A Malawian radio journalist was arrested this week for broadcasting an interview with a man who claimed to have been attacked by a vampire, the Guardian reports. Southern Malawi has been rife with rumours of blood-sucking vampires, fuelled by the popular belief that the government is colluding with vampires to collect blood for international aid agencies.

The right of citizens to freedom of expression has, for ages, been brutally suppressed in countries like Ethiopia, where democratic systems have not been established. After the EPRDF (Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front) put the entire country under its control and usurped state power, it accepted and ratified the UN Declaration of Human Rights, approved the charter during the transition period and promulgated the press proclamation. Ever since then, numerous free press publications have been rendering services as alternative sources of information.

Good initiative, looking forward to learning more about the newsletter.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) office in Kenya launched a programme on Monday to screen former Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army rebels who wish to apply for an amnesty and return to Uganda.

Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) Health Minister Mashako Mamba told IRIN on Tuesday that "more than" 2,000 people had died as the result of an influenza epidemic that had been sweeping across parts of the country for one-and-a-half months.

The UN has prepared a coordinated multi-sectoral response to a malnutrition crisis it says is "likely to occur" in the country due to a poor harvest.

Ever since the outbreak of fighting in the southwestern town of Baidoa last July, humanitarian agencies have been unable to access the town, humanitarian sources told IRIN on Tuesday.

President Olusegun Obasanjo’s main challenger for Nigeria’s ruling party presidential ticket on Monday filed a suit in court to invalidate the incumbent President's nomination. Alex Ekwueme, a former civilian vice president, in his court papers said Obasanjo’s election at the 5 January People’s Democratic Party (PDP) primaries was in violation of party regulations.

A prominent human rights activist imprisoned for the past nine months in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been on a hunger strike for one week in protest against the lack of medical care being made available to him.

Thousands of civilians have fled fresh fighting between government troops and Hutu rebels in Gitega Province, the spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Burundi, Nicholas McGowan, reported.

Over 26,000 Liberian returnees and refugees from Cote d'Ivoire require urgent assistance after fleeing recent military activities in the rebel-held western Ivorian cities of Danane and Man, UNICEF reported on Monday.

The UN Humanitarian Envoy for Cote d'Ivoire, Carolyn McAskie, at the weekend appealed to the Ivorian government to exercise its obligations with regards to humanitarian law and provide protection to refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs).

South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma ended on Thursday a four-day visit to Ethiopia and Burundi to gather support for the deployment of an African mission force in Burundi.

Somali parents are paying smugglers up to US $10,000 to take their children abroad, as part of a lucrative and exploitative international child-smuggling business. Faced with desperate choices, many parents who see no future in their own country allow their children to be abandoned by "agents" at airports and railway stations in European and North American countries.

A global report just released on internally displaced persons (IDPs) has described the abundance of land mines in numerous African countries as a major impediment to the ability of displaced persons to reclaim their lands. The report has cited Angola as one of the most heavily mined countries in the world, with an estimated 8 to10 million land mines.

Once more attention is on education following the recent High Level Group on Education for All (EFA) meeting held in Abuja by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in conjunction with the Federal Government and other related international agencies. UNESCO has classified Nigeria among countries that may miss the 2015 deadline for the provision of Education for All if urgent action is not taken.

As a major UN investigation confirmed the commission of widespread atrocities against Twa 'pygmy' communities in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Minority Rights Group International (MRG) called for neighbouring states and the UN Security Council to take urgent diplomatic and humanitarian action to protect Twa and other communities from violations including mass rape, kidnapping, executions and cannibalism carried out against them by rebel factions.

The international community and the news media are paying too much attention to Iraq and too little to the calamities facing Africa, senior U.N. officials said Wednesday. The African continent, they warn, is being threatened by a famine, destabilised by an intense civil war in Ivory Coast and endangered by an AIDS epidemic made worse by a shortage of funds.

Poverty and famine have left an estimated 14 million people across Southern Africa hungry, and hunger leaves people weak and vulnerable to disease, including HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. United Nations AIDS Agency (UNAIDS) representative, Bunmi Makinwa, explains that: "A person with HIV needs better nutrition - more calories and more proteins - to stay healthy."

Ghana's reconciliation commission has begun its second week of public hearings of horrific rights abuses and torture allegedly committed by past regimes, especially military governments.

