This World Bank paper reports on a study which addresses the challenges of child stunting in Ethiopia. At present, the report notes that stunting in Ethiopia has persisted at around 60 percent since the early 1980s and is among the highest in the world. The study integrates three different national surveys from Ethiopia conducted over the period 1995-96.

Mozambique's government launched an initiative Monday that will codify international norms protecting children's rights into its own domestic policy. The initiative, supported by UNICEF, will first analyze existing legislation and customs to see if current law sufficiently follows human rights treaties, such as the Convention of the Rights of the Child, to which Mozambique is a signatory.

The 3½ day workshop will link strategic communication, media relations, and message design and delivery. The workshop will provide hands-on learning in 4 areas: Developing Winning Messages; Crisis Management; Camera/Microphone Readiness; and Internet Monitoring and Marketing.

The government in Djibouti has extended the deadline for the departure of illegal immigrants from the East African country, where the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has been struggling to cope with thousands of people who thronged a transit centre in a last bid to apply for asylum and legalize their stay.

Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser will get his final chance in January 2004 to beat agribusiness and biotechnology giant Monsanto, when the Canadian Supreme Court is to issue a ruling that could affect farmers the world over. Schmeiser's entire canola crop was seized after Monsanto filed a legal complaint. Monsanto said Schmeiser violated their patent rights on the company's genetically modified (GM) Roundup Ready canola by growing it without paying for the seed and without signing a technology use agreement. "The outcome of the Schmeiser case will set an important precedent for other countries," says Peter Rosset, an agroecologist and co-director of FoodFirst/Institute for Food and Development Policy, an organisation that promotes food as a human right. The implications for agriculture worldwide will be profound, agrees Helweil.

Average rates of malnutrition in southern Sudan have been steadily worsening since 2001 causing "a major humanitarian crisis", according to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF). Every survey undertaken in Bahr el Ghazal and Upper Nile since the beginning of the year showed at least 20 percent malnutrition rates. The measure - Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) - applies to children under five who are below 80 per cent weight for their height.

Real world economic outlook is a yearly publication, produced by the team that launched the Jubilee 2000 campaign. Real world economic outlook examines the global economy from a radical perspective: that of economic and environmental justice. In stark contrast to the output of institutions like the IMF, whose bi-annual economic report it shadows, this book is both intellectually rigorous and accessible, informing and offering alternative analyses to a wide audience. With contributions from high profile and leading thinkers like Joseph Stiglitz, Dani Rodrik and Herman Daly, it sets out to integrate economic, environmental, and gender themes; to challenge dominant economic orthodoxy; and to transform mainstream economic thinking.

Embezzlement of public funds has continued unabated under President Mwanawasa's administration, Transparency International Zambia (TIZ) has observed. Launching the 2002 state of corruption report on Wednesday, TIZ board member Leonard Kalinde said they were concerned at revelations of ongoing misapplication of government resources meant for national development.

On 22 August 2003, Lawson Heyford, the Port Harcourt bureau chief of "The Source" magazine, was arrested by police officers and detained at the Force Criminal Investigation Department (FCID) in Lagos. According to Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) Nigeria sources, the police gave no reason for Heyford's arrest, but information gathered suggests the police action was informed by articles the journalist wrote on an intra-tribal conflict in southern Nigeria.

Early next week a French-led contingent of multinational troops will pull out of the Congo town of Bunia after barely three months of peacekeeping. A replacement force will serve a further year in an attempt to end the regional conflict which since 1998 has claimed more than 3.3 million lives. But while efforts are rightly focused on seeking a truce between the Hema and Lendu militia groups, and urging an end to Ugandan and Rwandan interference, western diplomats might also think about getting their own houses in order. In an uncanny repetition of western intervention in the region that dates back to the 19th century, complicit multinational corporations and unknowing - or unthinking - western consumers have contributed to the regional conflagration.

Balancing Act’s News Update covers connectivity developments in Africa and goes out to 6142 subscribers in government, the private sector, civil society and education. It has subscribers in almost all African countries.

