Preaching abstinence to the young has not worked, nor has sex work been eradicated. Experts gathered in Mexico City for the 17th International AIDS Conference say it is time to put public policies under the microscope and see why they have failed.

While conflict diamonds or blood diamonds, as they are known, have gained attention the world over in terms of the role illicit gems play in fuelling warfare, the role that the timber trade has played in abetting conflict has received considerably less consideration. That may be beginning to change.

Funding support for women’s organisations and for non-governmental organisations working to achieve gender equality is an important element in many donors strategies. These organisations often have detailed knowledge of social and cultural barriers to gender equality. They can also recognise and address the impact of gender inequalities at local, national and international level.

The paper aims to provide information on the size, structure and significance of China-Zambia relations. It specifically studies the nature and scope of Chinese investment in Zambia, the pattern and magnitude of trade between China and Zambia.

At the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City this week, there has been a great deal of discussion about violence and discrimination directed at homosexuals and lesbians, often based on the mistaken assumption that they are responsible for the disease. Public health officials and organizations working to diminish the impact of AIDS around the world agree that more tolerant societies have better programs to combat AIDS and other sexually-transmitted diseases.

More than 50 women, some as young as 13 and others as old as 60, have been gang raped and tortured by government-backed militias in Zimbabwe because of their support for the opposition, rights groups and victims say.

At least 20 people have died after a bomb hidden under a pile of rubbish exploded in Somalia's capital, according to witnesses. Witnesses said the dead in Sunday's blast in Mogadishu's southern K4 neighbourhood were mostly female civilians, 10 of them street cleaners.

Shutting down clinical trial centres in Africa in response to continued failure of HIV vaccine candidates would be a big mistake, researchers warned at the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City yesterday (5 August).

The fired managing director of The Gambia's pro-government 'Daily Observer' newspaper has been discharged by the court. Mr. Dida Halake, whose nationality remains unclear, was discharged by a local magistrates' court after the prosecution filed an application to withdraw criminal case against him. The prosecution said this will allow it to put its house in order.

Independent observers and civil society groups in Ghana say voter registration, the first major step towards landmark general elections in December, is being marred by violence and irregularities. In the north of Ghana supporters of the two main political parties – the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) - vandalised registration centres on 2 August and gun shots were heard in Tamale, the capital of the northern region, during voter registration.

Much of Somalia's displaced population has scattered across rural villages, which are hard to reach because of rampant insecurity and limited resources, an international agency said, impeding aid delivery.

Negotiations between the National Oil Company of Zimbabwe (NOCZIM) and two international petroleum companies to supply fuel to the country have collapsed over pricing, sources told ZimOnline.

The decisions of the executive council and the assembly of heads of state and government from the recently concluded African Union summit in Egypt are now available for download.

The AU Commission chairman Jean Ping has welcomed the accord between Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and the Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai to begin negotiations on power sharing. While Ping called it ‘a significant step in the efforts aimed at overcoming the crisis facing Zimbabwe and promoting national reconciliation in the country’, the US insisted that the talks should lead to new elections. Meanwhile, African civil society organisations have welcomed attempts being made by Zimbabwean political parties to end the current crisis and have called on African leaders of all levels, the Southern African Development Community and the AU to demand an end to serious human rights violations in the country and publicly denounce the violence.

African trade ministers, meeting at an annual general meeting of the African trade insurance agency, agreed to remove barriers to regional trade and work towards improving regional transport and telecommunication infrastructure to bolster trade within Africa. The AU, regional economic communities, development partners and NEPAD’s comprehensive Africa agriculture development programme have ‘kick-started initiatives aimed at staving off the high food prices’. As the third Accra High Level conference (HLF-3) on aid effectiveness approaches, it is suggested that the scope of the application of the Paris Declaration principles should be broadened beyond Official Development Assistance and should govern all aid flows. HLF-3 is expected to focus on the building of more ‘effective and inclusive partnerships through constructive engagement of new and emerging donors, private foundations, global funds and civil society’.

As Africa celebrated pan-African women’s day on July 31, African Union chairman Jean Ping conveyed his special greetings and congratulations to all women of Africa recalling the history of ‘gender consciousness’ within the institution.

