In the slums of Botswana's capital Gaborone, high unemployment mixed with alcohol and drug abuse help drive unsafe sex, reflected in shocking rates of HIV and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) among the most vulnerable, adolescent girls.

A key challenge for this position in the next few years will be to ensure the sustainability of our current work through capacity building of local NGOs and associations, through ongoing development of policy level partnerships and ensuring that lessons learned within Rwanda are shared with other SC UK programmes.

The impending famine in Southern Africa has opened up a potential new market for US grain traders and biotechnology corporations. However, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Mozambique have steadfastly refused to accept GM food aid. Malawi, on the other hand, has been forced to accept the GM grain, having had to sell off its own grain surplus to service a debt to a commercial bank.

Separatist rebels in the oil-rich Cabinda enclave on Wednesday accused the Angolan government of stepping up a military offensive, and warned they would not participate in peace talks until hostilities ended.

South Africa has been asked to send a battalion of peacekeeping troops to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The Rwandan former armed forces chief of staff, Augustin Bizimungu, denied on Wednesday genocide charges before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda sitting in Arusha, northern Tanzania, Internews reported.

Provide managerial and technical support to the TTS project, in support of the Southern Africa Initiative on Youth and HIV/AIDS (SAY). Propose plans, budget and methods for handling communications strategy for TTS including promotion of special events. Maintain programmatic oversight on TTS staff activities.

Recent fighting between Sudanese government troops and forces of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army in the oil rich regions of southern Sudan, which has led to massive displacement, has further undermined the already precarious food security situation and increased rates of malnutrition in the area.

Neoliberal globalization is based on patriarchy and therefore on the widespread oppression of women. Confronted by accelerating impoverishment and by more and more sophisticated forms of exclusion, numbers of women are aware that the diversity of their demands and their experience of economic pluralism form a counter-current to the dominant economic theory -- neoliberal and patricidal -- and represent serious forms of resistance.

They come from neighbouring countries, but crossed paths in the tangled web of war in West Africa. Manu Famuley, a Liberian matriarch, recently fled to Sierra Leone to escape the fighting in her country. Massa Bossa, a Sierra Leonean woman, recently returned from exile in Liberia to embrace the fragile peace in her homeland. Both women passed through the same refugee camp without ever meeting, but they share similar stories that reflect the suffering and strength of the region's refugee women.

For more than a decade, the West African countries of Liberia and Sierra Leone have been roiled by civil conflicts that have caused millions to flee their homes and left up to 200,000 dead. Even as the fighting has systematically destroyed the two countries’ economies, infrastructures, and social institutions, the interlinked conflicts have spilled across borders, drawing in neighboring Guinea and raising tensions in Cote d’Ivoire.

In yet another row over racism in the Democratic Alliance (DA), black members of the party in Gauteng North this week complained bitterly about a Gauteng legislature caucus decision instructing them to circulate separate pamphlets for "white supporters".

Corruption and maladministration in South Africa's prisons and the Correctional Services Department are turning out to be much more widespread than initially thought, according to Judge Thabani Jali.

Editors in South Africa have employed a lawyer to look at grounds for a possible challenge against a media bill that is widely seen as taking away editorial independence and giving the government of President Thabo Mbeki control over the country's national public broadcaster.

President Yoweri Museveni has said the Government is to urgently construct a fully-fledged special primary and secondary school in Kampala to accommodate about 3,000 former Kony rebel captives, sources say.

ANC MP Winnie Madikizela-Mandela has been found guilty by her peers in Parliament of failing to disclose donations and some of her financial interests in the register of members' interests.

The Health and Social Services Ministry has 4 000 orphans on its books, most of whom have been left without parents as a result of HIV-AIDS.

With the spread of HIV/AIDS having reached an alarming rate in the Republic of Congo (ROC), a number of non-governmental organisations have, with the help of funding from the UN and other donors, and by means of outreach and education, stepped up their longstanding efforts to halt the exponential spread of the epidemic.

Ways should be found to direct state resources to the 98920 nonprofit organisations in the country as a way of facilitating development, University of Natal's Centre for Civil Society director Prof Adam Habib says.

The United States government, through the United States Aid for International Development, has made available nearly $140 million for the strengthening of community based initiatives to support children orphaned by HIV/Aids.

Denmark has committed more than a R100 million to boost South Africa's fight against HIV/Aids. The funds will go towards two programmes aimed at reducing the impact of poverty and Aids, and tackling the link between violence against women and HIV/Aids.

In a ground-breaking move, the man accused of Marike de Klerk's murder and rape is to get R30 000 from the Foundation for Human Rights, funded by the European Union, so he can afford his own DNA expert.

"The non-profit sector is a major economic force in South Africa. It employs more people than the mining sector or the government - and its size and significance are far greater that previously thought."

"The Starfish Charitable Foundation was founded by a group of young South Africans in London, England, in June last year. Starfish aims to raise money for children orphaned or made vulnerable by Aids; to date close on R2 million has been collected through various fundraising events."

Over the last 10 years, more and more West African women decided to stop waiting for their men to mail checks home from the United States and to join them and earn their own income.

