PAMBAZUKA NEWS 83
PAMBAZUKA NEWS 83
Human rights group Women Against Child Abuse and the Democratic Alliance (DA) have launched a campaign to put pressure on government to allocate resources to fight the criminal abuse of women and children.
The Ghanaian Chief Justice has sent out a strong warning to corrupt officials in the judiciary, describing the problem of corruption as "disturbing" and warning that those caught will be removed from the service.
The global fund to fight Aids, tuberculosis and malaria has appointed private auditors to oversee its projects in Asia and Africa in an attempt to cut corruption and inefficiency.
Officials at the Social Security Commission (SSC) paid two investment brokers N$5 million to manage funds allocated illegally. Most of the money was eventually shared as kickbacks, a probe into the parastatal reveals.
Indian group Paharpur will bid a second time for the Komatiland forests only if its concerns around good governance and fair play in the bidding process are addressed, it says.
Ethnic Burundi rebels have 30 days to agree to a ceasefire or face tough action. That is the word from Jacob Zuma, South African Deputy President and mediator to the talks, and the African leaders who had gathered in Tanzania. The ultimatum comes a day after the leaders failed to achieve an all-inclusive ceasefire to end the nine year-war in Burundi.
On the western shore of the Red Sea, three drought stricken countries are locked in a food emergency that is threatening the lives of millions of people. Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Sudan have all been engaged in complex military conflicts that, together with the failure of the region's crops, have placed residents and refugees alike at risk of starvation.
A Swazi Transport minister, Titus Mlangeni, has been ordered by a parliamentary select committee to resign following findings by the committee that he received bribes in the sale of a government-owned airline.
Rather reluctantly I have to write to say that I disagree with almost everything that Issa Shivji has to say (Pambazuka News 80&81). The reluctance is because I share Professor Shivji’s starting point: how can human rights discourse be wrested from those who use it to defend the dominant structures of society and reformulate it to advance the struggles of the oppressed? However, I find the actual content of his argument incoherent. It also fails to engage in any practical sense with the work of African human rights activists.
Sociologists call it "cross-generational sex" -- older men choosing teenage girls as casual sex partners -- and it's become an astonishingly common practice in sub-Saharan Africa. These relationships are transactional in nature: The girls get clothes, school tuition, gifts -- sometimes it's just food or cheap plastic shoes -- in return for a sexual relationship. They also get AIDS.
They crossed the Atlantic Ocean, the gender gap and the digital divide on the way to success. Now a group of African women tech-entrepreneurs take on their next challenge: bringing it home.
Rights groups in Swaziland are concerned that Swazi women who want to receive government scholarships must prove their loyalty to the Swazi way of life by showing that they subscribe to the maidens' chastity rules called "umcwasho".
Professor Adebayo Williams, popular columnist and author of The Remains of the Last Emperor was home recently from his base in the United States. He spoke about his new work and issues concerning the state of Nigerian literature, publishing and the reading culture.
Many of these sixty-seven poems deal with coming to terms with the long period of military rule and kleptocracy in Nigeria, and the effects on its citizens' psyches. A kind of absurd theatre is the poet's metaphor for these memories, and forms the structure of his work. The poems are grouped into acts and scenes, and the final 'chorus' act includes poems from other poets who have inspired this poet's work, notably Tanure Ojaide.
In this overview of world capitalism, William K. Tabb confronts the prevailing view of globalization as the steamroller against which even the most powerful nations are helpless. Tabb describes how institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation have focused on neoliberal goals, devising regulatory frameworks to provide greater freedom and opportunity for capital at the expense of social need.
Zimbabwe's police force has just signed a regional code of conduct that binds them to a respect for human rights. Visit this page and decide for yourself whether they measure up. If they don't, various contact details are provided for you to express your opinion.
We discovered that Tom had been in Central all day Friday and had been severely tortured for a period of about 4 hours in the afternoon. He was initially beaten with all of the other guys for about an hour with batons, boots, fists etc... The 4 were returned to the cells and Tom was taken off for special treatment. He was taken to a room in Central and subjected to a series of about 30 - 40 electric shocks while blindfolded, with his hands hand-cuffed behind his back. He was beaten on the soles of his feet, kicked and beaten all over the body. He has severe lacerations on his tongue and mouth where he bit himself while convulsing during the shocks. He cannot eat and has difficulty drinking. His wrists and arms are swollen from the handcuffs which restrained his arms behind his back while our state agents did their patriotic duty. The soles of his feet are so painful he has great difficulty walking. He can't use his hands. When we first saw him he was having difficulty focusing, though this improved towards the end of the day. He is sore all over his body from the kicking and beating.