The number of new cholera cases reported in the Liberian capital Monrovia peaked at more than 1,200 a week in mid-August, but has since started to decline, Omar Khatib, the World Health Organisation (WHO) representative in the country said on Monday. "Between 11-17 August, 1,203 new cholera cases were reported. Since then, the situation has stabilized. But there is still an epidemic," he told IRIN.

A total of 65,000 Sudanese refugees have fled to eastern Chad since April to escape ongoing clashes between the government of Sudan and rebels in the western Darfur region, according to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR). Many were being taken care of by local Chadians from the same ethnic groups, but others were showing signs of exposure and suffering from pneumonia and other ailments, said UNHCR spokesman Rupert Coleville. Relief efforts were being hampered by the rainy season.

Sympathetic accounts of the rise and rise of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe are few and far between. The anger that he has managed to generate has left little room for debate, and even more frightening, for criticism in Zimbabwe itself. He has ruled by fear and patronage, and he has maintained his political isolationism through invoking the unresolved land question and suppressing dissent. Stephen Chan is not a Mugabe hack. He does however attempt a reasoned look at history, politics, economics and war to develop a profile of arguably one of the most controversial leaders in Africa today.

Sudan, which has the highest prevalence of female genital mutilation (FGM) in the world, has made a commitment to ban the practice. At the end of a regional three-day symposium held last week in Khartoum, Health Minister Ahmed Osman Bilal expressed his government's commitment to eradicate FGM at all levels, according to a summary of proceedings provided by UNICEF.

Tanzanian authorities expelled on Tuesday 910 Rwandans who had been living the northwestern region of Kagera, humanitarian workers and government officials told IRIN. The government said on Wednesday that the Rwandans had been screened and refused refugee status, and were therefore in the country illegally. The government said 708 of them had been living in the Lukole refugee camp and 202 in Tanzanian villages.

The Ministry of Health of the Central African Republic is consulting its emergency operations partners after numerous cases of malnutrition and acute respiratory infections were detected near the town of Birao, some 1,100 km northeast of the capital, Bangui, a ministry official told IRIN on Monday. The ministry’s director of preventive medicine and disease control, Dr Abel Namssenmo, said that 73 children had died of malnutrition and respiratory infection between May and August in the village of Boromata, about 60 km west of Birao.

Crowds of cheering Liberians lined the roadside in pouring rain on Monday to welcome a convoy of military trucks ferrying 150 Gambian peacekeeping troops from Roberts international airport into the capital Monrovia. The Gambians were the latest West African soldiers to arrive to reinforce 1,550 Nigerian troops who have been trying to enforce a ceasefire between the government and two rebel movements since August 4.

South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) station managers have been ordered in a secret memo to avoid broadcasting programmes involving "political discourse", citing the arms deal row, in the run-up to next year's election. The memo said the decision had been taken against a background of discussion of corruption allegations against Deputy President Jacob Zuma.

Ugandan insurgents killed 22 civilians and abducted an unknown number at the weekend in the northern and northeastern regions of the country, officials said on Monday. The Lords Resistance Army (LRA) killed eight people on Sunday after marching them from a suburb of the district town of Soroti, about 350km northeast of the Ugandan capital, Kampala, said the army spokesperson.

Painted hunting dogs, also known as Cape hunting dogs or African wild dogs, so named for their individual and elaborate skin markings, are some of the most maligned of Africa's predators. What is known about them now is that they are very social animals living in large packs numbering up to 40. There is usually one breeding female in each pack, which gives birth to a litter of up to 10 pups at a time that the whole pack takes turns in looking after. The dogs used to be a common part of the African wilderness. But with the advent of the European colonisation, they were branded vermin and mercilessly persecuted, to the extent of being eradicated from national parks.

The lack of women's voices and limited portrayal of their roles in the media may soon change if a new plan to correct those anomalies is implemented in Tanzania. "If the two-year plan is fully implemented, on time, I am optimistic that a lot of positive changes will occur," says Rose Haji, director of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) Tanzania Chapter. The plan, says Haji, will involve media watchdogs monitoring how both women and men make news to promote gender equality in, and through, the media.

