High swells have continued to frustrate efforts to pump oil from the grounded Jolly Rubino and could delay the process right up to the weekend, salvors Smit Marine reported. The Rubino is grounded near the sensitive St Lucia wetland area.

A combination of violence, fraud and mismanagement prevented the registration of almost a third of Nigerians who turned out to put their names on the electoral roll this month, the country's Catholic church has claimed.

Amina Lawal has been sentenced to death by stoning - she is to buried up to her neck in the ground, after which her punishers will surround her and throw rocks at her head until her skull is crushed and she dies a painful and horrible death. She has only thirty days to appeal her trial. Please go to the Amnesty International site, www.mertonai.org/amina/ and sign the letter addressed to the President of Nigeria. It literally takes one minute, and could help to save her life, as well as put an end to this kind of cruel and disgraceful practice.

The newsletter of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), Africa Internet Rights ICT Policy Monitor to mobilise African Civil Society for ICT policy for development and social justice (http://africa.rights.apc.org), has created an annotated list of a selection of women's organisations using information and communication technologies (ICTs) as tools to network and share information to advance gender equality in Africa.

I would like to thank the fine women and men of Pambazuka, who very skilfully design such a comprehensive newsletter of information on all issues affecting Mother Africa.

Your work impacts not only on Africa, but on global issues of immense concerns and shared values, in the interests of mankind. I am a practitioner in International Peace and Conflict Resolution, Electoral Assistance and Democratisation, Humanitarian and Sustainable Development around the world.

I salute your commitment and dedication to making humanity and our beautiful planet a much better place in which to live. No doubts, through our individual and collective efforts and endeavours, we can make a difference around the world regardless of geographical location(s).

God bless you all and please kindly keep up the wonderful work for the sake of humanity.

Malick Ceesay
Sustainable International Development Program, Heller Graduate School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University

Kenya has decided to equip its game wardens with new AK-101 and AK-102 Kalashnikov automatic rifles, replacing the old AK-47 and G-3 rifles which had been used by the Kenya Wildlife Service rangers for the past 10 years.

International scientists have called for urgent action to conserve the Guinean forest of West Africa, saying it is one of the world's top five biodiversity hot spots.

A special issue of the Overseas Development Institute’s Disasters journal reports on a conference exploring dilemmas and debates around politics, conditionality and humanitarian aid. Looking at conflicts and relief responses in the Balkans, Great Lakes, Afghanistan and elsewhere, articles chart the problematic consequences of the politicisation of humanitarian aid.

Tawanda Majoni a reporter with Zimbabwe's new and fourth daily paper, The Daily Mirror recited to MISA-Zimbabwe in an interview on Sunday 14 September, the story of his arrest on Thursday 12 September and how he suffered in police cells. Majoni is a former police officer and he left the force after studying for a Diploma in Journalism. He was arrested for allegedly writing a false story about the health status of the Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri.

As the political debate heats up over whether Swaziland is a democratic country, the leaders of the tiny southern African kingdom have been accused of being "looters" of state funds by using developmental projects as financial scams.

Workers of a large commercial transport company in Swaziland, Cargo Carriers, are on strike demanding the expulsion of a white expatriate manager of the company who assaulted one of their colleagues on Thursday.

News that the genocide suspect, Jean-Baptiste Gatete, has been arrested is cause for a general sigh of relief in Rwanda. The battle for justice for the genocide is still far from over, but the capture of Gatete in the Republic of Congo on 11 September 2002 hit a primary target. For nearly two decades, Gatete has been notorious as a violent extremist in Rwanda, says the organisation African Rights.

Intellectual property rights laws are "holding up access to vital medicines," including drugs to treat HIV/AIDS, in poorer nations, and strategies such as compulsory licensing and differential pricing should be implemented to increase access to medicines in developing nations, according to a report released by the Commission on Intellectual Property Rights.

Young people in both the Congos are alerting one another about the deadly risks of HIV/AIDS and how to prevent infection in an initiative supported by international and private sector partners. Nearly 250 students and teachers in the Republic of the Congo and from the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo gathered recently at a conference in Brazzaville to expand the project.

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo urged U.N. members Sunday to seek a legally binding agreement to curb trafficking in small arms, which he said worsens many conflicts in Africa. Many African wars were exacerbated "by the influx of small arms into the continent," he said.

To deal with recurring drought and famine in Africa, long-term strategies must be developed to address the fundamental economic and political problems facing these, and other, African countries. It is imperative that significant investments are made by both local governments and foreign donors to strengthen the capacity of the countries to become more agriculturally productive, and for local people and institutions to deal with the effects of droughts and related epidemics, according to a new report.
* Related Link: http://www.unfoundation.org/unwire/index.asp

The World Bank pledged $120 million Thursday to help Angola rebuild after more than two decades of civil war, but told the authorities they must take measures to dispel suspicion of high-level corruption.