* An extract from an email by Edwina Spicer, mother of MDC activist Tom Spicer
Regional and internal conflicts often provide an atmosphere for human rights violations causing large groups to flee across borders or to leave their homes seeking safety elsewhere. Unaware of how or where to request assistance, their plight often becomes desperate. This volume provides a detailed and concrete analysis of how human rights complaints mechanisms can be accessed by refugees, asylum-seekers, and internally displaced persons.
For the vast majority of Africans -- the 70%-plus who live on subsistence farms off in the bush, or eke out meagre livings in towns -- medical care is a dream. In terms of purchasing power, $1 to $2 a day is the absolute best that Africans, on average, can manage for essentials. In other words, the average daily wages earned are precisely the cost of even the least expensive HIV treatments. This is a Devil's Bargain, no choice at all: The choice is, very simply, between absolute destitution and death.
Thousands of Eritrean refugees in Sudan are in limbo as recent tensions between the two countries have put their repatriation on hold just months before their refugee status comes to an end.
A rapidly increasing number of foreigners, mostly African, are seeking asylum and refugee status in Cape Town due to the "high incidence of xenophobia" and crime in Johannesburg.
A report published by Greenpeace suggests that the US administration is using the famine in southern Africa as a marketing tool to push GM food in the continent. The document details how the offer of GM food aid by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is the latest move in a ten-year marketing campaign designed to facilitate the introduction of US-developed GM crops into Africa.
The post involves providing technical policy support and guidance, working within national, regional, global and external policy frameworks. Central to the role is the development and implementation of current and future HIV/AIDS work in Mozambique at both a strategic and operational level.
The IRC seeks a Sexual & Gender Based Violence Program Coordinator for its Guinea program.
The purpose of the position is to provide strategic leadership and technical support in human resources management (HRM) of World Vision Mozambique (WV-Moz), and to strengthen the management of the human resources services and functions of the office, including the recruitment, hiring, salary administration, and benefits for all expatriate and senior national staff.
A desperate plea from a 'Bushman' girl holding out in Botswana's Central Kalahari Game Reserve has been received by Survival International. The letter was handed to an Italian tourist visiting the reserve, who passed it to Survival. In the letter the unnamed girl says, 'Tell other countries [about our plight] so that if we die they will know there were people in this area... Margaret Nasha [minister in charge of the relocation] has sentenced us to death because of water... The government of Botswana forced Basarwa (Bushmen) from Central Kalahari Game Reserve to new villages... some people of Gugama (village) we refused to move... Help us with food and water.'
Did you know that Europe's 21 million dairy cows could take a luxury round-the-world trip for the amount European governments spend subsidising their farmers every year? It means European cows receive more income per day than the 3 billion people in the world who live on less than US$2 a day. Join Cafod's trade justice campaign.
Legal aid in Africa exists in name only in most countries. Prisons across the continent are congested with high remand populations. The few with the means to retain a lawyer may get bail or a prompt trial, but most suffer unseen and unnoticed by a system that is itself under-resourced and over-stretched. The situation in Malawi is no different. In May 2000, Penal Reform International (PRI) proposed a pilot paralegal scheme to provide legal aid to prisoners. After two years of operation, more than 550 paralegal aid clinics have been held, reaching over 10 000 prisoners.
Environmental justice is a useful tool in tackling human vulnerability and environmental management, Capacity Global (Capacity), a UK-based, not-for-profit organisation working on poverty, environment and human rights, has found. Environmental justice for vulnerable communities is based on two main principles: Everyone has the right to a clean, safe and healthy environment and to manage their own resources. The most vulnerable people in society, the poorest in particular, should not suffer the disproportionate, negative effects of environmental omissions, actions, policies or law.
Action for Southern Africa
Twenty million South Africans still live in abject poverty, more than 4.6 million have no income at all and more than 2.7 million families have no shelter. These statistics are shocking enough alone, but become even more so when you consider that in comparison, the beneficiaries of South Africa's apartheid era still have their houses, cars, pensions and jobs and that apartheid's international profiteers continue to make ever-greater profits.