There are nearly 5 000 chimpanzees living in Uganda, according to a recently completed census. But continued hunting and human encroachment on their habitat could reduce that number, said scientists on Tuesday.

World Bank loans and International Monetary Fund-imposed Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) have stripped many women of what meager health and education benefits were once available to them. Women's formal sector unemployment has increased due to IMF-induced recessions, privitizations, and government cutbacks. Food production and other activities that provide income and sustenance to households have been undermined, as in Africa where incentives that switch land and labor to export crop production have forced women to reduce time tending farm plots that are the basis of food security and spend more time as unpaid labourers.

International trade and environmental protection are issues that continually arise on the global policy agenda, including the ongoing World Trade Organization negotiations. But as this volume illustrates, there are often profound differences of perspective, even clashes of interest, between the rich industrialized and developing countries. This book seeks to clarify the issues, detailing how trade impacts on the environment, and the effects that environmental concerns can have on trade.

The involvement of women in the on-going Burundi peace talks is a reflection of their general position in society. The initial battle for women's inclusion by mainly the urban based, educated women, enabled them to enter the peace talks, albeit long after they had started. But even today women are primarily observers of the process. They can participate directly in the discussions but have no right to vote on any motion. Read about the experiences of African women at the East Africa Media Women's Website.

The Norwegian Refugee Council is starting up aid projects for the internally displaced in Liberia. Increased actions of war in Liberia and its neighbouring country the Ivory Coast, has worsened the situation for civilians. There are presently approximately 200 000 internally displaced refugees in Liberia.

Back in 2001 the Doha declaration set the TRIPS council a deadline to find a solution to the issue of how developing countries - with limited or no production capacity - can take advantage of access to compulsory licences to respond to health emergencies. That deadline has now passed with no solution agreed and the post-Doha mood of optimism all but forgotten. This web page sifts through the political fallout of this failure to bring you analysis of how this situation came about and background to the declaration and the issues it aimed to address.

Through an article about AGOA you published recently, I learnt about your excellent web site. I am a Tanzanian citizen, a strong believer in social justice. I am also the co-coordinator of an informal group called Indigenous Rights for Survival International (IRSI). IRSI is a loose network of young people with an interest in public policy issues in Africa. We mainly discuss policy issues through email and ultimately write articles in the press. I am sending you this letter (available through the link below), which I wrote to the President of the United Republic of Tanzania calling on him to stop the violation of fundamental human rights in Loliondo Division of Ngorongoro, Tanzania.

The Women's World Summit Foundation (WWSF) cordially invites you to submit nominations for the tenth annual 'Prize for Women's Creativity in Rural Life' Award, honoring creative and courageous women and women's organisations working to improve the quality of life in rural communities around the world.

Latest media reports about the Mandela SOS music concert reveal that it's not "all systems go" for the concert as reported earlier on Thusanang. According to the Sunday Times, the concert was called off on Friday last week due to contractual problems. The Nelson Mandela Foundation's head, John Samuel, cited the inability of US producers to come to a satisfactory agreement with the foundation as the main reason for the cancellation of the concert. Revenue generated from TV rights from around the world was to be donated to the Foundation and the UN for the fight against Aids.

New violence has flared in Ivory Coast as the army fights rebels near the Liberian border, while rival factions in peace talks near Paris discuss a power-sharing pact aimed at ending civil war. The fighting in the west of the world's top cocoa producer was by far the heaviest since former colonial power France launched talks last week to try to end a four-month conflict it fears could spread through West Africa.

Four suspects in the murder of Bulawayo war veterans' chief, Cain Nkala, were tortured during interrogation by the police in Bulawayo and forced to sign confessions which were dictated to them by their torturers, the High Court has heard.

There is a current discussion on the role that ICTs potentially have to play in rural areas of the developing world. Its stated aim is to look beyond the current 'digital divide' debate, which focuses on information disparities to assess the potential role of ICTs in the context of current rural development paradigms.

Britain will not abandon its development projects in Africa even if war breaks out in Iraq, said British International Development Secretary Clare Short. Britain currently spends £600m ($900m) on development assistance in Africa and plans to increase this number to one billion pounds by 2005-2006.

