Iteso Welfare Association (IWA) is facilitating four discussion forums/workshops to explore and discover realistic visions from ethnic diversity. The main objective is to address problems arising from deep-seated assumptions and attitudes towards self, others and one’s background of other ethnic groups and cultures.

Venue: Hilton Atlanta, Atlanta, GA, USA APRIL 7-10, 2004. Keynote speakers: Ambassador Andrew Young And President Jerry Rawlings, Former President of Ghana. Hosted by: J. Mack Robinson College of Business Georgia State University 35 Broad Street Atlanta, GA 30303 USA.

Top Zimbabwe government and ruling party officials who have acquired multiple farms must surrender the extra farms for peasant resettlement or risk imprisonment for "theft" of state property, John Nkomo, special affairs minister in President Robert Mugabe's office, has warned. Nkomo, who was tasked with overseeing land reform and resettlement after the recent cabinet reshuffle, said influential people who were refusing to give up extra farms as ordered by Mugabe last year were violating the country's laws.

Indigenous children are among the most vulnerable and marginalized groups in the world and global action is urgently needed to protect their survival and their rights, says a new report from UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre in Florence. Improving the lives of indigenous children is crucial not only for their own health and well-being but for the future of indigenous peoples and their unique place in the human family, the report concludes.

Education has become a global challenge. For instance, Europe, the United States, Japan and even the emerging nations of Asia have all come together in support of Education For All. Education is the big issue of today, says Laya Sawadogo, Burkina Faso’s Minister of Secondary and Higher Education and Scientific Research in an interview published on the Unesco website.
"I’d like to cite you some figures to give you an idea of the situation in Burkina Faso: 42 per cent of our children are in primary school, only 12 per cent are enrolled in secondary school and 1.3 per cent go on to higher education. And we have an illiteracy rate of 76 per cent. We need to improve all these indicators, but that’s not an easy thing to do given our present situation."

A three-member team of nurses from Medicos Sin Fronteras (MSF-Spain) arrived on Wednesday in the northwestern town of Batangafo, in the Central African Republic (CAR), to verify a meningitis outbreak reported on 1 February, the MSF country representative told IRIN. "The team has a mobile laboratory to carry out Pastorex [meningitis] tests on the ground and will leave anti-meningitis drugs in the Batangafo health centre," Dr Carlos Recio said.

Thom Chiumia and Chikumbutso Mtumodzi, two journalists who are also politicians, halted printing of the privately owned "The Dispatch" newspaper on 29 January, and seized the printed copy and plates. Chiumia is president of the New Dawn for Africa (NDA) political party and Mtumodzi is the NDA's secretary-general. The NDA supports the ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) party and is widely believed to be funded by UDF supporters.

The National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) has deplored "additional gross instances" of the ongoing erosion of the rule of law in the country, as evident from the renewed attacks on the judiciary by high-ranking Government and ruling party leaders. The NSHR said firebrand SWAPO National Assembly MP Petrus Iilonga questioned the loyalty and patriotism of the country’s judiciary. Among other things, Iilonga accused judges of defending criminality and hatred for the ruling SWAPO party.

As African Heads of State converged in Syrte, Libya to begin their two-day meeting, Independent Advocacy Project (IAP), the good governance group, again called on the federal government to seize the opportunity presented by this meeting to ratify and begin putting in place structures that would allow for effective implementation of the African Union Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption which was adopted last July. In a statement released in Lagos, IAP says signing and ratifying the Convention will compliment Nigeria's efforts under the Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) which is part of the monitoring process of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). Nigeria has voluntarily submitted itself to be reviewed under the APRM.

The contrast between rich countries' rhetoric and reality is staggering, says an ActionAid report that examines the performance of 22 rich country leaders on their promise to provide the aid needed for every child to get an education.

