The UK-based Swaziland Solidarity Campaign (SSC) has called on the Swazi government to stop harassing journalists after receiving reports that some Swazi journalists have been the subject of death threats and intimidation by police.

The rights of people living with HIV/AIDS to participate in the voting process should be upheld, extended and preserved, with reasonable accommodations made in the voting process including voting programmes, mobile voting facilites, provisions for absentee voting, early voting and proxy or mail voting. This forms part of a six-part plan on how enhanced democratic processes can make a difference in fighting the HIV/AIDS pandemic, released by the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa.

The focus of the conference will be to examine best training practices used in international healthcare settings, with particular emphasis on family planning and reproductive health in Africa. In addition, training practices that have been employed successfully in sectors other than healthcare will be examined and discussed for their applicability to reproductive health programs.

The Certificate in Managing NGO Resource Centres will provide participants with the opportunity to gain or improve skills in managing information, as well as to analyse the dynamics of indigenous knowledge, appropriate media, information sharing and networking. During the program participants will develop an action plan for their resource centre's contribution to the community-based development, information and education strategies of their organization.

I am very pleased with this service. I work for the Canadian International
Development Agency (CIDA) on Guinea and Sierra Leone and always closely monitor your publication for news and reports important to the region.

United States and international relief groups are growing increasingly concerned about the ongoing food crisis in six Southern African nations where they say as many as 14.4 million people are in urgent need of assistance. The latest figure was significantly higher than the 12.8 million the United Nations has cited in previous estimates.

Boldly proclaiming a decisive and historic battle against corruption, the Zambian government is locked in a bitter struggle with most of the Cabinet it replaced in January.
However, the way the government is going about its anti-corruption campaign has raised questions of whether it is not an old-fashioned power struggle instead.

The Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies, Center for Civil Society Studies is pleased to announce a call for applications for the International Fellows in Philanthropy Program for the 2003-2004 academic year. This program based in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, affords an opportunity for advanced study, research, and training for up to eight participants each year who are involved in studying or managing private nonprofit, or philanthropic organizations outside of the United States, or working as NGO liaisons in the public or commercial sectors. Fellowships, which can be an academic year or semester, are available at both the Junior and Senior level. Special funding is available for Fellows from East Africa.

A review paper on NGO Participation in the Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria undertaken by the International HIV/AIDS Alliance examines and provides recommendations on issues relating to problems of access to information by participating NGOs, the need for NGO involvement to mean more than simply consultation, a need for improvements in NGO networks and accountability and the role of NGOs as recipients in fund disbursement.

A boycott by Mozambique's opposition Renamo party of planned celebrations last Friday to mark a decade of peace has been described as "regrettable" by ruling Frelimo.

A new report by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) has found that cultural practices intended to safeguard young Swazi women from unwanted pregnancies and HIV infections may actually be contributing to the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Sao Tome and Principe President Fradique de Menezes last Thursday appointed Maria das Neves the archipelago's first woman Prime Minister, news agencies reported.

Women in the Central African Republic (CAR) are struggling to improve their status in society. One of the ways in which they are trying to achieve this is to form associations to fight their cause. The Association of Women lawyers (Association des Femmes Juristes de Centrafrique) is one of these bodies at the forefront of the endeavour.

The non-governmental organization Action by Churches Together (ACT) appealed on Thursday for US $1.6 million to provide emergency relief to at least 30,000 Liberians internally displaced persons, the organization reported.

For years, she wrote a column called The Secret Diary of Christina, about a young, single woman living in Kampala, which ran in Uganda's The New Vision. Then she started writing a series of children's stories, The Adventures of Tema, which were published in the Sunday Vision for several years, and proved to be very popular. Now all that writing has come to fruition. Last week, Susan Mugizi Kajura was announced the winner of the $3,000 (Sh 240,000) Most Promising New Children's Writer Award at the Macmillan Children's Literature Awards, 2002.

The Treatment Action Campaign, the lobby pushing for the rights of HIV/AIDS victims, says that a meeting of government's advisory and advocacy panel on the epidemic amounted to another missed opportunity to deal with urgent issues. In its statement the SA National AIDS Council, Sanac, gave no signal of national government's intentions to allow disbursement to KwaZulu-Natal of grant funding from the Global Fund. The Treatment Action Campaign accused the health minister of blocking the grant because it would expand access to antiretroviral treatment in the public sector.