The ‘Making the eHealth connection: global partnerships, local solutions’. conference began in Italy this week. Meanwhile, Aids activists from francophone African countries warned that ‘the continual and growing outbreaks of violence against members of the gay community in Africa are jeopardising efforts undertaken to combat HIV both within that group and across the population as a whole’. Further, in order to achieve an Aids-free generation, African governments will need to change the political culture and, in particular, ‘African parliaments need to play a more assertive role in exercising oversight over how state funds are expended – and in ensuring HIV/Aids funding is put to its intended use’. In addition, Africans should partner with countries such as Cuba who have expertise in tackling the pandemic and have shown solidarity in with the continent in a myriad of ways.

Lastly, the AU commission is assessing the progress made in implementing the ‘plan of action on the family in Africa’, adopted by the assembly of the heads of state in 2004. Country responses to the evaluation will be submitted to the first AU conference of ministers in charge of social development to be held in October 2008.

The Global Campaign for Education is looking to recruit someone, to coordinate the development of a large funding proposal for the Education For All Fast Track Initiative. This proposal will be focused on supporting civil society advocacy work on education and creation of national Civil Society Education Funds. It will involve close collaboration with national education coalitions / campaigns across Africa, Asia and Latin America as well as strong partnership with regional education platforms (ASPBAE, ANCEFA and CLADE).Deadline: 3pm GMT 12th August.

African Women’s Day gives us the opportunity to remember that gender-based violence is one of the most serious and widespread violations of the basic rights of women, particularly on the African continent. Gender discrimination is both one of the causes and an aggravating factor of the consequences of violence against women, thus contributing to the perpetuation of impunity of such cases.

The signatory organizations call on African States to ratify the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on women’s rights (the “Maputo Protocol”), harmonize national laws with international standards and take all necessary measures to fight against violence against women by tackling the general context of discrimination which encourages such violations and which perpetuates the marginalization of women, particularly as regards their access to justice.

In this context, the signatory organizations want to draw the African States’ attention to the need to tackle the general environment of discrimination, which leads to such violence against women, generally of a sexual nature, perpetrated by the State but also within the community or in the private sphere.

Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda led the Tanzanian National Assembly in signing onto UNIFEM's Say NO to Violence against Women campaign at a ceremony on 22 July 2008, which was witnessed by UN Deputy Secretary-General Asha Rose Migiro. The Speaker of the National Assembly Samwel Sitta, Deputy Speaker Anna Makinda, leader of the opposition Hamad Rashid Mohamed and all of the other MPs assembled followed the Prime Minister's lead, making the Tanzanian National Assembly the first parliamentary body in the world to offer its full support to the campaign.

The Kenyan government should immediately open an investigation into the recent beating and sexual assault of civil society activists by police, the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) said Tuesday. "We join Kenyan human rights leaders in strongly condemning the police attacks on civil society activists as they prepared to hold a peaceful rally," said Suliman Baldo, Director of ICTJ's Africa Program. "The government must immediately investigate the attacks, as well as end the growing trend of police brutality and intimidation against Kenyan civil society."

As the dust settles over the failed WTO talks in Geneva of the last fortnight, a fact that has been under-highlighted has become more clear. That is the important and even crucial role that the African and other smaller economies played in the mini-Ministerial process. Much of the media publicity has focused on the role of the United States and European Union on one hand, and on India, China and Brazil on the other hand.

The Urgent Action Fund-Africa (UAF-Africa), based in Nairobi, Kenya seeks an ExecutiveDirector (ED) to take up the post by April 1 2009. The Executive Director is a dynamic leader who ensures UAF-Africa’s strategic vision, mission and goals. S/he is responsible for the consistent and effective delivery of the organisation’s programmes. Supported by a team, s/he has experience at senior management level, knowledge of and commitment to feminist movements and women’s human rights issues, and a sophisticated ability to network with other organisations, funders and donors.

The final interview of the Black History Month series is with Horace Campbell, professor of African American studies at Syracuse University, and author of Rasta and Resistance, from Marcus Garvey to Walter Rodney, and Reclaiming Zimbabwe: The Exhaustion of the Patriarchal Model of Liberation.

This episode was produced by

The Third International Congress on Islamic Feminism has been announced by Junta Islàmica Catalana (Catalonian Islamic Board). The conference will be focused on the problems of Muslim women in the Global era. Many Muslim women today are facing a double oppression: economic (neo-liberalism) and political (religious fundamentalism). The Congress will consider the responses given by Islamic feminists to this situation, and their contribution towards the construction of a new civil society worldwide, based on a culture of human rights and Qur'anic values such as democracy, social justice, freedom of conscience and gender equality.