A recent Refugees International assessment mission to three refugee camps situated in the vicinity of Nzerekore, in Guinea's Forest Region, revealed that significant improvements have taken place in the quality of refugees' lives over recent years. This is partially the result of a drastic reduction in refugee numbers. Guinea's political stability, however, is far from assured, and potential internal conflicts would jeopardize the safety and welfare of refugees, as well as recent political gains in neighbouring countries.

Dar Four rebels, in Western Sudan, said this week they are ready to sign a ceasefire with the Sudanese army after an initial agreement concluded with the Sudanese government during secret negotiations held in Chad. Sudan's liberation movement was established in August 2001 under the name of Dar Four liberation movement. It has been launching since February attacks against the Sudanese army in various areas of the almost desert areas of Dar Four. The rebels get logistic support from the main rebel movement in Sudan, the Sudan People's Liberation Army, which is deployed in various areas of southern Sudan.

Namibia's food security situation is causing growing concern as news reports point to a higher than expected cereal deficit in the Caprivi region, the World Food Programme (WFP) told IRIN on Wednesday. Some 400,000 people across the country may need food aid distributions this year, due to crop failures caused by persistent drought.

Among the tasks ahead for President Paul Kagame is to find ways to build and develop consistently a democratic culture in Rwanda, ensuring that the needs of the Rwandese people are understood and reflected at the highest level of government. This endeavour must begin almost immediately for the forthcoming Parliamentary Elections, according to an analysis of the recent presidential elections by African Rights.

A recent conference on reparations expressed support for the litigation in the United States against Apartheid-supporting foreign companies and demanded that the South African government withdraws an affidavit to the US court discouraging the litigation. The civil society reparations conference, "Opening Civil Society Dialogue on Reparations", was held in Randburg on 27 and 28 August 2003. It was attended by some 50 organisations, including those of a national and more localised character and ranging from organisations interested in reparations to others actively bringing together people around reparations-related issues.

Crude oil from a ruptured oil pipeline caught fire, destroying farmland and polluting streams in the Ogoni area of southeastern Nigeria, residents said on Monday. Residents of Gio, a small Ogoni community 40 km east of Port Harcourt, said they were roused from their sleep in the early hours of Friday by a loud bang as crude oil gushing from the broken pipeline caught fire.

When the traditional leopard skin, the sign of authority, was draped around her shoulders at the weekend, Kgosi Mosadi Seboko not only became the paramount chief of Botswana's Bagamalete people, but also a powerful symbol of change for women. A woman has never assumed the position of a paramount chief. Traditionally women were not even allowed to attend the village kgotla (Setswana word meaning village meeting) unless they were invited to give evidence during the settlement of disputes. The ascension of Kgosi (chief) Mosadi to head a Kgotla has therefore broken new ground.

Watching the news, it seems that there's a new environmental crisis occurring almost daily: global warming, pollution, habitat destruction, species depletion and extinction, and much more. The bad news is plentiful and painful. But then, on a fairly regular basis, a nice-looking man pops up and says that everything you are seeing is an exaggeration. The environment is fine. Everything's fine. To the average person, it must be quite confusing. What's going on here? Are the stories on environmental calamity really an exaggeration? The quick answer is no.

On 29 August 2003, police officers arrested Guy Kasongo Kilembwe, editor-in-chief of the satirical newspaper "Pot-Pourri", following the publication of an article criticising a member of parliament's reported embezzlement of funds. On 31 August, after being held in police custody for 48 hours, the journalist was transferred to Kinshasa's Penitentiary and Reeducation Centre (Centre pénitentiaire et de rééducation de Kinshasa, former Makala central prison). "Without commenting on the content of the offending article, we condemn all cases of preventive detention for defamation, which should fall within the competence of civil courts," Reporters sans frontières (RSF), Secretary-General Robert Ménard said. He asked that Kasongo be released, presumed innocent, and granted a fair trial.

