The Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the country's two main opposition factions have signed an agreement on military and security arrangements, a major step towards the formation of a two-year national transitional government, according to the United Nations mission in the country.

Parliamentary elections in Guinea-Bissau, which have already been delayed three times this year, are to take place on 12 October, President Kumba Yala announced on Monday.

Media activists in Botswana have again raised the alarm over a proposed draft communications bill which they say will pose a serious threat to freedom of expression and the free flow of information.

The development NGO Save the Children is to hand over refurbished classrooms to communities in Zimbabwe's Midlands province this week as part of its emergency education programme. Some 10 schools were damaged when a severe hailstorm hit Mberengwa district in Midlands province in September 2002. The roofs and windows of classrooms and dormitories were destroyed, seriously affecting the learning environment of the pupils, the NGO said in a statement.

Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, on Sunday to protest against continuing violence and abductions in the city, according to one of the organisers.

A decade after 18 U.S. Army Rangers were killed by an angry mob in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, the Bush administration is facing mounting pressure to put American 'boots on the ground' in Africa once again. Calls for an active U.S. intervention in Liberia are coming from the United Nations and various member governments, including Britain and France and leading African officials.

Ivory Coast's rebel military chiefs declared a state of emergency on Monday and blocked access to the parts of the country they control, accusing the president of failing to fulfil promises meant to end civil war. Rebels who control around half of the West African country joined a reconciliation government in April and fighting has virtually ended since a comprehensive cease-fire in May. But Monday's declaration highlighted the deep bitterness and unresolved grievances.

In Burkina Faso, Gueswende Public Primary School addresses local poverty and national environmental issues through agricultural education. Through a gardening programme at school, pupils are growing vegetables and maintaining a fruit orchard. A portion of the produce goes to improving the diet of the school lunches while the other portion is sold.

Kenya's former President Daniel arap Moi has called on the government of his successor, Mwai Kibaki, to stop a "witch-hunt" against him. Earlier this month, the government ordered anti-corruption police to question Mr Moi in connection with the collapse of Kenya's Euro Bank, although he has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

The Kenyan government is to lift a colonial-era ban on the Mau Mau, a group which killed a small number of European settlers in the 1950s. Removing the ban is among several long-standing demands of veterans of the Mau Mau uprising against the British in which 32 settlers were killed.

Have you been working on a project that uses Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) as a tool for achieving development? Then this is an opportunity for you to share your experiences with the world. In almost all projects up-to-date knowledge about Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) is crucial, but resources and access to this knowledge are often limited. The ICT Stories objective is to capture the learning process that accompanies the introduction and implementation of ICTs in a project in exemplary stories.

Barring any last minute hitches, Nigeria's proposed National Virtual Library Project (NVLP) will come on stream in October, reports www.balancingact-africa.com. The project is aimed at providing Nigerian students, academics and administrators, access to current books and journals in their fields using computer technology as a tool. This is expected to boost learning, teaching and research in the nation¹s institutions of higher learning.

The Bush Administration's human rights agenda in Africa has been primarily focused on Zimbabwe and, to a lesser extent, Sudan. The primacy of the U.S. war on terrorism has meant that the United States has given even less attention to Africa than might otherwise have been expected. In the few African countries that the administration believes are strategically valuable, particularly in the Horn of Africa, the United States has often de-emphasized human rights issues. This briefing from Human Rights Watch on the eve of a visit to Africa by U.S. President George W. Bush to Africa examines areas of U.S. interaction with Africa and includes key questions related to the specific countries that Bush will visit.

The DRC has timber, diamonds, gold, copper, and other esoteric minerals such as coltan, used in mobile phones and video games and has therefore attracted transnational mining concerns. An expert UN panel investigating the illegal exploitation of DRC’s resources found that a "predatory network of elites" had been established to fight an "economy of war." As a result of the investigation the panel called upon the UN to impose financial penalties on various companies. Eight of these 29 companies were Canadian, showing that when it comes to exploiting the profit potential of Africa, Canadian firms, among others, are quick off the mark.

President Bakili Muluzi has threatened to deal with media houses that probe the way he distributes maize to his supporters during political rallies. Muluzi was apparently incensed by a lead article in the "Weekend Nation" of June 21-22, 2003, that questioned the source of the alms the president doles out at his rallies.

"The poor of South Africa did not vote for a government who would bring back laws declaring any dissenting voices as terrorists. We did not vote for the return of detention without trial and the indiscriminate banning of organisations. We did not vote for landlessness, evictions, electricity and water cut-offs and arms sales to an international terrorist like Bush. We did not vote for a government who would contribute weapons to occupying forces to kill thousands of Iraqi and Palestinian and East Timorese people, while at the same time claiming to be anti-War."