An expanded version of the Sudan Open Archive (SOA) is now online. The new version - SOA 2.0 - features an improved user interface and open access to a thousand books and documents on all aspects of Sudan. The Archive makes a wide range of material available - and searchable - in digital form for the first time. It also incorporates an internet guide with links to several hundred Sudan-related websites. SOA 2.0 includes dictionaries, material on human rights and environmental issues and a collection of reports on local peace meetings in north and south Sudan.

The Free Software Directory is a project of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).This site catalog useful free software that runs under free operating systems — particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux variants. Licenses are verified for each and every program listed in this directory.

University of KwaZulu-Natal vice-chancellor Malegapuru Makgoba is expected to deliver an edict that the Centre for Civil Society will close on December 31.

The reason given by dean Donal McCracken to a sceptical School of Development Studies (where the centre is housed) is that staff do not have "permanent" funding. But neither do most of the university's research units, and there is money in centre reserves for at least a couple of years, plus ongoing donor support for many of our projects.

Hence this "execution" will be doggedly resisted in the Memorial Tower Building, because UKZN still has many staff and students who remember the struggle for non-racial democracy and don't mind speaking out to challenge misguided decisions.

I enjoyed reading the article, as it exemplified empowerment for many women who can not fight. As a young African woman, I believe African tradition and culture has for a long time accepted violation and abuse of women through various practices e.g. female genital mutilation.

In addition to some African man believing its their God given right to litre their manhood everywhere i believe its a violation against women. Its very interesting that Africans always seem to have negative conotations about woman in the "West" who are perceived to be individualistic and not submissive. However, Ithink woman in the West are aware of their sexual rights and the law is supportive and prosecutes violent behaviour against women.

I totally advocate for emasculation of man especially if the lives of babies and young children are involved. Castration should be the first penalty.

Graham Thom died in his home in London on 10 July 2008.

Graham a graduate from Cambridge University, made a significant contribution to developing a vibrant and strong civil society sector both in England and in Africa, and was much loved and respected by his colleagues for his creativeness, his passion and boundless compassion. Graham co-founded Link Community Development and became its first Director. He went on to lead the Transform Programme, a consortium of Oxfam, Christian Aid, Education Action International and CAFOD, providing capacity building services for NGOs in Southern and East Africa. Graham also worked as Chief Executive of the Back-Up Trust, a charity working with people with Spinal Cord Injury, overseeing the growth of the organisation. He also worked as Director of Fundraising for Haven House. At the time of his death, Graham was Director of Fundraising at Computer Aid International. It was Graham’s dream to bring greater stability and sustainability for the civil society sector, particularly in Africa, as this sector continues to strive for social justice for citizens, in an ever increasingly hostile and resource starved environment. His work has not gone unnoticed,

Graham is survived by his wife Rajani, parents Denis and Jane and sister, Caroline.

Biofuel production is certainly one of the culprits in the current global food crisis. But while the diversion of corn from food to biofuel feedstock has been a factor in food prices shooting up, the more primordial problem has been the conversion of economies that are largely food-self-sufficient into chronic food importers. Here the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO) figure as much more important villains.

Whether in Latin America, Asia, or Africa, the story has been the same: the destabilization of peasant producers by a one-two punch of IMF-World Bank structural adjustment programs that gutted government investment in the countryside followed by the massive influx of subsidized U.S. and European Union agricultural imports after the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture pried open markets.

African agriculture is a case study of how doctrinaire economics serving corporate interests can destroy a whole continent’s productive base.

FROM EXPORTER TO IMPORTER

At the time of decolonization in the 1960s, Africa was not just self-sufficient in food but was actually a net food exporter, its exports averaging 1.3 million tons a year between 1966-70. Today, the continent imports 25% of its food, with almost every country being a net food importer. Hunger and famine have become recurrent phenomena, with the last three years alone seeing food emergencies break out in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Southern Africa, and Central Africa.

