The world has undoubtedly changed radically since 11 September. Yet many things remain the same: a disregard for human life and human dignity, as well as for economic, cultural and social rights; an escalation of old and festering situations such as the Middle East, Afghanistan and Colombia, said Amnesty International as it launched its Report 2002 on human rights in the world during 2001.

The World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) is seriously concerned for the future of human rights in Tunisia, following a constitutional referendum which was, according to the Ministry of the Interior, approved by more than 99 per cent of voters. There is a real danger that the new constitutional powers will be used by the President of the Republic in order to further stifle any dissent within the country and to institutionalise his personal powers by giving him supreme authority over the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government, says the organization.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has released a new formula on Oral Rehydration Therapy (ORI) that will further save millions of lives and reduce the severity of illness of those suffering from acute diarrhoea. The solution responsible for saving the lives of millions of children worldwide is salt and glucose sugar, proportionately combined and widely used to treat children under five with acute diarrhoea, a killer disease.

CHIMPANZEE trafficking is still alive. In a surprise twist of events, the illicit trade has sucked in diplomats and expatriates. They purchase the chimps for sale in Europe, the Middle East and other destinations using their diplomatic immunity. The New Vision has learnt that the chimps are kept as pets, used in circuses and medical research.

Switzerland denied on Monday it had leaked information to a French newspaper about the alleged involvement of Angola's president in a $614-million embezzlement of his government's loan repayment to Russia. The allegations recently published in Le Monde sparked a diplomatic row between Angola and Switzerland. On Sunday, the Angolan president's office issued a statement accusing the Swiss government of leaking the information to the newspaper, which it called an "unfriendly act."

Acres International Ltd., one of the great names in Canadian engineering, is nearing the end of a criminal trial in an impoverished African kingdom on charges that could stain its reputation. Acres is accused of bribing the former head of one of Africa's biggest public projects, a system of dams and tunnels to divert water from Lesotho's mountains to thirsty South African cities and generate electricity in the process. Acres maintains it is innocent of bribery.

Reporters Without Borders protested today against the shutting down of the privately-owned Somali Broadcasting Corporation (SBC) by the authorities of the Somali region of Puntland and called for the measure to be reversed at once.

An FBI anti-terrorism investigation possibly involving Osama bin Laden was hampered by technical flaws in the Bureau's controversial Carnivore Internet surveillance system. The incident, which occurred in March 2000, is described in newly-released FBI documents obtained under court order by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). A written report describes the incident as part of a "pattern" indicating "an inability on the part of the FBI to manage" its foreign intelligence surveillance activities.

Heavy rains in Kenya could precipitate a health crisis in any number of ways. In rural areas, water sources can become contaminated, and because most rural folk do not know how to de-contaminate drinking water, this could easily translate into greater incidence of water-borne diseases.

The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) has developed various ICT maps based on data collected from different sources. Currently maps on the status of National Information and Communication Infrastructure (NICI) strategies, Africa's Internet and teledensity, the number of ISPs (and ownership), mobile teledensity, and broadcasting (regulation, radio, TV) can be found.

Take a look at this web site. The Africa Tech Forum is developing an African technology index and features a forum dedicated to African technology issues and solutions.

Ethiopia is in imminent danger of losing its rare wildlife, the national Institute of Biodiversity Conservation and Research (ICBR) has warned. At least four mammals and two bird species are facing extinction, the Ethiopian-based wildlife institute said. According to experts the Walia ibex, Ethiopian wolf, mountain nyala and Grevy zebras as well as the white-winged fluff tail and Ankober Serin bird species are all threatened.

Keep up the great work. Your publication is wonderful.

It took me 30 years living on and off in the 3rd world to spot what is going on. The World Bank is busy explaining to everyone that capitalism will save the 3rd world, but without explaining that the Capitalism in the 3rd world is not the same Capitalism which is bringing prosperity to the developed World. In the West, the value-added in the production of goods or services is divided approximately 80% to the workers and 20% to the owners; in the 3rd world, the proportions are reversed - the value-added in the production of goods or services is divided 20% to the workers and 80% to the owners. In fact sometimes it is 97% to the owners, but the principle is there…

We all know that increasing the income of a poor man by 10% means that the increase gets spent and goes round and round in the economy (a multiplier effect); whereas increasing the income of a rich man by 10% means that he hordes it in a bank or in a hole in the ground, and the spin-off is zero or extremely limited.

