Software tool eNRICH enables communities to quickly and efficiently build their own gateway website, enriched with their own local content and connected to knowledge sources and services that are tailored according to their own information and communication needs.

The small central African country of Burundi has repeatedly been wracked by conflict since its independence in 1962. Since 1993 a fully-fledged civil war has raged, with enormous human and economic cost. Tragically, the most promising episodes of Burundi’s history in terms of democratisation and reform have repeatedly been turned into the triggers for the most violent and deadly confrontations. This study is concerned with the role that the exploitation and control over the country’s agricultural produce has already played in fuelling the conflict.

"Among the myriad human rights challenges of 2004, two pose fundamental threats to human rights: the ethnic cleansing in Darfur and the torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib. No one would equate the two, yet each, in its own way, has had an insidious effect. One involves indifference in the face of the worst imaginable atrocities, the other is emblematic of a powerful government flouting a most basic prohibition. One presents a crisis that threatens many lives, the other a case of exceptionalism that threatens the most fundamental rules. The vitality of the global defense of human rights depends on a firm response to each - on stopping the Sudanese government's slaughter in Darfur and on changing the policy decisions behind the U.S. government's torture and mistreatment of detainees." This is according to the introduction to the Human Rights Watch World Report 2005, available through the website link provided.

This paper examines the roles of women in natural resource conservation in Kenya, identifying the major research gaps. The author argues that conservation efforts will only succeed if government and non-governmental conservation bodies target rural women. The paper argues that gender roles in Kenya put women in direct contact with natural resources such as forests, water, land and wildlife, and that women utilize and conserve these resources to supply basic needs for their families.

Over the past week, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown has visited Africato launch a campaign to persuade rich western countries to ease the burden of debt on some of the continent's poorest developing countries. His tour has included South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania and Kenya. During his visit, the Chancellor has signed deals with Mozambique and Tanzania to take on 10% of their debt service between 2005 and 2015 to the World Bank and African Development Bank. He has promised to do the same with some 20 further countries but has said that this list is potentially extendible to 70 nations. This comes in a week which also saw Canada cancel all debt owed by Madagascar. The African nation has been forgiven $21-million in debt by Canada. A new Eurodad briefing analyses these new developments on debt relief.

A solution for Africa would be a solution for the rest of the world; if Africa could be made safe and secure, then the rest of the world could be made safe and secure by the same means, states this article from the Peace and Conflict Monitor. In the article, worldpeace.org.uk advocates that the only real solution to achieving world peace, is for each individual nation or regime, to give up its armed forces and weapons, and for there to be one central, universal army (but not government) to maintain security in the world.

This five-day course offered by the Community Development Resource Association is aimed at providing development practitioners with a foundation of the core understandings, concepts, principles, leading ideas at the heart of a developmental practice as well as an introduction to many of the key competencies required for further development.  Though some skills will be learned in the process, this is primarily a foundation and an orientation to a developmental practice.

Banikoara Community Multimedia Centre (CMC) in Benin has provided many essential services to the large but isolated local community in this cotton-growing region since 2002, but until recently, it was hampered by poor Internet connectivity. Since UNESCO provided VSAT in September 2004, use of the CMC's telecentre has shot up. "Even though nine computers are available for email and Internet from 8a.m. until 11 p.m., queues often form and we frequently have to stay open until midnight", explained CMC director Mohamed Alidou.

Over the past four years Tectonic.co.za has established itself as the premier site for open source news from Africa. During this time Tectonic has led the drive for greater open source usage as well as documenting the critical shifts and developments in what is fast becoming the most important phenomenon in the IT sector since the invention of the Internet. Now Tectonic.co.za is expanding with the launch of a print magazine.

"As you may already know, world renowned Kenyan playwright, novelist and social critic Ngugi Wa Thiong'o and his wife Njeeri Wa Ngugi were brutally attacked on August 11, 2004, in an apartment in Nairobi, Kenya. Ngugi was severely beaten and burned with cigarettes, and his wife, Njeeri, was raped in the ordeal. Subsequently, several people were arrested in conjunction with the attack, and it is becoming increasingly clear that this was a politically motivated assault on a leading international intellectual and his wife. It was the first time that Ngugi had returned to his home country after 22 years of political exile. We are writing to ask you to take a few minutes of your time to send a letter to the  addresses appended below to encourage the Kenyan courts and government to take this attack seriously, and to prosecute not only the direct attackers, but all those involved in the attack."

The International Women's Media Foundation publishes a newsletter to keep women journalists informed internationally. If you would like to subscribe, send a blank email to [email protected]

On 18 January 2005, the National Security Agency (NSA) confiscated all copies of the sports newspaper Al-mushahid after waiting for the 18 January 2005 edition of the paper to be printed and ready for distribution, reports the Sudan Organisation Against Torture. "The aim of such confiscation is to force the paper to practice self censorship," said the chief editor of Al-mushahid, Abdelmoniem Shagarabi.

A packed courtroom echoed to the chants of furious South African demonstrators yesterday as a white farmer went on trial, accused of murdering a black worker by feeding him to a pride of lions. Mark Scott-Crossley, 37, pleaded not guilty to all charges, drawing hostile glares from the public benches on the opening day of the most racially charged court case in South Africa's recent history.

Southern African journalists reporting socio-economic development issues are invited to submit entries for the 2005 Southern African Development Community (SADC) Media Awards. The annual contest is administered by government communication agencies in each of SADC's 14 member nations. The award aims to promote regional cooperation and integration by encouraging journalists to improve their reporting and analysis of regional development issues. For more information please email Charlotte Mampane [email protected]

Civil society groups and anti-debt campaigners in Africa have cautiously welcomed a British proposal for the debt of Africa’s poorest states to be cancelled. "It’s a good start for a G8 member like Britain," said Charles Mutasa, a research and policy analysis programme officer at the Harare-based African Forum and Network on Debt and Development. (The G8, or Group of Eight, comprises the world’s eight leading industrialized nations: Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States.) But, notes Sanusha Naidu, a researcher at the Pretoria-based Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa, "We need specifics."