President Olusegun Obasanjo, who came to office in 1999 after more than 15 years of military rule, has promised to help dispel widely held perceptions of Nigeria as an archetype of unethical business behaviour. Less than a year before he is due to stand for re-election, the country's continued notoriety raises questions about the effectiveness of the president's actions and highlights the manifold and deep-rooted difficulties that confront campaigns for greater public sector and corporate transparency in poor nations.

Critics of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) charge that the whole approach is fundamentally flawed. Three years after the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) introduced their Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) approach as the latest template for the world's poorest countries to get out of poverty, a new Panos report examines the progress so far and the arguments about whether PRS can succeed.

World Resources 2002-2004 focuses on the importance of good environmental governance. We explore how citizens, government managers, and business owners can foster better environmental decisions -- decisions that meet the needs of both ecosystems and people with equity and balance.

Following a recent increase in fighting in Burundi, over 300 refugees have crossed the border into western Tanzania over the last three days, a humanitarian agency told IRIN last Friday.

The Media Resource and Advocacy Centre (MRAC), Lagos Nigeria, announces the final in its series of regional strategic communications training course aimed at equipping NGO activists with skills in health promotion, advocacy and general publicity for development programs and projects. The course will take place between 25-26 May, 2003 in Kaduna, Nigeria.

President Joseph Kabila of Congo was last week urged by Human Rights Watch to use his visit to the United Nations General Assembly to announce the release of one of the country’s leading human rights defenders. N’sii Luanda Shandwe has been held in Kinshasa for more than four months and is charged with treason and sheltering criminals. He is facing trial before the Military Order Court, and could be sentenced to death if found guilty.

President Paul Kagame of Rwanda announced last Friday that Rwandan troops would begin their pullout from neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) "in approximately one week's time".
* Related Links: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/-/1/hi/world/africa/2262015.stm and http://irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=29949

Two thousand children in Ethiopia have been selected for a 15-year 'fly-on-the-wall' study, assessing the root causes and long-term consequences of childhood poverty. Experts will monitor some of the country's poorest children from the age of six months until they reach their 15th birthday. The results are expected to form the largest and possibly the most comprehensive study ever on the insidious affects of poverty among children.

As fuel and food queues lengthened on Thursday structural faults in the latest Zimbabwe-Libya $360-million fuel deal were emerging. Despite being granted a pick of the country's choice assets, the Libyan government has reportedly stepped up pressure on Zimbabwe to offer more assets of greater value as guarantee for sustained fuel supplies from the North African country.

The aim of the position is to gain experience in a wide range of field conditions including various aspects of program management and implementation, cultural and field conditions, technical support and activities.

We are looking for a highly energetic and motivated professional to support the development and delivery of a regional advocacy, campaign and media strategy. The postholder will be based within the Regional Management Centre in Pretoria, South Africa.

Nigeria plans to set up a refugee centre in the southeastern city of Calabar in expectation that the border dispute with Cameroon might trigger a refugee crisis, a senior official in charge of refugees said on Saturday.

Four virtual seminars were held between 1 July and 13 September dealing with multiple aspects relating to ICTs and gender empowerment and development. Visit the link below for an extract from the final summary of the virtual seminars.

It is the elderly that suffer from the death of their children as a “significant proportion” of adults suffering AIDS return to their parents’ home shortly before they die. This is according to a survey in north-western Tanzania in 1991- 94 comparing the activities and wellbeing of the elderly in households before and after the death of a prime-aged adult with those of the elderly in households that did not experience the death of an adult.

African countries have asked for poorer states in the World Trade Organization to be given the right to retaliate collectively against rich powers in disputes, trade sources said Wednesday.

A retired high court judge, who clashed with a Zimbabwe government minister two months ago, was released on bail this week after spending three days in a squalid police cell. Magistrate Lillian Kudya granted bail of R1800 to Fergus Blackie, 65, and ordered him to appear again on November 18.

United Nations General Assembly member states should emphasize political reform and respect for human rights over traditional economic development initiatives, Human Rights Watch says. “It is tempting for member states to want to focus on traditional development projects,” said Peter Takirambudde, director of Human Rights Watch’s Africa Division. “Such projects are less controversial and provide measurable results. But, NEPAD’s success hinges upon the political reforms that are more difficult and that need international support. These are the initiatives that can really transform Africa.”

Guinea worm disease, a debilitating water-borne parasitic infection, was once endemic throughout much of Africa. But recent efforts to control the disease have proven so successful that experts now believe it could be eradicated within a decade.