The UN declared apartheid a crime against humanity in 1973 and across the world, anti-apartheid movements began to press strongly for sanctions against apartheid. In 1987, an investigation into the responsibility of multinational corporations for the continued existence of apartheid by the UN Commission on Human Rights' concluded that "by their complicity, those transnational corporations must be considered accomplices in the crime of apartheid and must be prosecuted for their responsibility in the continuation of that crime".
Yet, there was no relent. When the apartheid state was bankrupt in 1986, the world's biggest banks from Germany, Switzerland, the United States, the UK and France rescued apartheid by favourably extending its loan terms three times. The apartheid regime used this lifeline to postpone negotiations and to intensify its repression. A criminal system which repressed the majority of the people of South Africa through imprisonment, torture, murder, an enforced migrant labour system and forced removals from land and housing, was wilfully backed up by financial and business investments that generated massive profits.
More than $3 billion in profits was transferred out of apartheid South Africa by foreign banks and businesses each year between 1985 and 1993. The 21,000 victims of apartheid violations identified by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), although by no means representing all those affected, could all be compensated if foreign investors returned only 1.5 percent of those profits.
The victims of apartheid should be entitled to reparations, including compensation, for the suffering they endured. But foreign banks and businesses have been remarkably hard-nosed in rejecting calls to contribute to reparations payments, which has now led to the filing of an international legal suit. A claim against Swiss and American banks was filed in New York in June. German, British, French, and South African banks and businesses that prefer to ignore apartheid victims' call for justice will be similarly challenged in the months to come. The doors are still open to discuss and resolve the matter decisively, but the foreign corporations' refusal to communicate has so far left no other option.
In terms of who should foot the bill for post-apartheid reconstruction and development, to insist that the new South African government alone should pay is to ask the victims to pay for their own suffering. Businesses and banks that propped up and profited from apartheid are liable too. Adequate reparations for apartheid must include massive social programmes for the reconstruction and development of whole communities. The new South Africa's attempts at doing this are seriously constrained by the legacy of apartheid, including the $25.6 billion inherited in illegitimate foreign debt. Apartheid debt cancellation is one form of reparation that will allow greater room for national spending on job creation, housing, health care, education, and the provision of water and electricity to the poor.
* Njongonkulu Ndungane, Jubilee South Africa patron, Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town
* Send comments on this article to [email protected]
Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagdo launched a failed attempt to defeat rebels in their northern stronghold of Bouaka this week after refusing to sign a peace deal following mediation by the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas). The conflict, which reportedly started out as an army mutiny on September 19, was quickly upgraded by the government to a coup attempt and with the rebels now in control of the north of the country, risks being reclassified as a civil war. In this Q&A Pambazuka News answers some of the questions surrounding the conflict.
A discussion list arising from the journal of the same name. The list is for anyone "interested in developing critical insights on class composition, struggles and resistance in South Africa in the broader context of globalized capitalism.". "...it is by no means confined to experts on South Africa; it rather aims to locate the contents of 'Debate' in the broader worldwide confrontation against neo-liberalism." To subscribe send an email to [email][email protected]
Leave the Subject line blank. In the Message area put:
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"Aid Workers Exchange" is an experimental weekly e-mail for knowledge sharing amongst field staff in humanitarian relief and international development. To subscribe write to [email protected] with the title "subscribe".
The outbreak of violence in the Ivory Coast was part of a “conflict system” that had engulfed West Africa since the start of the Liberian civil war in 1989, says the West African Action Network on Small Arms (WAANSA). “The carnage and human cruelty in Sierra Leone, the sporadic violence in Guinea and the massive refugee situation are all manifestations of the West African conflict system.”
Both the government and Unita carried out deliberate violations of international human rights law that constituted war crimes during the Angolan civil war, but the United Nations and the international community failed to intervene in the crisis. Since the end of the conflict the international community has shown themselves to be just as incapable of dealing with the suffering of civilians and understanding the urgent human need that exists in the country, says Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) which has released two reports showing how Angolan civilians were abused as a strategy of war.