Almost one quarter of a million displaced Sierra Leoneans were resettled in their areas of origin by the end of 2002, officially ending the internal displacement crisis in the country and further consolidating recovery after more than a decade of devastating civil war. A success story, in which the wishes of internally displaced people themselves prevailed, said some observers. Not so, insisted others, pointing to numerous flaws and problems along the way. So was the resettlement process really the final chapter in Sierra Leone's displacement story? Arguably not, at least with respect to durability of return and resettlement as required by the UN Guiding Principles.

In a part of the world where one quickly becomes inured to the sight of scrawny, red-eyed, gun-toting teenage boys, there was an astonishing sight today along this capital's main road. In an empty field, in a heavy downpour in the middle of the rainy season in one of the world's wettest countries, was a small group of women, nearly all dressed in white, throwing their arms to the sky and dancing and singing, drenched from head to toe, calling to God to bring an end to war. These are Liberia's peaceniks - the Women in Peacebuilding Network - who for the last three months have been bent on praying on the side of the road, in sun and rain, every single day, to bring an end to war.

According to the Sunday Times, popular South African artists have signed an open letter and a petition against Arts and Culture Minister Ben Ngubane's running of the state funded arts councils.

"We, citizens from around the world, drawn from the four corners of the earth and from countries rich and poor, come together united in our determination to denounce in the strongest terms the devastating impact of high level corruption and the levels of impunity that facilitate it, and to demand concerted national and international measures to combat it. We unequivocally condemn all those whose actions and whose inactions have contributed to the crisis of corruption now sweeping the globe, deepening poverty; undermining emerging, and even developed, democracies; and eroding fundamental human rights in many societies."

With rebel forces at the gates of Monrovia, Liberia's capital, and eastern parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo beset by feuding militias, there is little sign of an end to Africa's conflicts. So it is all the more surprising, on the face of it, that a United Nations-backed initiative should appear to be on the verge of legitimising the "official" trade in diamonds that many fear can easily be subverted to help support civil wars. In many African countries, diamond production is in the hands of artisan miners, with little or no regulation. The flow of diamonds - a small but high-value commodity that is easily hidden, transported and smuggled - was always seen as almost impossible to control.

About 235 NGOs are in the running for millions of dollars to be made available for HIV/AIDS projects from the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Malaria and TB. The proposals are now being examined by a six-person committee, which has to submit its recommendations to the Ministry of Health by 16 July.

Karti News is released every two weeks and contains the latest news and information about Somalia, Somaliland and the Horn of Africa. The newsletter has sections on the peace process taking place in Kenya, human rights, health and education, women and gender and civil society. Karti News forms part of a project whose overall objectives is the achievement of permanent respect for human rights, justice through rule of law, pluralism, good governance and sustainable peace in Somalia and Somaliland. To subscribe, send an e-mail to [email protected] with only the word 'subscribe' in the subject or body of the message.

An investment agreement in the World Trade Organisation, such as is being promoted by the major powers of WTO, is likely to pose worse problems for the social and economic development of African and other developing countries than anything encountered by these countries as a result of the debt crisis. Foreign private financial flows to these countries generate far larger outflow of resources than those associated with foreign loans, and so can cause overall financial instability as well as undermine domestic resource mobilisation for productive activity. That is, unless such flows are managed through careful regulation. However, the very policy instruments necessary for such management are precisely those which a WTO agreement on investment aims to take away from African and other developing country governments who need it most, when they need it most. These observations were contained in a paper presented by David Woodward, economist and consultant, at an African civil society seminar on investment in Accra in May, organised jointly by Oxfam International and Third World Network-Africa.

The World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) has included in its deliberations the issue of Internet governance with various stakeholders voicing their concerns around governance issues during the recently concluded call for inputs to the WSIS draft declaration and action plan. Chakula staff took a look at some of those inputs, which focus on the role of different stakeholders in the management of public resources such as the country top level domains (ccTLDs) and some reflections on the overall governance of the Internet at global level. (Chakula is produced by the Africa ICT Policy Monitor Project of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) -

On 1 July 2002, the Rome Statute entered into force thereby establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC), after the mandatory 60 state ratifications was achieved and surpassed on 11 April 2002. Currently there are 139 signatories and 90 States Parties (ratifications) of the Rome Statute. The ICC is currently based in the Netherlands with 18 judges, a prosecutor and a registrar having been appointed.

