It is the first day of catch-up classes for vulnerable children in Ruhengeri, Rwanda. This is a big day. For the 300 children who succeeded in getting a space in the classroom, the suspense and excitement are overwhelming. Most of these children, aged nine to 14, have never been to school. Others dropped out years ago. A national study supported by UNICEF found that around 400,000 primary school-aged and 600,000 secondary school-aged children across Rwanda are not in school. In response to this educational crisis, UNICEF and the Rwandan Ministry for Education set up these classes to give the children another chance.

The Debt Management Office (DMO) recently reported that Nigeria owed about $28 billion from 1980 to date. The entire process of debt renegotiation and rescheduling, says this editorial, may be fraught with shady dealings. Nigerians need to know exactly the status of both the domestic and external debt profile and the strategy for tackling it.

Shadreck Pongo, a photojournalist with the Standard newspaper, was severely assaulted and injured by the police on 18 November in Harare while covering a nationwide demonstration organised by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU). Riot police apprehended him while he was shooting photographs of demonstrators and pulled him into a police truck where they severely assaulted him.

Carlos Cardoso, Mozambique's most famous journalist, was gunned down on a Maputo street on 22 November 2000. Three years later, the identity of all the persons involved in his death is still unknown, even though six people were convicted in an exemplary trial. At least one of the instigators behind the contract killing is still at large. This is the main conclusion of a report issued by Reporters sans frontières (RSF) on 21 November 2003.

Summary killings, rape, torture, and illegal detentions remain commonplace. Children are among those who have been subjected to physical and sexual abuse by soldiers. Villagers have been harassed by Angolan Armed Forces (FAA) soldiers while working in their fields, hunting in the forests or fishing in rivers. As a result, some Cabindans, especially those in rural areas, are afraid to pursue the livelihoods that ensure their existence. Growing numbers of villagers are suffering from hunger in a region that is rich in natural resources. This is according to a report on the human rights situation in Cabinda, which is an enclave that seeks independence from Angola.

"AMANITARE is a pan-African partnership that works to build an influential social movement to institutionalise the recognition of African women’s and girls’ sexual and reproductive health and rights as fundamental to their civil and human rights. The struggle against gender-based violence is at the heart of AMANITARE’s work, with the recognition that violence is a widespread, brutal tool used to systematically control women’s bodies, self-expression and social and political participation. Violence denies African women and girls the agency granted as citizens and equal members of our communities. Violence against women is fuelled by a lack of recognition and respect for women’s rights to their bodies, and their rights to make decisions regarding their sexuality and fertility."

Solar panels are bringing environmentally friendly power to homes, health centres, schools and other facilities in the Nuba mountains in south central Sudan, helping impoverished communities recover from decades of conflict that ended in a ceasefire last year. Sudan suffers from a huge shortage of energy, with only 15 per cent of the population, mainly those living in urban areas, linked to power grids.

Scientific diasporas - networks of expatriate scientists -are no substitute for direct capacity building in developing countries. Nevertheless they have an important contribution to make, and their activities need more support.

While many of the constraints to development of the Tanzanian dairy sector can be tackled locally, low world market prices can largely be explained by EU subsidies, and the existence of cheap powdered milk remains an unfair competition which has effectively blocked the expansion of the dairy sector. This is according to a study by the Centre for International Development Issues that examines how Europe's common agriculture policy (CAP) is operated and influences the livelihoods of dairy farmers in Tanzania and Jamaica in order to demonstrate how European policy can hamper the development of farmers in developing countries.

Women and girls should be safe in their homes, on the streets, in the workplace and in school, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, UNFPA Executive Director, said on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination on Violence against Women on November 25. Yet, far too many live in fear and countless others have paid with their lives, she stated.

U.S. forces have disrupted several planned terrorist attacks against Western and other targets in the Horn of Africa and local authorities have killed or captured more than two dozen militants, the U.S. general in command of an anti-terrorism task force told The Associated Press. The task force is responsible for fighting terrorism in seven Horn of Africa countries: Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Yemen, Sudan, Kenya and Somalia.

The faltering Zimbabwe public health system has been further reduced as nurses and senior doctors join junior and mid-level doctors on a month-long strike. The nurses briefly joined the doctors striking last month for higher pay. They returned to work after being promised an 800% pay rise. But the strike was on again after pay checks last Thursday showed no increase.

Members of Burundi's main Hutu rebel group, a faction of the Forces for the Defence of Democracy, are now represented in the country's government. They hold four of the 27 ministerial posts. Rebel leader Pierre Nkurunziza is Burundi's new minister for good governance.

