Racism is an assault, often intentional but also covert, by individual acts or regular practice, against persons for the sole reason of their ancestry, history, or physical appearance. The person who has never had an encounter with someone hostile to his or her race will find it hard to comprehend. It is sheer horror, the worst of mockery. What then is race? This is a much harder question. Racial theorists like to say that race is both real and imaginary, a construct and a reality. This desire to have it both ways leads to some odd and contradictory conclusions.

The Municipal Services Project is seeking proposals for research on the impact of the marketization of key basic services (specifically water and electricity) on the ability of households with HIV/AIDS to cope with the illness. This research is intended to act as a pilot study for a larger investigation of this issue and is exploratory in nature. Up to US$10,000 is available for this phase of the work. The marketization of services (e.g. privatization, cost recovery) is most advanced in South Africa, but similar developments are occurring throughout the region. We will consider proposals from any Southern African country where the marketization and health link can be adequately investigated. Proposals must be submitted by May 15, 2004.

For years on end technology has been taking the world by surprise. The very things that are now operating machines, controlling nuclear power plants, assembling cars and running entire factories are the ones to have brought about an industrial revolution, an economic change and most importantly a social transformation. Information technology is no exception. Its evolution, advancement and results continue to spread at a record pace. Yet the integration of such technology into human social lives remains questionable. This paper aims to address the issue of the growth of human reliance on information technology and the arguments in favour of technology-human adaptation.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has started to investigate allegations of corruption in projects funded by the World Bank and its affiliates, Senate sources said Tuesday. Committee staff have been quietly looking into charges for some time and the first public hearing is set for May 13. Projects under review include the Yacyreta Dam on the Argentina-Paraguay border, the Lesotho Highlands Water Project and projects in Cambodia, according to letters obtained by Reuters.

Fighting corruption at all levels with effective and transparent institutions was listed as the first battle-post in defining a pro-growth African agenda, as stipulated by studies conducted by the South African Institute for International Affairs. This, the organisation suggested, would involve the establishment of genuinely independent and well-funded anti-corruption authorities with the power to prosecute without political interference. It would also involve the strengthening of powers of banking and financial regulation to stop laundering illicit funds, improve public access to information on government spending, and publicly disclosing political party financing.

African leaders gathered in Paris on Monday for a conference on the receding waters of the Niger River, the continent's third-longest river and a lifeline that sustains 100 million people. Representatives of nine African countries are trying to come up with an action plan to encourage better management of the water and prevent its levels from dropping further. "The basin is today threatened with becoming a place of desolation and misery," said Niger President Mamadou Tandja, who is head of the Niger Basin Authority.

The UN’s main human rights body has demonstrated an incapacity and unwillingness to address serious human rights violations and must reform, said Amnesty International as the 60th session of the UN Commission on Human Rights drew to a close. The Commission failed to adopt draft resolutions on China, Chechnya, Zimbabwe and the detainees in Guantanamo Bay, repeatedly using the “no action” procedure to prevent discussion of resolutions on China and Zimbabwe. Amnesty International said: “The Commission has demonstrated that it must reform itself if it is to fulfil its responsibility to protect human rights and denounce violations wherever they occur.”

UNDP, in cooperation with Botswana's National AIDS Coordinating Agency (NACA), has held a series of leadership development workshops to strengthen the response to HIV/AIDS in one of the world's hardest hit countries. About 130 leaders from many sectors attended the three-day sessions. They came from government departments, including the police, health and social service agencies, the private sector and civil society organisations.

The April 2004 issue of the International Rivers Network's bimonthly magazine, World Rivers Review, is now available online. The issue's special focus is on the legacy of past World Bank projects. It contains several references to Africa, including an article on a proposed new dam on the Nile that will drown cultural treasures and communities.

HIV and AIDS have significantly increased the care burden for many women. Poverty and poor public services have also combined with AIDS to turn the care burden for women into a crisis with far-reaching social, health and economic consequences. This is according to a fact sheet from the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/ AIDS that explores the impact that HIV and AIDS have had on the role that all over the world women are expected to take in domestic work and in providing care to family members.

