A pregnant woman is more likely to die giving birth in Sierra Leone than in any other country in the world. Health experts blame a shortage of medical staff equipped to deal with complications that can occur during labour, as well as the financial and logistical impracticalities of getting from home to a hospital. In this West African country struggling to emerge from a decade-long civil war, mothers die in 1,800 of every 100,000 live births, according to the 2005 global report from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

The Science and Development Network (SciDev.Net) has launched a useful online resource that provides crucial data about the current state of the world's biodiversity. This new biodiversity 'facts and figures' section includes recent estimates of extinction threats, detailed assessments on the economic and ecological value of biodiversity and provides the latest information on conservation efforts. Go to www.scidev.net/biofacts to find out more.

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) is pleased to announce its 2005 Advanced Research Fellowship Programme and to invite interested scholars to submit applications for consideration for an award.

A gay Ugandan man has been denied a visa to enter Britain because there is a warrant for his arrest in his home country - a warrant that was issued because he is gay. Chris Stentaza had been invited to the UK by the Church of England.  Stentaza had been a teacher at an Anglican run school in Uganda but was fired and forced to go into hiding after speaking at a conference of gay Christians in Manchester 15 months ago. Homosexuality is illegal in Uganda, punishable by lengthy prison terms. Stentaza was rejected for a visa by the British high commission in the Ugandan capital of Kampala based only on the fact that a warrant had been issued on charges of "crimes against nature". 

The corruption trial of a prominent South African businessman resumed on Tuesday with the court hearing details of his financial links to Deputy President Jacob Zuma, who has presidential aspirations. The high-profile case of Schabir Shaik on fraud and corruption charges has put Zuma on the defensive since it opened in October amid allegations that President Thabo Mbeki's deputy accepted kickbacks and bribes.

As wars multiply around the globe, involving civilians to unprecedented degrees, UNESCO estimates that more than half of the 104 million children out of school live in countries touched by conflict. More than 27 million children in those countries do not have access to education. In Mozambique, some 45 per cent of primary schools were destroyed during the civil war; in Rwanda, over two-thirds of teachers either fled or were killed. The majority of refugee children who do receive education are enrolled at primary level, with only 6 per cent getting secondary schooling.

The principle of non-discrimination is well established all over the world. It is to be found in most international conventions as well as in many countries municipal laws. Kenya is no exception and the principle is found in Kenya’s constitution as well as in the Children Act. Kenya furthermore, has ratified several of the international conventions containing the principle. Despite this, the principle is not always adhered to in Kenya and discrimination does exist in the country. One group that is being discriminated against is children born out of wedlock. When it comes to the issue of parental responsibility, these children get less support than children born by married parents. What is important to note in this regard is that this distinction between children born out of wedlock and children born by married parents, is actually provided for in Kenya’s national laws.

According to the Children’s Act, the issue of parental responsibility, i.e. which of the parents has responsibility for the child, is determined by whether or not the parents were married at the time of the child’s birth. In cases where the parents were married, both the mother and the father shall have parental responsibility. Neither the father nor the mother shall have a superior right or claim against the other in the exercise of this responsibility. However, in cases where the parents were not married at the time of the child’s birth and have subsequently not married, the issue of responsibility towards the child is different. In these cases, the mother is the one with full parental responsibility whereas the father bears no responsibility at all. The father can acquire responsibility, however, this is optional and more importantly, it is optional to the father, it is nothing neither the mother nor the child is able to enforce on the father.

>>>>>To read the full article, please click on the link below.

Through AFFORD's Opportunity Africa Programme, we have secured an internship with the World Bank in Luanda, Angola for 2 to 3 months – there is no deadline at the moment, but we would like the person to start as soon as possible. To be eligible for the internship, one must be an Angolan national, fluent in Portuguese and living in London. The internship will be paid and this is an opportunity that would benefit some young Angolans living in London to gain some experience in the field of international/African development. As the first step – the young Angolans attend the Opportunity Africa careers seminar on Tuesday 8 February 2005 from 6pm to 9pm at the AFFORD Offices in Vauxhall (31-33 Bondway, Vauxhall, London). The nearest tube and train station is Vauxhall (Victoria Line). Our office is opposite the new bus terminal outside Vauxhall station.

Thousands of Sudanese refugees living in camps in northern Uganda are reluctant to consider repatriation for a variety of reasons, including the lack of facilities in southern Sudan, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, told IRIN. The agency reported that the refugees felt the landmark peace agreement signed in December 2004 in Nairobi, Kenya, was not inclusive of all Sudanese groups.

US lobby group Africa Action has rejected the conclusion of a United Nations (UN) Special Commission report, which this week declares that a pattern of government-sponsored killings, displacement and other forms of violence in Darfur, Sudan, does not constitute genocide. The report, which acknowledges that abuses carried out by government and militia forces in Darfur may constitute "crimes against humanity", comes just one week after UN and African Union (AU) troops confirmed new attacks against civilians by the Sudanese Air Force, killing at least 105 people, most of these women and children.
LINK
- Report of the UN commission of enquiry
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/sudan/2005/darfurcoi.pdf

Globalization - or the ability of many people, ideas and technology to move from country to country - is not new. In Africa, it was initiated by the slave trade and given impetus by colonialism and Christian missionaries.