Globalization can and must change, says a new, groundbreaking report released by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) urging that building a fair and inclusive globalization become a worldwide priority. A Fair Globalization: Creating Opportunities for All calls for an "urgent rethink" of current policies and institutions of global governance. "There are deep-seated and persistent imbalances in the current workings of the global economy, which are ethically unacceptable and politically unsustainable. Seen through the eyes of the vast majority of men and women, globalization has not met their simple and legitimate aspirations for decent jobs and a better future for their children," says the report.

One of the world's leading electrical companies, Schneider Electric, was fined R10-million in the Lesotho High Court after admitting to bribery. The global giant avoided a trial by pleading guilty on 16 counts of bribery, all relating to the construction of the now-completed Lesotho Highlands Water Project. The corruption involved around R16-million.

Hundreds of non-governmental organisations operating in Ghana will be blacklisted at the end of March, if they cannot provide an adequate record of their activities. Kojo Amoakwe, Chief Director of the Ministry of Manpower Development and Employment, explained to BBC Africa Live! that there are 3,000 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the country and only 150 have submitted their annual reports and statements of accounts to the Social Welfare Department.

The police force remains the most corrupt institution in Kenya, an independent study has revealed. A survey conducted by Transparency International says it has found that police are still the most frequently bribed public officials. But the Kenya Bribery Index notes the number of corrupt incidents has dropped by 77% in the force compared to 2002.

Prosecutors in Zimbabwe on Tuesday rejected evidence by the defence in the treason trial of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, saying it simply tried to cover up a plot to assassinate President Robert Mugabe and stage a coup. In his closing arguments before the Harare High Court, prosecutor and acting attorney general Bharat Patel described the evidence by defence witnesses as "not quite clear".

Informal talks are being held between the ruling ZANU-PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), a senior Zimbabwean official told IRIN on Wednesday. "Talks are taking place with a section of the MDC, who believe in moving forward," said Simon Khaya Moyo, the country's ambassador to South Africa.

The government of Burkina Faso has urged traditional healers in West Africa to collaborate with scientific researchers in the fight against HIV/AIDS by using herbal treatments to address AIDS-related illnesses such as tuberculosis and diarrhoea. Jean Gabriel Wango, the secretary general of the Ministry of Health, made the appeal at the opening of a week-long international exhibition of traditional medicines in the capital Ouagadougou on Monday.

More than 500 cases of cholera have been reported over the past seven weeks in Douala, the largest city in Cameroon, and at least 13 people have died of the disease, according to government statistics. However, health workers told IRIN that the real cholera infection rate in the heavily polluted port city of 2.5 million people could be much higher than official figures suggest.

Burundi’s ethnic civil war is nearing a conclusion, according to the country’s president, Domitien Ndayizeye. Now entering its 11th year, the conflict has killed at least 300,000 people and forced more than 1 million to flee their homes. Speaking to journalists in Paris on Jan. 16, Ndayizeye said his country has reached “the point of no return on the road to peace and security.” Although hopes for an end to the fighting are high, the humanitarian situation is no less alarming than before and the transitional government and international community are still not doing nearly enough to “defuse” the “land time bomb,” according to a report by the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think-tank.

Congolese military officials confirm that about 100 civilians and seven military officers in the south-eastern province of Katanga have been brutally slaughtered by rampant peasant Mai Mai warriors since January. The killings near the town of Kitenge, some 700 km north of the provincial capital Lubumbashi, highlight the challenges for nearly 11 000 UN peacekeeping troops deployed largely in the country's lawless east.

The ongoing destruction of the Mau catchment area is threatening the survival of over three million people, a lobby has said. The group said if the destruction was not checked, tourism activities in the Maasai Mara Game Reserve and the Mara-Serengeti ecosystem would also suffer. The Indigenous Peoples Land Commission said the livelihood of the Maasai and Ogiek communities, who depend on these resources, was also in jeopardy.