The Chief Justice, Benjamin Odoki, has conceded that corruption exists in the Judiciary but said the problem was not as massive as portrayed.

Willie Madisha, president of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), says government leaders may be linked to attempts to infiltrate the labour movement in a bid to fragment it. He was responding to a government statement on Wednesday branding Cosatu's two-day anti-privatisation strike a failure and saying there was a crisis of leadership in the union body.
Related Links:
* The Future of the Alliance
http://www.nu.ac.za/ccs/default.asp?2,40,5,78
* Sactwu berates government
http://www.africapulse.org/index.phpaction=viewarticle&articleid=416

Eritrea has denied backing Sudanese rebel forces which launched an attack in eastern Sudan last week.

The International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES) is seeking a skilled field intern who will provide support to the IFES field offices in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The position will last for one semester or over the course of one summer with a minimum of thirteen weeks spent in the DRC.

The Program Manager will coordinate CRS Health/AIDS programs/projects, assist counterparts in planning, designing, implementing, monitoring and reporting of Health and HIV/AIDS projects, assist counterparts in establishing systems for implementation and monitoring of activities.

Somali refugees preparing to move to the United States are rushing to circumcise their daughters after learning the practice is illegal in their future home. An unusually large number of girls have been circumcised in recent weeks in the Kenyan refugee camps housing the nearly 12 000 Somalis from the Bantu ethnic group due to be resettled to the US early next year, humanitarian workers confirmed.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) warned on Monday that thousands of people could die in Southern Africa from the explosive combination of disease, hunger and a lack of medical facilities unless money was raised quickly for urgent health care.

Guinea-Bissau's opposition parties demanded last Friday the resignation of President Kumba Yala, saying he had interfered with the independent judiciary and encouraged tribalism to destabilize the country, news agencies reported.

The Senegalese Ministry of Health has reported some 12 cases of yellow fever particularly in the central Mbaké department, which includes the city of Touba with 800 000 inhabitants, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday.

National advocacy groups for the rights of handicapped women and children throughout the central Africa region have formed a federation that will be based in Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo (ROC).

Last Friday’s issue of the Washington Post carried, like many leading newspapers in developed countries, a prominent story announcing the genetic sequencing of both the parasite that causes malaria and of the mosquito that transmits it to people. All such stories emphasised that the details of the sequence of these two organisms, published in the journals Science and Nature, opens up exciting new avenues for prevention, diagnosis and treatment of the disease. In sub-Saharan Africa — home to almost 90 per cent of the 300 million people who are infected by the disease each year — however, the coverage was very different. The front pages of leading newspapers in cities like Kampala and Nairobi continued their coverage of local political stories.

Violence against women is one of the most pressing public health problems in South Africa, with rape being more common than tuberculosis, according to Professor Lynette Denny, senior specialist at Groote Schuur Hospital and University of Cape Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology.

HIV/AIDS has "contributed heavily" to Southern Africa's food shortage by causing the deaths of many African farmers and leaving many farmers and communities too weak to cultivate crops, according to a new U.N. report.

Former Grain Marketing Board chief executive Martin Muchero has been sentenced to 150 hours of community service while the former finance manager Dorothy Chasakara will serve a total of 550 hours of community service for their corrupt dealings. Muchero was on Wednesday found guilty on one count of corruption involving a $59 000 deal, while Chasakara was convicted of the same count plus a charge involving the purchase of 21 vehicles for more than $1,6 million.

As the peace process begins to take root in Angola, displaced communities have turned to indigenous forms of therapy as a way of dealing with the psychological scars left behind by nearly three decades of civil war.

The Johannesburg Implementation document that emerged from the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) was not an action plan and contains few targets for implementation, many of which are reiterations of the Millennium Development Goals and other UN agreements. Nevertheless, progress was made on women's access to land, an issue of particular importance to women in Africa. For the first time in an official document, and due to concerted advocacy by the Women's Caucus, language is included that explicitly guarantees the right of women to inherit land, according to a report on the WSSD from the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO).

Development finance ministers have backtracked on support promised for the new Education for All Action Plan programme at the 2002 IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings. Since the promises were made in April donors have failed to deliver additional financing, implementation has slipped and the financing framework has still not been finalised, says a report from the Global Campaign for Education.

