Pambazuka News 63: Edição Especial - Relações Raciais no Brasil
Pambazuka News 63: Edição Especial - Relações Raciais no Brasil
The EU on Friday expressed its extreme concern over the continuing violence and worsening humanitarian situation in Burundi, particularly in Bujumbura Rural Province, a statement from the EU said.
President Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania and the head of the visiting United Nations Security Council delegation have called on political leaders in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Burundi to shoulder their responsibility for restoring peace in their countries.
Despite objections, the Namibian government is to
go ahead with plans to relocate around 24,000 refugees to an ecologically
sensitive district occupied by the hunter-gatherer San community.
The international community on Monday was
cautious in their show of support for Madagascar's new president, Marc
Ravalomanana. Although several western diplomats were present at the inauguration
ceremony, most sent consular officials rather than ambassadors, news reports
said. The guarded approach was seen by analysts as the "most appropriate response"
to the unresolved political row between Ravalomanana and veteran leader, Didier Ratsiraka.
The Independent Online (IOL) reports that Libyan oil company Tamoil, which supplies 70 percent of Zimbabwe's total fuel imports, has recently pulled out due to lack of payments received. Libya has moved close to Zimbabwe and has been accused by Zimbabwe's opposition of attempting to 'colonize' the southern African country.
Events of last few months have radically altered the face of politics in Kenya. The March 18th Kanu elections led to a massive realignment of Kenyan political scene and paved way for Moi's succession. The ruling party has never held elections since 1988, when they used the infamous Que. voting otherwise known us 'mlolongo'. The party has always used threats to silence critics and consolidate its power. Indeed there was even a commission that was formed in 1980's and which had powers to punish members of parliament over their utterances in parliament. Kanu became the supreme organ in the state defying the constitutional order.
The Nigerian legislature is set to pass a law banning female genital mutilation and imposing a two year jail term for offenders. The bill, which is currently being considered by the Senate, was unanimously passed by Nigeria’s lower house, the House of Representatives last year. The senate is expected to conclude its deliberations on the bill in May, after which it will be sent to President Olusegun Obasanjo for his assent.
A consortium of key humanitarian agencies has adopted a policy statement designed to prevent sexual abuse and exploitation in humanitarian crises throughout the world. In the statement members of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) pledged to ensure that their staff and implementing partners do not abuse their power and influence to exploit and harm victims of conflict, particularly women and children.
Economic success in Africa does not have a chance unless governments provide the necessary funds to combat the rampant HIV/AIDS pandemic on the continent, renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs told the U.N. Economic and Social Council. Sachs is also U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan's special adviser on development issues.
Although circumcising girls is now illegal in Kenya, there is no indication the ban is having any meaningful impact on the ground. On the contrary, reports from the media and gender organisations since last December indicate that many communities ignored the legislation.
The pandemic of HIV/Aids, and the poverty associated with it, is hitting children with a force no one foresaw, according to a new study. In Africa, in particular, it has already undone the achievements in social development of the last half century. Life expectancy has fallen by between 18 and 23 years in the worst affected countries; malnutrition has risen; immunisation rates have dropped; more than 13 million children have been orphaned by Aids, 95% of them in Africa; and four million children have died of Aids since the epidemic began. "These are shameful statistics for a world possessing such extraordinary wealth, knowledge and technological capacity," says the study, prepared by Unicef for this week's United Nations Special Session on Children.
Central and Eastern African countries, whose education systems are already threatened by HIV/AIDS, need to take concrete steps to minimise the impact of the pandemic, a regional forum in Yaounde, Cameroon, has concluded.
BRIDGE, gender and development information unit at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex is putting together an information pack on gender and HIV/AIDS and would like to hear about organisations doing innovative work in this field. They are interested in any area of work that involves a focus on gender relations and HIV/AIDS.
Programs crash, people make mistakes, networks grow and change. That's life, and computer scientists are finally building systems that can deal with it.