The fourth issue of the SADC Barometer, a quarterly analysis by the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA), which focuses on key issues and trends affecting the Southern African Development Community (SADC), is available. The issue includes:
* Unlikely Bedfellows: The main article warns that although it has an important role to play, ‘civil society’ will not provide the panacea to our social and economic ills in the region. It points out that civil society itself is weak and divided and that SADC institutions are still relatively closed to real partnerships between the public and private sectors.
* Zimbabwe is still on the Agenda! Brendan Vickers looks at the events surrounding the Commonwealth Heads of State Meeting in Abuja, Nigeria, in December and concludes that SADC leaders might have overplayed their hand by rallying behind President Robert Mugabe.
* In the next year five Southern African nations will go to the polls. This is an encouraging sign for democracy and a challenge for civil society. Mike Davies finds out how the media, in particular, can contribute to free and fair elections in the sub-region.
For more information or comment, please contact the SAIIA SADC researcher and SADC Barometer editor, Richard Meissner on +27 (0)11-339-2021, e-mail: [email protected] or [email protected].

South Africa has emerged as the second country with which the Home Office has started talks to take failed asylum seekers from Britain as part of a concerted drive to step up immigration removals and deportations. Negotiations with Tanzania are already underway though Tanzania, which already houses more refugees than any other sub-Saharan country, said it had rejected the idea.

Since the unexpected arrival of the Portuguese traveler Diego Cao at the mouth of the Congo river in 1482, the peoples of the area to become the Congo had their lives more and more determined by processes started from far away and of which they had less and less control. At the time, they were hardly aware of the fact that in the world yonder, the need for peoples experienced in tropical agriculture would be forcefully satisfied by their best sisters and brothers being captured, kidnapped, shackled and shipped to America.

The resulting Atlantic slave trade, one of the cornerstones of globalisation, over determined irreversibly the lives of the peoples of the area. Even their very survival depended on the evolution of remote processes assigning changing roles to the area. Suffering and modernization would become almost two faces of the same coin marking their lives. The Atlantic slave trade was the first phase of globalisation, laying the foundations of the world market whose evolution would shape the adjustment and re-adjustment of parts of the world around an evolving center.

Three processes are involved when we are looking at globalisation: The first is the historical process of effective transition to capitalism in each country. This involves the transformation of a double articulation of relations and forces of production. This is the long process of transformation or destruction of the specific form of the African commune through the slave trade and colonialism to the present neo-liberalist structural adjustment programmes and poverty accumulation based epoch.

The second process is the historical formation and transformations of anti-colonial (in the broad sense including anti-Atlantic slavery struggles for life) 'mass' movements into more and more organized struggles for the recovering of land, bodies, psyches (selves) and cultures. This deals with the story about the changes of the agencies of struggles: their historical formation and transformations, their social character, their strategies, their programmes, their theories, prescriptions, dreams, ideologies of politico-social emancipation up to the conscious anti-globalisation civil society. In this process, we can only hail partial victories, mostly through accommodation rather than breaks from the commands from the centres.

Thirdly, the 'external domination' in Africa (or forced or willing incorporation of Africa in the outside originating processes) is what is often thought of as globalisation. It involves:
- Obstacles to national liberation/independence and local/national self-determination, self-reliance, South-South initiatives and pro-people developments;
- Imperialist domination and regional expansionism;
- Forms taken by super-power struggles for world hegemony inside and around certain countries in relation to conditions of accession into and character of their independences;
- The transnationalization process through multinational corporations and international economic organisations up to the ultra-liberalist destruction/reduction of the nation/state and the pursuit by the US of the politics of pure super-power, linking tightly politics to war and the US dream of becoming the present-epoch-Roman Empire;
- A world system of a political economy of crime (money laundering, drug and arm traffic, new forms of labour/sex enslavement, private or super-power State terrorism, etc.) develops and comes along. High and low intensity warfare, through regional relationships of forces of super-powers' proxies, continues.