The Women's Budget Initiative has a new report available:
'Rights, Roles and Resources: An Analysis of Women's Housing Rights - Implications of the Grootboom case.' The report examines the Grootboom case from the aspect of gender,rights, and budgets.

Something is not quite right in the way women are made to feel inferior to the opposite sex even though they may be more intelligent, more determined, more serious and even more capable than the men who are born to assert dominance as their birthright.

Transport policy makers and providers have paid almost no attention to gender equity, and gender researchers in development have seldom examined the crucially important role which transport plays in women's lives.

The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) is failing to recognise that increasing numbers of those living in extreme poverty are older people. The WSSD calls poverty reduction "the greatest global challenge facing the world today and an indispensable requirement for sustainable development". It will re-state the goal of halving the proportion of people living in extreme poverty by 2015. But it is population ageing rather than population growth amongst the poor that is now the core demographic trend. It has become a major social policy challenge in developed and developing countries, HelpAge International argues.

What does it mean to be a poor, single mother in the new South Africa? Lots of guilt and anger, reports Health-E News Service, as women confess to taking out their frustrations on their children.

A US federal court began preliminary hearings last Friday into a multibillion-dollar lawsuit brought by South African apartheid victims against a host of multinational corporations and banks.

Earth Emergency invites people everywhere to sign a statement of support for a nine-point plan of action to deal with the Earth's state of emergency. It aims to create a popular, global alliance to lobby world leaders at the Summit. You are invited to sign up, discuss the nine points in the plan of action, and suggest existing projects and partnerships to take the work forward.

The economic value of wild ecosystems far outweighs the value of converting these areas to cropland, housing or other human uses. A study in the latest issue of the journal "Science" says habitat destruction costs the world the equivalent of about $250 billion each year.

The deliberate victimisation of women during recent wars has focused attention on the different impacts of internal and transnational conflicts on men and women. At the same time, the contribution of women and women's organisations to conflict resolution, management and peace building is also gaining wider recognition.

Sustainable development means the elimination of poverty in ways that do not damage the environment for future generations. If world leaders can't take steps to ensure trade benefits poor people and the environment, who can?Write to world leaders with your demands on sustainable development.

HIV-positive people who know they have the virus and commit sexual offenses would be subject to the death penalty under a bill presented on Wednesday to the Lesotho Parliament by Refiloe Masemene, minister of justice, law and constitutional affairs in the Southern African nation.

The 50,000 delegates from nearly 200 countries set to throng the Johannesburg summit this month will have no problem finding a common language to thrash out a strategy for sustainable development. They'll be immersed in the eco-jargon that splits experts from the lay community, most of whom have no idea what the broad, vague phrase "sustainable development"
actually means.

Abiteye village lies in the heart of the Niger Delta region. American oil giant ChevronTexaco has a gas plant and an oil flow station here. But for its oil installations, the company's premises could pass for a maximum-security prison. Barbwire fences and iron bars separate the company from the community. Inside the company's premises, police, soldiers and naval personnel clutching assault rifles stand guard.

In complex humanitarian emergencies, such as the present situation in Burundi, acute malnutrition becomes an inevitable consequence of armed conflict.

Relative calm has returned to western Liberia and some people who had crossed over to neighbouring Sierra Leone are gradually returning to their villages, humanitarian sources in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, said last Friday.

We, the National Association of Child and Youth Care Workers in South Africa (NACCW) would like to subscribe to this excellent newsletter.

President Yoweri Museveni has ordered for the immediate and total withdrawal of the remaining UPDF soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, sources say.

Perfect for courses on social movements since the sixties, on DIY culture, queer theory, or on anti-globalization, ‘From ACT UP to the WTO’ is a unique collection of essays from activists in a wide range of organizations that charts the profound influence of ACT UP on the style and substance of activism in the eighties and nineties and beyond. It places such events as ‘the battle for Seattle’ in important historical context – it didn’t start there! – and reveals numerous and creative forms of resistance forging ahead in many communities despite the backlash following September 11.

Gen Ernest Betibangui, the chief of staff of the Central African Republic's (CAR) armed forces, on Sunday denied that there had been any attack on the northern town of Kabo, 65 km to the south of the CAR's border with Chad. "Nothing happened in that region," he told IRIN.

The UNDP Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery (BCPR) has designed an initiative to bolster protection of vulnerable groups. The project will improve camp management; strengthen systems for reporting, monitoring and following up on rights abuses; and promote awareness of human rights among displaced people and host communities where camps are located.

It is vital that world leaders tackle the growing global water crisis before it's too late and start implementing the Millennium Declaration goals, the head of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has said.

Nigeria has approved wide-ranging recommendations to secure an uninterrupted supply of contraceptive commodities as countries all over the world face a dearth of supply and donor support, increasing demand, and the growing incidence of HIV/AIDS.

Although some progress was reported at the international AIDS conference held last month, one country's efforts to secure help in tackling its AIDS epidemic indicates the gulf between needs and the resources available to meet them. After repeated interactions with donor organizations and the newly established Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, Malawi, a country in which 16 percent of the adult population is infected with HIV, was forced to whittle down an ambitious plan to one that will barely make a dent in its problems.