We are looking for an outstanding individual to lead our programme in Liberia and to strengthen its impact and quality with a view to growing the scope of Oxfam's response even further.

This is a full-time appointment for an initial period of one year as of January 2004, with the possibility of extension. The researcher will be based in a field office in Kigali, Rwanda.

Reporters Without Borders has urged the Zimbabwean authorities to drop charges against 14 people who were arrested for circulating an e-mail message criticising President Mugabe's economic policies and calling for his departure. They were all released on bail but have been ordered to appear in court on 26 November.

After 18 months of painstaking deliberation Parliament's justice committee has approved the new anticorruption bill with a new provision which makes it an offence to offer or receive "gratification" which has not been earned.

A new report, launched by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), highlights the urgency of making the elimination of violence against women a serious global priority. The report singles out gender inequality as the chief source and breeding ground for the continuing scale of violence against women.

The headline statistics about AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa are well known: nearly one in ten adults, a staggering 26 million people, are estimated to be infected with the deadly HIV virus. In eight countries in Southern Africa, the overall adult prevalence rate is now well over 25 per cent. But, unlike no other pandemic before it, there is very little accurate information about just how many people have died of AIDS-related illnesses during the last decade or so. A real concern is that seriously over-inflated estimates of HIV prevalence could exacerbate already high levels of despondency and even fatalism about the epidemic among many young people in Africa.

Africa’s civil society is failing to harness the power of the internet to help communicate “strategically and effectively”, a global computer charity network warned on Monday. The Association of Progressive Communications (APC) said that all too often, advocacy and campaigning by charities was undermined by their lack of internet communications. The comments came at the launch of a pioneering project during a week-long summit at the UN Conference Centre in Addis Ababa to help charities tap the potential of the worldwide web.

A US-based organisation has called for the dissolution of the African Union and the establishment of a new continental body strictly for democratically elected governments. The Free Africa Foundation president, Mr George Ayittey, from Ghana, said the AU could not solve conflicts because its leadership comprises "mafia states" practising a politics of exclusion.

A recent post-harvest survey in Mozambique has shown worrying levels of vulnerability for children and orphans due to the combined impact of drought and HIV/AIDS. The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said additional analysis of data collected by the national Vulnerability Assessment Committee (VAC) in May and June, showed that "maternal orphans were found to be 50 percent more likely to be chronically malnourished than the general child population and 120 percent more likely to be severely chronically malnourished.

Despite the peace agreement of 18 August 2003 and the establishment of a United Nations (UN) peace-keeping operation, civilians continue to be killed, raped, used as forced labour and driven from their homes, an Amnesty International delegation recently returned from Liberia concluded. Speedy deployment of additional UN peace-keeping forces is necessary to provide protection. In addition, the perpetrators of these abuses must be made to understand that they will be held accountable.

The Parliamentary Millennium Project is designed as a nation-building intervention that will assist South Africans in recognizing how their diverse past experiences and the perspective resulting from those experiences have shaped their views of the present. The project is currently compiling a database of potential service providers for their media campaign and seeks expressions of interest from service providers who have commendable expertise in the following key areas: design and implementation of a comprehensive and integrated communication strategy; development and management of a comprehensive media liaison programme.

The Global Fund for Women, an international network of women and men committed to a world of equality and social justice, advocates for and defends women's human rights by making grants to support women's groups around the world. The Global Fund makes grants to seed, support, and strengthen women's rights groups based outside the United States working to address human rights issues.

Hundreds of families who were driven out of their homes by recent fighting in the Galgudud Region, central Somalia, are said to be living in "destitute" conditions. Local elders told IRIN the exodus was due to heavy fighting two weeks ago between the Darod subclan of the Marehan and the Dir subclan of Fiqi Mahmud. The clashes were concentrated in and around the village of Herale, some 80 km northwest of Dhusa-Marreb, the regional capital.

Some 700 people associated with Mayi-Mayi militias were demobilised in Kindu, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), on Saturday by the UN peacekeeping mission in the country, MONUC, in cooperation with forces of the seventh military region of the unified national army. A statement issued by MONUC on Monday reported that the 700 individuals - including women, children and the elderly - who opted to return to civilian life, were part of a larger group of about 2,000 fighters, the remainder of whom asked to be integrated into the national army.

The eldest son of Mobutu Sese Seko, former leader of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has ended his six-year exile. Manda Mobutu, 43, who has started a new political party, was welcomed at the airport by 200 cheering supporters, reports Reuters news agency.