Thus we differentiate three phases of globalisation: the first phase is based on the Atlantic slave trade (sometimes viewed as a pre-globalisation phase), the second phase was the integration of Africa through colonization and the third phase began in the late 1980's and continues up to now. The peoples who became known as the Congolese from the second phase, miraculously survived the first two phases. While the population was being drastically reduced by the slave trade, people took sometimes self-defeating forms of resistance. Some preferred to commit suicide rather than be enslaved and for a long time women were refusing to bear children for the slave trade. Communal forms of resistance and more advanced forms of capitalist opposition to the slave trade helped people survive, but only to be militarily conquered for domestic colonization. The forgotten holocaust (Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost, 1998), during the so-called King Leopold's Congo Free State, the most brutal integration of the area into the world economy, reduced the population estimated at 20 million to a mere 8 million in less than 30 years. It has not been possible to completely heal the effects of the accumulated traumas strongly influencing the forms, styles and sometimes content of the diverse cultures of our country. The continuing replay of those effects not only organize the submissive and docile character of public consciousness, but the regular violent outbursts that mark the bloody history of the Congo. Is the prevalence of the song a form of healing?

The international civilizing agents of globalisation initially behaved in a way that made the country become what one of the most honest of them described as Heart of Darkness. The colonialist attitude was more concerned about How much did the Congo cost Belgium (Jean Stengers, 1957) rather than how much did Belgian colonialism cost the Congo. Each attempt at trying to recast the relationship between the Congolese and globalisation psychologically (radical prophetism as healing - Simon Kimbangu and others), politically (P.E. Lumumba and others), militarily (P. Mulele and others), etc., unleashed the most barbaric forms of violence to infinitely discourage the possible resumption of similar attempts. Kimbangu was condemned to death and then to a life sentence (he died in jail, 1921-1951), Lumumba and his companions' remains were dissolved in acid. Mulele's body, cut into pieces, was put in a bag and thrown into the Congo river joining in the Ocean the bones of the rebelling slaves on the way to America. That was only the tip of the iceberg; how the less known ones were treated is not known.

Throughout its various phases since European contact, Africans have been forced into relationships imposed from outside, with catastrophic consequences for the majority. The transitions which took place - whether from slavery to abolition, from "discovery" to occupation, from negation to acceptance of Civil Rights (1866-1966), (W.E.B. DuBois, Reconstruction), from colonial status to Independence, from the Cold War to re-Globalisation – have generally had a negative impact on the relations between people in the Congo and between the Congolese people and others (J. Depelchin, 2003). Globalisation involves relationships to diseases, to means of death (traffic of arms), to the ecology, to the economy of crime (money laundering, drugs, sexual slavery), to the economy dominated by the dynamic of extraction of natural resources whose market is outside the country and thus also of looting, to world hegemony, to sexuality, to God, to peoples' psychology and cultures generally.

Pan-Africanism, independence or freedom and (racial) equality have characterized the consciousness of the Black man facing the various phases of globalisation. From the anti-slave revolts up to the independence of Haiti in 1804. From the first Negritude calls (Brazil) to the US-initiated Pan-Africanist Congresses. From anti-colonial struggles to national liberationist movements and independences in crisis. The anti-slave question, the anti-racialist question, the Pan-Africanist or African Unity question, the national question, the democracy question, the social question, the question of the protracted demand for compensation for slavery and for the equality of humanity, etc: all are so many calls from the struggles against globalisation.

Pro-globalisation consciousness often opposes those calls and celebrates calls for submission to and docility vis-à-vis the grossest forms of denial of the right to reclaim history and above all, as Cabral said, to assert the right of African people to make history: "The foundation of national liberation lies in the inalienable right of every people to have their own history." (A.Cabral, Unity and Struggles: Speeches and Writings, 980). To deny that right absolutely, the very existence of History is now being denied: History is globalisation made by everybody! Victims and victimizers are made equally responsible for the havoc that befalls on humanity. The world is said to have become a village, never mind the fact that movement of people from some parts of that village to other parts is extremely selectively restricted. When history of our people is allowed to be told, it is mostly done by historians acting as organic intellectuals of globalisation.