The early missionaries saw African culture and religion as a deadly adversary and as an evil that had to be eliminated. In 1876, a 27-year-old missionary named Mary Slessor emigrated from Scotland to spend the rest of her life in Nigeria.

For her efforts in trying to covert the people of Nigeria, Mary Slessor’s photograph appears on Scotland’s ten pound note, and her name can be found on schools, hospitals and roads in Nigeria.

The introduction to Mary Slessor’s biography titled: “White Queen of the Cannibals” is revealing:

“On the west coast of Africa is the country of Nigeria. The chief city is Calabar,” said Mother Slessor. “It is a dark country because the light of the Gospel is not shining brightly there. Black people live there. Many of these are cannibals who eat other people.”

“They're bad people, aren't they, Mother?” asked little Susan.

“Yes, they are bad, because no one has told them about Jesus, the Saviour from sin, or showed them what is right and what is wrong.”

These opening words clearly show that Mary Slessor came to Africa on a mission to indoctrinate us with Christian theology. She told us we worshipped an inferior god and that we belonged to an inferior race. She worked to expel what she described as “savagism” from our culture and heritage and to encourage European “civilization” to take root in Africa.

>>>>>Please click on the link below to read the rest of this article.

A joint monitoring visit to Tunisia undertaken by members of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) has found serious cause for continuing concern about the current state of freedom of expression and of civil liberties in Tunisia, including gross restrictions on freedom of the press, media, publishing and the Internet. The visit, which took place from 14 to 19 January 2005, was the first of the IFEX Tunisia Monitoring Group and was organised in preparation for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), a United Nations intergovernmental conference to be held in Tunis in November 2005. The purpose of the visit was to evaluate the state of freedom of expression in Tunisia and to assess the conditions for participation in the Summit.

On 29 January 2005, "Daily Times" reporter Collins Mtika was beaten up by supporters of the Alliance for Democracy (AFORD), a party that is a member of the ruling coalition. Mtika told MISA-Malawi that he was attacked when he went to cover a press conference at AFORD leader Chakufwa Chihana's house, in the northern city of Mzuzu. At the press conference, Chihana challenged a decision by certain executive members to dismiss him from the party on allegations of poor governance and fraud.

Reporters sans frontières (RSF) has called on the Mozambican authorities to protect Jeremias Langa, news director of the privately-owned television station Soico TV (STV). On 27 January 2005, the journalist was kidnapped at gunpoint in Maputo. He was held briefly and threatened with "the same fate as journalist Carlos Cardoso if [he] continued to talk too much." Cardoso was killed in 2000. Langa was previously attacked and threatened by armed men in October 2004.

As a national human rights organization advocating inter alia the universal right to a clean and safe environment, Namibia’s National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) deplores plans to open yet another uranium mine in the country. “As if the danger to human life and the environment posed by the existing Rossing Uranium Mine (RUM) is not grave enough, the government is allowing yet another uranium mine in the country”, wondered NSHR executive director Phil ya Nangoloh.

Jointly chaired by the Government's Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Foreign Affairs and the South African Human Rights Commission in Johannesburg, the outcome of the first-ever public hearings on xenophobia held in early November 2004 will lead to a report that will be tabled before Parliament with the ultimate aim of realising some of the most pertinent recommendations made towards addressing xenophobia. Readily acknowledged as a global phenomenon, the public hearings on xenophobia gave the civil society, government agencies and communities affected by this scourge, the opportunity to voice their concerns.

The phenomenon of African migration into Europe is one of the hot topics often debated in the European media. But while the headlines focus on illegal migrants and the desperate means they resort to in order to reach Europe's shores, very little attention has been paid to refugees who also risk their lives along the way. This mixed flow of people arriving in Europe raises new challenges in terms of refugee protection. In recent years, the UN refugee agency has become increasingly concerned that, in their effort to combat illegal migration, European Union countries tend to overlook the needs of the refugees mixed in with the illegal migrants.

South Africa said Thursday it was ready to help the International Criminal Court investigate war crimes on the continent as the tribunal tackles its first cases in Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. "We are working on a memorandum of understanding as to how we can assist the ICC," Justice Director General Vusi Pikoli told reporters in Pretoria after meeting with chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo.

Previous promises to Africa have not always been honoured and the continent Blair once described as a "scar on the conscience of the world" waits to see if the outpouring of goodwill at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland will be any different. "There has certainly been an increase in rhetoric, and not for the first time," said Kenyan Arthur Muliro, analyst at Rome-based think-tank the Society for International Development. "Africa has been on the radar screen in this way many times before. There has been no shortage of promises, but in real terms nothing has changed."