Liberian President Charles Taylor on Monday reiterated his opposition to calls for an international peacekeeping force to end the violent conflict in his country. "There will be no intervention force in Liberia as long as I am president," news agencies quoted him as saying. "Anybody who sets foot on Liberian soil without the consent of this government must be prepared to fight."

The 190-member U.N. General Assembly formally endorsed Monday the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), the initiative to rebuild and rejuvenate the crisis-stricken and war-ravaged continent.

The first round of the promising peace process mediated by the regional Inter-Governmental Authority for Development (IGAD) produced the breakthrough Machakos Protocol, with provisional agreements on the key issues of a self-determination referendum for the South, and religion and state. However, the government walked out of the second round after losing an important city on the battlefield in early September. IGAD mediators and the observer countries must devise a strategy for reviving the talks and then keeping the parties focused on negotiating a comprehensive solution, says an international think-tank.

The Rwandan-backed rebel group governing much of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is limiting access to refugees in the Masisi region of North Kivu who have been forcibly repatriated from Rwanda, according to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR).

The newly-formed African Union (AU) has set out its first ever policy to tackle corruption which, it says, is costing the continent at least US $148 billion a year.

I loved reading your journal the first time and will enjoy doing so in future. It's excellent reading.

West African experts on child rights met government and nongovernmental representatives in Mali on Monday at the start of a three-day technical meeting to review progress in promoting children rights in the Economic Community of West African States.

The Poverty Reduction Strategy process, introduced by the World Bank and IMF in 1999, is supposed to ensure that governments and civil society groups take the lead in defining policies that the Bank and Fund should support. But many commentators have complained that macroeconomic policy choices have not been adequately debated and that few countries have deviated from standard options, says a report from the Bretton Woods Project. The report also provides a critical assessment of the current moves to introduce "Poverty and Social Impact Analysis (PSIA)".

The Strengthening STD/HIV Control in Kenya Project seeks to reduce the incidence and mitigate the impact of STD/HIV in Kenya. Responsible for the implementation of the capacity building component of the Project.

The Project currently seeks to expand its geographic scope and establish effective HIV programmes through local implementing partners within Kenya. This is a new position. It will be key in ensuring the development, adjustment and implementation of gender-sensitive HIV programmes with local partners.

Cracks opened Tuesday in the hull of a burning Italian cargo ship grounded offshore of the Greater St. Lucia Wetland Park on South Africa's east coast. An estimated 450 metric tons of oil have already spilled from the vessel into the waters near the country's first World Heritage Site, but so far the fragile wetland environment has been spared.

The Clinton Administration had promised the ratification of the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty by 2006. However, last year the Department of Defense, with input from the State Department and the National Security Council, recommended to President Bush that the US abandon all efforts toward signing the Treaty and banning landmines. Write to US politicians urging them to move forward with the banning of land mines.

Human rights are often presented as claims or entitlements. It is also said that rights belong to individuals. Both these ideas arise from a philosophical perspective, which assumes that human beings exist as isolated individuals who make claims or possess entitlements in isolation.

An exactly opposite philosophical perspective tells us that human beings are social beings, not individual beings. Society is a web of relations - social, economic, cultural and political - which have been constructed historically as different interests in society interact, clash and contradict and give birth to new sets of relations. Social struggles, therefore, are the base from which social relations develop. […]

The modern human rights debate - or discourse - is constructed on the philosophical foundation of the human being as an individual, and not as a social being. This lies at the centre of many of the controversies in human rights discourse. […]

The values and principles that underlie the human rights discourse have been constructed historically in the course of social struggles. Therefore, human rights is a contentious discourse in which different, and often contradictory, perspectives representing different interests in national and international society, seek dominance or hegemony.

Just as dominant and dominating interests may employ the ideology of human rights to justify and rationalise their dominance, so also the forces that seek to resist dominance may deploy human rights to mobilise their resistance. Human rights, as we know them today, were born in a period of contention. They were born in the context of the Cold War between the socialist and the capitalist system on the one hand, and in the context of the wars of national liberation from imperial/colonial domination, on the other. This context has had a major impact on the debates within, and about, human rights. […]

Human Rights as Contentious Discourse

The most celebrated document in the history of human rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), was adopted in 1948 when the world had just emerged from one of the most devastating wars. There were only 56 member states of the United Nations with only three from Africa, including apartheid South Africa, which adopted the UDHR.