Add to this the fact that the elites (of all colours) in much of the 3rd world do not plough their money (fairly or unfairly earned) back into their own economies – they externalize it to Switzerland or some other secretive tax-haven.

And then the World Bank tells the 3rd world that they must attract foreign investment – when that same World Bank knows full well what these 3rd world elites are doing. That foreign investment which the country is trying (and probably failing) to attract is the same money which has been externalized unofficially (it sounds better than illegally) by their own elites.

Thus we have a deception on a grand scale, where the losers are the 3rd world workers who have to get by on the 20% of the value which they add, and the average citizen in the West, who has to subscribe financially and politically to the nonsense which the World Bank (and even international NGO’s and charities) peddles.

The 20/80 thing is real – I have seen it affect directly (and I have calculated the numbers for ) at least 2 members of my wife’s family here in sunny Zimbabwe Africa.

This also explains some of the scandal to do with people like Nike in the 3rd world – foreign companies are in the 3rd world because of the enormous profits to be made under the 20/80 system. They behave no worse than local companies (and often much better).

And if you really think about it also, capitalism in the West used to be of the 20/80 variety.

Review by George Monbiot.
In his recent book The Song of the Earth, the Shakespearean scholar Jonathan Bate made the extraordinary claim that poetry could save the world. I think Alastair McIntosh has just proved him right.

This is a world-changing book, one of the most important I have ever read, which will transform our perception of ourselves, our history and our surroundings, much as the work of Alice Miller and Sven Lindqvist has done. It is a first step towards the decolonisation of the soul: the essential imaginative process we have to undergo if we are to save the world from the political and environmental catastrophes that threaten it.

Soil and Soul is an extraordinary adventure in theology, economics, ecology, history and politics. It takes us from the Hebrides to the Solomon Islands, gently guiding us towards a new and remarkable philosophy by means of compelling, beautifully written stories. It overflows with ecstasy, quiet wisdom and love – love for humanity, for the world, for our failings and our possibilities.

McIntosh tells the story of his exceptional childhood, the historical destabilisation of the community in which he was brought up and, as he travels and reads, his growing understanding of why and how this happened. He explores the colonisation of resources, of human labour and, most importantly, of our own perceptions. Then he uses this emerging wisdom and experience to develop daring and innovative means of tackling the powers that have deprived us of ourselves. With the people of the Isle of Eigg, he helped devise a strategy for overthrowing the once-intractable power of the landlord. Their remarkable victory – the first known case in which Scottish tenants cleared a laird from his own estate – galvanised public demands for widespread land reform in Scotland. When a multinational quarrying company announced its intention to turn a Hebridean mountain into a giant superquarry, McIntosh persuaded the Native American Warrior Chief Sulian Stone Eagle Herney to come to Scotland and help assemble the first-ever theological submission to a public inquiry. The publicity converted a local issue into an international one, developing one of the most striking challenges to corporate power in British history.

McIntosh draws on these experiences to develop a radical politics of place. He transforms our engagement with soil and soul – once the preserve of the right – into a new and compelling vision of freedom and social justice. His radical liberation theology, rediscovering both the presence of God in nature and the neglected femininity of divine wisdom, is persuasive enough to encourage even such an indurated old sceptic as myself to take another look at God.

By these means, Alastair McIntosh shows us, we can break the spell of consent, unchain our imaginations and challenge both power itself and the anomie and disaggregation on which power’s abuse thrives. The work of a great thinker and a great poet, Soil and Soul shows us how we can, in McIntosh’s words, make ‘beauty blossom anew out of desecration’.

Make no claim to know the world if you have not read this book.

A women-only university, which will offer science and technology courses, has been launched in Kenya, with the explicit aim of popularising science among African women. The privately owned Kiriri Women’s University of Science and Technology (KWUST), has already received a letter of interim authority from the Commission for Higher Education, the body charged with registration of new universities in the country.

The author traces the misapplication of Western, body-oriented concepts of gender through the history of gender discourses in Yoruba studies. THE INVENTION OF WOMEN demonstrates that biology as a rationale for organizing the social world is a Western construction not applicable in Yoruban culture where social organization was determined by relative age.