It’s a sign of how bad things are when even the modest proposal that everyone on planet earth gets fresh water and enough to eat is fighting talk. – Terry Eagleton

Naomi Klein aptly described the first World Social forum as “the end of the end of history”. The fall of the Berlin Wall signified the end of a utopia gone badly wrong. Thatcher and her followers were able to speak with confidence that There Is No Alternative to the barbarism of capitalism devouring the guts of most of humanity. For sometime, Fukuyama’s apocalyptic “end of history” seemed real. It became almost impossible to breathe and dream. The hegemony of global capitalism had reached maddening proportions. It is said that in 1992 Nike paid Michael Jordan to advertise its shoes, and here was the madness - he earned more than the entire East Asian industry which produces those shoes.

Then in 2001, the city of Porto Alegre, situated in Brazil’s southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, reverberated with a fresh call: “Another World is Possible!”. The birth of the World Social Forum was a noisy affair. The force of this new possibility stood in contrast and opposition to the rigid and soulless World Economic Forum happening at the same time on the beautiful island of Davos in Switzerland. Those who took the side of the wretched of the earth looked to Porto Alegre, and those who worship the power and logic of money turned to Davos. The battle lines were drawn. Ever since, world politics have not been the same. This year will see the fifth installment of the World Social Forum return to its base after the 2004 event was held in Mumbai, India. The WSF has come to mean many things to many people: celebration of hope, new ways of doing and thinking, and the limits of resistance to capitalism in our times.

African murmurs

The 80s saw Africa saying NO! to the devastation visited upon the continent through the killer medicine of the Structural Adjustment Projects (SAPs) of the World Bank and the IMF, which required iron-fisted men to carry out their mission – from the safe distance and sanctity of parliament and state houses – in the name of development and democracy. To achieve this madness nothing was spared; even the anti-colonial history and memory was appropriated, as was revolution and socialism. But the African NO! was simply named “food riots”; this was a resistance which did not speak for itself and the IMF quickly worked these “ food riots” into its four-staged re-colonisation strategy, revealed by Joseph Stiglitz after his sojourner as a servant of the devil.

The call for Africa’s “second liberation” was stillborn and was appropriated into a limited desire for “multi-party democracy”. Instead of freedom from the shackles of neo-colonial bondage, multi-party democracies continued the one-way traffic of African wealth to the North and domestic suburbs where the national representatives of the system reside. In the words of the African revolutionary thinker A.M. Babu:

"It is much better for the international bourgeoisie for locals to supervise their own dependency, it lessens tensions and the real master is invincible. We are busy chopping each other’s heads through military coups and the struggle for power in order simply to prove ourselves better supervisors on behalf of international capital, and to enjoy the rewards in wealth or absolute power”.

What Babu did not anticipate was the effective utilization of democratic discourses and the ideology of development to sustain the same position in the interest of global capitalism. African leaders chose to do unto themselves what global capital would otherwise do unto them. As South Africa’s ruling party (Mandela’s African National Congress) policy ideologue put it:

"We don’t oppose the WTO. We never joined the call to abolish it, or to abolish the World Bank or the IMF. Should we be out there condemning Imperialism? If you do those things, how long will you last?"

Resistance was colonized, tamed and tailored to serve the purpose of the hegemony of money. Resistance needed to liberate itself from the party, the leader, the old orthodoxies, hierarchies and empty discourses. It was the creative power of resistance and poetry of the indigenous people of Chiapas in Mexico which gave the world the beginnings of a new language – a language which found expression within the WSF. What started in Africa as a murmur now found a name – the monster was named “neo-liberalism”. The dream returned, history could be made again. Chiapas fortified the possibility of the peoples of the world to say a collective NO! and many YESES!

In the past five years, the view that there is no one answer, no one single manifesto, no pre-determined history (as the nineteenth-century Russian populist Herzen declared, “History has no libretto”) seemed both to gain ground and drive the desire to make history afresh through trial and error, rather than rely upon the certainty of yesteryears’ political fantasies. Of course, those who held old views found new energy from the emergent global peoples’ resistance – Marx, Lenin, Mao and even Stalin occasionally reared their heads. The freedom from the burden of certainty was best articulated by one of the World Social Forum’s superstars, the French small-scale farmers’ leader and bane of agri-business, José Bové. When asked whether the Seattle gathering represented a new internationalism, Bové answered:

"There are no pre-conceived ideas. Those days have gone – thank goodness – when popular movements were slotted into theoretical constructs. Seattle showed the opposite. People came together not with any worked out theory, but to take action… far too long, theories and analysis have been shuffled around, promising change. People today have lost confidence in these theories. Seattle revealed the existence of an informal worldwide network. "

The birth of the WSF is generally perceived to have carried on the spirit of the 1999 battle of Seattle. The collective NO! saw the closure of a meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) right within the belly of the beast. From there onwards the evil triad of the WTO, World Bank and IMF could only hold their meetings behind army barricades. The people of the world had won the moral high ground despite their leaders’ shameful genuflection to these institutions. The WSF gave the new resistance a space to share the new language. By and large, the forum strove to be anti-hierarchical and non-vanguardist. The WSF spoke about “space”, “reflections” and “networks of resistance”. These new discourses and praxis somehow gave expression to a movement of movements, but there were shortcomings – and deep ones, too.