The Congo, without the willingness or consent of the Congolese, has been drawn into processes of mass destruction. In the 1940's the uranium which the USA used to execute its nuclear genocide of millions of Japanese at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, came from the Belgian Congo. The USA responsible for 60% of world pollution, is refusing to endorse the Convention on the conservation of Nature, it sustains that irresponsible posture thanks to the deep and wild Congolese forest that minimizes pollution's impact on the whole world. But does the West responsible for most of world pollution, care about helping the Congolese protect and reproduce the forest? Each time a major virus threatening humanity's health appears, the Congo is pointed out as a possible origin of the virus. What is done to equip the Congo to avoid those possibilities? Nothing of some importance has taken place in the Congo since its creation by Berliner powers (1884-1885), without the involvement of external, generally Western, forces.

It is on this basis that the current situation of the Congo in the context of globalisation should be examined if we are going to be able to throw some light on this crucial and vital issue for the next generation of combatants for real freedom.

* Send comments on this editorial - and other events in Africa - to

* NOTE FOR EDITORS: Please note that this editorial was commissioned from the author for Pambazuka News. While we are pleased that several print publications have used our editorials, we ask editors to note that if they use this article, they do so on the understanding that they are expected to provide the following credit: "This article first appeared in Pambazuka News, an electronic newsletter for social justice in Africa, Editors are also encouraged to make a donation.

The Polisario movement which is fighting for the independence of the Western Sahara released a further 100 Moroccan prisoners of war this week, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said. An ICRC spokesman told IRIN they were flown home on an ICRC plane from Tindouf in Western Algeria, where several camps housing 165,000 Western Sahara refugees are situated.

President Olusegun Obasanjo has approved the dismissal of Justice Chris P.N. Senlong of the Federal High Court from the Federal Judicial Service. The dismissal of the Plateau State born judge followed the recommendation of the National Judicial Council (NJC), which found him guilty of corruption.

Lecturers at Zambia's biggest university will not teach this year unless their wages and allowances are increased, a union official said on Monday. Thomas Mabwe, acting president of the University of Zambia Lecturers and Researchers Union (Unzalaru), said lecturers would not take part in any academic activities when the university opens next week for the first semester of 2004.

Fresh fighting between a rebel movement headed by Agathon Rwasa and the regular army has displaced thousands of people in Bujumbura Rural Province, a local administrator said. The administrator of Kanyosha Commune in Bujumbura Rural, Ernest Ndabakeneye, told IRIN Wednesday that the entire population of the Muyira and Ruyaga sub-counties had fled their homes following Monday's battle between the forces of the Forces nationales de liberation (FNL) and the army.

Each year, since 1994, CODESRIA has organised a Gender Institute which brings together some 12 to 15 researchers for between four to six weeks of concentrated debate, experience-sharing and knowledge-building. CODESRIA is seeking applications for the following posts for the Gender Institute 2004: Director (senior scholars known for their expertise on the topic of the year and for the originality of their thinking on it); Resource persons (senior scholars or scholars in their mid-career who have published extensively on the topic, and who have a significant contribution to make to the debates on it); Laureates (African social scientists who have a minimum qualification of a Masters' degree, with a proven research capacity and who are currently engaged in teaching and/or research activities are invited to send in their applications for consideration for admission into the Institute). For more information, please contact the CODESRIA Gender Institute: [email protected].

HIV/AIDS has spread rapidly in Mozambique despite heightened awareness campaigns by both local and international agencies to battle the epidemic, a senior government health official said Friday. "HIV/AIDS has affected more and more people despite the campaigns and this means that something could be wrong with the way in which messages are put out," Diogo Milagre, deputy executive secretary of the National Campaign for the Struggle against Aids (CNCS), told AFP.