But the world was a long way from recognising the universal human being. More than two-thirds of the world's peoples were colonised and referred to as natives. They were not thought to be human enough to have human rights! President Roosevelt's four freedoms – freedom of speech and expression, freedom to worship 'god' in your own way, freedom from want and freedom from fear (no wars between states) – which are supposed to have provided the building blocks of the UDHR did not include the freedom most central to the colonised peoples: 'freedom from colonial oppression' or the right to national self-determination. […]

The human rights ideology was incubated in the crucible of the Cold War (1945-90) and reflected the political, ideological and military disagreements and struggles underlying it. While the Cold War was cold in Europe, it was very hot in the Third World, Africa included. There was not a single year from 1945 to 1990 when there was not conflict somewhere in the world. […]

During much of the Cold War and to this day, the USA presented, and continues to present, itself as the champion of freedom, democracy and individual rights, despite the fact that it was at the same time trampling on the basic rights of Third World peoples - their rights to life and self-determination - as it propelled and fuelled wars and supported dictators. […]

The double-standards in human rights discourse, and the unequal power relations which underlie it, is not fully appreciated if human rights are presented as apolitical, asocial and ahistorical values inherent in us all because we are human beings. The setting of human rights standards through international conventions and declarations is itself a very contentious political process which demonstrates the gross inequalities of the world capitalist and imperial system. […]

Thus the way human rights are prioritised and categorised is itself open to debate, demonstrating the ideological nature of human rights discourse. Like all ideological discourses, half-truths and untruths are presented as absolute truths and whole truths. We should be wary therefore of a perspective on human rights which does not treat human rights in the context of history and social struggles.

Wherever there is oppression and injustice, there is bound to be resistance and struggle. In this process, the oppressors justify and rationalise their oppression in ideologies of domination, just as the oppressed mobilise and articulate their resistance in the ideologies of struggle and resistance.

In the present era, as globalisation is touted as the universal human good, we are also witnessing unprecedented inequalities, injustices, oppression, and levels of poverty and deprivation, which make mockery of our basic humanity, let alone human rights. […]

What Africa pays in debt-servicing and through loss of terms of trade every year would be more than enough to provide decent health, education and safe drinking water to every man, woman and child on the continent. Meanwhile, for the last 10 to 15 years, Africa has been subjected to unprecedented dictation from the international financial organisations and the so-called donor community. The neo-liberal policies adopted as a result have plunged the continent deeper into poverty with little prospect of improvement as its resources are pillaged by multinational corporations and its politics increasingly entrapped in the game of musical chairs for the minuscule urban elites. […]

Human Rights as Resistance

- The rights of peoples to self-determination

As we saw, the UDHR did not include the right of nations and peoples to self-determination although the declaration was born in the midst of a world in which more than two-thirds of the human race lived under colonial or semi-colonial conditions. […]

In the context of the rising national liberation movements and new forms of imperial domination, a number of liberation movements, trade unions and activist intellectuals meeting in Algiers in 1976 adopted the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Peoples, known as the Algiers Declaration. ( ). The Algiers Declaration is a fine example of the reconceptualisation of the rights ideology by civil society to legitimise the struggle of peoples. The Algiers Declaration does not pretend to set any standards nor freeze these standards as enforceable rights of individuals to stabilise the status quo, but rather it consciously sums up people's struggles so as to legitimise them.

By further rethinking the right to self-determination and giving the term 'people' a contextual meaning, this right also has the potential to capture the current struggle of the African people for democracy from below and genuine participation in governance.

The right to self-determination, it can be argued, includes the right of the people to be consulted on all matters that affect their lives. Just as an individual has a right to be heard before any adverse action is taken against him/her, so the people have a right to be consulted before decisions are made affecting them. […]

The right to self-determination has been a major weapon used by various NGOs to argue and articulate the case against the ruinous economic policies the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have imposed on African and other developing countries. In February 2002, a number of NGOs campaigning against Third World debts convened a People's Tribunal in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil to hear evidence and adjudicate upon the legality and legitimacy of the debts. The 'verdict' ( ) deploys with great effect the language of human rights generally, and particularly the language of the right to self-determination, in order to show that Third World debts are illegitimate and that the people of the South are fully justified in resisting payment of these debts.

- Right to Life

The right to life is considered a basic right. As a matter of fact, the right of peoples to self-determination and right to life together may be justifiably called the mother of all rights.

In the mainstream interpretations, the right to life is given a narrow meaning of the right to existence. Various campaigns against capital punishment and torture have been anchored in this right. But Third World jurists and human rights activists, faced with extreme poverty and inhuman existence in their societies, have imaginatively expanded the meaning of the right to life to include the right to livelihood, right to shelter, right to land and right to food. […]

In this way, the language of rights is deployed to articulate the most pressing concerns of the large majority of people while at the same time providing the language of resistance against, and changing of, the existing conditions. It is important, therefore, that activist NGOs and other human rights advocates are conscious of the different perspectives on human rights, so that they know what to promote, in whose interest and in which direction.

* See for the Algiers Declaration and the verdict of the People's Tribunal on Debt.

*Would you like to respond to this editorial? Send your views to [email protected] and we will publish them in our Letters and Comments section next week.