In May last year, IPS reported that teachers in Swaziland were at loggerheads with government over the delicate matter of admitting AIDS orphans to schools free of charge. With the new academic year looming, has the situation improved? Certainly, Education Minister Constance Simelane is making all the right noises. "What everybody should know is that children are the country’s future. They should be given first priority," she said.

At least 100 people have been arrested after last week's apparent attempt to assassinate President Lansana Conte, a human rights group says. They are being held in abominable conditions, Thierno Maadjou Sow, the head of the Guinean Organisation of Human Rights, told Reuters news agency. Some of those arrested have been released but others are still being questioned by the security forces.

Mozambique's supreme law-making body has called for the inclusion of local and international observer missions at all stages of the vote tally, ensuring greater transparency in future elections. Although the Constitutional Council (CC) last Thursday validated the results of the December 2004 general elections, which the ruling FRELIMO party won by a landslide, it reportedly said it had followed the debate on observers' access to vote tabulation "with concern".

The candidates banned in December 2004 from running in upcoming presidential elections in the Central African Republic (CAR) can now all participate except one: the former president, Ange-Felix Patasse. State radio announced the news on Sunday and said that presidential, as well as legislative, elections would be postponed from 13 February to 13 March. A total of 11 candidates can now run.

Amnesty International has expressed its serious concern at the arrest of Dr Mudawi Ibrahim Adam, a leading Sudanese human rights activist and Chair of the humanitarian organisation Sudan Social Development Organisation (SUDO). Members of Sudan's National Security and Intelligence Agency arrested Dr Mudawi Ibrahim Adam and a friend Salah Mohamed Abdelrahman in his family home in Kondua, a village in North Kordofan on Sunday 24 January. No reasons were given for their arrest and no one has so far had access to the detainees. They were reportedly brought to the National Security Agency office in the town of Umburua, North Kordofan.

Corruption remains the most significant barrier to doing business in Kenya, a joint World Bank and Kippra survey says. The survey shows that graft is the number one barrier to investment. The Investment Climate Assessment Survey is entitled: Enhancing the Competitiveness of Kenya's Manufacturing sector: The Role of the Investment Climate. It says that corruption was rated as a severe hurdle by three quarters of the sampled firms, while respondents reported that 'unofficial payments' to 'get things done' are required 57 per cent of the time.

Experiences from a UK Department for International Development funded project in Nigeria suggest that greater critical attention must be given to the impacts and effects of HIV/AIDS on communities, and the ways in which conflict can develop, emerge and be sustained, resulting in severe breakdown of social cohesion and reduction or cessation of HIV/AIDS activities. It is argued that conflict can be fuelled by the different priorities and perceptions of community members and groups vis-à-vis those of development organisations, and by the impact of funds on often desperately poor communities.

The Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victims in Copenhagen, Denmark, has initiated work towards creating the Thesaurus of Torture Terminology (T3); a thesaurus of terminology related to torture, prevention of torture, and rehabilitation of torture victims. The T3 project aims to create a structured vocabulary sufficiently extensive and detailed to facilitate indexing and retrieval of documents on torture, at a level suited to specialists in the fields of torture prevention and rehabilitation of victims. The thesaurus will be created in English; it is hoped that translations/adaptations into other languages can be undertaken subsequently, possibly in cooperation with interested organisations in the human rights field. Anyone interested in further information on the project, in particular organisations and individuals who would be willing to comment on drafts of the thesaurus, or are engaged in similar initiatives within the work field of torture prevention and rehabilitation of victims, can write to [email protected]

The Ghanaian government has issued tough new guidelines for medical practitioners as it prepares for a big hike in health spending. It has ordered a switch to more expensive, but more effective drugs for treating malaria and a big increase in antiretroviral (ARV) treatment for people living with AIDS. The 517-page guidelines, along with a new list of essential medicines, aim to deliver efficient treatment at least cost as the government prepares to boost its expenditure on drugs from the estimated 2004 level of US $6million.

Nigeria is to phase out malaria-resistant drugs such as chloroquine immediately and switch to the more effective but more expensive artemisinin-based drugs, Health Minister Eyitayo Lambo said on Tuesday. With the mosquito-borne disease responsible for 30 percent of all childhood deaths, Nigeria has adopted a World Health Organisation (WHO) recommendation to use artemisinin-based combination therapy.

Scores of students in Moroni, the capital of the Comoros Islands, took to the streets on Tuesday, demanding government action to end a teachers' strike that has closed schools. More than 300 teachers across the Indian Ocean archipelago failed to turn up for classes at the start of the school term earlier this month, protesting accumulated salary arrears.

South African generic AIDS drug manufacturer, Aspen Pharmacare, has become the first African firm to win approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its production plant. The FDA conducted a pre-operational review and close inspection to ascertain good manufacturing practice at Aspen's Port Elizabeth facility in September last year. As a result of this approval, funds from the US President's Emergency Plans for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) can be used to purchase Aspen-manufactured drugs for use in countries where the local drug regulatory agency has approved them.

In early 2004, media reports emerged alleging that UN peacekeepers in the UN Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) were involved in the sexual exploitation and abuse of Congolese girls in Bunia, in the Ituri District in the north-east of the DRC. After carrying out a number of internal investigations, MONUC and the UN's Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) requested the UN's Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) to investigate the allegations. The OIOS report, which has just been released, is based on a three-month investigation from June to September 2004. One of its recommendations suggests that the Department of Peacekeeping Operations consider a wider application of prevention and detection policies to protect against sexual abuse and exploitation by peacekeepers. This may include the designation of local officials or nongovernmental organizations to receive reports of sexual exploitation and abuse; the central reporting of all cases to mission senior management on an expedited basis; the development of mission-based rapid-response teams; the development of educational programmes for the troops on their responsibilities and on sanctions for sexual exploitation and abuse; the public naming and shaming of those found to have engaged in sexual exploitation and abuse; and the permanent exclusion from peacekeeping missions of those troops who engage in sexual exploitation and abuse and of their contingents' commanders.