Two new laws, one currently going through the legislative pipeline - the Child Protection Act - and another enacted last year - the Sexual Offences Act - are key to addressing the confluence of social problems that are contributing to Lesotho's humanitarian crisis. It is hoped that the Sexual Offences Act will have an impact on the spiralling HIV rates.

The government of Slovakia must do more to bring its arms trade under control, Human Rights Watch says in a new report. Slovakia adopted some legal reforms in 2001 and 2002, but serious problems remain that allow arms to be exported or illegally trafficked to human rights-abusing countries in Africa and elsewhere. Human Rights Watch said that the country has served as both an exporter and transit hub for arms deals from other countries. Many of the weapons it supplies are surplus weapons the country is shedding as it finalized preparations to enter NATO.

Kenya's officials are investigating a bank suspected of being used to launder millions of dollars stolen by former Nigerian dictator General Sani Abacha. Detectives from the Central Bank of Kenya's banking fraud unit are examining documents and accounts of the Trans National Bank from as far back as 1997. They say they want to see if some of the bank's customers helped launder an estimated $100 million that General Abacha allegedly looted from Nigeria's coffers and transferred to the United States, Switzerland, Britain and other countries.

The last two years were characterised by uncertainties and delays, which have thrown a number of challenges in the way of the Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) in the execution of its onerous mandate of conducting elections in a free, fair and credible manner. In an apparent attempt to save cost and counter voter apathy, the ruling party and the government in particular initially proposed the simultaneous holding of the local and regional elections. A constitutional amendment bill was therefore introduced in the National Assembly in June 2003 to shorten the term of office of the Regional Councillors from the initial six years. The house of review, which is constituted by representatives of all the 13 Regional Councils, was however unanimously removed to "withhold" its support for the bill. This lack of agreement cast a shadow of uncertainty not only on the scheduling of Regional Councils Elections, but on the Local Authorities elections, as well.

Are you tired of reading newspapers that portray women as stereotypes? Tired of editors thinking that the average reader believes women are only newsworthy if they are half-naked or the victim of a crime? The South African National Editors Forum (SANEF) has committed itself to get South African newsrooms to evaluate their performance on gender sensitive reporting. In line with SANEF's plans to engender the media, South African gender and media activists propose that all newspapers commit to leaving out their back page or page three "babe" section from the 5th to the 8th March 2004. Instead, content for these pages will be generated by members of the South African Gender and Media Network (SAGEM) around the theme of International Women's Day.

A new book criticising government land reform threatens to strain relations between the government, farmers and agricultural unions, the Department of Agriculture and Land Affairs said last Thursday. "In fact if this book gets out into the general populace I can see racial outbreaks developing between blacks and whites," said chief land claims commissioner Tozi Gwanya. At the launch of the book, The Great South African Land Scandal, in Pretoria last Thursday, publisher Philip du Toit said he hoped it would "inform the broader public about the slow cancer infecting commercial agriculture in South Africa". The book claims that recent amendments to the 1994 Restitution of Land Rights Act paved the way for the land affairs minister to "expropriate land at will".

This paper from the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics discusses the proposal that poverty ought to be regarded as a violation of human rights and therefore as a condition that ought to be abolished. This proposal has been presented as a new paradigm in the fight against poverty that has the potential to galvanise an effective strategy for ending poverty through an international human rights framework. The essay explores this proposal from a philosophical standpoint, and argues that the proposal would be strengthened by including compassion or humanitarianism as part of its moral basis and achieved without diluting either the moral force or the radical implications of regarding poverty as a violation of human rights.

Grace is a happy woman. She is about as poor as you can be, earning just £6 a month selling shoes from a tiny market stall. But in the past year she has been spared the prospect of a premature and painful death. Grace Matnanga is HIV positive, as are one in three of those around her in the streets of Malawi's capital city. But unlike them, and thanks to an act of human kindness, she is on antiretroviral drugs.