Agriculture is in deep crisis, and the causes are many, including civil wars and the spread of HIV-AIDS. However, a very important part of the explanation was the phasing out of government controls and support mechanisms under the structural adjustment programs to which most African countries were subjected as the price for getting IMF and World Bank assistance to service their external debt.

Instead of triggering a virtuous spiral of growth and prosperity, structural adjustment saddled Africa with low investment, increased unemployment, reduced social spending, reduced consumption, and low output, all combining to create a vicious cycle of stagnation and decline.

Lifting price controls on fertilizers while simultaneously cutting back on agricultural credit systems simply led to reduced applications, lower yields, and lower investment. One would have expected the non-economist to predict this outcome, which was screened out by the Bank and Fund’s free-market paradigm. Moreover, reality refused to conform to the doctrinal expectation that the withdrawal of the state would pave the way for the market and private sector to dynamize agriculture. Instead, the private sector believed that reducing state expenditures created more risk and failed to step into the breach. In country after country, the predictions of neoliberal doctrine yielded precisely the opposite: the departure of the state “crowded out” rather than “crowded in” private investment. In those instances where private traders did come in to replace the state, an Oxfam report noted, “they have sometimes done so on highly unfavorable terms for poor farmers,” leaving “farmers more food insecure, and governments reliant on unpredictable aid flows.” The usually pro-private sector Economist agreed, admitting that “many of the private firms brought in to replace state researchers turned out to be rent-seeking monopolists.”

What support the government was allowed to muster was channeled by the Bank to export agriculture – to generate the foreign exchange earnings that the state needed to service its debt to the Bank and the Fund. But, as in Ethiopia during the famine of the early 1980s, this led to the dedication of good land to export crops, with food crops forced into more and more unsuitable soil, thus exacerbating food insecurity. Moreover, the Bank’s encouraging several economies undergoing adjustment to focus on export production of the same crops simultaneously often led to overproduction that then triggered a price collapse in international markets. For instance, the very success of Ghana’s program to expand cocoa production triggered a 48% drop in the international price of cocoa between 1986 and 1989, threatening, as one account put it, “to increase the vulnerability of the entire economy to the vagaries of the cocoa market [1]." In 2002-2003, a collapse in coffee prices contributed to another food emergency in Ethiopia.

As in many other regions, structural adjustment in Africa was not simply underinvestment but state divestment. But there was one major difference. In Latin America and Asia, the Bank and Fund confined themselves for the most part to macromanagement, or supervising the dismantling of the state’s economic role from above. These institutions left the dirty details of implementation to the state bureaucracies. In Africa, where they dealt with much weaker governments, the Bank and Fund micromanaged such decisions as how fast subsidies should be phased out, how many civil servants had to be fired, or even, as in the case of Malawi, how much of the country’s grain reserve should be sold and to whom. In other words, Bank and IMF resident proconsuls reached into the very innards of the state’s involvement in the agricultural economy to rip it up.

THE ROLE OF TRADE

Compounding the negative impact of adjustment were unfair trade practices on the part of the EU and the United States. Trade liberalization allowed low-priced subsidized EU beef to enter and drive many West African and South African cattle raisers to ruin. With their subsidies legitimized by the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture, U.S. cotton growers offloaded their cotton on world markets at 20-55% of the cost of production, bankrupting West African and Central African cotton farmers in the process [2].

These dismal outcomes were not accidental. As then-U.S. Agriculture Secretary John Block put it at the start of the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations in 1986, “the idea that developing countries should feed themselves is an anachronism from a bygone era. They could better ensure their food security by relying on U.S. agricultural products, which are available, in most cases at lower cost [3]."

What Block did not say was that the lower cost of U.S. products stemmed from subsidies that were becoming more massive each year, despite the fact that the WTO was supposed to phase out all forms of subsidy. From $367 billion in 1995, the first year of the WTO, the total amount of agricultural subsidies provided by developed country governments rose to $388 billion in 2004. Subsidies nowaccount for 40% of the value of agricultural production in the European Union (EU) and 25% in the United States.

The social consequences of structural adjustment cum agricultural dumping were predictable. According to Oxfam, the number of Africans living on less than a dollar a day more than doubled to 313 million people between 1981 and 2001 – or 46% of the whole continent. The role of structural adjustment in creating poverty, as well as severely weakening the continent’s agricultural base and consolidating import dependency, was hard to deny. As the World Bank’s chief economist for Africaadmitted, “We did not think that the human costs of these programs could be so great, and the economic gains would be so slow in coming [4]."