Recently, someone called Matt Webb (can it be his real name?) wrote an add-on for the Instant Messaging (IM) clients AIM and MSN. You can now ask Google to search the web for you by sending an IM.
In 2002, with its population of close to 22 million people, Uganda is pivotal to the success of the much-publicized reform of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund policies. These international financial institutions and indeed the Government of Uganda and civil society organizations have lauded the Ugandan experience as an international flagship for participatory governance, transparency and economic growth over the last two years. Based on secondary materials and interviews with leading officials within the Government of Uganda, bi-lateral and multi-lateral institutions and civil society organizations in Uganda and Washington DC over 2001, this study presents evidence that crucial policy prescriptions within the PRSC and PRGF may impair Uganda's ability to effectively realize its antipoverty and growth goals.
Green campaigners are accusing a Greek flooring company of contributing to the destruction of ancient rainforests by being one of the gateways into the European Union for imports of west African timber. Greenpeace activists boarded the MV Zini, which is owned by Shelman, in the port of Kalamaki, near Corinth, on 15 April and found logs that they claimed were loaded in the Liberian port of Buchanan.
Africa is losing as much as US$4 billion a year through top professionals seeking better jobs abroad, according to research by a senior economist at Addis Ababa University.
A recent report by Transparency International UK estimates that the official arms trade accounts for 50% of all corrupt international transactions. A conservative estimate of the level of commissions paid is 10%, in an industry worth $40bn a year.
The Transparency International Bribe Payers Index 2002, carried out by Gallup International Association (GIA), will be launched in Paris, Hong Kong and Johannesburg on 14 May 2002. The BPI 2002 ranks the propensity to bribe of firms and business sectors from 21 exporting countries on the basis of an exclusive survey by GIA in 15 emerging market economies.
Just a year ago, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell was lauding Mali's 10-year-old democracy as "a model for the rest of the world to see and focus on." Amid a chaotic and disputed presidential vote count this month, however, many were left fearing that Mali — West Africa's model — had become only the latest promising young African democracy to slide back into old, corrupt ways.
TANZANIA HAS rejected its ranking by Transparency International as one of the most corrupt countries in the world and described the anti graft body as "an enemy of developing countries." Mr Wilson Masilingi, the Minister in the President's Office responsible for good governance told The EastAfrican last Friday: "The criteria used to reach such conclusions is biased against nations like Tanzania which are struggling against poverty."
African intellectuals are divided on the legitimacy of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad). During a three-day "African Forum for Envisioning Africa by African Scholars" in Nairobi last week, a section of civil society representatives and scholars said that Nepad lacked legitimacy as it was agreed upon by African presidents and sold to Western economic powers for funding without consulting citizens, parliaments and the civil society.
AS THE United Nations Special Session on Children gets underway, East African countries are admitting they have made little or no progress in meeting the goals for child and maternal health set at a UN conference 12 years ago.
Funding has been made available to non-governmental and community based organizations to start up /expand residential and day care facilities for adults with severe psychiatric disabilities. Priority will be given to facilities providing for person from historically disadvantage communities and to those discharged from long –term psychiatric hospitals. Funding is for operational costs only and is not for building or purchasing of premises
For further details kindly contact Radisha Sukhla (27) 11- 355-3402 or
Lehlogonolo Rakate (27) 11 355-3351
UK-based pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithkline has announced a donation of 100 million doses of its drug albendazole to treat lymphatic filariasis, also known as elephantiasis, which currently infects more than 120 million people worldwide. The company has promised to provide the drug for free until the disease is eradicated.
South Africa’s Nobel laureate launched his foundation in the United States, which is designed to work with universities nationwide to create leadership academies emphasising peace, social justice and reconciliation.
Save the Children and CARE today announced a $1 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to provide emergency food aid for more than two million people -many of them children- who are suffering from starvation in the southern African country of Malawi.