Africa has to act more decisively in stamping out the wars that blight the continent, the head of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) said on Tuesday. In a speech to mark the OAU's 39th anniversary, Secretary-General Amara Essy said it was imperative to find lasting solutions to conflicts across the continent. He said the new African Union - due to be launched in South Africa in July to replace the OAU - would give fresh impetus to promoting peace and security in Africa.

An international commission investigating alleged slavery practices in Sudan has said the abduction of civilians by both government and rebel forces was "commonplace", and called for President Umar Hasan al-Bashir to lead a campaign against the practice. The group found that "abductions of civilians and forcible recruitment by the armed forces of all sides in the war was commonplace," the report by the US-led eminent persons group on slavery, abduction and forced servitude in Sudan.

A Swapo MP has slammed officials in the Government and parastatals who abuse public funds. Speaking in the National Council last week, Generosa Andowa said: "These people have betrayed the nation through the mismanaging of public funds and assets."

The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) is co-ordinating activities related to the development of a database on African experts and the diaspora, and making it available for access and utilisation by member States, development partners and others.

The United States has donated $16m for AIDS vaccine research in five countries including Uganda. The US Department of State said in a statement the money would be given to the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), an NGO facilitating AIDS vaccine research. The money will be spent on designing and testing candidate AIDS vaccines.

So what do the community of people and organisations working on the range of
development issues think about some of the major questions that confront our
work? The new technologies provide the opportunity for direct input and
expression with almost immediate communication back to your peers.

This e-conference starts from the position that communities cannot be left with the full responsibility for managing their water supply systems. They need support: long-term, continuous and appropriate support to keep their systems working. What is more, we cannot be satisfied with occasional islands of success. We need to at least aim for 100% coverage. Community management needs to be scaled up. The electronic conference - entitled “Beyond the Community” will take place from 3 June – 28 June 2002.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson voiced concern on Tuesday over abuses in the Republic of Congo (ROC), where fighting has displaced tens of thousands of civilians and prevented aid workers from reaching those in need. "I am deeply concerned at the deteriorating situation," she said, "in particular in the Pool region, where both parties to the ongoing conflict are showing blatant disregard for the safety and human rights of the civilian population."

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on Tuesday began proceedings in the International Court of Justice against Rwanda for "massive, serious and flagrant violations of human rights and of international humanitarian law." The DRC says that through "killing, slaughter, rape, throat-slitting, and crucifying," Rwanda is guilty of genocide against more than 3,500,000 Congolese, including the victims of the recent massacres in the city of Kisangani.

United Nations Volunteers (UNV) has announced that it will run a five-year project aimed at transforming the lives of some 1,200 disadvantaged children in Burkina Faso's towns. So far, the project has received US $2,2 million from Luxembourg and close to $300,000 in kind from the government of Burkina Faso.

An agreement worth US $68.5 million to help the governments of eight northern Nigerian states to address rural poverty has been signed at the headquarters of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)in Rome.

Seven women teachers at the Little Flower High School in Qumbu, Eastern Cape, appeared in court on charges of common and indecent assault after they allegedly forced a girl pupil to perform a sexual act using a banana.

Womens's empowerment group Wiphold has blamed a lack of domestic economic activity and difficult trading conditions for its disappointing results for the year to February 28. It has reported a drop in net profit to R8m for the year from almost R31m a year earlier.

Borno State Governor, Mala Kachalla in Maiduguri. launched a project intended to alleviate the suffering of women in dire need including widows, vesco-virginal Fistula (VVF) patients, women living with HIV/AIDS, lepers and the mentally sick.

Divorced women are set to benefit from a new maintenance payment system after the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development has researched a method whereby maintenance money paid to divorced women could become available at automatic teller machines (ATMs) installed at magistrates courts throughout the country.

University of SA principal Barney Pityana has denied newspaper claims he was squandering Unisa funds, saying the report was part of a racist campaign to discredit him and other black university heads. "It has never been my practice to demand any more than I am entitled to. It is evident there is a campaign underway," he said. Pityana said he and the university have instructed their attorneys to institute immediate action for defamation against the Mail & Guardian newspaper, as well as personally against journalist David Macfarlane.