The World Bank failed to protect social spending during its structural adjustment operations in the 1980s and 1990s, and this led to the deterioration of basic services - including those needed for the prevention and control of HIV/AIDS. And instead of focusing on HIV/AIDS, the World Bank sought improvements in the way goods and services were provided and financed through health sector reforms, such as user fees, privatisation, decentralisation and integration of services. These reforms frequently had the unintended effect of reducing access to effective health care, including services aimed at the prevention and control of HIV/AIDS. This is according to a paper Produced by ActionAid that evaluates the response to the HIV crisis by the World Bank.

Investigators from the Anti-Corruption Unit in the Mozambican Attorney-General's Office have questioned businessman Nyimpine Chissano, the oldest son of President Joaquim Chissano, in connection with the September 2002 escape from the Maputo top security prison of Anibal dos Santos Junior ("Anibalzinho"), reports Friday's issue of the independent weekly "Savana". Anibalzinho was the man who led the death squad recruited to assassinate Mozambique's top investigative journalist, Carlos Cardoso, in November 2000. After his mysterious disappearance from prison on 1 September 2002, he was tried in absentia.

A team from the United Nations refugee agency has arrived in a Chadian border town to verify reports that 200 to 300 Sudanese refugees have been crossing weekly from the Darfur region into Chad since the beginning of April, an agency spokesman said.

Mordechai Vanunu's release dovetailed with the release this week of a book - dedicated to him - on South Africa's nuclear weapons programme. The book, Uranium Road, was due to be released at a launch organised by the Nuclear Energy Costs the Earth Campaign of Earthlife Africa. It was written by environmentalist David Fig. Before he was locked up, Vanunu had alluded to nuclear links between South Africa and Israel during the apartheid era. According to Fig, Israel was just one of a number of countries that supported South Africa's nuclear programme during the apartheid era.

A community based grass-roots organisation in Nairobi (Kenya) involved in disability, child rights, income generation and development issues, is looking for a short term consultant preferably from Kenya itself. The person should have experience in participatory methodologies and non-governmental organisational development. The total duration of the consultancy for conducting a workshop will be around 7 days, some time in November or December 2004. Interested persons should send their CV to [email protected]

In addition to working through partnerships with others, and advocating for open society ideals, the HIV/AIDS Programme Officer (PO) will develop strategies, guidelines and policies for OSISA’s HIV /AIDS programme to enable OSISA to make a meaningful contribution to HIV /AIDS response in Southern Africa. The vision of the programme is a “Southern African region that is totally engaged in overcoming the HIV/AIDS pandemic through the deployment of appropriate policies, resources and leadership”.

The Anti-War Coalition in partnership with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation invites you to a seminar titled ' The Relevance of Rosa Luxemburg in an Era of Endless Wars'. The seminar will be held from May 20th to the 22nd at the Workers' Library, Newtown, Johannesburg. Invited guests are expected from the following countries: Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, Mauritius, United States and Germany.

Reporters sans frontières (RSF) says it is extremely concerned over the abrupt imprisonment of Anas Tadili, editor of the weekly "Akhbar al-Ousbouaâ", on 15 April 2004. While officially arrested over a legal matter dating back 10 years, RSF fears Tadili may have been detained for an article published in his newspaper, and that the arrest was in fact the result of political pressure. On 9 April, Tadili's paper published an article entitled "Homosexuality and the political class in Morocco", detailing the homosexual adventures of a government minister at a resort in northern Morocco.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says it is deeply concerned about reports that two journalists have been detained in separate incidents in the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland, northeast Somalia, and the self-declared republic of Somaliland. Abdishakur Yusuf Ali, editor-in-chief of the independent War-Ogaal newspaper in Bossasso, Puntland, was arrested on April 21, because of an article accusing Puntland Finance Minister Abdirahman Mohamud Farole of corruption, said local journalists. Meanwhile Abdirahman Haji Dahir, a reporter for the independent Somaliland daily Haatuf, was arrested in the port city of Berbera because of an article that mentioned differences between Somaliland President Dahir Riyale Kahin and his vice president, said local journalists.