In this issue: The road to affordable, accessible medications; Activists warn that the FTAA will push medicine prices up; Clinton Foundation brokers new HIV/AIDS drugs deal; Maternal mortality: where do we stand? To subscribe or unsubscribe please email [email protected]

The African elephant does not make a good neighbour. In the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem, it is simultaneously an endangered species and a pest. How can conservationists work with other stakeholders to lessen the conflict between wildlife and people and to reduce the impact of safari tourism? Can there be a win-win situation for animals, locals and tourists?

Worldwide, an estimated 11.8 million people aged 15 to 24 are infected with HIV, most of whom (77%) live in sub-Saharan Africa. In Zambia, 21% of the population fall within this age group. How much do young Zambians know about HIV and how does it affect their behaviour? Researchers from Population Services International put these questions to young men in Lusaka, Zambia.

The practice of abducting children for exploitation as child soldiers or sexual slaves continues unabated in Northern Uganda’s three districts of Kitgum, Gulu and Pader. Despite tragic losses and cruel compromises of human rights of the kidnapped children, the government forces insist that they will not lay down their guns until they have disarmed and paralysed the rebel forces, while civil society, local communities, and religious actors are together crying for peace. This article in the Peace and Conflict Monitor assesses the chances for non-violent change in Northern Uganda.

There are few moments in the history of AIDS that can call for celebration. The recent decision of the South African government to begin rolling-out antiretrovirals is certainly near the top of the list. But many persons might be tempted to celebrate more widely as December 1st, World AIDS Day, arrives this year, if only because AIDS has received such mainstream appeal that funds now appear to be travelling in all directions, and new programs are announced nearly everyday. Bill Clinton, once the designer of trade sanctions stopping countries like Thailand and Argentina from importing AIDS medicines, now announces generic drug price negotiations. Randall Tobias, a former executive at multi-national drug company Eli Lilly now claims to advance a $15 billion U.S. foreign AIDS budget. If there is anything we can be certain of, it is that AIDS now travels as a key cultural commodity in the most established institutions. But is this cause for celebration?

There is a temptation to announce that AIDS is finally “being taken care of”, that if the farther right-wing elements of U.S. foreign policy are placing the issue centrally, then something must certainly be getting done. The temptation is to call attention elsewhere, to claim that AIDS has received “enough attention” and may be distracting resources from other problems. But such a temptation is, sadly, completely out of order. Those who would rebut such statements would, rightly, point out that the $15 billion is not only disproportionately small, but has not actually been appropriated. They will point to the limitation of drug price negotiations and the sad fact that press releases consistently belie the sad truths about implementation and the non-existence of effective health programs in the vast majority of sites around the world. They will talk about the infusion of abstinence-only rhetoric; the problems at USAID; and the obstacles posed by the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), Southern African Customs Union (SACU), and the new bilateral trade agreements. And they will be right.

But there are other reasons to be concerned; reasons that will likely go unmentioned. These reasons can be revealed when we examine the institutions that now claim to command AIDS, and ask some very simple questions about them: how have they constructed and envisioned their “target populations”? What are the approaches they assume to be effective? Who is to blame, who is to be accountable, and on what basis do “AIDS programs” come to be constructed in these institutions?

Even the oldest data on AIDS provide clear answers to these questions if we examine them for what they are instead of for what we want them to be. At present, the assumptions of institutions are to institute educational programs, add some antiretrovirals for those already infected, and perhaps offer “culturally competent” videos to reduce stigma in the community of concern. Such is the standard format of AIDS programming today. My contention is that such programming is based on questionable premises. If we look to data from Haiti, we hear the stories of persons who are not simply individuals making “risky decisions”, but those who must engage in sex for the sake of achieving greater priorities than long-term personal health: for tonight’s food, for tomorrow’s money, for some means of security. In South Africa, male miners are housed in all-male barracks, worked six days per week, and have letters sent to them informing them that their wives have left or entered prostitution for money. They are given alcohol and prostitutes to prevent them from rebelling, and are called “denialists” (equating their mentality to that of elite politicians) by social scientists who argue that they should be more worried about a disease that will kill them several years in the future than about their 42% injury rate.