The emergence of a more democratic polity in Nigeria demands a redefinition of the relationship between citizens and the state. While the essence of military or indeed any other dictatorship is the denial of fundamental rights in one guise or another, the essence of democratic governance rests on the respect for, defence and advancement of human, civil, political, economic and cultural rights of all without distinction. At least, this is the way it ought to be.

However efforts to promote civil and democratic rights and institutions in Nigeria are facing significant challenges and generating social and political conflict. Amongst the numerous social, political and economic crises undermining Nigeria's nascent democracy, a key issue has been the recent implementation of the Sharia Criminal Penal Code in northern Nigeria.

Sharia law is as old as Nigeria itself. Historically the 19th century holy war, which was led by Shehu Usman Dan Fodio in the Hausa kingdom, had as one of its major aims the need to improve the standards of living of Muslim women. However, after his death, and with time, the kingdom returned to its patriarchal structures.

In present-day Nigeria, the concern of human rights campaigners and millions of Nigerians, both Muslim and Christian, is the extension of sharia law to criminal matters as against personal and civil matters, which it had been regulating before 1999. This has led to the introduction of flagellation (whipping), lapidation (stoning) and amputation into the penal code. These punishments have stimulated national and international debate on the law as it relates to gender. Between 1999 and today, ten northern states have ratified the implementation of the Sharia Penal Code. These state authorities have argued that by virtue of section 6(5) (K), the 1999 constitution gives power to Nigeria's component states to establish courts, and may be authorized by law to exercise jurisdiction at first instance or on appeal matters with respect to which a state House of Assembly may make laws. Rights campaigners on the other hand, have argued that the constitution of Nigeria defines it as a secular state.

The implementation of Sharia Penal Codes in northern Nigeria is flawed in several respects. Firstly, it does not adequately protect the rights of women. Therefore abuse, violence and discrimination against women go unpunished as they are wrongly considered to be socially acceptable. In addition, the testimony of women is devalued and treated as that of a minor or person without necessary legal capacity. Often, these biases and attitudes also affect judges and therefore the judgment of the Sharia Courts.

As a result the implementation of sharia in Nigeria has placed some restrictions on the rights of women in northern Nigeria. In the last two years three major cases that have violated women's rights have attracted international and public condemnation.

In Safiya Tungartudu Hussein's case for instance, the question of gender bias has been raised on the following grounds:

1. Her pregnancy constituted the main evidence against her, but no scientific efforts were made to establish or disprove the paternity of the child.

2. The onus of pivot of adultery was just pregnancy.

3. The man named in the case was allowed to go free after denying responsibility for the pregnancy.

These points alone suggest that the thinking of the court and supporters of sharia is that only women can be guilty of the 'offences' of adultery or fornication. What happens then, in the case of seduction of minors, or rape? This suggests that men living under shaira have been given a license to rape women and seduce or assault minors, or even impregnate them in the course of a relationship and then deny responsibility and watch them face a death sentence.

Democratically minded Muslim activists have also adjudged the pronouncement as a misapplication of sharia law, as a result of ignorance on the part of the women, the judge and those that supported the sentence.

Some Islamic scholars go further and believe that under the sharia law every person irrespective of country of origin, religion, race, sex, status, age or colour has basic human rights that should be respected. These rights include: the rights to life, right to justice, right to equality, right to be free from discrimination, right to freedom from slavery, respect for the chastity of women, right to freedom from want, right to security of life and property, right to personal liberty, right to freedom of expression, and equality before the law.

Dr. M. T. Ladan has argued for example, that there are some specific rights to women because of their “special responsibilities and status in the eye of Islam”. These rights are the right to equality in status, worth and value, right to education, right to own and dispose of property, right to inheritance and dower i.e. a dead mans estate or part of his estate inherited by his widow, right to maintenance, right to custody of children and right to obtain divorce.

Nevertheless, rights campaigners, Islamic modernists and feminists believe that there are two important principles in the Quran which clearly establish gender differences:

1. Notion of quwama (the authority or guardianship that men can exercise individually or collectively over women).

2. Notion relegating women to private spheres of life.

The notion of quwama is reflected in several verses of Surah 4.34 (Al Wisa). It is also worthy of note that this surah deals with several issue's regarding family law, especially marriage, repudiation and inheritance.

