Gender inequality is sometimes fatal, as people are learning this week at the International AIDS conference in Barcelona. In this, the third decade of the global AIDS pandemic, stigma against women infected with HIV/AIDS is one of the single greatest challenges that face us as we try to slow the spread of this deadly disease.

The latest issue of the weekly newspaper "La Tribune" has been banned, apparently because it contained criticism of recent government efforts to interfere with the election of the president of the national bar association.

Freedom-of-expression organisations have raised concerns over the fate of Hassan Bility, a prominent Liberian newspaper editor. The journalist is missing and feared dead, say the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, RSF), while Human Rights Watch (HRW) is concerned that he may be at risk of torture and ill-treatment. Bility, the editor of the independent weekly "The Analyst," was arrested on 24 June, together with three other Liberians, on suspicion of operating a rebel terrorist cell in Monrovia, says HRW.

The Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (MACRA) has back-pedalled on its recently issued threat that the Malawi Institute of Journalism radio station (MIJ FM) risked losing its broadcasting licence for what MACRA described as anomalies and bias in its reporting.

A third of all women canvassed at three ante-natal clinics in a study in Soweto, South Africa, admitted to having had “transactional sex” in return for food, clothing, transportation, school fees, cash or gifts for their children – and were HIV positive.

The Kenyan authorities have given details of an outbreak of highland malaria, which has killed a total of 294 people since June.

In the context of widespread criticism of the WTO , South Africa chose to project itself internationally as the "bridge between the developed and the developing world". But within South Africa, government spokespersons have been proudly proclaiming South Africa's "leadership role" in the WTO "in the best interests of the developing world". As the evidence in this analysis shows, it is highly debateable whether this self proclaimed "leading role" is a reality among developing countries.

Melese Shine, editor-in-chief of the weekly "Ethiop", was released on bail of 12,000 birr (approx. US$1,440) on 25 June 2002. He had been detained since 19 March when he was charged with publishing and disseminating an article defaming the head of government, and publishing an interview with an alleged member of an illegal group. Gizaw Taye, the editor-in-chief of the "Lamrot" newspaper, was also released on bail on 24 June. He had been held since 15 March on press charges. It is estimated that there are at least 80 such cases waiting to go to trial involving journalists. Lubaba Said, the former editor-in-chief of the "Tarik" newspaper, continues to serve her one-year sentence handed down on 3 April for "fabricating news that could have a negative psychological effect on members of the armed forces and disturb the minds of the people".

The International Federation of Journalists, the world's largest organisation of journalists, set out its action plan for the UN World Summit on Information Society to take place in Geneva in 2003 and Tunis in 2005, and called for globalisation to respect social and professional rights of journalists. The Swiss Federation of Journalists (SFJ), representing the IFJ during the Preparatory Committee for Civil Society from 1 to 5 July 2002 in Geneva, introduced the position of journalists during a working session on media professionals.

Popular Gabz FM radio presenter and MISA-Botswana Chairperson Solomon Monyame and Gabz FM management have been jointly sued for the sum of Botswana Pula 1.7 million (approx. US$279,330) in damages over announcements broadcast on the station's breakfast show on 6 June 2002. On 6 June, Monyame announced between 6:45 and 6:55 a.m. (local time) that he would interview Radio Botswana 2 (RB2) announcer Gloria Kgosi on allegations that she was harassed by Botsalo Ntuane, executive secretary of the ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), on RB2's premises, thus delaying the airing of the national news by seven minutes.

At a time when the petropolitics of the Bush administration seem to reign supreme, the rights of peoples affected by the global hunt for oil have received an important boost. An African commission has ruled the Nigerian government should compensate the Ogoni people for abuses against their lands, environment, housing, and health caused by oil production and government security forces. Nigerian and international groups say that the ruling by the nine-member African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR) is a sweeping affirmation of what the human rights community calls ESC rights--defined by the UN's International Covenant on Economic, Social, and, Cultural Rights.

The commission called on Nigeria to undertake a "comprehensive cleanup of lands and rivers damaged by oil operations." It must also ensure that the social and environmental impact of future oil development on its territory does not harm local communities.