Statement by CSOs at the Fourth Ordinary African Union Summit of the Heads of States, 24-31st January 2005, Abuja, Nigeria

Signed by the African Network for the Campaign on Education for All (ANCEFA), African Womens Development and Communications Network (FEMNET), African Centre for Democracy and Human Rights (ACDHR), Center for Democracy and Development (CDD),
Pan African Movement (PAM), Pan African Development Education and Advocacy Programme(PADEAP), West African Students Union (WASU), Womens Rights Advancement and Protection Alternatives (WRAPA), Development Network of Indigenous Voluntary Agencies (DENIVA), Fahamu, ActionAid International, Oxfam GB

Summary

The fourth Ordinary African Union Summit of the Heads of States takes place at a time when the consequences of poorly financed and collapsing public health services across the continent can only be described as a public health emergency. Returning to Abuja where four years ago they committed themselves to accelerate the fight against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and other related infectious diseases, it is clear that key obstacles continue to prevent hundreds of millions of Africans from realising the right to health. African Governments and the African Union must reinvigorate the fight against the violation of HIV/AIDS and health related rights.

Recommendations

- African Governments must commit to increasing GDP allocation for health by three per cent each year in order to reach the 2001 Abuja Summit commitments of 15%.
- African government should ensure that treatment of AIDS and infectious diseases is provided free, reaches vulnerable groups and in an accountable manner.
- African Governments, who have to yet ratify the AU Protocol on the Rights of Women, must do so. It is a major instrument in securing the right to health for Africa’s women and girls.
- The African Union Commission must lead on lobbying the G8 in 2005 for debt cancellation and measures from industrialised countries to compensate for the brain drain of African health workers.
- The African Union Commission must lead on lobbying the G8 in 2005 for debt cancellation and securing measures from industrialised countries to compensate for the brain drain of African health workers.
- African Governments must mandate the African Union Commission to champion for enabling laws and policies in member states and a coordinated global advocacy approach towards the WTO Hong Kong Inter-ministerial in December 2005.

Situational analysis

Across our continent the health status of women remains precarious and in many instances, worsening, not only because of HIV but also because of the many unacceptable inequalities that exist in women’s health, the limited choices that are made available to women and finally, the lack of accountability for their health.
- Pascal Mocumbi, Prime Minister, Mozambique, 2003.

The majority of Africa’s 800 million citizens continue to remain locked out of health facilities across the continent. By the time the Summit opens, Africa will have lost 20 million people to the plague of AIDS. Behind them, they would have left 12 million orphans to fend for themselves. While our leaders meet, outside the doors of the Abuja International Conference Centre, 80% of the 40 million people currently living with HIV/AIDs across the world will be struggling to fight a debilitating disease that in some parts of the industrialised world is no longer a killer disease. 55% of these will be women.

By the time the Summit opens on the 24th January, 90 million African women and girls will have been forcibly circumcised or had their genitals mutilated. Between the opening and the closing Summit ceremonies, 77,000 women and girls will have undergone unsafe abortions in countries where restrictive abortion policies ensure that no standards can be maintained or monitored. As a result of this and other factors, a staggering 47/48 sub-Saharan African countries will not meet the goal of reducing maternal mortality and one in ten babies will not survive child birth due to poor and inadequate health infrastructure in Africa.

Yet, this is sadly no longer news in a continent numbed by the domestic stories of neglect, blocked access to life-saving drugs and poverty. What could be news is the scaling up of international and African public resources into expanding access to health-care services.

Expand public financing for health and education

When African Heads of States met in Abuja in April 2001, they correctly declared HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis (TB), and other related infectious diseases (ORID) as a state of emergency. Recalling and reaffirming their commitment to all relevant decisions, declarations and resolutions in the area of health and development and on HIV/AIDS, particularly the "Lomé Declaration on HIV/AIDS in Africa" (July 2000) and the "Decision on the adoption of the International Partnership against HIV/AIDS" (Algiers 1999) they stated;
“WE COMMIT OURSELVES to take all necessary measures to ensure that the needed resources are made available from all sources and that they are efficiently and effectively utilized. In addition, WE PLEDGE to set a target of allocating at least 15% of our annual budget to the improvement of the health sector.”

Now known as the “Abuja 15% commitment” this target was seen as a critical contribution to the fight against HIVAIDS and other diseases. Shockingly, despite this public commitment, four years on many countries continue to spend less than 10% of the revenue on health. African Governments must commit in this Summit to increasing GDP allocation for health by three per cent each year in order to reach the 2001 Abuja Summit commitments of 15%.

New research published by the Global Campaign for Education and endorsed by UNAIDS, shows that a complete primary education makes a strong and direct impact on HIV infection rates, especially among young women. Girls with a complete primary education are 2.2 times less likely to contract HIV than those with some or no primary education. Education equips young people to understand and apply facts and gives them the status, clout and confidence to avoid unsafe and exploitative relationships. Investing in free primary education for everyone but especially for girls, is one of the most effective and urgently needed measures to fight the epidemic. Investing in secondary education would bring additional benefits. Consequently, the AU needs to give priority to free, universal and compulsory basic education with gender equity, both in its own strategies for development and poverty reduction, as well as in its dialogue with forums such as the G8.

Debt cancellation is pre-requisite for progress

The heavy external debt burden …continues to mortgage African economies and cast a shadow over our People’s’ future. To date, the proposed remedies are ad hoc.
- Secretary General of the Organisation of African Unity, July 2002

A comprehensive AIDS plan for Africa would cost US$10 billion per year, yet African nations spend one and a half times this amount in debt servicing. In many countries, more is spent on debt servicing than on education and health or is received in aid grants and foreign direct investment. For the same money, the global fund against HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis could stop these diseases and provide Anti-Retrovirals (ARVs) for the three million people living with HIV in all developing countries not just Africa.