The Writers in Prison Committee of International PEN is concerned by the continued detention of Ethiopia journalist, Merid Estifanos, who has been unable to raise the elevated bail demanded of him. Estifanos, the former editor of the independent Amharic weekly newspaper Satenaw, appeared in court on 2 April 2004 to face charges of defamation. He had been led to believe that the charge referred to an alleged defamation of the Ethiopian foreign minister Seyum Mesfin. However, in court, he discovered he was also being charged with defamation of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

Hard on the heels of Earth Day came Africa Malaria Day. Earth Day got more coverage, and that's a shame, because malaria is as big a scourge as AIDS, maybe worse. Malaria kills two million people a year and ravages economies. In Africa, a child dies of malaria every 30 seconds, and many who don't die suffer brain damage. But we've been blinded by environmental paternalism. And so we're standing back and watching. The problem is our irrational aversion to DDT, which, in the popular imagination, is the most toxic pesticide known to man. So allergic are we to DDT that the World Health Organisation will not fund its use, and most agencies are pushing for a ban worldwide. This, despite massive evidence that DDT as it is used today does no harm to people or the environment - and saves lives.

Land is always a deeply political issue, involving highly disputed and often very dangerous terrain, as recent events in Zimbabwe have illustrated all too graphically. But working on land requires adopting very long term horizons and sticking with things through thick and thin, for these are long term processes which defy quick fixes or easy final solutions. Contexts do differ greatly but it is clear that the clumsy imposition of liberalisation, the rolling back of the role of the state and of the state marketing boards, grain reserves and the like, combined with manifestly unfair international trade rules, have left many poor people far more vulnerable than they were and far more dependent on access to land than ever before, while that very access is increasingly threatened in a globalising world. In such a context, struggles for land rights continue to form a vital part of the wider fight for global justice. This is according to a paper for a Oxfam-Zambia Copperbelt Livelihoods Improvement Programme Land Workshop held on 29-30 March 2004.

Delegates at a conference of Southern African former liberation movements and their sympathisers have given their backing to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's controversial stand on land reform. "Mugabe's not doing any more than what a lot of indigenous people are asking for around the world," Michael Anderson, an Australian aboriginal activist and founder of the Sovereign Union of Aboriginal Nations and People of Australia, told AFP. "They want self-determination, they want return of the lands, control of their natural resources," he said.

The International Telecommunication Union, the organizing entity of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), is conducting a survey to obtain views on the perceived importance of agreed upon targets for improving connectivity and access in the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). The targets outlined in the WSIS Plan of Action were agreed to by 175 countries represented at the first phase of the Summit in Geneva, 10-12 December 2003. The objectives of WSIS are to build an inclusive information society that will put the potential of ICTs at the service of development and to promote the use of information and knowledge for the achievement of internationally agreed upon development goals, including those contained in the United Nations Millennium Declaration.

Assiut is the hub of Upper Egypt - a city that has a large university, many educational institutions and a vibrant economic history. However, Assiut also has a chronically high unemployment rate among its educated young people with over 20% being unemployed according to official statistics in 2002. APC member in Egypt, ArabDev, has been working with Assiut Childhood and Development Association (ACDA) to counteract unemployment with IT skills training for the local job market.

In the latest attempt to curb the circulation of small arms in Africa, foreign affairs ministers and other representatives from eleven countries signed a protocol on weapons control recently in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. But, the jury is still out on whether this initiative really has the ingredients for success. The Nairobi Protocol for the Prevention, Control and Reduction of Small Arms and Light Weapons was signed after a two-day meeting that brought together eleven states from the Great Lakes area and the Horn of Africa. These regions have some of the highest rates of weapons proliferation in Africa.