The world is beginning to look like France, a few years before the Revolution. There are no reliable wealth statistics from that time, but the disparities are unlikely to have been greater than they are today. The wealthiest 5% of the world's people now earn 114 times as much as the poorest 5%. The 500 richest people on earth now own $1.54 trillion - more than the entire gross domestic product of Africa, or the combined annual incomes of the poorest half of humanity. Now, just as then, the desperation of the poor counterpoises the obscene consumption of the rich. Now, just as then, the sages employed by the global aristocrats - in the universities, the thinktanks, the newspapers and magazines - contrive to prove that we possess the best of all possible systems in the best of all possible worlds. In the fortress of Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay we have our Bastille, in which men are imprisoned without charge or trial.

The WTO, set up in 1995 to regulate international trade, operates on the basis of anti-democratic relations thereby becoming a weapon against poor women, countries and sustainable development. In secret preliminary mini-meetings, a small group of rich countries decide on laws and rules favouring their own interests; they then impose them on developing countries-more often than not with those countries' leaders' consent. There is no room for women and civil society to intervene, even when matters are compromising citizens present and future. In preparation for the next ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), to be held in Cancún, Mexico, September 10 to 14, 2003, African women and women all over the planet are either readying their proposals for presentation at the Peoples' Forum for Alternatives to the WTO in Cancún, or they are planning to stage demonstrations and other actions in their respective countries.

The poor nations are preparing for another unsatisfying round of trade talks in Cancun, and South Africa once again is lining up in a manner consistent with Third World rhetoric - and First World interests.

Consider the rhetoric, which on Tuesday in Malaysia took a surprising turn. South African president Thabo Mbeki was speaking at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, during the course of a state visit to a leader - prime minister Mahathir Mohamed - considered amongst the Third World's most militant nationalists. (Accused of anti-semitism for his paranoid 1998 attacks on George Soros and 'Jewish bankers,' Mahathir then imposed tough exchange controls which, according to local progressive economist Jomo K.S., mainly served to protect Mahathir's cronies.)

Earlier this year, Mbeki had passed the three-year leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement to Malaysia, and he encouraged Mahathir's delegation to take leadership at Cancun. But it was not only South-South unity that Mbeki apparently sought.

The Straights Times reported: 'Mbeki said that from South Africa's past experience, it helped to have strong anti-apartheid groups in developed countries to lobby its case. In the same way, he suggested linking up with groups in developed countries which were concerned about the negative effects of globalisation - which seemed to cause greater imbalances and disparity among the rich and poor nations. "They may act in ways you and I may not like and break windows in the street but the message they communicate relates."'

Well, this is new and different. It was, after all, only a year ago that Mbeki's government used stun grenades to disrupt a non-violent Johannesburg march of nearly 1000 global justice movement supporters outside the University of the Witwatersrand, and then initially banned another mass march to the World Summit on Sustainable Development. Defying the ban, at least 20,000 people marched from Alexandra township to Sandton, against Mbeki and the corporate-dominated talk-shop.

Within days, Mbeki provided this analysis to an African National Congress Policy Conference: 'Our movement and its policies are also under sustained attack from domestic and foreign left sectarian factions that claim to be the best representatives of the workers and the poor of our country. They accuse our movement of having abandoned the working people, saying that we have adopted and are implementing neoliberal policies.'

And indeed they still do, and will continue to after Cancun's dust has settled. What kinds of responses is Mbeki likely to get from the local allies of the global justice movements?

First, the wonderful network of trade activists across Africa have chosen September 13 to demonstrate in 18 cities, focusing on how public water systems are under threat due to the creeping privatisation advanced through the WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services. Mohau Pheko, coordinator of the Gender and Trade Network in Africa, was invited to attend Cancun as part of the official South African delegation on August 15. However, on August 20, the day after Pheko gave a critical talk, the invitation was withdrawn along with an excuse that the delegation had to be downsized. On August 21, Pheko found herself on the famous Mexican 'watchlist' of neoliberalism's enemies.