Human rights groups are hailing the commission's decision as a major breakthrough in the battle for international recognition of ESC rights, which have long been given lesser status--particularly by Western countries--than political and civil rights. "This is the first decision by the African Commission to specifically and comprehensively address violations of economic and social and cultural rights under the Africa Charter," said Felix Morka, director of the Lagos-based Social and Economic Rights Actions Centre (SERAC), which launched the case against the military regime of Gen. Sani Abacha in 1996. Morka observed that the recent ruling was the strongest and most articulate statement on the validity and enforceability of economic and social rights emanating from any intergovernmental human rights body.

"It is a remarkable decision indeed," said Bronwen Manby, a Nigeria specialist at the London office of Human Rights Watch (HRW). "The very fact that it's a decision by the African Commission--which is a body of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and appointed by governments--means that it will certainly form a part of the body of international jurisprudence on economic and social rights."

The case was filed shortly after the execution in November 1995 of nine leaders of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), including the world-renowned playwright and author, Ken Saro-wiwa. MOSOP and Saro-wiwa had led a global campaign to publicize the plight of the Ogonis, a minority in the oil-rich Niger Delta region, whose lands and rivers had been polluted for years as a result of operations by Shell Petroleum Development Corporations, the area's largest foreign oil producer, and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC). Protests by the Ogoni, especially in the early 1990s, were met with fierce military repression, including what one internal government memo called "wasting operations" against Ogoni villages and suspected MOSOP activists. Scores of people were killed and their property looted and burned.

After the 1995 executions, Shell became a target of an international consumer boycott, while a number of Western countries slapped diplomatic and other sanctions on the military regime, most of which lifted only after the return of civilian rule in 1999 when retired Gen. Obusegun Obasanjo won elections. Apart from one submission that confirmed the main allegations filed by SERAC, the Obasanjo government did not participate in the case, forcing the Commission to conclude that Nigerian courts were not prepared to act on the plaintiffs' case. Although the judgement was communicated to the government early last month, Abuja has not yet reacted officially.

The decision, which runs 14 pages, asserts that the government violated seven articles of the 1981 African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, to which Nigeria is a signatory. They included the rights: "to enjoy the best attainable state of physical and mental health," "to a general satisfactory environment favorable to [the peoples'] development," and to "freely dispose of their wealth and natural resources."

According to the ruling, "By any measure of standards, its practice falls short of the minimum conduct expected of governments." In a direct reference to the role of the oil corporations, the commission observed: "The intervention of multinational corporations may be a potentially positive force for development if the State and the people concerned are ever mindful of the common good and the sacred rights of individuals and communities."

The decision is important for people throughout the world who suffer from corporate practices, said Roger Normand, director of the New York-based Center for Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (CESR), which co-sponsored the case with SERAC.

"I believe that this can serve as a precedent not only throughout Africa, but also for all similar efforts to hold governments accountable for gross human rights violations linked to abusive corporate practices," he added. Normand and others also agreed with Morka that the decision is the strongest affirmation to date by an inter-governmental body of ESC rights. Despite their inclusion in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this family of rights have tended to be given second-class status by the West, including Western-based human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

Western nations agreed most recently at the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna that all rights in the Universal Declaration are indivisible and interdependent, however, "for most of the past 50 years, these rights were totally neglected by governments and human rights NGOs," according to Larry Cox, senior program officer for international human rights at the New York-based Ford Foundation. "But in the last five years, we've seen the beginning of real momentum on these rights, led first and foremost by groups in the Global South who are in many ways the most adversely affected by the lack of such rights," he noted. "That's the history of the human rights movement: people who make these rights real are the victims who are fighting for them."

Although the U.S. government has long agreed that all of the rights included in the Universal Declaration are indivisible and interdependent, Washington has tended to treat economic and social rights more as privileges than as core rights. Indeed, the State Department's annual human rights country reports do not explicitly cover economic and social rights. In that respect, said Normand, the African Commission's decision "is moving ahead of western standards in the protection of economic, social, and cultural rights--an important achievement for Africa, but an example for the rest of the world."