The Ceasefire Campaign is inviting applications for a Director and Part-time Administrator.

CREA South Africa, under a contract to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will in June issue a request for applications to interested South African organizations for the award of cooperative grant agreement for a period of thirteen months to undertake a Community Empowerment Project for the Central Karoo District Municipality. This project forms part of the USAID/DPLG Local Governance Support Program.

The Non Profit Partnership together with the Provincial Parliamentary Programme will be hosting a one-week training course on Financial Sustainability for NGOs and government officials working with these structures in Kwa Zulu Natal. This is a newly established training programme, aimed at the current needs of the sector.

During June, CREA South Africa, under a contract to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will issue a Request for Proposals to interested South African organizations for the award of firm fixed price contract for a period of twenty four months to undertake a Community Participation and Capacity Building for Effective Local Governance Project for the West Coast District Municipality. This project forms part of the USAID/DPLG Local Governance Support Program (LGSP).

The Kenyan government plans to launch a major measles vaccination campaign towards the end of June to tackle a disease that kills about 50 children in the country every day. Julius Meme, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Health, said on Wednesday that the US $15 million campaign, to be held from 17 and 23 June, would target more than 14.6 million children between nine months and 14 years of age.

During the Zimbabwe election campaign I wrote a letter to the British newspaper The Guardian. A supporter of the ruling ZANU-PF had written an article claiming that two friends of mine had been associated with the Selous Scouts – the elite Rhodesian army unit responsible for gross human rights violations in the 1970s. Both these people are prominent human rights activists (as well as opposition members of parliament) and the claims were demonstrably false.

I was simply writing to set the record straight, but nothing had prepared me for the deluge of emails that my letter would prompt. It was striking that everyone who wrote to me – bar one or two – made an automatic assumption about my political loyalties. Both ZANU-PF supporters and white supporters of the opposition MDC clearly jumped to a set of (wrong) conclusions about my reasons for writing. Everyone ignored the fact that I was defending my two friends from the horrendous allegation that they were Selous Scouts and instead reached the completely opposite conclusion that I was defending the Rhodesian security forces. They also drew a set of related inferences about my opposition to land reform, desire to reinstate colonial rule and closeness to the British Government.

I politely replied that my involvement with Zimbabwe began in the 1970s because I, as a socialist and trade unionist, opposed colonialism and the Selous Scouts and supported land reform. But I also opposed intimidation, election-rigging and telling lies about people. Some of my correspondents appeared genuinely confused by what they saw as a quite improbable conjunction of views.

This was all rather depressing testimony to the success of Robert Mugabe’s strategy of playing the anti-colonial card. The presidential election was as illegitimate as it is possible to imagine. Its outcome was influenced by disenfranchisement, manipulation of the electoral roll, violent intimidation, a government broadcasting monopoly and miscounting. All this has been documented. Yet Mugabe was still able to enlist a good number of African governments to endorse the result. This was achieved solely by presenting himself as the defender of African interests against whites and colonialists.

In Zimbabwe itself the anti-colonial card does not play quite so well, largely because ordinary people can see the reality. They are also bewildered by sheer ludicrousness of the supposed global conspiracy against Zimbabwe. According to the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation and the government-controlled Herald this conspiracy includes, in no particular order: Tony Blair, Tony Leon, former Selous Scouts, members of the House of Lords and their gay lovers, British sea captains blockading the port of Beira, “Terry Blanch” (presumably the khaki-clad Afrikaner neo-Nazi), Peter Tatchell, the BBC, George W. Bush, Israel (except when it is supplying riot gear to the Zimbabwe police) and myself. Actually the list is much, much longer and I am honestly making none of this up.

And what binds us all together, this motley crew of anti-Zimbabwe conspirators? Our skin colour, of course. I had the misfortune to be included on a list of supposed “terrorist apologists” because of something I wrote criticising official media coverage. There were seven of us on the list, five white and two black. But it was the five whites who were singled out, with the rider that we were “assisted by the likes of” the two black journalists. Even the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, is usually only described as being a tool of the conspirators. His crime during the liberation struggle is not that he was a Selous Scout, but merely that he did not fight. (Incidentally, those blacks who were in the Rhodesian security forces, such as ZANU-PF MP Philip Chiyangwa, are never mentioned in this context at all.) This has intriguing echoes of Ian Smith’s belief that “our Africans” were peaceable folk who were manipulated by “Communist terrorists”. Apparently Zimbabweans are still incapable of taking action on their own account – it’s just that the terrorist manipulators have changed.