The point is not a personal one: it is that SA trade minister Alec Erwin is subimperialist in his negotiating strategy. He positioned himself as a 'Green Room' apologist for free trade at Seattle, and a 'Friend of the Chair' (a.k.a. Green Man) at the 2001 Doha round. The new book, 'Behind the Scenes at the WTO', by Fatoumata Jawara and Aileen Kwa of Focus on the Global South (published this month by Zed Press), tells the story well. Even neoliberal think-tanks like the South African Institute of International Affairs concede, as two researchers recently put it, that African governments view Erwin 'with some degree of suspicion' because he 'does not have their best interests at heart.'

You can be sure that September 13 will include not only catcalls at US embassies across the continent, but also criticisms by African activists about Mbeki's New Partnership for Africa's Development, which would open Africa up to further global trade and financial vulnerabilities.

Second, another source of extraordinary conflict where international alliances play a key role is litigation over reparations for apartheid-era profits and interest. Two dozen multinational corporations are being sued by various South African groups for many billions of dollars 'for knowingly aiding and abetting the commission of crimes against humanity,' to compensate black victims and also to serve as a disincentive to any company considering similar bedfellows in future.

The cases are scheduled to begin in November, and so Mbeki has turned his attention to the matter in recent months, using a Swiss audience to declare it 'completely unacceptable that matters that are central to the future of our country should be adjudicated in foreign courts which bear no responsibility for the well-being of our country and the observance of the perspective contained in our constitution of the promotion of national reconciliation.' Erwin added that Pretoria was 'opposed to and contemptuous of the litigation' and that any findings against companies 'would not be honoured.'

The main venue is New York, because the South African government has failed to establish any enabling legislation to support reparations, and, moreover, now actively opposes Jubilee South Africa and its US and Swiss allies. In July, Mbeki's justice minister, Penuell Maduna, filed a formal objection with judge John Sprizzo, asking him to throw out the lawsuits on grounds that it would discourage 'much-needed foreign investment [and] could have a destabilising effect on the South African economy.' (Sprizzo replied that Maduna's letter was something he 'could not ignore.')

However, whereas Maduna asked that the corporations be let off the hook 'in deference to the sovereign rights of foreign countries to legislate, adjudicate and otherwise resolve domestic issues without outside interference,' a different agenda was revealed at last week's Reparations Conference in Johannesburg. Picking up the story of the August 27 opening plenary debate is Berend Schuitema from Jubilee South Africa's Eastern Cape affiliate:

'Dumisa Ntzebeza [one of the lawyers who filed reparations claims] basically picked the sovereignty argument to pieces. "Show me the enabling legislation and I will leap at the opportunity." A remarkable fact then slipped out from the Minister. The reason why he had made the objection was that he was asked for an opinion on the lawsuit by Colin Powell. He thus gave Powell his written response. Where upon Powell then said that he should lodge this same submission to the Judge of the New York Court. Howls from the floor. Jubilee South Africa president M.P. Giyose pointed out the bankruptcy of the sovereignty argument.'

Nobel laureate and former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz has also chimed in, writing to the court in opposition to Maduna and Mbeki last month: 'Those who helped support that system, and who contributed to human rights abuses, should be held accountable.'

Third, the last few weeks also witnessed developments in the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) for access to anti-retroviral medicines, which has been so powerfully assisted by the US group ACT UP, the French doctors in Medicins sans Frontiers, and even Oxfam. TAC leader Zackie Achmat announced that he didn't want to see yet one more South African killed by Mbeki's AIDS policies (600 die every day), and so began taking his pills, to the great relief of virtually the entire society. His rationale was that TAC was on the verge of winning access for at least half a million people who need medicines urgently.

The big question remains whether this occurs through generic medicines, and hence is more affordable and more easily established across the rest of Africa. Erwin remains a target, because, according to a TAC charge of culpable homocide filed with police in March, he 'unlawfully and negligently caused the death of men, women and children' when he ignored 'repeated requests' to issue compulsory licenses for anti-retroviral treatment. His 'conduct in failing to make these medicines available to people who need them does not meet the standards of a reasonable person.' (The police refused to charge Erwin, and instead used violence against peaceful TAC protesters in Durban.)