That was, however, a rare moment of candor. What was especially disturbing was that, as Oxford University political economist Ngaire Woods pointed out, the “seeming blindness of the Fund and Bank to the failure of their approach to sub-Saharan Africa persisted even as the studies of the IMF and the World Bank themselves failed to elicit positive investment effects [5]."

THE CASE OF MALAWI

This stubbornness led to tragedy in Malawi.

It was a tragedy preceded by success. In 1998 and 1999, the government initiated a program to give each smallholder family a “starter pack” of free fertilizers and seeds. This followed several years of successful experimentation in which the packs were provided only to the poorest families. The result was a national surplus of corn. What came after, however, is a story that will be enshrined as a classic case study in a future book on the 10 greatest blunders of neoliberal economics.

The World Bank and other aid donors forced the drastic scaling down and eventual scrapping of the program, arguing that the subsidy distorted trade. Without the free packs, food output plummeted. In the meantime, the IMF insisted that the government sell off a large portion of its strategic grain reserves to enable the food reserve agency to settle its commercial debts. The government complied. When the crisis in food production turned into a famine in 2001-2002, there were hardly any reserves left to rush to the countryside. About1,500 people perished. The IMF, however, was unrepentant; in fact, it suspended its disbursements on an adjustment program with the government on the grounds that “the parastatal sector will continue to pose risks to the successful implementation of the 2002/03 budget. Government interventions in the food and other agricultural markets…crowd out more productive spending.”

When an even worse food crisis developed in 2005, the government finally had enough of the Bank and IMF’s institutionalized stupidity. A new president reintroduced the fertilizer subsidy program, enabling two million households to buy fertilizer at a third of the retail price and seeds at a discount. The results: bumper harvests for two years in a row, a surplus of one million tons of maize, and the country transformed into a supplier of corn to other countries in Southern Africa.

But the World Bank, like its sister agency, still stubbornly clung to the discredited doctrine. As the Bank’s country director toldthe Toronto Globe and Mail, “All those farmers who begged, borrowed, and stole to buy extra fertilizer last year are now looking at that decision and rethinking it. The lower the maize price, the better for food security but worse for market development.”

FLEEING FAILURE

Malawi’s defiance of the World Bank would probably have been an act of heroic but futile resistance a decade ago. The environment is different today. Owing to the absence of any clear case of success, structural adjustment has been widely discredited throughout Africa. Even some donor governments that once subscribed to it have distanced themselves from the Bank, the most prominent case being the official British aid agency that co-funded the latest subsidized fertilizer program in Malawi. Perhaps the motivation of these institutions is to prevent the further erosion of their diminishing influence in the continent through association with a failed approach and unpopular institutions. At the same time, they are certainly aware that Chinese aid is emerging as an alternative to the conditionalities of the World Bank, IMF, and Western government aid programs.

Beyond Africa, even former supporters of adjustment, like the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington and the rabidly neoliberal Economistacknowledged that the state’s abdication from agriculture was a mistake. In a recent commentary on the rise of food prices, for instance, IFPRI asserted that “rural investments have been sorely neglected in recent decades,” and says that it is time for “developing country governments [to] increase their medium- and long-term investments in agricultural research and extension, rural infrastructure, and market access for small farmers.” At the same time, the Bank and IMF’s espousal of free trade came under attack from the heart of the economics establishment itself, with a panel of luminaries headed by Princeton’s Angus Deaton accusing the Bank’s research department of being biased and “selective” in its research and presentation of data. As the old saying goes, success has a thousand parents and failure is an orphan. Unable to deny the obvious, the Bank has finally acknowledged that the whole structural adjustment enterprise was a mistake, though it smuggled this concession into the middle of the 2008 World Development Report, perhaps in the hope that it would not attract too much attention. Nevertheless, it was a damning admission:

Structural adjustment in the 1980’s dismantled the elaborate system of public agencies that provided farmers with access to land, credit, insurance inputs, and cooperative organization. The expectation was that removing the state would free the market for private actors to take over these functions—reducing their costs, improving their quality, and eliminating their regressive bias. Too often, that didn’t happen. In some places, the state’s withdrawal was tentative at best, limiting private entry. Elsewhere, the private sector emerged only slowly and partially—mainly serving commercial farmers but leaving smallholders exposed to extensive market failures, high transaction costs and risks, and service gaps. Incomplete markets and institutional gaps impose huge costs in forgone growth and welfare losses for smallholders, threatening their competitiveness and, in many cases, their survival.