PAMBAZUKA NEWS 82
PAMBAZUKA NEWS 82
They say that it takes a thief to catch another thief. Conversely, when it comes to HIV it can be said that it is much easier for a person living with the HI-virus to convincingly offer counselling and support to a recently diagnosed individual, or to one another. Khopotso Bodibe of Health-e News Service, spent time with two AIDS counsellors at the clinic during a debriefing session and spoke with them about the benefits of giving their time to helping other HIV-infected women.
The International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), working in partnership with the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR), invites applications for the Transitional Justice Fellowship Program, a funded, six-month residential fellowship program in Cape Town, South Africa, for 26 professionals from 13 different countries to study transitional justice.
Prevented from hunting dwindling stocks of wildlife in their desert homelands, Gulf Arabs are increasingly setting their sights on the big game and birds of South Africa's veld.
One of the most apparently successful operations ever mounted to recover funds looted from a developing country by a dictator has fallen apart. Nigeria has been forced to resume legal action to seize funds plundered by Sani Abacha, the country's corrupt former ruler, following the collapse of an out-of-court financial settlement with his family worth more than $1bn.
Sudan must revoke a relief flight ban announced on September 26 to prevent a humanitarian crisis from becoming a famine, Human Rights Watch has said. The ban covers all relief flights and vehicles into southern Sudan from the main relief bases in Kenya and Uganda.
Afrika Heritage, the Biennale of The Pan-African Circle of Artists, is at its 4th edition this year. It began in 1995 at Didi Museum and is growing to become a major art event in this part of the continent. This year, Afrika Heritage happens at four centres in Lagos, Nigeria.
Thirty-four health facilities in Zimbabwe are administering the antiretroviral drug nevirapine to HIV-positive pregnant women to reduce their risk of transmitting HIV to their infants, the Zimbabwe Herald/AllAfrica.com reports.
The Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI) has strongly condemned the physical attacks, harassment and death threats issued against journalists working for the African Eye News Service (AENS) in Nelspruit, Mpumalanga Province. The FXI has written to the Mpumalanga Member of Executive Council (MEC) for Safety and Security, Thabang Makwetla, calling for action against the perpetrators.
A coalition of organisations involved in the fight for access to essential medicines in Kenya, has urged the Kenyan government to clarify its "contradictory" position on a new law aimed at expanding use of HIV/AIDS treatment in the country.
The Public Service Accountability Monitor (PSAM), an independent corruption monitoring unit, has declared as a "whitewash" an investigation that cleared a top level health official of improper conduct following revelations of his business interests in the health sector.
The possible sale of 11 "orphan" elephants from Swaziland's Hlane Royal Game Reserve to US zoos has led to a threat of a tourism boycott by a leading US animal rights group.
South African scientists at the University of Cape Town Institute of Infectious Diseases and Molecular Medicine have announced plans to begin manufacturing and testing three new AIDS vaccines, the AP/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.
Niko's is a dingy 24-hour brothel in Zambia's southern tourist town of Livingstone. It is here that young girls, with few other opportunities to make money, live and work.
The TAD Consortium is an e-mail service aimed primarily at people interested in using information and communication technologies to improve the quality of education in the developing world. If you wish to receive it directly, please send an e-mail to [email][email protected] with a request to be added to the TAD Consortium list.
As two days of polling in local council elections in rural areas of Zimbabwe drew to a close on Sunday, the main opposition party disputed the legitimacy of the vote, saying government opponents had been subjected to ongoing violence and intimidation.
Related Links:
* US decries elections
http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/zones/sundaytimes/newsst/newsst1033450804.asp
* Torture victims released
http://zwnews.com/issuefull.cfm?ArticleID=5246
The introduction of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in government processes is fostering a closer relationship between citizens and states, pushing official bodies towards more transparency and accountability. They are also posing a challenge to traditional decision-making structures. Such are the main conclusions of a recent joint study by UNESCO and the Commonwealth Network of Information Technology for Development (COMNET-IT) on e-governance in 15 countries.
The Communication Initiative are publishers of The Drum Beat electronic magazine, the knowledge based web site http://www.comminit.com, and a range of interactive processes such as the Pulse Poll and On-Line Research, as well as a number of other activities related to communication for development. They have initiated an evaluation of their work and are seeking your input. Please visit the web site provided if you would like to participate.
Strolling around supermarkets in Dar es Salaam, it is easier to find boxes of orange juice from Dubai, lines of canned beef from the UK and butter and cheese from as far away as New Zealand, than it is to find local produce. This, critics of the developed world's US $380 billion agricultural subsidies say, is real proof of the impact that the policy has on the development of local markets and industries.