At least 20 people died in three days of clashes between rival ethnic militias in central Plateau State, residents and officials said on Tuesday. The clashes between ethnic Tarok fighters and their Fulani rivals at Bakin Chiyawa in the Shendam district of the state began on Saturday, Emmanuel Bakat, a local government official and resident of the area, told IRIN.

A number of initiatives aimed at extending medical services to the rural poor have been launched by enterprising doctors in Zimbabwe. Many Zimbabweans are finding it harder to pay for medical treatment as inflation of around 600 percent translates into soaring fees for private doctors and shortages of medicines in public hospitals. Private hospitals, doctors and dentists increased their fees by between 50 percent and 100 percent at the beginning of April, hard on the heels of a similar price hike three months ago.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nation's Children's Fund (UNICEF) has announced a global reduction of 30% in deaths from measles between 1999 and 2002. At 35%, the reduction in measles deaths was even greater in Africa, the region with the highest number of people affected by the disease. This progress demonstrates that collectively countries can achieve the United Nations goal of cutting global measles deaths in half by the end of 2005.

Isis-WICCE Information Technology Training programme for women and girls is registering interested persons for the following sessions:
- Introduction to computers and MS Word (starting the week of 10 - 15th May up to the end of the month)
- The Internet and related applications (starting 1st week of June)
Each session accommodates 20 persons. If you are interested please register with Irene Tusiime at Isis-WICCE. Priority is for women and girls. Tel: 543953 Trainees will have free access to the Internet during the training period.

I have managed to read some of the Pambazuka newsletters and found some very useful papers and information there, so for those responsible thanks and keep up the good work.

I am keen to hear views on the current news that truces are being drawn and views regarding the politics of these positions (Sudan). I may probably not be able to directly act or contribute at this stage but it has been useful to have the input and views of those closely involved, even when I do not agree or fully understand the positions being taken but I hope it enables me to be informed enough to make good judgements should opportunities to support come.

Inefficient farming practices are helping to drive deforestation, pollution, ocean degradation, and species loss and constitute the most serious environmental threat in the world today, according to a new book. According to World Agriculture and the Environment, a global survey by Dr. Jason Clay, head of the Center for Conservation Innovation at World Wildlife Fund (WWF), agriculture contributes to serious environmental, social, and economic problems, particularly in developing countries.

We need to raise awareness of the need to redistribute the world’s resources, embracing the principle of sharing at all levels of society.

The current world economic system doesn't work. A world ruled by financiers and economists with no regard for human suffering or ecological damage is not sustainable. Unfair trading practices, set up by the World Trade Organisation and the G7 squeeze the third world to a point where famine and war are the result. When I think about the ever-worsening situation in the Third World I am reminded of an incident one summer in my childhood.

My sister and I went to stay with our aunt and uncle on their farm. When we arrived my uncle and aunt told us that the field of kale behind the farmhouse was full of caterpillars. Excitedly, we ran out into the field to look at them. Every leaf of every kale plant was covered in caterpillars, big ones, small ones and tiny ones.

As the days passed, the army of caterpillars marched across the field towards the house. They ate every leaf of every plant, leaving a forest of skeletons in their wake. Big fat caterpillars walked over the smaller ones, squashing them as they went. And when they reached the edge of the field they crawled towards the house, up the walls and in through the windows. We shut the windows. The caterpillars crawled over the gutters, up the roof and down the chimneys.

Everywhere we looked there were caterpillars: on the walls, the ceilings, under the chairs, in the bedrooms, the bathroom, and the toilet. They stuck to the walls and ceilings of the house, turned into chrysalises, then never hatched. Every one of those caterpillars died.

As I look at the world today I see the caterpillar metaphor in action. The rich crush the poor, with bombs, wars, crippling interest rates on loans and unfair trade. I see desperate poverty, leading to population explosions, and I see the destruction of the environment on a par with the caterpillar’s destruction of their field of kale.

Just as the caterpillars destroyed their source of sustenance, so we humans are destroying our environment. We are destroying the very source of the air we breathe: the tropical rain forests. Our rich, like the big fat caterpillars, get richer and fatter while our poor, like the small thin caterpillars, are crushed to death or left with nothing to eat.