In sum, biofuel production did not create but only exacerbated the global food crisis. The crisis had been building up for years, as policies promoted by the World Bank, IMF, and WTO systematically discouraged food self-sufficiency and encouraged food importation by destroying the local productive base of smallholder agriculture. Throughout Africa and the global South, these institutions and the policies they promoted are today thoroughly discredited. But whether the damage they have caused can be undone in time to avert more catastrophic consequences than we are now experiencing remains to be seen.

*Walden Bello is a senior analyst at Focus on the Global South, a program of Chulalongkorn University's Social Research Institute, and a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org) where this article first appeared under the title, "Destroying African Agriculture."

*Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Notes:

1. Charles Abugre, “Behind Crowded Shelves: as Assessment of Ghana’s Structural Adjustment Experiences, 1983-1991,” (San Francisco: food First, 1993), p. 87.

2. “Trade Talks Round Going Nowhere sans Progress in Farm Reform,” Business World (Phil), Sept. 8, 2003, p. 15

3. Quoted in “Cakes and Caviar: the Dunkel Draft and Third World Agriculture,” Ecologist, Vol. 23, No. 6 (Nov-Dec 1993), p. 220

4. Morris Miller, Debt and the Environment: Converging Crisis (New York: UN, 1991), p. 70.

5. Ngaire Woods, The Globalizers: the IMF, the World Bank, and their Borrowers (Thaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), p. 158.

“The elevation of an agricultural people to the condition of countries at once agricultural, manufacturing and commercial, can only be accompanied under the law of free trade, when the various nations engaged at the time of manufacturing industry shall be in the same degree of progress and civilization; when they shall place no obstacle in the way of the economical development of each other, and not impede their respective progress by war or adverse commercial legislation.” - Friedrich List, in the National System of Political Economy

People often say when Africans argue for an integrated national African economy, they are self-indulgent entertaining nothing but a futile illusion. They claim that to argue that Africa must unite economically, ‘knowledge-ically’, politically, and ’society-ically’ is to day-dream and to give in to fantasy. They assert that Africa does not exist in anything, form or shape other than as a geographical accident.

Of course, they would hardly say this of the USA, for example, where 'the tribes of the whole world’, and people have united under one constitution and national flag, and right now seemingly poised to electing an African –American with a father from Kenya! To claim more than a geographical reality to Africa is often condemned and reproached. The pursuit of African integration is said to be a too pie in the sky dream, fantasy, utopian, unrealistic, which distracts from taking realistic incremental actions. Thus, going for unity on a big scale is pronounced dangerous!

INTRODUCTION

Is the criminal justice system in Kenya well equipped to protect women from gender-based violence? This a critical question because in July this year, the (SOA) is celebrating two years of existence having came into force on 21 July 2006.

It has been lauded as an evolutionally piece of legislation that provides for the prevention and protection of all persons from harmful and unlawful sexual acts. It expanded the definition of rape to comply with jurisprudence that is evolving from the international arena and introduces new crimes that did not exist in the previous legal framework.

Even though I do not advocate for anarchy and individuals taking the law in their hands, the statement in, is well said: "Feminists are not calling for the castration or emasculation of men. Our position is a lot simpler than that. If men decide to use certain parts of their anatomy as weapons of mass destruction to wage wars on the bodies of women and girls, they will be disarmed and demobilised." I pray to God for His help and forgiveness of the evil doers, help them to return from their evil ways, and put their energy to serve and protect all people.

Also, I say let us support Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi, the Executive Director of the African Women's Development Fund. It is important to understand that success breads success and others' success is our success.

I agree, . If your arm causes you to sin cut it off - isn't it? If they wont cut it off themselves we should help them.

On July 16th, Changemakers launched the 'Banking on Social Change' competition, an exciting new initiative that seeks innovative, cutting edge methods that allow financial security to become a reality for everyone. Join Changemakers and Citi in the search for innovative and cutting-edge methods that allow financial security to become a reality for everyone. Enter and showcase your work to key decision-makers and investors.