This absurdity can only be seen from the experience of one country. Tanzania for instance, currently pays US$39 million dollars per annum in debt servicing while receiving only US$27 million in aid. It is revealing to recall that after the second world war, Germany was considered to be harshly penalised for having reparations set at 7% of its exports, yet in 2005 Tanzania is supposed to “adjust” and grow with debt servicing set at 60% of its exports.

Yet, this Summit occurs at a time when momentum has built once more around the necessity for debt cancellation. Several G8 countries have bi-laterally cancelled debts owed by African countries. In February 2005, the G7 Finance Ministers will consider proposals to underwrite debt cancellation by committing additional bi-lateral financing or by re-valuing IMF gold reserves. The benefits of this would be immense. Debt cancellation would enable countries like Ethiopia to expand access by doubling its expenditure on health and thus reaching beyond the 60% who are currently reached by health services.

There is precedence in Africa for successful re-channeling of debt relief into basic social services. At least six countries in Africa offer insight into the possibilities debt cancellation could create. In Benin for example, 54% of HIPIC relief monies was channeled into improving health programmes by recruiting health staff for rural clinics, implementing HIV/AIDS and anti-malarial programmes and improving access to safe water and increasing immunisation. Malawi has been able to allocate a 30% cut in debt servicing per year to enhance their HIV/AIDs health care system. US$1.3 million of debt relief money has been critical to resourcing Uganda’s National HIV/AIDS plan. Cameroon was able to launch a comprehensive national HIV/AIDS strategic plan funded to the tune of US$114 million with help from debt savings. In Niger, a special programme that focuses on rural education, health, food security and water systems has been fully financed through HIPC. This has mainly been used so far in building classrooms and rural clinics. In Burkina Faso, HIPC relief has been spent on health (33%), education (39%) and rural roads (28%).

As Jubilee Zambia coordinator Teza Nchinga notes, "Respect for the basic human rights (food, health care and education) of millions of Zambians should take priority over repayment of debts to comparatively wealthy creditors especially when capital on these debts has already been paid a number of times over." The African Union Commission must lead on behalf of African countries by aggressively demanding debt cancellation from the G8 in 2005. African Governments on the other hand, must follow the example of these six countries who have had re-channeled monies freed up from debt relief into strengthening health systems including the retention of health workers.

Industrialised countries must deliver on their aid commitments

Currently, despite the increases pledged in the UN Financing For Development Conference in Monterrey, rich countries spend half of the foreign assistance they did in 1960. If they were to meet the OECD targets of 0.7% of their GNP this would increase aid levels from US$70 billion to US$190 billion dollars. Yet, only the UK and Spain have set dates to meet these targets. 12 other countries are far from this and do not seem to be in a hurry.

Compared to expenditure on defense or domestic agricultural subsidies, this would be a very small amount. Looked at in terms of the cost to individual taxpayers, it would cost an additional US$80 dollars per person per year or put more simply, the average price of one cup of coffee a week.

G8 countries continue to prioritise aid to countries where they have geo-political interests rather than fighting poverty. Over 2004, America set aside US$ 65 billion dollars for fighting the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. This could have financed the exact annual budget deficit for the entire continent of Africa. Put another way, six months of US funding for the war in Iraq (US$ four billion) could have met the annual budget deficit for the global fund against HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis. Yet increasing aid is only one measure, improving its quality is another. For instance, nearly 30% of aid is tied to goods and services from donor countries. In the case of the US, this figure is as high as 70%.

The quality of foreign assistance also continues to be undermined by IMF and World Bank fiscal and macro-economic models, which act to constrain expenditure on basic social services. In a study of twenty Poverty Reduction Strategies, sixteen were found to contain fiscal targets for inflation and the budgetary envelope that had not been subjected to public discussion. They were targets that had been established by the World Bank or the IMF. Last year for instance, Ethiopian and Tanzanian Governments will have to meet 85 and 78 policy conditions respectively.

The AU clearly sees itself providing leadership, monitoring states performance and accountability, advocacy with states and beyond, setting up standards, harnessing new continental initiatives, and as a knowledge hub. This clear emphasis on harmonising the plethora of new initiatives and monies that are offered for flooding Africa and which are, in many cases, confusing national plans and programmes, is welcome.

To this end, the AU must challenge the proliferation of uncoordinated initiatives such as the US PEPFAR Presidential Initiative. Bilateral initiatives such as PEPFAR may reinforce donor-driven approaches, increase the administrative burdens of recipient countries and drain resources away from existing, experienced, multilateral initiatives. Such initiatives create parallel systems where the national government using inexpensive generic fixed dose combinations and that of PEPFAR using expensive brand names. This leads to confusion of both patients and health providers.

The African Union must take a more vigorous lead in engaging the international community to deliver the Monterrey promises and improve the volume and quality of foreign assistance to Africa. It is vital that donors’ initiatives and programmes should implement nationally defined policies especially regarding access to medicines.

Improving Access to Care and Support

The major challenge facing the people living with AIDS and people affected by AIDS is the issue of access to treatment and care. The World Health Organization (WHO) in December 2003 came up with an initiative to treat three million people by 2005. This is believed to be approximately half of the estimated six million people in dire need of antiretroviral therapy. This is the popular 3 by 5.

Despite the fact that some African governments have subsidized distribution programmes, less than 1% of Africans in need of ARV treatment had access to ARVs, compared to 85% in developed countries in 2004. South Africa has committed to providing free treatment to 53,000 people by March 2004. This is a fraction of South Africa's HIV positive population, estimated to be over five million. The Nigerian government began a treatment programme to provide ARVs for 10,000 people in November 2002. At a conservatively estimated number of 3 million people living with HIV&AIDS in Nigeria in 2004, this is quite clearly inadequate.