But all, fat and thin, rich and poor, are crawling towards eventual self-destruction.

But there are other models in the insect kingdom. Both ants and bees base their success on co-operation; the sharing of duties and resources to build highly successful communities. Ants that live in the topical rain forest co-operate not only with each other but with every aspect of their environment. Bees also work together co-operatively. Some would say that the bee model is regimented and smacks of communism. But the model merely demonstrates that sharing benefits both the community and the environment.

Part of the human race knows that sharing is the responsible way forward: the part which created the United Nations, the World Health Organisation and the hundreds of organisations that attempt to mitigate the disastrous consequences of unjust economic policies.

Even the World Bank was originally set up with a view to ending world poverty. But the problem with the world at the moment is that we do not have a queen bee, a head ant, a co-ordinating centre; in other words a world government. World power is in the hands of financiers, under the auspices of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation. These institutions dictate the terms of trade and protect the interests of the West, to the detriment of the rest of the world. The world deserves better than this.

The Brandt Report (http://www.dfid.gov.uk/News/PressReleases/files/pr_africacom_brandt_back...), for example, puts the needs of the world’s people first. It is the blueprint for a world government. Every member of the world’s society needs food, clean water, a roof over their heads, health care and education. The Brandt Report makes clear that we need to share responsibility for the world’s resources and the environment.

Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz in his book ‘Globalization and its Discontents’, explains in great detail how the current world economic situation evolved and what is wrong with it. The foundations of the current world economic system were laid by the United Nations in 1944 at Bretton Woods, in the US. Those present discussed how to rebuild war-ravaged Europe and as a result they set up an International Bank for the Reconstruction and Development of Europe. This later became the World Bank. They also set up the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to maintain world economic stability, so that there would be no more world economic depressions. As Joseph Stiglitz points out, these were good and worthy ideals at the time.

Over the years the power of the World Bank and the IMF, under the G7 (the US, Japan, Germany, Italy, France and the UK) grew and grew until they had economic dominion over the whole world. The World Trade Organisation was created, to set the price for third world exports, mainly raw materials and crops. The price for these commodities has fallen constantly ever since, making it harder and harder for these countries to repay the interest on their loans.

The economic system created in 1944 in the spirit of remorse and idealism, developed into a global economic network with a stranglehold over the third world. A world governed by financial institutions is not, and cannot be, a stable, sane or healthy world.

In the 1980s the World Bank and the IMF really began to squeeze the third world. It was during this period that Reagan and Thatcher came to power and began to promote the doctrine of monetarism and the free market economy. The IMF, the World Bank and the US treasury came to an agreement called the Washington Consensus (representatives of Third World countries were not invited to the meeting). They called for Capital Market Liberalization, i.e. forcing third world countries to open up to imports which they could not compete with, while using import tariffs to protect their own vulnerable industries.

The 1980s also saw the introduction of the iniquitous structural adjustment loans by the World Bank and the IMF. These loans were tied to so many conditions that third world governments were forced to cut back on essential spending, such as education and health programmes. This, over a period of decades has led to a worsening of health in the third world. Twelve million people now die of preventable diseases every year, and of these the largest number dies from dysentery and diarrhoea.

Since the people affected by diseases live in some of the poorest countries of the world, there is no incentive for the world’s pharmaceutical companies to put money into research and development of new drugs or vaccines. Pharmaceutical companies play an important part in Western health schemes, carrying out research and developing new medicines. But since they are inextricably linked into the current world economic system, which is driven by the profit motive and competition with each other, they feel that they are forced to gear their research towards finding drugs to treat the diseases which affect the developed world: cancer, heart disease, diabetes etc., drugs which they can sell at a profit. Only ten percent of research money worldwide is devoted to ninety percent of the world’s diseases.

The current world economic system is failing the majority of the world’s population. Profit-driven research will always be geared towards the development of drugs to treat the diseases of those who can pay. A world system based on sharing would look at need, rather than profit – as the driving force behind research.