The International Secretariat of OMCT has been informed by the Sudan Organisation Against Torture (SOAT), a member of the OMCT network, that 35 detainees from the Rizeigat tribe, including three children, were subjected to torture and are now awaiting their sentences following an unfair trial in Darfour Province, Sudan. The OMCT requests that you write to the authorities in Sudan protesting the treatment.

Nearly six months after the end of disarmament in Sierra Leone, at least half of the ex-combatants demobilised between September 1998 and January 2002 are yet to be reintegrated, officials in the capital, Freetown, told IRIN. The reintegration programmes were intended to prepare the 69,463 demobilised ex-combatants for re-absorption into their communities. However the process has been slow and ex-combatants were becoming "restless", the officials said last Friday.

Congolese President Denis Sassou Nguesso has expressed his satisfaction with the "peaceful" manner in which the local government election was conducted. "All in all the process has been peaceful. There have been some unfortunate incidents but no violence or disorder. So we have reason to be happy," Sassou Nguesso told journalists after he had voted in the Ouenze residential area north of Brazzaville.

A move by Zimbabwe's frustrated Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) to boycott parliament could spell disaster for the opposition party, analysts have warned. They said parliament was the last remaining platform for the MDC to safely challenge the government.

Minority rights activists in Nigeria have called on the government to act urgently on a ruling by the African Commission on Human and People's Rights (ACHPR) that the state perpetrated massive abuses in the southeastern area of Ogoniland. The Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) said in a statement sent to IRIN last Friday that it was seeking an audience with Justice Minister Kanu Agabi to obtain the prosecution of those who violated the rights of the 500,000-strong Ogoni and compensation for the victims as requested by ACHPR.

Aid agencies have rounded furiously on the world's richest countries, describing the G8's much-vaunted rescue plan for Africa as a squandered opportunity and "recycled peanuts".
Tony Blair hailed the action plan from the west's leading industrial nations as a "real significant step forward", but the blueprint was strongly criticised for failing to provide the Marshall plan for Africa the prime minister promised at last year's summit in Genoa.

If you are unable to attend the upcoming XIV International AIDS Conference in Barcelona, you can sign up to receive a daily email with updates on the latest conference coverage provided on kaisernetwork.org

African women's voices will now be heard online, thanks to the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), which has announced the launch of a website with information on gender issues in the Horn of Africa.

The HIV epidemic has created an emergency in SA. This emergency threatens South Africa's future by creating more poverty and impacting negatively on the ability to reconstruct and develop SA to the benefit of all of its people. A national HIV/AIDS Treatment Plan is needed to combat this emergency. A treatment plan will strengthen the existing five-year strategic plan, which concentrates mainly on prevention. These were the conclusions of a Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) National Treatment Congress held in Durban, South Africa, between 27 and 29 June.

The Democratic Alliance (DA), stung by allegations by German fugitive Jurgen Harksen that he donated money to the party, has proposed legislation to regulate political party funding. Harksen claimed he had donated about R750000 to the DA, allegations which have not yet been validated by forensic auditors from Ernst & Young, who have tracked every donation of more than R5000 of the 14000 donations received at national and provincial level last year.

The Nigerian police have arrested three senior officials in a central state over allegations that they demanded some $2.5 million in kickbacks for awarding a government contract to a businessman, state-run radio said on Sunday.

How do you deal with the stigma and secrecy surrounding STIs and HIV? Could you help people to talk about sexuality without embarrassment or fear? Could you spot the signs of an abusive relationship? A new guide "Programme Guidance on Counselling for STI/HIV Prevention in Sexual and Reproductive Health Settings" to be jointly launched by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) - the world's largest voluntary organisation working in sexual and reproductive health - answers these and the many other challenges facing family planning counsellors and others dealing with STI and HIV in the field.

Cosatu and the Treatment Action Campaign are to table a national HIV/Aids treatment plan in Nedlac following the first national treatment conference, which concluded in Durban this week. A key aspect of the plan involves making antiretroviral drugs available through the public health system to those infected with HIV.