The Charities Aid Foundation Southern Africa will be hosting a regional one-day working conference on governance and accountability in the non-profit sector on the 25th May 2004. Entitled: 'Governance and Accountability: Developing Guidelines for Southern African NGOs,' the conference is aimed at generating discussion on the need for Southern African NGOs to apply principles of good governance and accountability in their work, as well as to launch the process of developing a draft Code of Good Governance for the non-profit sector.

Police in Zimbabwe on Saturday dispersed more than 100 women who were planning a Valentine's Day march to urge national reconciliation in the capital, Harare. In Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second city, the high court refused to hear an urgent application sought by the Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) to compel the police to allow them to march.

The prospect of a new constitution has been dangled in front of Kenyans since the late 1990's, when a process of review began under former President Daniel Arap Moi. Last December, Moi's successor - Mwai Kibaki - promised the country a new constitution by June. Political bickering may also derail this pledge, however.

Mary Waweru, a kindergarten teacher in Nairobi's sprawling Kawangware slums, has noticed that some of her pupils are increasingly absent from school due to ill health. Some of the young children have already been orphaned, being supported by charity organisations. Waweru has begun to suspect that these frequently absent pupils could be suffering from AIDS, which she thinks may have been passed on to them by their parents before they were born.

Armed militias continue to violate human rights and international humanitarian law, despite the progress being made to end Liberia's 14-year conflict, a human rights lawyer says. "The rebels are engaged in a new wave of violence, extorting, abducting and harassing the civilians," said Dempster Browne, chairperson of the Monrovia-based National Commission on Human Rights.

Government has expressed concern about the extent of corruption in Namibia's regional and local authorities, which it says represents "a serious departure from administrative ethical norms". Speaking at the induction workshop for newly appointed regional officers, Deputy Minister of Regional and Local Government and Housing Gerhard Totemeyer said that recent months had thrown up ample evidence of corruption by officials not adhering to moral standards.

Produced by UNICEF and the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, this publication is an essential guide to the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child related to children in armed conflict. It describes the context surrounding its adoption, efforts supporting its objectives, key provisions and the legislative processes involved for signature and ratification or accession. The Guide aims to support child rights advocates - including government officials, child protection agencies, humanitarian workers and those involved in national coalitions - in their work to generate momentum and support for ratification and implementation of the Optional Protocol.

This Forum, which is organised by the Consortium for Street Children in collaboration with the Hope Village Society, will be a mixture of field study,
plenary, and group sessions focusing on street children in the context of children's rights, poverty, and social exclusion. Key experts working with street children from the following countries will be attending: Algeria, Egypt, Jordan/Palestine, Lebanon, Tunisia, Morocco, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. For more information, contact: Consortium for Street Children, Unit 306, Bon Marche Centre, 241-251 Ferndale Road, London SW9 8BJ, UK; Tel:+44(0) 20 7274 0087; Fax: +44(0) 20 7274 0372; Email:[email protected]

Internally displaced Eritreans continue to suffer the consequences of war and drought, resulting in inadequate fulfilment of basic needs such as food, water, health care, shelter and education, the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has reported. OCHA said the country still had 58,953 internally displaced persons (IDPs), living in and outside camps and unable to return to their places of origin. "Although much has been accomplished to assist these IDPs, many basic needs are not yet fully met. A continuous effort is required to avoid a deterioration of the situation," it said.

In a non-verbal but eloquent answer to a question posed by a visiting government and UN delegation about health conditions in her school, eight-year-old Tendayi Bwanali started coughing. When she finally settled down, she told the education department and UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) officials: "We are holding lessons in tobacco barns where tobacco is prepared (cured) every year - the smell of tobacco is so strong that we have problems breathing."

Humanitarian access to western Sudan's war-torn Darfur region remains limited despite government claims to have opened relief routes, say humanitarian sources. "There is absolutely no access to any place, no humanitarian access," said the advocacy group Refugees International, quoting an agency trying to bring supplies to Darfur. "Things are not changing at all. If they are changing, they are changing for the worse."