A World Government based on the principle of sharing would share responsibility for the health of the world population, direct research and development towards all the diseases which affect the world, not just those that affect the West.

A world economic system based on sharing would want to share responsibility for the health of the world population. A world economic system based on sharing would want to preserve ancient knowledge of traditional medicine, share responsibility for protecting rare medicinal plants, for growing and harvesting these plants and making them available to all those in need.

The current economic system exploits the environment shamelessly, leading to its destruction. We are destroying the world’s tropical rain forests, an invaluable and irreplaceable source of medicinal plants.

Sharing is not just about sharing resources. It is also about the sharing of knowledge, both the high tech knowledge of the developed nations, and the detailed, intimate knowledge of the environment of the people who inhabit it. The current global economic system exploits both the environment and the people who live in it. The emphasis on profit denies all other values, such as traditional knowledge and respect for the environment. This is extremely dangerous, and if it continues will lead to complete ecological destruction, followed by the death of a large proportion of the human species. We need a world government to instil in everyone the necessity of sharing responsibility for the environment.

Sharing the world's resources, knowledge and responsibilities is the only way for the human species to survive. The infrastructure for such sharing is already in place. All that is required now is a shift of consciousness on the part of human kind, away from the idea that competition should be the basis of our economic system, towards the idea that sharing would be of benefit to all.

* Mohammed Mesbahi is the Chair and Founder of a London-based organisation called Share the World’s Resources (STWR). This article was submitted to Pambazuka News by email.

* Send comments on this article - and other events in Africa - to [email protected]

Women are most often responsible for domestic and community water management in developing societies, being in charge of determining sources, quantity and hygienic quality, begins a Unifem publication. On average women and children travel 10-15 kilometres, spending 8 or more hours per day collecting water and carrying up to 20 kilos or 15 litres per trip. It has been calculated that in South Africa alone, women collectively walk the equivalent distance of 16 times to the moon and back per day gathering water for families. The economic value of this unpaid contribution is enormous, notes the publication.

Chairperson of Women Trafficking and Child Labour Eradication Foundation (WOTCLEF) and convener of the African Women Conference, Mrs. Amina Titi Atiku Abubakar, has said the conference is meant to reposition Africa and write a new chapter in the history of African women. The event is a six-day conference intended to highlight and deliberate on issues related to the development of African women.

A group of Rwandan refugees in Namibia will embark on a "go and see" mission to their home country to assess conditions for their proposed voluntary repatriation. This visit is being organised to allay the concerns of the nearly 500 Rwandan refugees over their safety once they return. In April a group of Rwandans fled Namibia's Osire refugee camp and told the local Namibian newspaper that they did not want to be repatriated.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) proposed on Monday a regional youth peace forum aimed at strengthening Africa's regional capacities for peace and development. A two day strategy meeting to pave the way for the launching of this regional forum for the four core countries of the Great Lakes Region (Burundi, D.R. Congo, Rwanda and Uganda) is being held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The forum, which is an initiative within UNDP Regional Bureau for Africa's second Regional Co-operation framework is expected to enhance active youth participation in national and regional reconciliation and peace building initiatives in the four core countries of the Great Lakes Region.

South Africa's the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) has welcomed the re-appointment of Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, with whom the organisation has had a fraught relationship over the last four years. “The re-appointment of Health Minister, Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang will be a disappointment for many of us, especially the range of actors in the health sector. However, we urge Minister Tshabalala-Msimang to re-establish a working relationship in the interest of fulfilling the mandate of our people,” said the TAC.

Cholera has broken out in eight districts, the health ministry said. Kampala, Kasese, Hoima, Arua, Nebbi, Kabarole, Masindi, and Bundibugyo have continued to report significant numbers of cholera cases since the beginning of this year, the ministry said. "As the rains increase, there is a likelihood of an upsurge of diarrhoeal diseases such as cholera in several parts of the country. Already some districts such as Kampala in Namuwongo parish are experiencing an increase of these diseases. So far seven people are sick while two have been reported dead," said a statement.