About 570,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) have resettled or returned to their areas of origin in Angola over the past five months, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in its latest situation report.
Two incidents have occurred involving the Guinean army and armed assailants in Nzerekore, near the border with Liberia, amid reports that the situation at the border is getting increasingly tense.
The bookmobile travels around the USA and prints out public domain books that are available as etexts on the Internet. This wonderful project could be implemented in any country - all it takes is a vehicle, a wirelesss link to the net and a PC with a printer and paper. The site also has links to many online texts.
Africa's largest development project, a 650-mile, £2.8bn oil pipeline between Chad and Cameroon, is being criticised for damaging the interests of the poor - the people it was supposed to help. Embarrassed World Bank officials have already admitted that the notoriously corrupt Chad government has spent the first £10m of grant money it received from the consortium on arms for its security forces rather than on the educational and development projects for which the money was intended.
The Southern Africa Institute of Fund Raising has pleasure in presenting a three-day "Resource Mobilisation and Fund Development Course" at it's offices in North Riding, Randburg between 27 - 29 November, 2002. For bookings e-mail [email protected]
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad) has called for a major overhaul of international policy approach to Africa's development following the failure of structural adjustment programmes (Saps). The organisation said after almost two decades of applying Saps, poverty levels in Africa have risen and slow erratic growth is the norm. It adds that rural crises have intensified and de-industrialisation has damaged future growth prospects.
Zambia is importing black rhinos from South Africa for restocking in its game parks where the species had been poached into extinction. The Zambia Wildlife Authority (ZAWA) says 25 black rhinos have been bought from South African National Parks for translocation into the Luangwa North National Park in eastern Zambia.
David Scribner has written a 2-part guideline on how GNU-PG, a powerful encryption package, can 'play a vital role in personal and business communications by increasing security'. A must have if you are concerned about keeping the data on your PC or in your email confidential.
Enjoy this article about the best and worst predictions for the future of technology from some of the world's computing experts. It also contains interesting information about current research and developments in the world of ICTs.
A local content study prepared by the Fantsuam Foundation, an APC member in Nigeria, is examining how communities in Nigeria are using information and communications technologies (ICTs) to document traditional healthcare knowledge.
A government-sponsored program that includes HIV/AIDS prevention, counseling and testing, as well as antiretroviral treatment, could help save nearly three million lives and prevent almost as many new infections in South Africa by 2015, thereby averting a "social catastrophe," according to a report released last Thursday by the Treatment Action Campaign.
Panos seeks to offer a number of fellowship grants to journalists or development experts to research and write articles in national and international media on ICTs and their development impact. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are recognised as a powerful tool to facilitate social development. The flow of information towards the poorest should increase, if poverty is to be reduced. ICTs greatly facilitate the flow of information and knowledge offering the socially-marginalised and the poorest of the poor unprecedented opportunities to assert their own entitlements.
Malian musician Salif Keita has a new CD and will perform its mostly acoustic songs as part of a US tour in October. He talked to Sean Barlow and Banning Eyre of Afropop Worldwide about his new work -and about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Mali.
The International Monetary Fund's policy-making panel has directed the institution to develop a "concrete proposal" that will allow heavily indebted countries to, in effect, declare bankruptcy.
The World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA) declared last Friday that it should be the human right of an infant to be breastfed.
The rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) has offered to suspend military actions during peace negotiations, which have been stalled since government negotiators walked out three weeks ago.
American cotton subsidies are destroying livelihoods in Africa and other developing regions. By encouraging over-production and export dumping, these subsidies are driving down world prices – now at their lowest levels since the Great Depression. While America’s cotton barons get rich on government transfers, African farmers suffer the consequences.
As negotiations between European nations and 77 poor countries get underway, Jenny Brown, Christian Aid's Senior European Union Policy Officer, argues that the European Union must allow its former colonies the freedom to protect their vulnerable producers and emerging industries.
The International Foundation for Education and Self-Help (IFESH) invites applications from college seniors, recent graduates or graduate students who wish to spend nine months (Sept - May) working as International Fellows in developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The International Fellows Program (IFP), created in 1987, provides a diverse group of Fellows an opportunity to work overseas for organizations such as Africare, UNAIDS, CARE, Save the Children, TechnoServe, and Opportunities Industrialization Centers International (OICI) on various types of development activities.