A public meeting entitled “CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES on NEPAD - a new partnership for Africa's development?” will be held on 8 July from 5:30 to 6.45 at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. [near Russell Square, on Thornhaugh Street, London WC1] Nearest Underground: Goodge Street [ Northern Line] or Russell Square [Piccadilly Line]. It will take place in the Assembly Hall - Room G2 - near the reception in the Main Building of SOAS. Organised by the Africa Book Centre with grateful thanks to the African Studies Association of the UK, guest speaker will be Patrick Bond, editor of the new book 'FANON'S WARNING: A Civil Society Reader on the New Partnership for Africa's Development'

Kanu will give financial backing to its women candidates in the forthcoming general elections, Secretary General, Raila Odinga, has said. Raila said Kanu will give women an equal chance in campaigning for parliamentary and civic seats.

About 300 of the 2,061 Sierra Leonean refugees in Nigeria have opted for voluntary repatriation and are expected to go home soon, according to a senior Nigerian official. Nigeria's Federal Commissioner for Refugees, Professor Isaac Gabriel, told a news conference on 21 June that efforts were being made to help the refugees go back now that peace had returned to Sierra Leone.

Bernard Ndorainywe, 39, is a Burundian who has lived in the Nduta refugee camp in western Tanzania since 1996, and he wants to go home. However, as with many of the 100,000 refugees in the camps in Kibondo District, his home is in southern Burundi, where the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is not facilitating repatriation.

President Yoweri Museveni's press secretary Mary Karooro Okurut has said the media is not doing enough to cover children's issues. Okurut made a passionate appeal to the media to come out and play a more active role in the fight against child abuse and neglect.

Children within the East African Community (EAC) will soon be allowed to attend primary schools in any of the three countries without discrimination. The EAC assembly nominated MP, Mr Mohamed Zubedi, has said the programme being handled by a special committee with members from EAC will be effective in few years' time. He said the move is aimed at harmonising the education systems among the three East African nations.

Primary school feeding schemes are intended to give poor children an incentive to attend school - and not to compensate for the lack of nutrition at home, argues Lenore Dunnett, deputy director for the Western Cape's Nutrition Programme. But for many under-privileged children, the food they receive through such schemes is all they can expect to get to eat on any given day.

The arrival of some 8,000 new refugees from Liberia into eastern Sierra Leone in recent days has put a potentially dangerous strain on war-damaged Sierra Leonean villages along the border and threatens to sidetrack efforts to reintegrate tens of thousands of repatriated Sierra Leonean refugees into their home communities, according to an on-the-scene assessment this week by the U.S. Committee for Refugees (USCR), the public information program of Immigration and Refugee Services of America.

In 1997, The Gambia carried out a biodiversity country study to gather and analyse biological and socio-economic data as the basis for preparing its national strategy and action-plan. A national task force was formed comprising representatives from the relevant government institutions and NGOs, was established to provide both policy and technical guidance to a team of national consultants contracted from relevant institutions to handle specific sectoral and sub-sectoral issues covered in the study. According to the research and development officer at the Department of Parks and Wildlife Management (DPWM), Famara Drammeh, biological resources are vital to humanity's economic and social development, and as a result, there is a growing recognition that biological diversity is a global asset of tremendous value to present and future generations.

The WWF is calling on the European Union to work with West African nations to avert a potentially catastrophic collapse in fish stocks that provide a much-needed source of food and income in countries such as Senegal and Mauritania.

There is a pressing need to understand better how to ensure the translation into policy and practice of important research findings in HIV/AIDS prevention and care in countries threatened by fast spreading HIV epidemics. This paper reviews the findings and implications of a policy analysis case study of an HIV/AIDS clinical trial that has been successful in influencing HIV prevention policy relevant to low-income countries in order to identify illustrative lessons for HIV/AIDS researchers in the future.