If Klein was ecstatic about the first forum, by the third she was crying “highjack!”. The event had been taken over by established left-leaning political parties and the Latin American big men: Lula of Brazil, Chavez of Venezuela and the ever-presence of Castro, even in his physical absence. Perhaps the most devastating critique came from the pen of the respected radical thinker James Petras, who saw the 2002 meeting as a “tale of two forums”. One forum promoting reformism and accommodation could be found representing the established political parties, NGOs and a myriad of intellectuals, and was based in the main venue, the Pontifical Catholic University (PUC). On the other hand, there was the more radical, anti-establishment forum which occurred in hundreds of small and big meetings, circles of articulation and self-organized spontaneous conversation away from the university and media attention. Others began to argue that the WSF had become a jamboree of a motley concoction of agendas and interests, as recent greetings from one of the regular attendees shows:

"Hope you all doing well. I’m in Porto, and now joining the throngs who pretend to struggle, we the passport wielding, credit card swiping, voyager mile accumulating, cyber connected, defenders of the rights of the working class, the Dalits, the landless peoples’ rights for self-determination. I watched with glee as the internationalists were hooking up at airports, hotels, taxis. “Hi comrade, long time. Since Mumbai”. “Hi comrade, long time, since Cancun, are you going to Hong Kong. I am still struggling to get funding”. Yeaaaaa., this is the new age struggle; and I am part of it. Now that I have more time on my hands (thanks to?donor sponsored air-conditioned hotel room)…"

The biggest conceptual and organizational challenge to the WSF came from a parallel meeting, organized under the catchy name “Mumbai Resistance 2004” (MR). The critique delivered by MR 2004 was devastating (if not over-stated at times); tough questions were asked around the origins and funders of the WSF. One of the most serious charges was that the WSF is nothing but a valve and a permitted space of dissent, and does not really threaten the interest of global capital. MR 2004 pointed to the once CIA-controlled Ford Foundation as one of the main funders, and the agenda of the moderate French players, such as ATTAC and Le Monde Diplomatique, was also held up as evidence of the castrated possibilities of the WSF. MR 2004 did not mince its words: he who pays the piper plays the tune. True, more and more global South NGOs found legitimacy by association, and Northern Funders continue to determine, in particular, the African representation to the WSF. These were often the same donors who would not touch national movements and counter-hegemonic projects at a national level. Increasingly, those who have sustained and given impetus and life to the WSF find themselves outside; the Zapatistas are excluded because they are involved in armed combat, the FARC of Colombia was denied space for a press conference in 2002.

Lack of Black Voices

One of the key fault lines in the WSF activities has been the lack of a platform to build and raise the black voice and black issues. This is surprising given the fact that Brazil is home to the biggest black population outside of Africa, and racism continues to ensure that the darker you are, the lower you find yourself in the Brazilian social ladder. The lack of prominence of the black question in the global resistance, and at the WSF in particular, can be accounted for by examining the historical inequities which developed along the color line. A second factor is the historical denial of race as a legitimate area of resistance. This is partly a result of the out-dated Marxist philosophies raven with arrogant universalizing Eurocentrisms, which privileged class over any other category of exclusion.

* Andile Mngxitama is a Johannesburg based land rights activist and member of the Wewrite editorial collective. This is the introductory editorial to the latest edition of – A Journal for Black Thought. In the edition, the problem of exclusion is discussed by Radha D’ Souza and Michael Abrahams. Frank Wilderson debates the uneasy relationship between Marxism and the Black Subject, and Aziz Choudry points to how global struggles run the risk of eclipsing older struggles such as those of the indigenous peoples in places like Canada, USA and New Zealand. The promises and challenges facing the ASF are examined in a piece by Amanda Alexander and Mandisa Mbali.

* Please send comments to [email protected]

>>>>>Links to news from the WSF

- Euphoria in short supply at WSF
http://www.tni.org/archives/bello/euphoric.htm
- News and reports from the WSF
http://www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/eventos/10.html
- Blogside at the WSF
http://dorseynation.blogspot.com/
- Updates from the WSF
http://www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/informes/2603.html

The plight of Liberian refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) has been explored in a new book that will be launched in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, on Friday. "A Life Removed: Hunting for Refuge In the Modern World" by British author and journalist Rose George, focuses on what it means to suddenly be made a modern-day refugee or IDP. She researched it by talking to displaced people in Liberia and refugees in camps in Cote d'Ivoire.