This is to see Zimbabwe entirely through the prism of race. Why not, for a moment, remove the racial element and see what we are left with.

At independence in 1980 the new government adopted what was essentially a welfarist approach, providing considerable benefits for the people in areas such as health and education, while leaving the structure of economic power intact. In accordance with the pre-independence Lancaster House agreement there was no programme of genuine land reform and land resettlement was marginal. Both commercial and communal farmers benefited from significant real increases in the producer price of maize, while the commercial sector also saw a boost to its export earnings.

By the early 1990s, when the legal constraints on land reform were removed, several other things had happened. ZANU-PF had made considerable strides towards introducing a one-party state, notably by forcing the main opposition party into a merger. The army had massacred thousands of its supporters in Matabeleland. The government adopted a structural adjustment programme, which was causing widespread economic distress. And official corruption was becoming more extensive and more brazen.

Land acquisition was used not as a means to redress ancient injustices, but rather as a further means of enrichment for the party elite. There was an increasing amount of rhetoric about “indigenisation” of businesses. But genuine indigenous capitalists, such as Strive Masiyiwa of Econet, were obstructed bureaucratically because they came from outside the charmed political circle.

Opposition to all these developments was led by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU). Originally this had been under the leadership of Mugabe’s brother, who died mysteriously in the midst of a corruption scandal. Over the next few years the membership wrested control from the party appointees. By the 1990s what could be seen in Zimbabwe was a remarkable manifestation of class struggle, with the organised workers leading opposition to the government on a number of issues.

There was a misfortune and an irony in the success of the civic opposition in forcing a referendum on the constitutional issue in February 2000. If the government had not been defeated then, it is quite possible that the newly formed MDC would have won the legislative elections later that year. As it was, the referendum not only inflicted a psychological shock to the ruling party. It also laid bare the new political demography of Zimbabwe. The urban population was solidly against the government. So was Matabeleland, for reasons that are not hard to divine. But, most significantly, so were swathes of Mugabe’s Shona heartland. Until this point ruling party strategists had assumed that they had an automatic ethnic majority in perpetuity. Yet what had happened was that class politics had asserted itself. The anti-Mugabe rural votes were workers, very often unionised, on the massive commercial farms.

The wave of farm invasions that followed the referendum and that has continued ever since combined three elements. They were an attempt to mobilise anti-white sentiment and a supposedly visceral African attachment to the land. This plays well in Windhoek and Pretoria – less so in Harare, or even Bindura. Secondly, the farm invasions were a way of the political elite getting their hands on new economic assets. And thirdly, they would have the effect of displacing (and thereby disenfranchising) tens of thousands of farmworkers and their families.

And now, in the post-election phase, when international attention has moved elsewhere, it has become clear that this strategy was remarkably successful. Mugabe can rely on the support of his African “brothers” to soften the impact of any international sanctions. The allocation of farms has been a massive new source of patronage whereby Mugabe can reward the loyal. These are not, of course, primarily the “war veterans” who took over the farms in the first place, but party functionaries, government ministers, police and army officers, Mugabe’s family members, broadcasters, judges – all the heroes of what has been labelled, apparently without irony, the “third chimurenga”, or war of liberation.

And the rural workers – Zimbabweans who had the temerity to put class before tribe – have been scattered. Some estimates of internal displacement in Zimbabwe put the numbers as high as 1.5 million. Beyond question hundreds of thousands of people, mainly rural workers have been driven from their homes.

Zimbabwe faces a massive food crisis. Agricultural production, hardly surprisingly, is at an all-time low. This has coincided with famine in the sub-region. Communal farmers are likely to be spared the worst consequences, but it is the urban and rural working class – Mugabe’s opponents – who will be hardest hit. And to make matters worse, provision of food aid at the local level is often only available to those with a ZANU-PF card.