For instance it is argued that polygamy is forbidden for women (Al wisa verse 33) while it is allowed for men. Even though this has taken a new dimension in some countries, the verse endorsing polygamy (Quran 4.3) has been read by modern scholars as being applicable only to the man who believes that he will be able to love and relate to more than one wife equitably, including financial maintenance if applicable. This is however subject to the conscience of the man. As we know, ethics, morality and the law in all countries and all religions have established that many men and women have no conscience. In certain countries, modern legal reforms have positively insisted that a man must prove to the court his ability to maintain several wives equitably before entering into a second marriage.

Be that as it may, the critics of this notion still feel that women are not given the same opportunities i.e. to have as many husbands as two, three or four even if they claim they can love, relate to and maintain them equitably. This suggests that men are believed to be superior to women, or in some way more powerful beings. On the second notion of exclusion of women from political participation, Abu Bakra's has read a hadith to mean or to have an effect that “a nation which places its affairs in the hands of a woman shall never prosper”, Al-Bukhari, Hadith No. 4425. Some scholars have argued however that some of these criticisms are a product of custom and have no relationship to the law. Several Muslim countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia have elected women leaders.

One of the issues regarding gender bias is that of women as witnesses. Quran 2: 282 appears to allow the testimony of women in only civil matters and even then, two women are considered the equivalent of a single male witness. However in criminal procedure, certain interpretations believe that women are not acceptable as credible witnesses.

Discrimination against women has also manifested in policy and law making. For instance women in Zamfara State in northern Nigeria were, for a period, prevented from travelling in public transport. The stated reason was that women are not to be seen in public spheres of life and certainly not in the company of unrelated men. Some women's organisations protested, and the law was amended, but in practice women are mostly provided with “women only” public transport.

In another instance in Tarata Mafara local government, single women were given a three month ultimatum to get married or face being sacked from jobs in the civil service. Some financial inducements were provided to encourage women to become married. These examples constitute rights violations under Nigerian law. These and other similar policies also mask a greater problem of growing unemployment, lack of amenities and recreational facilities etc. The criminalization of women and their rights diverts attention from the real causes of crime, lack of adequate transport and housing and so forth. Such discriminatory policies are applicable to mostly ordinary everyday people as the rich and powerful find ways around them.

The Nigeria constitution is supreme by virtue of the provision of Section 1 (1). Section 3 states that any other law which is inconsistent with the provisions of the constitution, shall be null and void. Chapter 4 of the 1999 constitution dwells on fundamental human rights, which include rights to freedom of thought, conscience and religion (Section 38, 1999). However, federal legislation does not specifically uphold the rights of women in areas where custom or religion violate their constitutional rights. Police officers for example routinely deny women the right to post bail in both Christian and Muslim parts of the country even though posters in many police stations state, “men and women have the right to post bail”. Like other laws, specific punishments need to be stipulated for the violations of women's rights.

Existing inconsistencies and ambiguities create the space for the violation of women's rights. In conclusion, rights campaigners, women's organisations in Nigeria and internationally need to work towards law reform, and the domestic enforcement of international norms and standard for the observance of women's human rights such as the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Elections are not equal to democracy. The real test of democracy is a nation's capacity to uphold the constitutional, democratic and human rights of all its citizens regardless of ethnicity, race, age, economic and social status, and of course gender.

*Abiola Akiyode-Afolabi is a human rights lawyer. She is also Coordinator of Women Advocates Research and Documentation Centre (WARDC), which has campaigned extensively on Sharia and other women's rights issues in Nigeria. WARDC can be reached at [email][email protected]

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers has called on women to do more to influence "political priorities", urging them to speak out against political agendas that do not take into account what is important to them. Speaking in Geneva at the launch of an assessment report on the impact of armed conflict on women and their role in peace-building, Lubbers said women can play a stronger role in conflict resolution as they tend to approach conflict resolution in a practical way.

Aids dissident Roberto Giraldo, in South Africa for the second time in two months to talk to health officials, says Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang agrees with his controversial views. But the minister of health denies this. Giraldo, who has given a talk on HIV and nutrition to the health ministers from the 14 Southern African Development Community countries during his latest visit, also claimed that the 14 ministers believed correct diet could cure Aids.