Access to ARVs is also determined by power within and between households. Findings from CSO participatory research studies in Zambia and Nigeria suggest that intra-household power relations conspire to constrain women’s access to ARVs. Women in Zambia have a disproportionate access to ARVs (30%) despite comprising of 50% of the population. In January 2004, less than 30% of people who had access to ARVs were women in Zambia. In many families who cannot afford to have more than one person on ARV, it is the male head of household that is chosen. At another level, scanty or total ignorance of prevalent diseases, the weak bargaining position of women and the pervasive cultural endorsement of male liberty to have free and multiple sexual relationships (in and out of marriage) has escalated the distributive impact of STDs and led to the high prevalence of HIV/AIDS across communities all over Africa.

In many countries across Africa the right to health is not enshrined in either the constitution or laws. It is in this context that the African Union Protocol on Women’s Rights and in particular the provisions in articles 14 and 15 significantly contribute to grounding the obligations of Governments. Yet, despite encouragement by the African Union Commission under the leadership of President Konare and civil society campaigning, only seven Governments have ratified the Protocol, a further 33 have signed but not ratified. To this end, African Governments who have not yet done so must re-commit to ratify with urgency, the AU Protocol on the Rights of Women, as a major instrument in securing the right to health for Africa’s women and girls.

Class equities also affect the distribution of ARVs. Interviewed recently, a 29 year old father of three kids in Nigeria said;

“The ARV that come to the center are not given to those of us who have come out to declare our status, but to those BIG men who bribe their way through and we are left to suffer and scout round for the drug. “

Attempts to bring down the costs of ARVs are obviously the way forward. In Nigeria, Malawi and Zimbabwe, tariffs on essential drugs have been removed. The Governments of Zambia and Mozambique have issued compulsory licensing for ARVs for their treatment programmes. Zimbabwe has also allocated precious foreign currency to a local company to manufacture generic ARVs, and is currently running trials on AZT at two of its largest hospitals. However, Zimbabwe’s lack of foreign currency has made it difficult to secure an adequate supply of drugs. In Kenya and Malawi also many public hospitals have no drugs for treatment of HIV/AIDS-related infections.

Access to essential medicines rests on African countries being able to domestically produce or source cheap drugs from southern based generic drugs industries. The AU should consider initiating dialogue with WHO, UNCTAD and the EC to explore the feasibility of establishing African centers of excellence in the producing of high quality local production of medicine especially ARVs. African states should be encouraged to influence both public and private health service providers to dispel misinformation about generic drugs being inferior to brand products, eliminate the costs of ARVs to users and actively target the rural poor with special emphasis on gender equity. Key to this will be the replication of policies that cut taxes and tariffs and promote price regulation to countries that have not already done so.

We welcome existing plans for a continental conference on the rights of people with HIV/AIDS to raise the profile of rights abuses and to chart a new chapter in the evolution of national laws and standards consistent with the spirit of the African Charter of Human and Peoples Rights. We call on the AU Commission to extend an invitation to People with AIDS organizations and networks across the continent to help design this process.

African Governments must mandate the African Union Commission to champion for enabling laws and policies in member states and a coordinated global advocacy approach towards the WTO Hong Kong Inter-ministerial in December 2005. The AU must ensure that new trade agreements especially Trade Related Aspects on Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), bilateral and regional trade agreements do not undermine access to medicines in Africa.

The absence of effective conditions to fight HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and polio conditions and poor remuneration of African health workers has led to an exodus of trained health personnel. Calculating the cost of training, every doctor that leaves the continent costs Africa US$60,000. This results in a staggering subsidy to G8 countries of US$500 million every year just for health personnel.

To increase access to medicines African governments should redirect aid and debt money towards investing in basic health services including retention of health workers. Donors’ initiatives should follow national medicines policies especially using inexpensive generic fixed dose combinations. The AU should advocate with states, donors and the pharmaceutical industry to decrease the prices of second line treatment for HIV.

Conclusions

As African Governments meet once again in Abuja, they must embrace the opportunity of an invigorated African Union Commission to turn words into further deeds and directly confront the state of emergency. The temptation to simply re-affirm the 2001 Abuja Declaration must be avoided in order for the costs of this Summit to be justified. Increasing domestic resourcing, improving the quality of health programmes particularly to rural communities and delivery on debt cancellation are key to preventing hundreds of millions of Africans from being denied the right to health.

Recommendations

- African Governments must commit to increasing GDP allocation for health by three per cent each year in order to reach the 2001 Abuja Summit commitments of 15%.
- African government should ensure that treatment of AIDS and infectious diseases is provided free, reaches vulnerable groups and in an accountable manner.
- African Governments, who have yet to ratify the AU Protocol on the Rights of Women, must do so. It is a major instrument in securing the right to health for Africa’s women and girls.
- The African Union Commission must lead on lobbying the G8 in 2005 for debt cancellation and measures from industrialised countries to compensate for the brain drain of African health workers and stop recruiting more workers.
- African Governments must prioritise monies saved by debt relief for strengthening health systems that ensure the retention of health workers.
- African Governments must mandate the African Union Commission to champion for enabling laws and policies in member states and a coordinated global advocacy approach towards the WTO Hong Kong Inter-ministerial in December 2005.

* Please send comments to [email protected]

* Useful Reading Materials
- African Union, Report of the African Summit on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and other related infectious diseases. Abuja Nigeria, April 2004
- African Union, HIV/AIDS Strategy 2005-2007
- ActionAid International, Responding to HIV/AIDS in Africa, a comparative analysis of responses to the Abuja Declaration in Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria & Zimbabwe, June 2004
- ActionAid International, 3 by 5: Ensuring HIV/AIDS Care for All. June 2004
- Fahamu/SOAWR, Pambazuka News 190: Special Issue on the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa: A pre-condition for health & food security, January 2005
- Oxfam International, Paying the Price, January 2005

What is the real motive and agenda of the Tony Blair's Commission for Africa? In what way does the CFA differ from pervious similar initiatives? And what is the likelihood of real change resulting from the work of the CFA? These were some of the questions raised at a Southern Africa civil society consultation held in Zambia in December. Participants drawn from civil society groups from Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zimbabwe and Zambia itself attended the event.