When, last month, the SA cabinet finally announced that a plan would be prepared for rolling out expanded access to medicines, no one trusted health minister Manto Tshabala-Msimang to do so. The state Medical Research Council further complicated matters by threatening the deregistration of the drug Nevirapine, which TAC says has saved more than 50,000 babies from getting the HIV virus from their mothers. Meanwhile, the US government's pre-Cancun concessions on Trade in Intellectual Property Rights clauses that protect pharmaceutical corporate patent monopolies continued to disappoint activists. In sum, given the trio of Mbeki, Bush and Big Pharma, people like Achmat and their international allies will need all the sustenance they can get, because the fight is by no means over.

Fourth, water privatisation is another site where internationalist allies have supported post-apartheid South African opponents of worsening class apartheid. Here again, the last days have shown the need to intensify the pressure.

In Johannesburg's Orange Farm and Soweto townships, the Anti-Privatisation Forum has been opposing attempts by Paris-based Suez to install thousands of pre-paid water meters. During the last two weeks, Trevor Ngwane and a half-dozen of his comrades were arrested for filling in trenches that are being dug in Phiri zone of Soweto. The South African government delegation to Cancun still hasn't revealed whether it will follow European Union requests for much more extensive water privatisation through the General Agreement on Trade in Services.

These are just four sites where it seems that Mbeki's newfound interest in the world's anti-capitalist movement will not be met with trust and respect. Should international progressive groups -or even just those who like to 'break things' - be open-minded about Mbeki's apparent desire for an alliance? Five days earlier, the Reparations Conference concluded its deliberations with this sentence: 'The conference was informed of the call by the President's Office for a list of participants to the conference and expressed its condemnation of this approach as an invasion of participants' rights.'

In other words, they don't trust the man - not one bit.

* The new edition of Patrick Bond's book 'Against Global Apartheid' is being published this month by Zed Press; Patrick is at [email][email protected])

* Please send comments on this editorial to [email protected]

Cancun websites:
* Oneworld: Spotlight on Cancun http//www.oneworld.net/article/frontpage/339/4953
* Global Issues: Introduction to the issues

* Draft Cancún Ministerial Text
http://www.cancun2003.org/en/nav/index.html
- Comment by Third World Network on the text http://www.cancun2003.org/en/nav/index.html
* Alternative Information and Development Centre

FOR MORE NEWS AND COMMENTARY ON THE WTO MEETING IN CANCUN, MEXICO, VISIT THE DEVELOPMENT SECTION OF PAMBAZUKA NEWS.

In detailed documents submitted to the secretariat of the United Nations’ World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) and the APC Women’s Programme recognised the efforts of the WSIS drafting committee to include the concerns and interests of the many governments, private sector and civil society stakeholders taking part in the process which will culminate in the first ever UN Summit dedicated to communications in Geneva in December. However, say the ICT activists, “there are critical issues [that] are not addressed sufficiently, if at all”.

Can information technology promote new public management (NPM) in Africa? Can e-government projects improve public sector effectiveness and bureaucratic efficiency? How should e-readiness for e-government be measured? How can we close the gaps between project design and African public sector reality that have caused most e-government projects to fail?

Shortages of essential medicines and medical equipment, a staffing crisis and inadequate infrastructure are undermining the quality of hospital care across sub-Saharan Africa. This could jeopardise plans to provide anti-AIDS drugs to people living with the HI virus, delegates attending the World Health Organisation (WHO) regional committee meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa, heard this week.

A last-minute World Trade Organisation compromise in Geneva on intellectual property protection and access to medicines is being heralded by some as finally opening the doors to imports of generic medicines by poor countries without a manufacturing capability. In intense negotiations in recent months, the U.S. reached behind-the-scenes agreements with key countries such as Brazil, India, South Africa, and Kenya. The U.S. and the international pharmaceutical industry made some concessions after blocking an agreement for almost two years. However, the compromise also imposes extremely complicated procedures designed to protect patent rights, which leave enormous obstacles to overcome before affordable medicines are actually made available. The World Health Organisation and treatment access activists stress that the real test will be whether affected countries and international agencies take full advantage of their right to put public health before patent rights. Clicking on the link provided will take you to the rest of this posting by Africa Action containing a variety of statements and articles on the issue.