As the first anniversary of the ICC was reached on 1 July 2003, already 200 cases have been referred to it. The ICC will be now able, in principle, to prosecute individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. These crimes include crimes committed in both international and non-international armed conflict, of murder; enslavement; deportation or forcible transfer of populations; torture, sexual violence (such as rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, and enforced sterilization) and apartheid. It also includes persecution against any identifiable group on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious or gender grounds. Fundamentally, the ICC is important because it will be able to investigate and bring to justice people who commit the most serious violations of international humanitarian law.

Such crimes have only increased in recent years, especially in Africa, as civilians more frequently become the target of conflict. Some aspects of the ICC are groundbreaking in terms of international law. They include recognition of sexual violence as a war crime (first recognized in the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia), special services to victims and witnesses, and the ICC's independence from the UN Security Council.

The scale of conflicts in Africa has grown over the last two decades. The most disturbing aspect of conflict in Africa is the increasing use of extreme violence, especially over the last ten years.

Africa has a poor record of adjudication of criminal offences against populations. The reasons for this are complex, but include the presence of on-going conflict; the inability of victims to report such offences; the inability of civil society, media and peace, safety and security agencies and national institutions to monitor, investigate and report such offences to national nor international bodies; derogation of the separation of powers and the lack of independence of national courts; constraints in the establishment of ad hoc criminal tribunals and their inherent inability to react to early-warnings of such offences against populations and their lack of deterrent effect they have in light of their ad hoc nature; the absence, hitherto, of a permanent international tribunal that has jurisdiction over target countries to immediately investigate reports of such offences and to prosecute perpetrators whomever they are and to provide reparation to victims; and the lack of political will and/or capacity of governments to ratify and harmonise domestic legislation with that of international conventions that would extend the jurisdiction of these conventions to the target countries.

But while the coming into force of the ICC is a historical event, the ICC is far from being empowered to carry out its work in Africa. This is partly due to the low number of ratifications on the continent and the US's attempts to weaken the effectiveness of the ICC.

Thus far, only 22 African countries have ratified the ICC. By not ratifying and enacting implementing legislation, governments avoid the jurisdiction of the ICC extending to their states thereby avoiding prosecution by the ICC. Aggravating the low number of ratifications is the US's attempts to obstruct the work of the ICC.

One of the very last acts of the Clinton administration was to sign the Rome Treaty in late 1998. Instead of subsequently ratifying the Treaty, in May 2002, the Bush administration withdrew the US signature. Since then, the US has intensified its efforts to undermine the ICC. Also in 2002, the US enacted the American Service Members Protection Act (ASPA). The ASPA set 1 July 2003 as a deadline whereby ICC State Parties receiving US military assistance will lose financial packages unless there is a US Presidential waiver of this provision (like with the NATO allies), or if they sign bi-lateral agreements with the US agreeing not to hand over US nationals and army personnel on their territory to the ICC for prosecution of human rights crimes. The fact that this deadline coincides with the first anniversary of the coming into effect of the Rome Statute must be perceived as an ominous signal.

Many countries have not bowed to US pressure, including the EU and in Africa, South Africa. Of the 22 countries in Africa which have ratified the ICC, 8 have signed bi-lateral agreements with the US. In total, 49 countries have signed these agreements (13 from Africa; 12 from Asia; 6 from the Pacific and 5 from Europe).

Eric Hoffer once wrote, “It is when formidable power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable”. It seems apparent that the US fears that the ICC is an impediment to its expansion of power in the world. It does not want to be held accountable for its actions in sovereign states and it is this fear that drives the US into an ever growing and formidable campaign against the ICC. In its defence the US alleges that its soldiers stationed in foreign territories could be prosecuted before the ICC on trumped-up, politically motivated charges. This argument is fallacious and unfairly brings into question the independence and impartiality of the ICC's judges and the statutory checks and balances that would ensure that false charges motivated by political considerations would not be prosecuted.

If the entry into force of the Rome Statute of the ICC constitutes a necessary precondition for the prevention of impunity and further conflict on the continent, it is by no means sufficient. The next step in the process may turn out to be more arduous than that which led to the coming into force of the ICC. The ICC has the potential to bring stability to the region by acting as a deterrent to future violations as well as bringing perpetrators to justice. However, unless there is a critical mass of African states that ratify the Rome Statute, draft implementing legislation and aggressively resist signing bi-lateral agreements that will undermine the ICC, impunity will continue to be a feature of the region.