As globalization proceeds apace international law, and the scope and powers of international institutions - the United Nations, the Bretton Woods institutions, the World Trade Organization - continue to grow. If democratic values are still an aspiration of the 21st century, then their deficit at international level must be addressed. Patomaki and Teiveinen survey the range of proposals now on the table. Ruling nothing out, they emphasise feasibility. While democratic advances do not come without political mobilization, there is little point mobilizing people for the utopian and unrealizable.

Until recently, the debate surrounding human rights in international financial institutions had not begun in earnest. There was considerable skepticism and many questioned the existence at all of a link between human rights and international financial operations, particularly the IMF and the World Bank.  Now this debate has a legitimate and important place inside international forums and is taken seriously by civil society and scholars. 'The IMF, The World Bank and the Question of Human Rights' seeks to explore all of the issues facing international financial institutions and their obligations to adhere to human rights rules.

For women on the continent of Africa, the upcoming 6the Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Hong Kong in December will stand out as the apogee of failure for the globalisation project.

Women and social movements have articulated the need for economic democracy. This involves the equitable participation of all people in the ownership of the productive assets on which livelihoods depend upon.

Some of the key messages African women are sending to the Hong Kong meeting centre around research of the lived experiences of women, which indicate that agricultural trade liberalisation measures can create starvation and famine when tariff barriers are removed. These measures allow the flow of cheap food, which displaces poor women and men and destroys their entitlements.

Lowering of import barriers and flooding of the market with imported food grains sold at low prices is the result of the many levels of hidden subsidies of the rich countries. These have been shown to contribute to hunger and starvation in agricultural societies, which predominate in African countries. What the Agreement on Agriculture aims to achieve is the replacement of women and other subsistence producers with agribusiness as the main providers of food. Behind the obfuscation of terms such as ‘market access’, ‘domestic support’, is a raw restructuring of power around food: taking it away from people and concentrating it in the hands of a handful of agro-industrial interests.

The agriculture negotiations when taken up by our governments are treated as gender neutral. These discussions do not take into account the 75% contribution women make to agricultural production. They assume a common myth that separates affluence from poverty. If you produce what you consume, you do not produce. This is the basis on which the production boundary is drawn for national accounting that measures economic growth.

This myth is perpetuated in the WTO contestation and contributes to the mystification of growth and consumerism. It also hides the real processes that create poverty. The WTO agriculture negotiations are inimical to people’s interests. They have become a space for protecting the interest of agribusiness corporations and commercial farmers whose priority is not food security but profit. Their profit distribution is a monopoly. They are the sellers of inputs to farmers, the buyers of agricultural commodities from farmers, and the sellers of processed foods to consumers. Women do not see the agreement on agriculture as a conflict between farmers of the North and those of the South, but between small farmers everywhere and agribusiness multinationals. In Africa the small farmers are women, even though their role has remained invisible and has been neglected in the official trade discussions.

In the upcoming Hong Kong meeting women will fight against the free export and import of agricultural products because this translates into the destruction of small farmers and local food production capacities. By locating food in the domain of international trade, women recognise that this will dislocate its production in the household and community.

Trade liberalisation through the WTO is aimed at removing all restrictions for trade and trading interest and results in the removal of food security by removing the legal and policy instruments that protect the entitlements of poor women and men who have little to no purchasing power and are therefore excluded from the market.

African women find trade negotiations a rather strange place for products of the mind to be discussed. Yet, that is precisely what has happened. Trade and plunder merge in what is called Trade- Related Intellectual Property Right (TRIPs). This is another instrument, which will dispossess rural women of their power, control and knowledge. Land, water, forests, rivers, indigenous medicines, plants are regarded as commodities. Even more obscene women are fighting against TRIPs intention to take seeds out of the custody of women and make it private property of multinational corporations. By adding ‘trade related’ to intellectual property right, the WTO has forced issues of ownership of genetic resources and life forms on to the agenda of international trade.

The construction of ‘intellectual property’ in the WTO is linked to multiple levels of dispossession for women. The preamble of the TRIPs agreement states that intellectual property rights are recognised only as private rights. This excludes all kinds of knowledge, ideas and innovations that take place in the intellectual commons, in villages, farmers, indigenous people. TRIPs is a mechanism to privatise the intellectual commons and de-intellectualise women, so that in effect, the mind becomes a corporate monopoly. TRIPs critique by women stems from the Latin root of private property, privare, and means to deprive. The laws of private property which rose during the 15 -16th centuries eroded people’s common right to the use of forests and pastures, while creating the social condition for capital accumulation through industrialisation. These new agreements in the WTO are created to protect individual right to property as a commodity, while destroying collective rights to water, land, food, health and the basis of sustenance.

Economic democracy is fundamental to the essential and efficient functioning of economies and sound public regulation. Today’s markets respond only to money, they are obsessed with the wants of the rich and neglect the most basic needs of poor women and men. Economic democracy is a necessary foundation of individual, community, and national economic self-determination – the right to determine one’s own economic priorities and the rules of one’s economic life – because it helps secure a political voice for each person.

* Mohau Pheko is the coordinator for the Gender & Trade Network in Africa, based in Johannesburg, South Africa ([email protected])

* Please send comments to

The Cape Town High Court decided in favor of Earthlife Africa this week and set aside the approval for the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of the Pebble-Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR). Earthlife Africa and other interested parties will now have their chance to challenge Eskom's version of the truth. ESKOM, the second respondent in this case wishes to construct a demonstration model 110 Mega Watt class PBMR at the site of the only existing nuclear plant in South Africa near Cape Town.