Are “behaviour change”, “education”, and stigma-reducing videos the most appropriate interventions we have available to us in such contexts? Perhaps. But data suggest otherwise. A recent systematic review of evidence in the British Medical Journal indicates that “providing information about health risks changes the behaviour of, at most, one in four people - generally those who are more affluent”. Data on HIV reveal that most persons know of its means of transmission, yet lack the personal agency to act on such knowledge, as the conditions of their lives dictate that dictate that, as Paul Farmer has stated, "their risk stems less from ignorance and more from the precarious situations in which hundreds of millions live". Even the BBC, in their recent worldwide poll, can confirm such claims. So why can’t our responsive institutions?

The public response from institutions is that “structural violence” - or the structural realities of poverty, inequality and other problems of power - are simply too difficult to address. Such claims ignore that AIDS activists have changed massive structures for years, from the entire development process of medicines to the housing and healthcare policies of the largest multinational companies in southern Africa. The private reality is that to expose the root responsibilities behind AIDS - rather than focusing on individual behaviours and “cultural” problems - is to expose the institutions who now claim to champion interventions for the disease. The Clinton Foundation would rather not admit its role in creating an intellectual property system that takes public research and development dollars into private hands and leaves the diseases of the poor to market failure; for them, AIDS is a unique issue to be negotiated selectively, rather than addressing the industry that spends 27% of its profits on marketing and 11% on R&D even as it ranks #1 in the world and makes 19% profits as a percentage of revenue (three times the Fortune 500 average). The World Bank would rather not deal with the association between their policies on agriculture and the subsequent migration of workers and break-up of stable unions; for them, AIDS is an issue of building narrow and specific health services with a few token antiretroviral projects and some “bereavement counselling” for the masses.

The institutions who are claiming to champion AIDS do not understand what AIDS activists have long realized: that AIDS is not merely a unique circumstance, but a massive symptom of a much larger disease. That is why the AIDS drug victories in South Africa are not merely celebrated by AIDS activists there, but by land-reform and water rights movements. It is because AIDS drugs are not merely medically necessary, but are also metaphorical: they represent broader inequalities in the distribution of resources. And for institutions to address that would be to admit that AIDS does not “compete” with malnutrition or cholera or respiratory infections. Rather, to truly address AIDS is to address the resource inequalities that drive all of these syndromes forward in the poorest of places in the world.

What, then, are the tasks for this coming year? I would argue that they are two-fold: (1) to turn research and action towards “structural interventions”, and (2) to change the meaning of what it means to use terms like “blame” and “stigma”. The first task is straightforward but rarely pursued: our research agendas and program implementation still focuses on information and educational speeches, rather than testing how primary commodity prices and housing scenarios and migration patterns affect AIDS, and how the campaigns to reform these resource inequalities can be replicated systematically. The second task is more difficult. Many social scientists and public health workers are wonderful at describing social problems and blame and stigma among the “marginalized”. But few ask what it means to be a marginalized person who must deploy the language of the mainstream, stigmatizing and blaming themselves and their peers for the sake of reducing their “marginalization” and struggling to reach the level of “individual responsibility” needed to be accepted in another social world.

What we need is more than description, but a turn to local geographies to ask how the process of becoming “marginalized” occurs, and why so many of the poor must resort to the language of the rich to stigmatize themselves and subsequently adopt the language of individual “responsibility” for the sake of survival. The answer, once again, becomes one of resources and institutions and power inequalities. We need to examine the basic processes of power, not merely its end pathologies. Because only in our understanding of the processes of power can we hope to find the answers to offer the institutions, and only in our understanding of the processes of power can we hope to take back the meaning of AIDS.

* Please send comments on this editorial - and other events in Africa - to References for this editorial can be found by clicking on the link below.

* Sanjay Basu is at the Yale University School of Medicine, where he studies the influence of trade agreements and health system reform on the spread of infectious and metabolic diseases. For more information: http://www.worldaidsday.org/
- http://www.unaids.org/wad/2003/Epiupdate2003_en/EpiUpdate2003_en.pdf
- http://www.un.org/events/aids/worldaidsday2003.html

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe will not attend the upcoming Commonwealth summit in Nigeria next month, ending weeks of speculation that the government's last-minute attempts might secure him an invitation.

"Charges against leaders and activists of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition and other civic societies, arrested on Tuesday November 18, 2003 were dropped this week. The activists were arrested for demonstrating against government’s mismanagement of the economy, high inflation and taxation. We applaud the individual officers within the Attorney General’s department whose decision it was to decline to prosecute some of Zimbabwe’s illustrious human rights defenders." Clicking on the link below will take you to the full press statement, a further statement by the Zimbabwean Lawyers for Human Rights on the arrests, and a report on the humanitarian crisis facing Zimbabwe.