How then can this be achieved? Internationally, and to a much lesser extent, within Africa, there has been considerable momentum built by NGOs and other civil society organisations in support of the establishment of the ICC. That momentum is in danger of being dissipated by the understandable complacency that can follow victory in the establishment of the ICC and efforts by the US to undermine the ICC.

If African governments are to be persuaded to ratify the Rome Statute, to begin the process of introducing strong domestic implementing legislation and resisting attempts to undermine the ICC, then this will be achieved only if concerted efforts are made to increase public awareness, to strengthen the capacity of civil society organisations to campaign within each country as well as to engage their own governments in a constructive dialogue. In addition, the media, parliamentarians, the judiciary, lawyers and law enforcement agencies need to be won over to the necessity for ratification and/or implementing legislation, to understand what their own contributions towards such a goal might be, and the implications for their own work in relation to cooperation with and support for a strong ICC. The momentum already created in support of the establishment of the ICC needs to be built upon if such campaigns are to succeed. The South African Coalition for an ICC (SACICC) and Fahamu (www.fahamu.org) are in the process of planning a strategy on these and individuals and organisations interested in collaborating on this project as well as networking and establishing national and regional networks on the ICC issue may send a message to [email][email protected]

* Anil Naidoo is Convenor of the South African Coalition for an ICC and Firoze Manji is Director of Fahamu
* Please send comments for publication in the Letters and Comments section of Pambazuka News to [email protected]
* More ICC stories in Pambazuka News:
- ICC MARKS FIRST BIRTHDAY
- WHITE HOUSE HOBBLES INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT, WORLD SECURITY
- US SLAPS MILITARY AID EMBARGO ON SA

DO YOU SUPPORT PRESS FREEDOM AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION?
http://www.ipetitions.com/campaigns/freeafricanmedia/
Do you support Press Freedom and Freedom of Expression? Would you be happy to sign a petition aimed at the African Union & its member states calling for the release of all incarcerated African Journalists & for the repeal of Anti-media and Anti-free expression legislation? If Yes, click on the link to sign the petition. If you would like to do more, please make this message part of your signature and/or forward it to like-minded people.
* See the Media section of Pambazuka News for statements in support of the petition and a list of organisations and individual statements of those who have already signed up.
* Visit

A group of HIV-positive people have launched a project through which they can be "hired" to present talks at schools, churches and other organisations in Namibia.

This article investigates the national and community level interventions that offer promise for increasing primary education access for children who have been orphaned or made vulnerable in areas heavily affected by AIDS in the eastern and southern Africa region. The report examines thirteen initiatives that have potential to increase primary education access for such groups.

President Bush's Africa trip next week provides a rare opportunity to put the continent's pressing problems at the top of the international agenda. Africa needs more help than the United States can or is willing to offer. And this visit, like other presidents' trips to the region, is not likely to dramatically change the situation for the impoverished continent. But there is at least one gesture Bush can make that would have a positive effect on Africans, and it wouldn't cost U.S. taxpayers a penny. He can lean on Big Oil to clean up its role in the region's corrosive corruption.

“On reading the searing race debate last week between official opposition leader Tony Leon and President Thabo Mbeki, who rebutted so angrily, I wondered what had become of non-racialism,” writes Ferial Haffajee in South Africa's Mail and Guardian newspaper. “And a saying of my gran came to mind: it seemed well and truly ‘in sy moer in’ - buggered, injured, perhaps fatally so.”

World Bank projects costing hundreds of millions of pounds and aimed at cutting malnutrition among children in developing countries have completely failed to make any difference, according to a new report. Save the Children UK claims that the bank has not only continued with costly but failing projects in Bangladesh and Uganda but it is planning to expand, with a scheme billed for Ethiopia.

As the deadline to achieve at least a 30 percent inclusion of women in politics and decision-making in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) draws closer, women in Tanzania still face marginalisation in the political arena.

Amnesty International has condemned the confiscation of the 28 June edition and parts of the 29 June edition of the Sudanese independent daily Al-Sahafa by the country's security forces. "The Sudanese government and the National Security Agency must put an end to the confiscation or suspension of local newspapers. The intimidation and harassment of journalists with the attempt of restricting the freedom of the press must end," Amnesty International said.

Police in Abuja this week arrested two journalists and beat up three others during union-led street protests against fuel price increases of more than 50 percent. In a letter to Police Inspector-General Tafa Balogun calling for a full investigation and the punishment of those responsible, Reporters sans frontières (RSF) said: "It is not normal for journalists covering demonstrations to be targeted in this fashion by police."