While the most recent Tsunami has spared the coastal areas of Kenya and the tidal waves nowhere reached above the high-water mark, the threat to the coastal ecosystems continues to come from within. Though inshore trawling was banned along the Kenyan coast - after many years of struggle by environmentally concerned organizations and citizens and already under the former government of then President Daniel Arap Moi - the new Kenya Government seems to disregard all decrees and agreements as well as its own political commitment towards poverty eradication as well as the respective Millennium Goals it signed at the United Nations.

"My excitement upon arriving at a large weekend workshop of the Anti-Privatization Forum (APF) in South Africa and seeing a room filled with community activists, more than half of whom were women, was abated as the workshop progressed and I realized that most of the women were not participating. It was men’s voices that overwhelmingly dominated the comments from the floor. Of the women who did participate, it was primarily women with lighter skin, for whom English is their primary language," writes Dawn Paley, an intern with Alternatives, currently living in Johannesburg, South Africa. "This experience has led me to question how is it that Black women can make up the bulk of the membership of the movements against neo-liberal policies and be so marginalized in the functioning of these organizations?," she writes in this commentary for www.zmag.org

The World Social Forum (WSF), sometimes described as the "carnival of the oppressed", is about to get underway in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre. While WSF participants debate the problems facing the international community another issue is also likely to come up for discussion, however: Africa's prospects of hosting the forum next year. "Brazil and India are worthy hosts of the forum, with both countries being characteristic of many of the socio-economic problems that the WSF aims to address," Ayesha Kajee, a senior researcher at the Johannesburg-based South African Institute of International Affairs, told IPS. "The value of the WSF initiative is that it encourages open debate, exchange of ideas and sharing of best practice from around the world. Hosting the forum in Africa could spur innovative new ideas and re-energise initiatives to reach the Millennium Development Goals," Kajee added.
* WSF LINKS:
- African Social Forum website
http://www.forumsocialafricain.org/english/index.htm
- Activists gather for WSF
http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/ap/2005/01/26/ap1784820.html
- Original Venue, New and Improved Methodology for Giant Meet
http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=27190
- Terraviva: A publication of the world social forum
http://www.ipsterraviva.net/tv/wsf2005/

Burundi's transitional President Domitien Ndayizeye has been warned against changing the draft constitution to allow himself to run in elections. The chief mediator in Burundi's peace talks, South African deputy President Jacob Zuma, said the move could damage efforts to end the 10-year war. About 5,000 United Nations peacekeepers are in the country to support the South African-brokered peace process.

The appointment this week of Angola's first Justice Ombudsman has sparked concern among human rights activists, who fear a lack of transparency and consultation in the process will render the position ineffective. Human rights organisations and civil society groups are up in arms because they have had no part in the selection procedure. "The Angolan government has violated the rules of the game," said one human rights worker. "They are going against international guidelines - the Paris Principles - which expect a consultation with civil society over the nomination of the candidates, as well as the structure and function of the whole institution."

Unprecedented infighting in Zimbabwe's ruling Zanu PF shows President Robert Mugabe has lost control of his party ahead of elections due in March, the main opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, says. "Mugabe now is a leader of a faction, not the leader of the party of the country and that undermines his legitimacy," the Movement for Democratic Change leader said. More than a dozen top party officials have been purged amid jostling to succeed Mugabe, 80, upon his retirement in 2008.
* Related Link:
- Wilf Mbanga on disappearances in Zimbabwe
http://tinyurl.com/3ke8o

* Editorial: Markets respond only to money and the needs of the rich at the expense of poor women and men. That’s why women will fight against the free export and import of agricultural products at a WTO meeting later this year, says Mohau Pheko of the Gender trade Network
* Comment and Analysis: Public health services across the continent can only be described as a public health emergency, says a civil society statement addressed to African leaders meeting in Abuja, Nigeria
* Human Rights: Nigerian civil society organizations leak a long-awaited human rights report
* Women and Gender: Women are on the frontline in resistance to neo-liberal policies, yet they are often marginalized within their organizations, says this commentary from www.zmag.org
* Elections and Governance: Burundi’s Ndayizeye is told not to change a draft constitution and South African trade union Cosatu vows to visit Zimbabwe
* Development: News from the World Social Forum in Brazil
* Health and HIV/AIDS: Funds injected into communities to fight HIV/AIDS can cause community conflict, a study in Nigeria finds
* Environment: Civil society organizations demand a moratorium on World Bank backed logging in the DRC
* Jobs: English-French/French-English volunteer translators needed for Pambazuka News

>>>>>

* Sign the petition for women's rights: http://www.pambazuka.org/petition

* Stay awake: Get Pambazuka News alerts: http://www.pambazuka.org/petition/alerts.php

>>>>>

Botswana has unveiled plans to build an additional centre to house the growing numbers of illegal immigrants crossing into the country, mainly from neighbouring Zimbabwe. The new centre, expected to be situated in Molepolole, a village 60 km west of the capital, Gaborone, is meant to ease the pressure on a similar facility in Francistown, which is already stretched to capacity. Tension between the two countries has been simmering in recent years as increasing numbers of Zimbabweans entered Botswana, both legally and illegally, in a bid to escape the economic crisis at home.

The attackers, as they have done so often, rampaged through terrified people, shouting "kill the slaves". They cried: "We have orders to kill all the blacks". Eight more villages in Darfur were torched in a single day by armed men in a concerted operation. As arguments rage over who was to blame for the attacks five days ago, the UN is deciding whether the atrocities of the past two years amount to genocide. Human rights organisations are using the occasion of Holocaust Day today to call for international war trials to help stop the crimes still being committed against the civilians of Darfur.

The United Nations refugee agency on Tuesday criticized a pledge by Britain's Conservative Party to pull out of a five-decade-old global asylum accord if it wins the country's upcoming election. Rupert Colville, a spokesman for U.N. high commissioner for refugees, said Conservative leader Michael Howard's promise to withdraw Britain from the 1951 Geneva convention was "alarming," and that the consequences "would be extremely counterproductive." Under the accord, countries are meant to provide asylum for refugees.