The Youth Program Specialist leads and manages the youth and socio-professional program for Save the Children's Children in Emergencies and Crises Project in Guinea. The Specialist provides technical support to field staff on youth and socio-professional training programs and serves as liaison with host country authorities, NGO representatives and UN officials. As importantly, he/she will manage one of three SC field offices in Guinea and be responsible for administrative, financial and logistical duties. The position requires frequent travel within Guinea and occasional regional and international travel.
President Bakili Muluzi has lashed out at the "Chronicle" and "Daily Times" newspapers for what he termed "irresponsible journalism." Speaking at a rally in Balaka district (southern Malawi) on 25 September 2002, Muluzi described the "Daily Times" as a "naughty paper" whose agenda was questionable.
The high cost of the female condom is forcing Zimbabwean women, particularly commercial sex workers, to reuse the device to save money, despite the risks associated with reuse, AIDS activists have warned.
Salvage workers are resuming the pumping of oil from the ship that went aground off the east coast of South Africa in mid-September. The Jolly Rubino, a freighter carrying hazardous chemicals, is still aground near the St Lucia Wetlands reserve - a designated World Heritage site.
In Kenya, many students are starting a second week without lessons, as the country's state teachers continue to strike. The teachers are demanding that the government implement a 1997 salary deal, but the Education Ministry has refused and declared the strike illegal.
freedominfo.org is a one-stop portal that describes best practices, consolidates lessons learned, explains campaign strategies and tactics, and links the efforts of freedom of information advocates around the world. It contains crucial information on freedom of information laws and how they were drafted and implemented, including how various provisions have worked in practice. Subscribers to the mailing list will be notified via email whenever significant additions are made to freedominfo.org.
The Eastern and Southern African Symposium on Young Women and HIV/AIDS will focus on the impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic on young women and design strategies for greater practical action to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS among young women.
Six months after the Second World Assembly on Ageing agreed a new International Plan of Action, HelpAge International has launched a long-term programme to involve older people in citizen monitoring, to track how governments, international bodies and local authorities are acting on the commitments they made.
This new Global Health Council report is the first-ever global analysis of the impact of unintended pregnancies on maternal deaths in developing countries. The report details more than 300 million unintended pregnancies and the resulting deaths of nearly 700,000 women between 1995 and 2000, most of which could have been prevented had basic reproductive health services been made available to these women.
Circumcised women experience sexual arousal and orgasm as frequently as uncircumcised women, according to a study in Nigeria. The researchers also found no difference in the frequency of intercourse or age of first sexual experience between the two groups of women. These findings remove key arguments used to defend the practice, they say.
Data on 2,712 sexually experienced men and women in Tanzania were collected and used to determine if a mass media campaign promoting the female condom had an impact on women's and men's intentions to use this method. Results indicated that mass media exposure significantly increased the likelihood that a man or a woman would discuss use of the female condom with a partner.
I think your Newsletter is the best that I have ever seen. It's important not only for Africa. Its useful for all the NGOs of the international community. Among other things, I am in charge of managing the website of the Latin American Forum on Citizen's Diplomacy, a recently created space where all the major networks of the region that work at the international level exhange ideas and experiences. I am going to inform them on your fine work and establish a link to your website so that our region can learn from yours. Congratulations!!!! Keep up your good work. Juan Antonio Blanco, Director of International Cooperation, Human Rights Internet, Canada
SciDev.Net is pleased to announce the launch of SciDev.Net Africa, a regional network covering the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, the first in a series of such initiatives. We hope that SciDev.Net Africa will expand our regional coverage, improve the dissemination of SciDev.Net material, and play a key role in achieving capacity building in science and technology communication.
Red Hat, Inc. has released Red Hat Linux 8.0, a highly versatile operating system designed for personal and small business computing. Red Hat Linux 8.0 combines leading-edge Linux technologies with a new graphical look and feel that offers users a polished, easy-to-use operating environment.
Fourteen individual plaintiffs filed a class action suit against Royal Dutch Petroleum and Shell Transport, plc, on September 20 for alleged human rights abuses in Ogoniland, Nigeria. The complaint, filed by Philadelphia-based class action law firm Berger & Montague, uses the federal Alien Tort Claims Act to charge violations of customary international law relating to Shell's oil operations in Ogoniland, an area north of the Niger delta in southeast Nigeria.