In a speech at the annual meeting of the Donor Forum of Wisconsin, Open Society Institute Vice President and Director of U.S. Programs Gara LaMarche discussed "the need for foundations to pursue their mission...through grantmaking that is focused at least in part on public policy goals." He also contended - by drawing attention to what he considers worrisome political, social, and economic developments in the United States - that foundations must "lead with their voice" and take a more active and direct role in opposing or supporting key initiatives when appropriate.

The Ford, Kellogg and Mott foundations, the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund have announced a commitment of a total of $10 million for a special fund for grants commemorating the tenth anniversary of South Africa’s democracy and its impact on the social and economic development of southern Africa. The commemorative grants will support efforts to strengthen democratic institutions and encourage public debate about the experiences and advances since South Africa’s first democratic elections ten years ago. The five foundations will identify projects for special funding to address the spread of HIV/AIDS, strengthen the role of NGOs in South Africa’s democracy, help close the economic gap between disadvantaged and more advantaged groups, and other initiatives to be defined.

Malaria was responsible for one out of three deaths in children and one out of 10 deaths in pregnant women and cost Nigeria 132 billion Naira per year to treat, minister of health Prof Eyitayo Lambo said at the commemoration of the fourth Africa Malaria day. Prof Lambo said government had adjusted its fiscal policies to include zero concessional duties for insecticides for public health use, a reduction of taxes and tariffs on yarns and the maintenance of a 40% import duty on imported nets to protect local industries.

Children everywhere are spending more time in school than ever before, but there remain substantial differences between countries and regions, according to UNESCO’s Global Education Digest 2004. According to the Digest, a child in Finland, New Zealand or Norway can expect to receive over 17 years of education, almost twice as much as in Bangladesh or Myanmar and four times as much in Niger or Burkina Faso. The new edition of the Digest presents the latest global education indicators, one example of which is school life expectancy (SLE), or the number of school years that a child, on average, is likely to spend in the education system.

Federal President Azali Assoumani suffered a setback in parliamentary elections held at the weekend when parties aligned to the archipelego's three regional presidents gained the majority of seats in the national assembly. Following run-off elections for the federal assembly on Sunday, supporters of the presidents of the three semi-autonomous islands hold 12 of the 18 elected seats in parliament, against six for the federal president's party.

Renewed efforts to bring Zimbabwe's two feuding main political parties back to the negotiating table have hit a brick wall with Zanu PF showing signs of ill-feeling over the sincerity and impartiality of the arbitrators. Impeccable Zanu PF sources confirmed that there was a whiff of suspicion within their ranks, with some senior party officials, who are jealously guarding their positions, alleging that some of the church leaders pushing for the negotiations were sympathetic to the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). The church leaders from various denominations have been at the forefront of trying to bring the MDC and the ruling Zanu PF to the negotiating table which they abandoned almost two years ago.

Amnesty International has released a new report, 'Libya: Time to make human rights a reality', detailing the findings of the organisation's first visit to Libya in 15 years. The report - released on the day of Libyan leader Colonel Mu'ammar al-Gaddafi's visit to the European Commission in Brussels, his first to Europe in 15 years - reveals a pattern of on-going human rights violations, a continuing failure to investigate and resolve past abuses, and a climate of fear in which most Libyans are afraid to raise concerns over current and past violations. While welcoming some positive developments, Amnesty International said that a comprehensive program of reform is needed to address these human rights concerns.

The International Federation of Journalists has called on the Sudanese government to immediately lift repressive measures against foreign press coverage of the unfolding disaster in the west of the country where thousands of civilians have reportedly been massacred in a drama reminiscent of the Rwanda crisis ten years ago.

When armed men raided the printing press of Gambia's The Independent newspaper on 13 April, five of them opened fire on staff while a sixth doused the printing press with petrol and set it alight. It was the second time in six months that the newspaper's printing press was targeted, but employees complained that it took the police five hours to arrive at the scene, even though there was a police station only one kilometre away.