The Chief of Party will direct the implementation and oversee all management aspects of a new five-year USAID-funded program, designed to strengthen civil society capacity to promote good governance at the federal and selected state and local levels through advocacy, awareness-building and citizen empowerment. The incumbent will serve as principal liaison with all implementing partners, the donor, and host government counterparts on all matters related to the program. Qualified candidates send resume with salary history to: Human Resources CEDPA 1400 16th Street, NW, Suite 100 Washington, DC 20036 Fax: 202-667-1900

The World Health Organization released its "3 by 5" progress report on January 26, 2005, at the Davos World Economic Forum congratulating itself on progress made in the drive to fight the HIV pandemic. But only 700,000 or 12% of the nearly six million people in need of antiretroviral treatment in developing countries have access to it today. Looking at these figures Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), who provides ARV treatment to more than 25,000 patients in 27 countries, comes to the exact opposite conclusion. Instead of celebrating, WHO, UNAIDS, the Global Fund, the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and other institutions should be sounding the alarm.

We, members of civil society, Zimbabweans in the Diaspora and citizens of Africa, would like to express our serious concern about the continued violations of civil liberties in Zimbabwe, particularly against the freedom of opinion and expression, association and assembly. We call upon the Government of Zimbabwe to immediately cease the systematic human rights violations in the country, including all forms of intimidation, arbitrary arrests and torture of members of civil society. We advocate for the immediate repeal and/or progressive amendment of all pieces of legislation (including those mentioned before) which contravene Zimbabwe’s international human rights obligations and its Constitution.

Susan Mina, a Kenyan who has never stepped foot out of Africa, speaks English like the haughtiest of Britons. She can also put on a fair imitation of an American accent by swallowing all her words. Still, every once in a while, some Swahili slips out of her, and that is not at all helpful as she tries to enhance Africa's role in the global explosion of outsourcing. South Africa is far ahead of the rest of the continent, with an estimated 500 call centers employing about 31,000 people.

The IEEE 3rd International Workshop on Technology for Education in Developing Countries (TEDC 2005) is being organised on July 6, 2005 in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. TEDC2005 will take place in Conjunction with IEEE Intl Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT 2005). The goal of this third international workshop is to bring together researchers, and educators to discuss various issues involved in developing new techniques and on novel uses of technology for education in developing countries. The workshop will include invited papers and a panel. High quality submissions from developing countries are strongly encouraged. Submissions due: February 4, 2005

A delegation from the International Confederation of Free Trade Union-affiliated Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) which arrived in Zimbabwe on Wednesday was immediately expelled by the country's immigration authorities. The planned 48-hour visit was intended to bring together COSATU representatives with their colleagues from the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), also an ICFTU affiliate. The purpose of the visit, led by COSATU General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, was to discuss issues confronting workers in Zimbabwe and in the region in general.
LINK
- The Cosatu delegation and the March elections
http://www.sacp.org.za/umsebenzi/online/2005/RADEGE.htm

Urgent action must be taken in order to prevent Africa from bearing the brunt of global warming, a scientific conference on climate change was told. If current trends continued, temperatures in sub-Saharan Africa could rise by 2C with rainfall declining by 10%, according to Anthony Nyong, a scientist at Jos university in Nigeria. "There must be substantial and genuine reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by the principal emitters," Dr Nyong wrote in a paper presented to the conference, taking place in Exeter.

Competition for water resources could provoke wars in Africa and the Middle East, Boutros Boutros Ghali has said. In an interview with the BBC, the former UN Secretary General urged the international community to ensure a fair division of water between nations. Mr Boutros Ghali told Radio 4's Today programme that military confrontation between the countries of the Nile basin was almost inevitable. It would only be avoided if they could share water equitably, he said.

The team defending Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, the only woman so far to be indicted for genocide and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) begins its case on Monday. Nyiramasuhuko, the former Rwandan minister of Family and Women Affairs, is charged with 11 counts including genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide and rape. She has become the first woman to be charged for rape as a crime against humanity.

Luis Moreno Ocampo, chief prosecutor of the Netherlands-based International Criminal Court (ICC), is going to be a busy man this year as far as Africa is concerned. Reports indicate that the court could begin trying those accused of perpetrating atrocities in the conflict between Uganda's government and rebels from the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) this year. The LRA, led by Joseph Kony, took up arms against Kampala in 1986, saying it wanted to establish a government based on the Biblical ten commandments.

The tall man is skeletal. Even so, it is a huge feat for him to muster up the energy to sit upright in front of his visitor – a young, vibrant woman. They sit on wooden chairs around a small table in the centre of a starkly bare room. Lying on the table are a wall clock and several packets of pills – for the time being, things that are key to the man’s survival. "Why do you have to go yourself to the hospital tomorrow?" asks the 31-year-old woman, Louisa*. The man, 51-year-old Fernando, coughs and then replies faintly, between gasps of breath, "My wife doesn’t understand Portuguese well, so it is difficult with the doctors."

During the day, the unpaved roads connecting dozens of villages in this cocoa-growing region of southern Cote d'Ivoire are full of farmers and cocoa buyers. But at night, when the red dust has settled and the roads are deserted, the self defence committees come out to stand guard. The civil war has not entirely destroyed the tightly-knit social fabric that helped spawn Cote d'Ivoire's wealth, but it has certainly damaged it badly.