Male to female domestic violence levels in rural Uganda are high and associated with both alcohol consumption and the male partner's perceived risk of HIV, according to a study conducted by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The study found that approximately one in three women living in rural Uganda reported being physically threatened or assaulted by their current partner.

The Hospital Doctors' Association (HDA) met this week to discuss whether doctors should down stethoscopes once again to press the government for an 80 percent pay rise promised to all civil servants.

Any person infected by a life-threatening sexually transmissible disease who failed to disclose that to his or her partner before having sex is guilty of rape, the SA Law Commission (SALC) said on Tuesday. "Intentional non-disclosure by a person that he or she is infected by a life-threatening sexually transmissible infection in circumstances in which there is a significant risk of transmission of such infection to that person prior to sexual relations with another (consenting) person amounts to sexual relations by false pretences and would therefore constitute rape," it said in a statement.

Jeanne Nolte was sleeping fitfully in her hospital bed while waiting to undergo major head surgery, when a blood-soaked woman was brought into the ward. She told Nolte that three Afrikaans men had beaten her until she lost an eye. Three days later Nolte decided not to undergo the operation at Garankuwa Hospital to remove an aneurism on her brain, because it would cause her to lose her memory. Instead, she wanted all her faculties so that she could establish and run the Anti Racist Movement (ARM) in the city of her birth, Polokwane, in Limpopo. Today, if you drive through Polokwane, you'll find business and government offices displaying bold stickers declaring: "Right of Admission Reserved, No Racists Allowed."

The HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa could be turned around, despite the devastating toll on human lives, UN Secretary General's Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa Stephen Lewis, says. Lewis noted that defeating the disease would require a combination of political will and resources.

The industrialised North continues in its attempts to send its hazardous waste ships to be scrapped in the shipyards of the developing South, threatening human health and the environment in those nations, charged activists as delegates gathered this week for the conference of the Basel Convention on hazardous waste trade.

Four opposition supporters in Zimbabwe have been arrested after demonstrating in support of the Harare mayor, Elias Mudzuri. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change said it hoped to have 2,000 people at the demonstration, but the police banned the protest, and arrested those who turned up.

Residents of the small informal settlement of Driziek, situated in the Orange Farm area southwest of Johannesburg, face eviction from the homes they have lived in for the past nine years. The community has vowed to resist the “unwarranted and unilateral” move on the part of the local authorities and sees the proposed evictions as part of an ongoing assault by the state.

A relieved World Vision says it has resumed its feeding programme in the Beitbridge area in southern Zimbabwe, following a month-long delay in the delivery of food aid from the United States.

This review outlines a strategy for accelerating progress on Girls' Education in order to meet the goal of gender equality in primary and secondary education by 2005. This is an important challenge of the Millennium Development Goals and the Education for All goals and one which UNICEF feels is slipping.

A Zimbabwe correspondent for the BBC, Lewis Machipisa, has been accused of spying for the broadcasting station in Zimbabwe. The state owned weekly newspaper The Herald says that Machipisa is now working for the BBC and a London-based community radio station, SW Radio Africa. This was happening despite the "fact" that the government banned the BBC from operating in Zimbabwe, after accusations that the station was peddling "falsehoods". The paper says that Machipisa is now going "underground" in the rural areas, shooting images for the BBC, writing stories and sending them to Britain.

Zimbabwe appears headed for another season of food shortages in 2003-2004 with poor rains and reduced plantings likely to dent output, a U.S. based food monitoring organisation says. Although Zimbabwe was once the breadbasket of southern Africa, sharply reduced domestic food production has forced the country into dependence upon food aid, and nearly half Zimbabwe's estimated 14 million people now face starvation.

I refer to Ledum Mitee's editorial on the democratic process in Nigeria (Pambazuka News 94), and I'm sure he's right that there are flaws, but don't let any of us get too carried away with criticising the nations of Africa.

Democracy is very new in Africa and the old nations of Europe and America don't have a flawless record. In the UK we have a government with an overwhelming majority based on less than 50% of the vote, and in the USA we have a President elected with fewer votes than his opponent by virtue of a deeply flawed process in Florida, a state run by his brother.

No system is perfect. The important issue is that we continue to hold all of the systems up to the light of public scrutiny.

David Jamieson, United Kingdom