The Resource Alliance is pleased to announce that the 5th International Resource Mobilisation Workshop will be hosted in Johannesburg from 26-28 March 2004. Some of the world's leading experts in the field of resource development and fundraising will be guest speakers.

The leader of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), John Garang, is to hold face-to-face talks with the vice-president of Sudan, Ali Osman Taha, in Kenya aimed at breaking the deadlock in peace talks.

On the eve of the annual Summit of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in Tanzania, Amnesty International called on SADC leaders to jointly and publicly express their concern regarding Zimbabwe's deepening human rights crisis.
Related Link:
* SADC RALLIES ROUND ZIM
http://www.zwnews.com/issuefull.cfm?ArticleID=7429

Even if they no longer hold the whip hand in Burundi, armed rebels have shown that they still have a lethal grip on it. Even as the government and the largest rebel movement fine-tuned their proposals to recharge the transitional process, renewed fighting flared around Bujumbura. Humanitarian organisations reported that another 15 000 people had been displaced. Those responsible are the National Liberation Front (FNL) of Agaton Rwasa and renegade elements of the Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD).

The United States has a moral duty to slash its farm subsidies even if developing countries do not reciprocate by opening their markets to more U.S. farm goods, officials with a leading private sector development group said last Thursday. The United States is under pressure in world trade talks to reduce the billions of dollars in subsidies it pays to farmers each year. Leading U.S. farm groups have vowed to fight such an agreement unless developing countries reduce their tariffs to allow in more agricultural imports.

Transparency is not one of oil's properties. Corruption seems to rise to the surface wherever it is found. Is oil intrinsically dirty? "Oil rents have tended to impede democratization and have sustained a long line of authoritarian rulers -- from the Shah of Iran to Sani Abacha of Nigeria to the House of Saud to Saddam Hussein," the independent watchdog Catholic Relief Services (CRS) says in a report 'Bottom of the Barrel'. Several other reports point the same way. Oil and gas produce the biggest kickbacks after arms deals, Transparency International (TI) says in its latest report on bribery.

In areas of war-affected southern Sudan, maternal death rates are as high as 865 per 100,000 births, compared to 550 per 100,000 in the rest of the country, according to a UNICEF-sponsored study. The study documents how underdevelopment, more than 20 years of war and inequalities in traditional power structures have left women in southern Sudan suffering some of the world's poorest quality of life indicators.

"We live in a dream world. With a small, rational part of the brain, we recognize that our existence is governed by material realities, and that, as those realities change, so will our lives. But underlying this awareness is the deep semi-consciousness that absorbs the moment in which we live, then generalizes it, projecting our future lives as repeated instances of the present. This, not the superficial world of our reason, is our true reality." Read social commentator George Monbiot's latest column, in which he argues that climate change threatens the future of humanity, but has led to a refusal of the human race to respond to the crisis rationally.

The World Rainforest Movement (WRM) is an international network of citizens' groups of North and South involved in efforts to defend the world's rainforests. Among their activities, they publish a monthly electronic bulletin. Previous issues can be accessed through the web site www.wrm.org.uy. The newsletter has a section focused on Africa.

In the wake of the September 11th attack and the Iraq war, Nigeria's geopolitical significance to the U.S. has come into sharper relief. In March and April 2003, militancy across the Niger Delta radically disrupted oil production in this major oil supplier nation. News of these actions, following conflict-ridden national elections, has reinforced the notion that Nigeria and the new West African "gulf states" in general are matters of U.S. national security. This commentary takes issue with a May 2003 analysis of the situation by an influential Washington think tank, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). The critique argues that the CSIS ignores the role of some key actors, the oil companies foremost among them.