Angola has yet to provide the International Monetary Fund (IMF) with details of its windfall from high oil prices, delaying the Fund's mission to the country and raising doubt among donors about concluding an agreement any time soon. An IMF mission scheduled to come to Angola in November last year was postponed to January 2005, but would not take place before the end of February, sources in the capital, Luanda, told IRIN.

Kenya has become increasingly dependent on food imports, but declining incomes have limited the ability of households to buy these imported foods which has resulted in a worsened food security situation. This is according to research from the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA) that looks at the impact of the liberalisation of the agricultural sector. The study recommends that Kenya reconsider increasing the use of domestic support measures allowed within the World Trade Organisation agreement on agriculture to allow adequate development of the agriculture sector.

The relationship between land and conflict is intuitive. Historically, land has been significant in war in the form of a “prize” of territorial control enjoyed by the victors at the expense of the vanquished – losing groups would often be forced to flee, relinquishing their homes, fields and properties. More recently however, increased interest in conflict analysis has revealed various complex relationships between control over land (and land-based resources) and conflict. Combatants involved in conflict within states – by far the most significant kind of conflict today – often claim that unequal access to land is one of the causes of violence. During conflict, land access is affected not just for belligerents, but for entire communities, who become targets of violence due to the ethnicization of conflict. And in post-conflict situations, the land and shelter needs of returning internally displaced populations (IDPs) and refugees must be carefully managed in order to avoid dangerous disputes and further violence.

This problem is compounded in many developing countries by the challenging structural nature of land ownership, which may include demographic pressure, gross inequalities between and within communities, inadequate land administration and different conceptions of land tenure according to different land use norms. Therefore, land policies in post-conflict countries – and indeed, across the world – should consider the possible destabilizing effects that can result from inequalities and inefficiencies. In Africa as elsewhere, a key problem relates to the mismatch between customary land tenure systems, which are undergoing changes related to modernization and globalization, and state-managed systems based on western models. For this reason, the founder of ACTS, Prof. Calestous Juma, argued in 1996 that, “the way land use is governed is not simply an economic question, but also a critical aspect of the management of political affairs. It may be argued that the governance of land use is the most important political issue in most African countries.”

>>>>>To read the full article, please click on the link below.

The book, "Understanding Organisational Sustainability through African Proverbs" has recently been released by PACT publications, Washington. It describes how insights from the wisdom contained in African proverbs can be used to understand how organisations can achieve more integrity, sustainability and impact. By rediscovering the power of African proverbs, readers are rewarded with a new and creative ways to communicate organisational improvement efforts in a language that touches people's hearts and motivates them to personal and organisational transformation. The book can be obtained from: PACT Publications by contacting Sue Bloom at [email protected] or by visiting http://www.pactpublications.org

The emergence of an increasingly global economy suggests that the ability of individual countries to shape their own destinies is becoming more difficult. International trends and pressures now influence national, and even local, health care policy making. Researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, together with Oxford University, looked at the effect of globalisation on health issues in South Africa and assessed its influence compared to national and local forces. Political and economic developments in the international arena will inevitably influence health issues in South Africa. Institutions such as the WHO and the World Bank, together with international events such as the spread of AIDS, affect health care in the country. However local forces also play a large part in shaping the future of the South African health service.

Enormous hopes rested on the Government of Sudan (GoS) and the rebels Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M) when they signed a historic comprehensive peace agreement (CPA) in Naivasha, Kenya, on Sunday, 9 January 2004. If sustained, it will mark the end of a more than two decades of war and allowing Sudan’s people to return to a civilian lifestyle with the accompanying rights and freedoms.

Supported by the international community under the auspices of the Inter Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the agreement is the outcome of an intense process of negotiations between both warring parties that gathered momentum in 2004: The peace accord signed on 26 May 2004 between the Government of Sudan and the SPLA/M was followed by a comprehensive framework agreement, the Nairobi Declaration, on 5 June 2004. On 31 December 2004, the last two protocols for a peace deal were signed - a permanent ceasefire and the implementation modalities of the protocols. Sudan now embarks on its pre-interim period of governance before the six-year interim period leading to a referendum on the South’s secession officially begins.

However, through all the joyous proclamations of peace and stability by the GoS and the SPLA/M, it is by far from sure whether this will be the beginning of a new period in Sudan’s history where human rights are respected and protected. Although the peace agreement has been a fairly smooth process since 2002 once high level delegations from both sides were involved, the longevity of the war, its underlying causes and the mistrust still evident between the two sides continue to be an impediment towards how both sides view each other and others involved in the conflict. Shifting alliances and this deep mistrust of all parties continue to pervade the atmosphere in Sudan, generating a profound lack of confidence in governance institutions and the environment in which they operate, and it will have important implications in the way a future National Unity Government will operate.