Scientists and environmental groups often paint grim pictures of a world with a substantially altered climate. But the fact is, even if we start reducing our emissions today, we can't stop global warming in its tracks because the warming has already begun. It will take centuries before some effects, such as sea level rise, stop entirely. This leads to a common complaint some critics raise against the Kyoto Protocol, the only international framework set up to reduce the emissions that cause climate change. Alone, it will do little to curb the problem, so what's the point?

News that some of the continent's poorest countries will receive up to US $1 billion in additional debt relief won a mixed reaction on Monday, with some NGOs alleging that the G-8's pledges were "duplicitous" and "old fashioned ".

At least 13 people have been killed in northern Madagascar as troops loyal to President Marc Ravalomanana pushed ahead with an offensive into one of the last remaining bastions of the country's former ruler, Didier Ratsiraka, a military official said.

With the number of people requiring emergency food aid in post-war Angola rising dramatically, WFP has made a fresh appeal for assistance to international donors. The Agency estimates that it will need US$ 241 million to feed up to 1.5 million people over the next 18 months - over a half-a-million more than the number of current beneficiaries.

Digital Opportunity Channel is currently seeking submissions for publication on its new Web site. Coordinated by the Benton Foundation and OneWorld South Asia, the channel addresses the use of information and communications technologies (ICTs) for global development, as well as initiatives around the world bridging the digital divide.

April 2002 First Monday. A new report asks does the Internet increase or decrease the risk of a communication breakdown during a crisis. It concludes that while the Internet limits access to certain kinds of information and increases the spread of rumours, hoaxes, false information, and bias, it also decentralises information sources, enables personal journalism, accelerates the spread of information, acts as a watchdog on official information, creates global archives, and establishes virtual communities. [Drum Beat 151]

Organizations that are able to attract and successfully manage volunteers have the ability to ramp up their capacity without incurring the cost and responsibility of staffing for every need.

Vultures circle overhead, waiting for new prey. In the blistering 40-degree heat and bone-dry conditions, it does not take long before another cow slumps dying to the ground. This is Lady - a tiny village in eastern Ethiopia and scene of a looming crisis. In the last 10 months the area has not seen a drop of rain. Cattle are dying, and the effects are now starting to hit the thousands of families in the area.

This was a summit that promised much but failed to rise to expectations. A team of strong individuals that should play together well failed to deliver the goods. Some did better than others, but no team member comes away with much credit from a summit that leaves Africa still on the sidelines.

Zimbabwe's Minister of Information and Publicity, Professor Jonathan Moyo, warned media houses and journalists who refuse to register that the wrath of the "law" would descend on them. Moyo was quoted in the state controlled Sunday paper, The Sunday Mail of 23 June, saying that all media houses have to be registered.

Four people, including a journalist, were arrested on Monday and were being held incommunicado by security authorities in Liberia on suspicion of associating with the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), Amnesty International (AI) reported.

It is often said that the development of a nation does not solely rely on infrastructure and basic social services, but also it depends on the education of the citizens and their ability to understand the significance of a literate society. This belief might be incomplete in the absence of better communication for the development and education of a nation state because communication is a catalyst in this direction.

In years to come, we will reflect on this moment in 2002, and the deeper, more subtle ripples that will have been created by the Treatment Action Campaign's (TAC) Constitutional Court case, particularly in terms of the greater realisation of socio-economic and human rights. Why is it that civil society needs to use such extreme mechanisms to ensure that their message is heard? Surely we have sought to elect responsive and listening decision-makers who hear the voices of civil society and ensure that the concerns of the poor are at the heart of government policy? What has happened to the more traditional places for civil society to raise their concerns?

The United Nations and the Angolan government are not providing sufficient protection for hundreds of thousands of people displaced during Angola's civil war, Human Rights Watch has said in a briefing paper. Internally displaced people (IDPs) in Angola continue to face serious security threats, including harassment by government forces, restrictions on free movement, and possible forced return to areas where they would be at risk of political persecution and human rights abuses, Human Rights Watch said. Hundreds of thousands continue to live in poor conditions in government-run camps without access to basic food or medical care.