Earlier in the month, eight internet users in Tunisia who said they had simply used the Internet to download files about the situation in the Middle East where accused of promoting terrorist attacks and sentenced by a Tunis court to up to 26 years in prison. Reporters sans frontières (RSF)
commented at the time: "The trial of these young people demonstrates the Tunisian judicial system's outrageous contempt for the rights of the defence. Simply consulting Internet sites cannot be considered evidence of a terrorist plot. The Tunisian regime is trying to terrorise Internet users and silence dissent."

On Friday, April 2, Ethiopian authorities jailed Merid Estifanos, former editor-in-chief of the private, Amharic-language weekly Satanaw. This was after he was unable to pay bail in a criminal defamation case stemming from a September 2001 opinion piece titled "The Hidden Agenda of Prime Minister Meles." Estifanos did not write the article, but as editor-in-chief of the newspaper, he was held responsible for its content. The Committee to Protect Journalists said: "We call on Ethiopian authorities to release Merid Estifanos immediately, and to work toward removing criminal penalties for press offences."

These are arbitrary selections of press freedom and freedom of expression violations during the month of April. They are by no means unique. The routine stories that surface from around the continent on a daily basis paints a picture of a media environment where journalists are routinely harassed, suppressed, beaten, tortured and imprisoned.

Last year, on the occasion of the inauguration of the African Union, Pambazuka News carried an editorial which highlighted the shocking state of press freedom on the African continent. The editorial stated:

"This distinguished gathering of Ministers did not think it necessary to respond to the urgent issues such as warnings by the World Food Programme of looming food shortages and famine in several African countries .By no coincidence, the governments of these countries have been identified by several international and African press freedom and freedom of expression organisations as suppressing press freedom and freedom of expression. In almost all cases, the rights to association, assembly and political participation have also been curtailed."

Noting the serious development challenges faced by the African continent - education, healthcare, HIV/AIDs, agriculture, provision of adequate housing and conflict resolution - the editorial pointed out that these challenges could not be met without the active participation of the citizens of African countries. It said:

"Active participation of citizens in shaping policy and decision making of their countries is however impossible if their own governments continue to deny them the rights necessary to ensure such participation. These include the rights to freedom of expression, assembly, association and political participation, as well as media freedom to facilitate a free exchange of information, ideas and opinion."

But, the editorial went on to say, these rights continued to be violated by numerous governments despite the fact that virtually all African countries had signed up to or ratified the constitutive Act of the African union, the African Charter on Peoples and Human Rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other similar documents.

One year later and the almost daily violations of press freedom and freedom of expression rights in multitude countries continue almost unremarked except for the shrill protests of various media freedom bodies. As the African Peer Review Mechanism (ARPM) of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad) kicks in with its first reviews, it will be interesting to see whether the ARPM shows any teeth when it comes to reporting on press freedom and freedom of expression violations.

According to an AU/Nepad paper giving guidelines for countries to participate in the ARPM, the purpose of the ARPM is to foster the adoption of appropriate laws, policies, standards and practices that lead to, amongst other aims, political stability. Although the media is not specifically listed, it is difficult to see how a respect for media freedom and freedom of expression could be excluded from the definition of political stability. Country review visits by the ARPM team will indeed be responsible for carrying out widespread consultations that include the media.

But As World Press Freedom Day approaches on May 3, it is important to note that there has been little progress towards the enforcement of the right to freedom of expression on the African continent. Until such time as institutions and leaders commit to entrenching media freedom and freedom of expression as a basis for development on the continent and not as a concession benevolently handed out - and withdrawn - on a whim, World Press Freedom Day in Africa will be marked for the bravery of those journalists who go to work under a cloud of repression, rather than a day for the celebration of a right fulfilled.

* Please send comments to

* Related Link:
Release of MISA's Annual Publication, 'So This Is Democracy?: State of Media Freedom in Southern Africa'
http://allafrica.com/stories/200404280686.html

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