PerfectXML is a great place to get started with using XML or learn about advanced applications and new XML technologies. The free library is probably the most valuable source of information on the site.
As African telecoms cease to be state-owned, pressure for change will increasingly come from the new private companies' consumers. By any standard, Africa's telecom customers are badly treated: they often have to put up with long queues to get a landline service, billing is often erratic and unclear, there are no transparent service obligations and even with competition, little evidence of a "service culture". As one of the continent's largest markets, Nigeria is a case in point.
Within the framework of the Women on the Net (WoN) and in co-operation with UNESCO Communication Development Division, the Society for International Development working with partners in ZaWon, Zanzibar, Tanzania, Help Resources and DAWN Pacific, Port Morseby and Centre for Women's Development Studies (CWDS) New Delhi will conduct a series of training WoN workshops in November, December 2002 and January 2003 for rural and poor urban women's groups working for gender equality and women's human rights. The training workshops will provide practical guidance to the participants of the use of Internet for advocacy, networking, and sharing of information and know how on women's rights and gender equality in each location. The workshops will provide training resources and support for women's groups who are involved with community women at grassroot level to build their analysis, knowledge and skills in using ICTs in support of promoting women's gender equality and human rights.
Before I start this poem, I'd like to ask you to
join me in a moment of silence in honor of those who
died in the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon last September 11th.
I would also like to ask you to offer up a moment of
silence for all of those who have been harassed,
imprisoned, disappeared, tortured, raped, or
killed in retaliation for those strikes, for the
victims in both Afghanistan and the U.S.
The United Nations refugee agency has reported that it is "desperately" looking for new sites to house refugees who have been forced from their homes by recent violence in Abidjan, the main commercial city of Cote d'Ivoire.
The withdrawal of foreign forces from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been applauded by Zambia, but the southern neighbour is also worried by the instability that could follow. "There are still some clashes here and there ...That causes concern for us, as when affected people start running, the first place they end up is Zambia," a government official explained.
Burundi's Ministry of Health has appealed for more meningitis vaccine because of an increase in cases of the disease in Gitega Province in central Burundi and Karuzi in the northeast.
An international media watchdog, Reporters sans frontieres (RSF), has said it would hold the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) President Joseph Kabila "personally responsible" for the continuing deterioration of the health of a journalist imprisoned in early September. Delly Bonsange, editor of the daily newspaper Alerte Plus, was admitted to Mama Yemo Hospital in the DRC capital, Kinshasa, on 26 September for emergency care following the continued decline of his health due to lack of treatment for diabetes.
Over 2,000 children fathered by Uganda People's Defence Force (UPDF) soldiers are estimated to have been left behind in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), The New Vision, the Ugandan government-owned newspaper, reported on Tuesday from the northwestern DRC city of Gbadolite.
The "pressure is still on" for Congolese refugees in Rwanda's Gihembe camp to go home, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported on Friday. Teenage boys in the camp said they were afraid to return to their homeland, because they knew they would be conscripted into rebel forces in eastern DRC.
A South African unionist protesting the privatization of electricity, a Cameroonian development expert protesting an oil pipeline and a Tanzanian activist protesting plans to allow private companies to buy public water delivery systems were among the people marching in Washington against the World Bank and IMF in late September.
A proposed amendment to South Africa's broadcasting law jeopardises the South African Broadcasting Corporation's (SABC) fundamental rights to freedom of expression and editorial independence, warns Article 19. Article 19, the independent and non-partisan NGO that works to promote and protect freedom of expression, says the new Broadcasting Amendment Bill raises a number of concerns. A formal requirement that SABC's output be accurate, accountable and fairly reported and that staff should act in the best interests of the corporation, "give room to undue interference with their editorial independence and journalistic standards," the group warns.
Hosted by the University of Natal Pietermartizburg, South Africa. Primary focus is to develop a regional strategy for ABLE provision and delivery, co-operation, and the implementation of projects in the Southern African Development Community which begins to respond to the socio-economic and political consequences of illiteracy. It will set in motion coherent efforts to improve the quality of adult learning in SADC member states. Seven Keynote and fourteen country papers will be presented.