The International Criminal Court (ICC) celebrated on July 1 the one year anniversary of its jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Since the July 1, 2002 entry into force of the court's treaty, the Rome Statute, the ICC has seen the adoption of its primary governing instruments and the election of all of its senior officials.

In the heat and dust of Kakuma and Dadaab refugee camps, in northern Kenya, there is little for the estimated 220,000 inhabitants from Somalia and Sudan to do but survive. But despite the staggering odds, a flicker of hope is emerging among young refugees who are not only learning to cope with their predicament, but are also looking towards a brighter future.

Ahead of President Bush’s first official trip to Africa next week, four leading advocacy organisations held a press briefing Wednesday to examine the current state of U.S. Africa policy. Africa Action, TransAfrica Forum, 50 Years is Enough and Foreign Policy in Focus hosted the briefing, in which a panel of African-American and African experts offered a critical analysis of Bush Administration policies on key issues in U.S. Africa relations. Salih Booker, Executive Director of Africa Action said: "American unilateralism is at odds with African efforts to gain international cooperation to address the most urgent global priorities ­ such as AIDS, poverty and civil conflict ­ which have the most devastating consequences in Africa."

The Zimbabwe crisis is not on the official list of African flashpoints under discussion at next week's African Union heads of state summit in Maputo. Dr Jakkie Cilliers, executive director of the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, said the leaders were expected to "completely avoid" the subject during the summit, which kicks off next Thursday.

The Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) is supporting a petition to the African Union (AU) calling for the abolishment of media laws and practices that restrict media freedom and freedom of expression in Africa. The petition, launched by two African human rights groups, the Centre for Research, Education & Development Of Freedom of Expression & Associated Rights and FAHAMU, will be presented to President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, the Chairperson of the African Union, at a meeting of Heads of State in Maputo, Mozambique, from July 5 to 12, 2003.

Uganda will receive US$200,000 (about sh400m) in military aid from the US following the non-surrender agreement the two governments signed last week. President Yoweri Museveni, while on a visit to the US, signed the non-surrender pact with Secretary of State Collin Powell, exempting US soldiers on international combat assignments from prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Malawi's army has been sent to round up a herd of rampaging elephants that have killed at least three people since they broke out of a game reserve earlier this week, police said last Thursday.

Shell has bowed to pressure from Tony Blair and human rights campaigners by publishing details of payments made to the Nigerian government, which amounted to $900-million last year. The information is included in a new report on its operations in the turbulent west African nation, which also shows the Anglo-Dutch company produced 15,5-million tons of greenhouse gases.

As the transatlantic dispute over the future of genetically modified (GM) food heats up, African activists say it is time to publicly challenge the image that the Bush administration is presenting on the issue. Washington, they say, is not entitled to speak on behalf of African states on the matter. “How can one country decide for another country without taking into account the opinion of the other country's people?” Amadou C. Kanoute, regional director of the African office of Consumers International said.

Angola on Thursday announced it would make public all its oil payments under a new push to stamp out corruption and attract aid and investment. Aguinaldo Jaime, the country's deputy prime minister, said: "For the first time in Angola's history, the budget will encompass all revenue and that will send to the donor community the signal that the Angolan government is committed to a fully transparent way of managing the budget."

Amnesty International has called on the Sudanese government and security forces to immediately stop harassing, detaining incommunicado and impeding Sudanese civil society activists from discussing issues related to the peace talks on Sudan.

With the future of millions of young refugees jeopardized by war, hatred and exile, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan last week appealed to the international community to make "serious and sustained efforts" to solve the problems that cause displacement in the first place.

Funded as a pilot project by terre des hommes Switzerland in 1997, Humuliza is based in Nshamba, Tanzania and works to meet the psychological needs of orphaned children, in part by developing practical instruments to enable teachers and caregivers to support orphans. Humuliza has produced 19 training modules with handouts, which may be combined in ways to suit the needs and time of the trainees. These manuals, as well as a basic textbook about psycho-social support for orphans, are available by clicking here.

The National Intelligence Agency (NIA) has taken an interest in the Nigeria-South Africa oil saga and has visited some of those involved, including the wife of Eastern Cape Premier Makhenkesi Stofile. The Mail & Guardian revealed a month ago how a lucrative crude oil contract — awarded by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to the "Republic of South Africa" after lobbying by President Thabo Mbeki — was diverted to an offshore company. There was no benefit to South Africa. The government has offered no comprehensive explanation since then.