, the State Security Service (SSS), which carried out a heavy-handed raid on its offices on 19 August and then used threats to deter street vendors from selling its latest issue. "President Olusegun Obasanjo can pose as an African peace-maker as much as he likes, but Nigeria continues to be one of the continent's most violent countries for journalists," the press freedom organisation said. "His intelligence service has no scruples about punishing dissident voices and using perverse methods of intimidation if necessary."