Writing about the world's response to the Boxing Day tsunami disaster, Kevin Watkins, director of the UNDP Human Development Report, states that while relief operations in Asia are of importance "it is no less of an imperative to break the grip of abject poverty and avoidable suffering in Africa and elsewhere." Watkins concludes: "We must build on the groundswell of compassion unleashed by the tsunami to end the injustice and indifference at the heart of Africa's crisis. We have the opportunity. Later this month, the UN Millennium Project will set out an agenda for mobilising the resources needed to halve extreme poverty, reduce child deaths and educate children. Britain can push the G8 to act on aid and unfair trade. Public opinion must get behind Africa."

Wealthy countries "deliberately" enlist doctors and nurses from poor nations, costing developing states US $500 million a year in lost training, Ndioro Ndiaye, deputy director-general of the International Organisation for Migration, said. According to Ndiaye, the UK drafted more than 8,000 nurses and midwives from outside of Europe in the year 2000. This was in addition to the 30,000 hired over previous years. Some 21,000 Nigerian doctors were working in the US the same year, while there were more doctors from Benin working in France than in their own country, she said.

Violence against women has devastating health consequences on the victims and undermines women’s control over their own reproductive health. In dealing with survivors of violence against women at the Coalition on violence’s Against Women (COVAW) counseling and legal aid clinic, what has emerged is that most women undergoing violence perpetrated by intimate partners also present with reproductive health risks and problems.

These can broadly be categorized into fatal outcomes and non fatal outcomes suffered as a result of violence. The fatal outcomes could be death as a result of homicide, suicide by the victim, maternal mortality and HIV/ AIDS. The non fatal outcomes include poor physical health as a result of the injuries, poor mental health like depression, consequences related to reproductive health like unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortions and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/ AIDS.

The psychological consequences are even more long term and devastating. The 2001 world health report identified gender based violence as one of the factors contributing to the disproportionate rates of depression amongst women. It further points out that recurrent abuse can erode women’s resilience and places them at risk of other psychological problems such as post traumatic stress disorder, suicide, and alcohol and substance abuse.

The right to access basic health care services and information is a basic human right enshrined in several international conventions and instruments like the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Violence Against Women (CEDAW), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Conference for Population and Development (ICPD).

Despite this research from several countries has shown that women in violent relationships often do not have adequate access to reproductive health services yet they are among the most vulnerable and seek health services more frequently than non abused women.

Within the health sector systems violence against women remains highly invisible and there are glaring gaps within the health sector as well at the community level for dealing with violence against women. Most health providers have consistently failed to recognize and consider violence against women an important part of their work. Some health workers, being products of a culture that condones violence against women, view it as a normal way of life and do not feel obligated to pay attention to women who present with signs and symptoms of abuse. They do not feel that caring for women suffering violence is part of their professional profile. Their attitudes about violence are also largely shaped by prevailing cultural norms. Owing to this disinterest, women living in violent situations also rarely reveal their situations to health care providers.

One doctor interviewed in an intimate partner violence survey conducted by Family Health International captured the situation thus:

“Health workers – doctors, nurses clinicians are men first before they are health workers. As a result they cannot escape from the mashismo socialization that all men receive from their environment”.

Many providers also express attitudes that blame the victim rather than the aggressors. Such attitudes pose a serious challenge to transforming the culture of silence and complicity on issues of violence against women. The situation is further compounded by the lack of legislative and policy frameworks that require health programs to integrate policies and national plans to address gender based violence. The establishment of health sector policies on addressing violence is a key step towards institutionalizing violence against women programs and raising awareness amongst health providers on their role in addressing violence. Policy frameworks within the health system are important as they create a mechanism of holding the health sector responsible in addressing violence against women.

Governments are responsible for upholding women’s reproductive health and rights yet they consistently fail to live up to that duty. This has meant the use of international normative frameworks as a strategy to build pressure on governments to abide by universally acceptable standards of promoting women’s rights to reproductive health.

The protocol to the African Charter on women’s rights is one such instrument. Lauded as one of the most progressive instruments of promoting the rights of women on the African continent, it provides a comprehensive and useful framework for safeguarding women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights while upholding the bodily integrity of women. Article 14 of the protocol obligates state parties to undertake several kinds of duties relating to sexual and reproductive health and rights of women. Among the obligations it places on states are:

- The duty to protect the reproductive rights of women which requires states to take all necessary measures to ensure that no acts of omission and commission results in any violation of women’s reproductive rights.

- The duty to fulfil the reproductive rights of women which calls upon states to take all appropriate measures including legislative, administrative, budgetary allocations and other measures that will ensure the realization of women’s reproductive rights.

The duty to respect which entails that the government upholds a woman’s right to choice, information, and control over her sexual autonomy and bodily integrity. It further prohibits states from interfering with the protection and promotion of reproductive health and rights.

It is interesting to note that Article 14 has proved the most contentious in a number of countries yet it is one of the most liberating in terms of providing choice for women in matters of bodily integrity and autonomy. Women on the continent must not let the politics of control gain prominence over their rights to choice.

Once countries sign and ratify the protocol they become duty bound to uphold these rights. With glaring gaps that exist on legislative and policy frameworks in matters of reproductive health, it is necessary to continue building pressure for African governments that have not ratified the protocol to do so. Its passage will stimulate the enactment of national policies on violence which are strategic tools for stimulating greater sensitivity that violence against women is a public health issue. It will also create the political space for dialogue between civil society and the state while at the same time committing governments to a discourse that encourages sanctions against violence.

In a continent characterized by oppressive gender relations the passage of the protocol will anchor issues of women’s health within a human rights framework, thus creating duty bearers who can be held accountable for the realization of rights. Women’s rights activists must therefore not relent in their struggle to have governments move beyond lip service to securing serious commitments on issues of women’s reproductive health and rights.

* Anne Gathumbi is a women's rights activist and the outgoing coordinator of the Coalition on Violence Against Women (COVAW) in Kenya.

* Please send comments to