Moreover, even the official end of the north-south conflict will not necessarily bring immediate peace as potential uprisings and conflicts in the west, east, in Unity State and Upper Nile and continuing intra and inter ethnic conflict could destabilise Sudan once again. The human rights situation in the Sudan, although improved over a number of years, has sharply declined with the onset of the conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan and the situation in Sudan still remains tense with a number of high and low intensity conflicts throughout the country. The consequences and implications of these conflicts upon the peace process are still an unknown factor, and there is a significant danger that they could jeopardise the peace and cause instability.

The forthcoming several months, after a comprehensive peace agreement has been signed, will impact deeply on the stability of the country. This will have enormous consequences and implications for the human rights culture of the country. All parties to the conflict have committed serious human rights abuses that have been well documented.

Human Rights Trampled in One of Africa’s Longest-Running Conflicts

Civil war has characterised Sudan for all but ten years (1972-1982) since its independence in 1956. Two decades of the conflict, since its resumption with the SPLM/A in 1983, has devastated the country rich in natural and human resources, and the most heinous human rights violations have been committed. As a direct result of the fighting between north and south two million have died, three to four million have been displaced, and several million more have had their livelihoods disrupted. Sudan has consistently fallen into the lower echelons of the human and poverty indexes, where it was rated 139 out of 177 in the Human Development Index (HDI), and ranked 116/175 in the Gender-related Development Index, which measures the same achievements as the HDI but also takes into account the inequality in achievement between men and women. However, when the indicators highlighted in the Baseline Survey for Southern Sudan are taken into account these figures in reality should be much lower. This directly impacts economic, social and cultural rights of all Sudanese people – for example, the adult illiteracy rate countrywide is 41.2%, where many students are denied obtaining either a primary or secondary education due to migration, conflict and lack of governmental financial support.

In the past, the Government of Sudan has come under severe international criticism for its human rights record from the international community. Civil and political rights have been harshly repressed and the right to development in Sudan has been seriously adversely affected as a consequence of the fighting, affecting access to even the most basic of services such as education and health for the majority. Inversely, this has often led to human rights concerns as a low priority, and human rights violations were often carried out in a climate of impunity. The consequence of this has been for the international community to directly deal with alleviating suffering and responding to humanitarian needs in the short term.

Recently, the human rights situation has fluctuated according to the political atmosphere in Sudan and the Government’s flexibility. Reports from human rights organisations have stated that the human rights situation has slightly improved over the years, with fewer violations occurring within the civil and political spheres, as restrictions have been eased. Yet, this year has seen a number of simmering conflicts come to the fore, reversing the gains made in the past. The Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on Extra Judicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions on her recent visit to Sudan was “disturbed and alarmed by the gravity of the human rights abuses perpetrated in the Sudan,” and also stressed “the question of accountability as a fundamental principle in addressing violations of human rights.” Human rights violations committed particularly in the context of armed conflict is a worrying trend where security forces and militia allied to the GoS act with impunity.

Due particularly to the Darfur crisis in Western Sudan the human rights situation has steadily worsened over the past year, including war-related human rights abuses, such as killing, abduction, rape, displacement and extra-judicial executions. Human rights activists and defenders and opposition members, especially those associated with Darfur, have been detained and routinely harassed and are often held incommunicado detention without charge or trial. The international community has only recently begun to focus on the conflict, ongoing for over 20 months, and has highlighted the complete lack of accountability of human rights in Sudan. As the Government has gained a higher negative international profile as a consequence it has adversely rebounded on the rest of the country and made it more difficult for human rights activists to operate freely.

Ever since the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on Sudan on Human Rights was abruptly ended in April 2003 there has been no independent monitoring of the human rights situation in Sudan. After a tense session during the 60th Session of the Committee on Human Rights in Geneva, where Sudan successfully lobbied to avoid the re-introduction of a Special Rapporteur, an independent expert on the situation of human rights with a mandate to investigate human rights in Sudan was realised and made his first trip to Sudan in mid-August. The ensuing report back to the UN will ensure that human rights ‘benchmarks’ remains a presence on the government’s agenda and that the GoS continues to be accountable for its actions, whether in a conflict or non-conflict situation.

There has been no effective promotion or protection structures functioning in the country. Human rights monitoring and work continues to remain a sensitive issue, where strict controls regulate work by non-governmental organisations. The promotion and protection of human rights in the Sudan can take on a multiplicity of activities, but presently very few national activities are ongoing to systematically address human rights violations in the country. There are few national structures in place that effectively works on promotion and protection issues. Although, particularly since the Darfur crisis began, the Government has engaged more with international partners to discuss human rights issues and to improve the human rights situation, there are still structural weaknesses, particularly with regards to functioning government institutions dealing with human rights.

>>>>>For the rest of this article, that includes a regional analysis of threats to peace, the political challenges of establishing a unity government and the building of safeguards for human rights, please click on the link below.

* Denise Lifton is a freelance consultant working on human rights in Africa. She is currently working in Sudan.