President Thabo Mbeki has denied allegations that Deputy President Jacob Zuma once tried to solicit bribes from the French arms manufacturer Thales to shield it from a corruption probe. "There is no scandal," he told a French radio station. "There is not anybody, anywhere - in South Africa or anywhere in the world - who can produce one single fact to demonstrate corruption.

Gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orang-utans - the closest living relatives of humanity - could vanish from the wild within 50 years, say United Nations leaders meeting in Paris. They have appealed for $25m to save the world's great apes from extinction. The western chimpanzee has vanished from Benin, Gambia and Togo. Fewer than 400 remain in Senegal and 300 to 500 in Ghana. The population of chimps in Guinea-Bissau is below 200. Only about 600 mountain gorillas survive in Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

As part of its support to the 16 Days of Activism on Gender Violence campaign the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) is circulating articles of the Gender and Media (GEM) Commentary Service for use in mainstream media. The GEM Commentary Service provides mainstream media with fresh perspectives on the news that affects the every day lives of women and men in Africa. Please indicate use of the articles by writing to Patricia Made on: [email protected]

Brigit Namwalo has nothing to celebrate. As the world marked the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on November 25, she sat in her house, dejected, nursing a wound inflicted by her husband of 12 years. "I have lived in this abusive marriage for the last eight years. I really want to move out, but I fear that I may not be able to take care of my children," the mother of four told IPS in Nairobi.

A two month long general strike continues to paralyze schools, colleges and universities in Niger, where the government has made serious reforms to the education system in response to demands from the World Bank and international capital. Teachers and students continue to protest against the cuts that have come along with restructuring, which has led to numerous violent confrontations and arrests.

Where are we making progress towards equity in health in southern Africa? What are the critical driving forces for health equity? Where are the barriers? How do we build equitable expansion of ARV treatment now? What do we do about health personnel migration? Which health rights campaigns have promoted equity in health? How do we ensure an effective community voice in health systems? These are some of the questions that the conference hosted by the southern African network on Equity in Health (EQUINET) will address.

The "marginalised majority" in Sudan, including rebel groups fighting against the government in the country's only remaining battlefield, Darfur, will not accept a bilateral peace agreement between the government and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), according to a Darfur rebel group.

It is with great pleasure that I write this missive to introduce myself, as the newly appointed Cultural Program Coordinator at the Goree Institute. I look forward to continuing the legacy of providing cultural programs that are designed to ignite social change on the continent and throughout the Diaspora. The institute looks forward too expanding the link between culture and sustainable development. For a long time development has been exclusively defined in terms of tangible’s such as, dams, factories, houses, food and water, which are all in fact extremely essential. It is important, however, to include culture within the development paradigm as a means of achieving a satisfactory intellectual, emotional, moral and spritiual existence. This development allows groups, communities and nations to define themselves and their futures. The Goree Institute is expanding its cultural program in directions that respond to the current cultural environments, that we are committed to serving. The institute looks forward to providing fresh programming that is engaging to the intended populations. In short, programming that encourages self-reliance in Africa and throughout the Diaspora. The institute appreciates your continuous commitment and support. We look forward to strengthening and expanding these relationships to achieve the shared objective of realising cultural growth and development in Africa!

"I am talking of millions of men who have been skilfully injected with fear, inferiority complexes, trepidation, servility, despair, abasement." (From. Discours sur le colonialisme, Aimé Césaire)

The Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) is hosting a 4-week e-based discussion to find out what young women are currently thinking about reproductive technologies. We invite all interested young women to provide their perspectives and insights into this discussion, which will be co- hosted by AWID's Young Women and Leadership program and the Gender Equality and New Technologies program.

The cabinet in Uganda has paved the way for senior figures including the president's brother to be tried for corruption and wasting state resources. The officials are accused of wasting millions of dollars buying two unusable second-hand helicopters from Belarus.

Journalist Paulus Sackarias and driver Simon Haimbodi, both employed by the Afrikaans daily newspaper Republikein, were threatened and arrested at the weekend in a confrontation that resulted in the confiscation of their company vehicle by Special Field Force (SFF) members.

Members and sympathisers of Mozambique's former rebel movement, the Resistencia Nacional Mocambicana (Renamo), seized Radio Mozambique journalist Salvador Januario at the weekend and held him prisoner inside the local Renamo offices in the northern province of Cabo Delgado for several hours.

The Debate journal came into sight to serve as a platform to liberate and publish voices from the South African leftist sector. Its latest August issue carries articles, influential and poetic voices, analysis, commentary, and discussions about current affairs on the social movements arena.