The irony of all this is that Mugabe’s land policy has to some extent brought about the alliance that it denounced. White commercial farmers, always politically quiescent, have been driven into the arms of the MDC as they have seen that they have no political alternative. The whites who have been politically active against Mugabe for years have not, by and large, been commercial farmers or former Selous Scouts, but those same people who opposed Ian Smith before independence. The influx of right-wing whites is not what the party needs if it is to represent the interests of its own constituency – but this because they are right-wing, not because they are white.

As the scale of the Zimbabwean disaster becomes clearer over the next few months, there will no doubt be louder calls for a humanitarian response. But another type of response is needed to. While farmworkers are forced from their homes, public sector workers such as teachers and health personnel are driven from their jobs. And the government promotes its own yellow union, Zimbabwe Federation of Trade Unions, at the expense of the ZCTU. Zimbabweans need solidarity, especially from African trade unions, just as much as they need food aid.

Richard Carver is director of Oxford Media Research.

RSF has protested the arrests of Abdoulaye Tiémogo, publication director of the private weekly "Le Canard Déchaîné", and Abarad Mouddour Zakara, publication director of the private weekly "La Roue de l'histoire". Zakara was arrested and kept in police custody on 18 May 2002, following Commerce Minister Seïni Oumarou's filing of a complaint for "defamation". Sanoussi Jackou, owner of "La Roue de l'histoire" newspaper and president of the Parti Nigérien pour l'autogestion (PNA), a small opposition party, was also arrested on 17 May in the context of the same case. Tiémogo was held for questioning on 17 May, one week after hosting a debate on the private radio station Tambara FM during which Jackou accused Prime Minister Hama Amadou of ethnic and regional discrimination in the appointment of high state officials. The three men were placed in provisional detention at Niamey's civilian prison on 21 May. They are expected to stand trial on 24 May and face a six-month to two-year prison sentence.

Ethiopia’s first-ever team of youth counsellors who will help combat HIV/AIDS was launched on Friday. The members of the 30-strong team, which specialises in voluntary counselling and testing (VCT), will return to their local communities to teach youth counsellors in the fight against the virus.

Mandate the Future's global youth forum EVENT 2002 connects and mobilizes youth from all over the world - privileged and unprivileged, North and South, rich and poor - into a common forum to discuss and debate issues of immense significance to all of us. It unravels and brings into the open issues, concerns, viewpoints, needs, desires of our southern youth, on issues ranging from poverty and health to ICT. Mandate the Future also arranges for direct communication between young people all over the world, and experts to guide and inform them.

An eight-man rapist gang, which specialised in raping young girls, has been arraigned before a Sharia court in Bauchi, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) has reported.

Ms. Khaddijatou Baldeh, the Principal Education Officer at the Department of State for Education, and member of The Gambia Library and Information Service Association (GAMLISA), has stated that effective dissemination of information cannot be achieved if librarians and information workers are not equipped with necessary skills to transform and ensure access to, and efficient use of all available electronic information resources in the country.

The Uganda Women Parliamentary Association and the Coalition on the Domestic Relations Bill have agreed to lobby President Yoweri Museveni and the First Lady to support them on the Bill. The decision was reached at a meeting chaired by UWOPA chairperson, Loice Bwambale, at Parliament Buildings in Kampala.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill's 10-day visit to Africa is unprecedented. It is being seen as an opportunity for African officials to punch home their view that the continent's debt burden is unsustainable and that trade barriers in Europe and the United States must be dismantled. O'Neill is known to be one of the most skeptical and critical voices in the Bush Administration when it comes to assistance for Africa.

West African countries are considering creating a peacekeeping force under the auspices of their economic community (ECOWAS) to intervene in Liberia if negotiations between the government and rebels fail, President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal said on Friday.

As the weeks have passed since Angola’s ceasefire was signed between Unita and the MPLA government on April 4, it has become clear that a grim situation lies behind Unita lines. As people stumble out of the bush into reception centers, they are telling of intense suffering, of people dying of hunger. Olara Otunnu, Special Representative of the UN Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict has been traveling in Angola during the past week, visiting the eastern and central provinces of Bie, Moxico and Benguela. He talked to allAfrica.com by telephone from the Angolan capital, Luanda, about what he’d encountered.