This loose talk about AIDS can kill people - .

It is very dangerous to say without data that bed nets, circumcision, or other AIDS prevention methods don't work. That they might not work in very extreme situations is no reason to spread the false impression that they don't work.

Both DO reduce transmission when backed up by proper health care systems - and most AIDS cases are in peaceful countries like South Africa where prevention saves lives. Yes, work to settle and prevent war.

Yes, strengthen the networks which back up women's rights. Yes, criticize abstinence only strategies. But NO, don't undercut strategies which are saving lives every day.

The Kenyan government should account for dozens of missing people detained during the security operation in Mt. Elgon, Human Rights Watch said in a report. Human Rights Watch also called on Kenya to support independent investigations into torture and war crimes committed by security forces, and urged donors, including London and Washington, to review military aid to Kenya.

While each phase of disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) contains challenges, the most delicate and urgent component is disarmament. Written by Peter Swarbrick, this operational manual aims to educate donors, managers and practitioners about some of the most important obstacles to successful DDR operations. Using examples from the DDR programme in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the manual identifies common problems and practical solutions that can be applied to a variety of apparently dissimilar disarmament processes.

South African judge Navanethem Pillay has been nominated as the new UN high commissioner for human rights. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has informed the General Assembly of his choice for the nomination. The General Assembly will now be asked to approve the choice of Ms Pillay, who is currently an appeals judge at the International Criminal Court.

Large increases in biofuels production in the United States and Europe are the main reason behind the steep rise in global food prices, a top World Bank economist said in research just published. World Bank economist Don Mitchell concluded that biofuels and related low grain inventories, speculative activity, and food export bans pushed prices up by 70 percent to 75 percent.

The decision by the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) granting consultative status to two groups that work on sexual orientation and gender identity is a victory in the ongoing struggle for inclusion at the UN, a coalition of six human rights organizations said today. The two groups approved on July 21 and 22, 2008 are COC Netherlands and the State Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Transsexuals and Bisexuals of Spain (FELGTB), national organizations representing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in the Netherlands and Spain.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has sounded the alarm about the impact of escalating violence on young people in Somalia, where just last week seven children died in battles between anti-government forces and Ethiopian troops based in the capital, Mogadishu.

Sierra Leonean police have adopted new policy guidelines on sexual abuse and exploitation that have been drafted by United Nations officials as part of their efforts to reduce the widespread levels of violence against women and girls in the West African country.

Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua said on Thursday the biggest problem in Africa's most populous nation was poor leadership and rounded on public servants who abused their positions of power to gain personal wealth. Even among follow Africans, Nigeria is seen as the home of the "big man" mentality, where "Ogas" -- bosses in pidgin -- bark commands at all and sundry and travel in convoys with blaring sirens through the chaotic traffic.

South Africa has the largest HIV epidemic in the world with an estimated 5,7-million people living with HIV in 2007. This is according to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS’ (UNAIDS) 2008 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic released yesterday (SUBS: TUES), which reports that almost 33-million people are currently living with HIV/AIDS worldwide with 25-million people having died of HIV-related causes since the beginning of the epidemic.

The telecommunications sector is becoming a new gold rush where large white-owned companies pocket the wealth and leave nothing for the masses, says the chairman of the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa). The lowest rungs of society would be alienated if the regulator did not actively demand a greater role for black people in the industry, said chairman Paris Mashile. That is why Icasa would insist new licences for scarce spectrum went to companies that were 51% black-owned.

Under a new law in Tunisia, prisons are required to provide separate facilities for pregnant or nursing inmates. The new law also reduces the length of time a child can stay with their incarcerated mother from three years to one.

ITCH is a South-African born, internationally relevant online/offline magazine that publishes verbal and visual creative work. Work published includes non-fiction (book reviews, essays, polemic), narrative and poetry, as well as visual work in any medium. Submissions can include audio files (e.g., poetry recitals) and video (short films, animations, etc.).

Over the past week the UNHCR operation in Guinea embarked on a campaign informing Sierra Leonean refugees on the upcoming cessation of their refugee status and its implications. The UN refugee agency announced last month that as of the end of the year, Siera Leoneons who fled their country during civil war in the early 1990's will no longer be considered refugees since the root causes of the refugee problem in Sierra Leone no longer exist.