The international donor and creditor communities have a duty to ensure that the anti-poor lending and borrowing patterns of the past are not repeated, says a joint submission to the World Bank and IMF review of HIPC and debt sustainability by the Catholic Fund for Overseas Development (CAFOD). Both debtors and creditors need to begin analytical work to judge the desirable blend of grants and concessional finance to enable low-income countries to manage their future debt burdens.

Charities Aid Foundation in the UK, working together with CAF Southern Africa, is creating an international database of organisations eligible to receive online donations. 'CAF's aim is to help donors make the most of their giving and charities the most of their resources,' says Bongi Msimanga, an administrator with CAF Southern Africa. 'Through the creation of this database, CAF creates opportunities for individuals and companies to give via the Internet and to create another avenue for organisations to raise funds online.'

We need someone to manage one of our core services: placing finance staff from our register with NGOs in the field. You will take the lead in recruiting new, highly skilled people on to the register and maintaining good relationships with them. Working closely with our partner NGOs, you will help them to define their needs and find the right people for their field jobs.

At least 1,600 people from Côte d’Ivoire have sought refuge in Mali since a 19 September coup attempt sparked off fighting between the Ivorian army and mutinous soldiers, the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Activities (OCHA) reported on Tuesday.

The current instability in Cote d'Ivoire threatens to trigger massive population upheaval if fighting between rebels and government forces continues to spread. The political turmoil has already unleashed an anti-immigrant backlash that could affect millions of foreigners in Cote d'Ivoire, including 70,000 refugees, and that likely will linger after the current military standoff ends.

An expanding economy has helped lower Tanzania's poverty level slightly, but more than a third of the people still live below the poverty line and new data shows a growing rural-urban poverty gap.

A media awards programme has been launched to promote and encourage more informed, consistent reporting, analysis of the information society and issues related to the development potential and impact of Information and Communication Technologies.

"Press freedom is very limited in the territories under the RCD's control. Many journalists have been arrested, threatened or assaulted in the region since the start of the conflict," notes RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard in a letter to RCD President Adolphe Onusumba Yemba.

South Africa has set up a national chapter of one of the biggest philanthropic foundations in the world. The Laureus Sport for Good Foundation uses sporting legends to promote sport as a tool for social change and raise funds for social upliftment programmes worldwide.

Botswana on Tuesday became the first beneficiary of a new "diamond relief fund" aimed at reducing poverty in the poorest gem producing countries. The fund was launched as the diamond industry's top traders and polishers opened a world conference on Monday in Antwerp, Belgium.

Five Southern African countries have launched a bid to be allowed to sell ivory, despite a ban intended to protect elephants. They are seeking permission to sell 80 tonnes of ivory, arguing that their game parks have too many elephants and are not at risk of extinction.

Export subsidies from the EU encourage European dairy farmers to over produce, creating the infamous European butter mountain. This surplus is dumped on the markets of some of the world's poorest countries putting local dairy producers out of business. In Zimbabwe butter production fell by 92% between 1994 and 1999 because dairy farmers could not compete with subsidised European butter. Action for Southern Africa is campaigning to allow African farmers the freedom to grow.

The Nobel Prize for Physics has been awarded. Visit this site for the official press release and read the lectures by the winners.

This paper scrutinizes the language of government reports and news media sources to shed light on their role in forming a negative image of politically motivated hacking in general, and online political activism, in particular. It is argued that the mass media's portrayal of hacking conveniently fits the elite's strategy to form a popular consensus in a way that supports the elite's crusade under different pretexts to eradicate hacking, an activity that may potentially threaten the dominant order.

Pressure is mounting on the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to isolate Zimbabwe from the regional body or risk sanctions from the European Union (EU) and the US. According to SABC news monitored in Lusaka, EU senior officials have been meeting to come up with a strong position demanding that Zimbabwe should not be included in all regional initiatives or meetings.
Related Link: SADC leaders spurn Mugabe
http://www.suntimes.co.za/2002/10/06/news/news01.asp

Thousands of teachers from two rival unions joined forces Tuesday in observing a strike for more pay and better working conditions. Members of the Progressive Teachers' Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ), which called the strike, and the Zimbabwe Teachers' Association (Zimta), whose leadership had opposed it, both staged sit-ins at schools around the country.