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Zimbabwe's main opposition party has announced it will field candidates in parliamentary elections next month "with a heavy heart". The polls would not be free and fair, said the Movement for Democratic Change. "We participate under protest." The MDC had wanted the 31 March elections to be put back so that more reforms could be passed.

Every month rich country leaders delay a deal on debt cancellation, the poor pay with their lives. Last month, rich countries agreed to suspend the debt repayments of the countries devastated by the Tsunami for 12 months. Under the intense media spotlight, it was clear that rich countries could not continue to give aid with one hand only to take it back with the other hand through debt repayments. Through this step, they recognised that saving lives is more important than repaying debt. On Friday 4th February 2005 the Finance Ministers of the G7 will meet in London. These seven men have the power to make a decision which would end the crippling debt burden of the poorest countries. G7 leaders have made warm speeches about the importance of solving the debt problem. This is according to a joint ActionAid, CAFOD and Oxfam paper released ahead of the meeting.

International prosecutions are needed to deter ongoing atrocities in Darfur, Human Rights Watch saysin a report documenting crimes the Sudanese government and its allied militias have committed with complete impunity. On Tuesday, the U.N. international commission of inquiry on Darfur is expected to report its findings to the U.N. Secretary-General. In September, Resolution 1564 mandated the commission to investigate violations of international humanitarian law and human rights in Darfur, to determine whether genocide has occurred, and to identify perpetrators with a view to holding them accountable. "Regardless of whether there has been genocide, the scale and severity of the ongoing atrocities in Darfur demand an urgent international response," said Peter Takirambudde, Africa Director at Human Rights Watch. "Given Sudan's continuing failure to prosecute the perpetrators, the Security Council needs to refer the situation of Darfur to the International Criminal Court."

Cameroon's new government this week published the names of 73 top civil servants accused of embezzling public funds in local newspapers to spotlight a sudden anti-corruption drive. Most of the doctors, prison directors and other eminent officials said to have pocketed sums ranging from a modest 80,000 CFA francs (US $158) to 42 million CFA francs (US $83,000) - as well as equipment totalling 126 million CFA francs (US $249,000) - are being sacked. Some are to face criminal charges and all have been ordered to return the missing cash and state property.

Applications are invited from suitable qualified persons for the position of DIRECTOR. This individual is principally required to:
- Provide dynamic and strategic leadership to AFRA in terms of its vision, policy and approach to land and agrarian reform in South Africa.
- Represent AFRA’s position in various local and national forums, platforms and media.
- Be accountable to AFRA Board of Directors and responsible for fundraising.
- Oversee, support and direct all programme strategies, human resources, financial resources, administrative and reporting functions.

The strong opposition of the AU to the UN sending 9,000 troops to monitor the implementation of the recently signed Sudan Peace Accord signed on January 9 between the government of Sudan and SPLA is mind-boggling. According to the AU, there is no "need for peacekeeping where people have agreed mut ally to cease hostilities."

It appears the AU has not read the comprehensive peace agreement that calls for the presence of a U.N. peace mission.  The presence of this international force is to supervise and monitor the disengagement of forces, as well as to monitor compliance with the terms of the peace accord.

It is surprising that the AU representatives to the peace negotiations in Kenya never paid attention to this clause, as the organization's leadership is not aware of it.  This raises disturbing questions about an organization that has laid claim to the primary responsibilities of maintaining and promoting peace, security and stability on the continent.

Since the AU has failed to fully deploy its forces to Darfur, why should it be jittery when the UN is asked to deploy in Southern Sudan? Isn't it obvious that monitors are required to ensure peace accords are implemented? How does the AU expect the Sudan peace agreement to be implemented without international monitors, in view of the fact that it is incapable of monitoring the humanitarian agreement in Darfur?

The performance of the AU so far in Darfur has left a lot to be desired. It should explain how it has spent the $200 million so far donated for its mission in Darfur instead of trying to block the UN deployment in South Sudan.

The Development Management Trust courses have been designed to bring about positive changes in development practice by promoting the use of resources that encourage a more learner-centred and skills based approach to development. Courses consist of several sessions (3-4 hours each) over a period of 3-4 weeks, in which participants are actively involved in the learning process. Visit their website for more information.

Deadline: 11 February 2005

The Wits University Journalism and Media Studies Programme, together with the Ruth First Trust has established a Fellowship. The Fellowship is established to commemorate Ruth First as a journalist/intellectual/activist and her contribution to critical, independent socially-engaged writing.

Fellows will receive a grant of R35 000 and expected to present their work at a public event within six months and to submit it for publication/broadcast through an appropriate outlet.

Deadline: 01 February 2005 @ 16h00

Mveledzandivho is a School Development Project that is being implemented in six provinces and is funded by BHP Billiton through its Development Trust. The aim of the Project is to improve management practices and teaching and learning in 29 schools spread across six provinces.

The project calls for proposals from interested service providers in Inclusive Education at one project school in Mpumalanga.