Sinethemba Children's Care Centre received a R60000 boost to renovate its dilapidated building. The centre cares for 30 Aids orphans, physically and mentally disabled children.
The international medical relief organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has started an emergency feeding and medical programme in Chipindo, in Angola's southern province of Huila, to aid 18,000 isolated people in severe need.
South Africa's top companies contributed about R460 000 to an education trust which would help Andrew Babeile and other pupils to further their studies, announced former president Nelson Mandela.
The value of the Border Community Chest in helping so many deserving organisations throughout its region was illustrated again on Tuesday when the distribution committee decided to make annual grants for 2002-3 of just under R200 000.
The Savings and Credit Opportunity for Women (SCROW), a loans scheme started in the Kaleo area in 1992, is soon to become the first women's rural bank in the Upper West Region.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO), along with the government of Tanzania and Akiba Commercial Bank, has launched a project to help tackle the problem of child labour in the country by boosting women's income-earning potential.
Genital mutilation increases infections, researchers say. Women who have undergone female genital mutilation in Gambia have a higher prevalence of bacterial and viral infections.
A 19-year-old woman from Zaki local government area of Bauchi State, Adama Yunusa, who dragged her fiance, Isa Katagum, before a sharia court over unwanted pregnancy, would receive 100 strokes for indulging in immoral act. Katagun had denied the allegations, saying he never had any sexual intercourse with the complainant.
In a country long-sickened by the level of sexual violence, a shocking series of child rapes has stunned South Africa and left people grasping for answers.
The Senegal's African Women's Media Center (AWMC) has launched a comprehensive new manual to help women journalists report more effectively on HIV/AIDS.
NISC's Gender Studies Database Collection has added the Men's Studies Database intended to help complete the spectrum of gender engaged scholarship inside and outside academia. Multidisciplinary coverage includes empirical and theoretical scholarship encompassing the issues of men's identity and experience.
Sierra Leoneans await the establishment of a Special Court and a Truth and Reconciliation Commission…. Nigeria pursues domestic trials as the Oputa "Truth Panel" ends its public hearings… Gacaca trials begin in Rwanda… the Congolese negotiations in South Africa put a truth and reconciliation commission on their agenda…. South Africans continue to debate the legacies of their own Truth and Reconciliation Commission… Zimbabwean activists working for a post-Mugabe dispensation consider possible truth, justice and reconciliation options... a host of NGO and CBO-led initiatives at the community level gather momentum in a number of African countries…
Over the past decade, strategies for conflict resolution or democratic transition in Africa have increasingly addressed complex issues of truth, justice and reconciliation. It has become more difficult simply to ignore questions about accountability for serious human rights abuses and reparations and support for the victims. This is welcome, of course. But all apparent breakthroughs bring with them new dangers. In recent years we have become particularly concerned by two distinct but interrelated dangers.
First, there is the danger of off-the-peg solutions that do not take account specific historical and political-economic contexts. Second, there is the danger that those most directly affected -- the victims themselves -- are marginalised or manipulated by initiatives on truth, justice and reconciliation.
In what follows, we offer a brief explanation of our concerns. We then outline an idea for combatting these dangers. This is the creation of a service-providers' network of African NGO's, CBO's and individuals with experience of truth, justice and reconciliation issues. We need your feedback about this idea.
The danger of off-the-peg solutions
African governments and civil society activists who are committed to ending violent conflict or authoritarian rule often look for international assistance in addressing issues of truth, justice and reconciliation. In principle, there is no problem with this. After all, African governments and civil society often lack detailed information about how these issues have been tackled elsewhere. They may also feel that the expertise for such complex, ambitious undertakings is not available locally. Also, African governments and civil society do not generally have the funds to run institutions or processes of accountability and reparation without international assistance.
But this can leave African countries extremely vulnerable to outsiders -- for example, the United Nations, or the plethora of international NGO's now active in this area -- who try to shape these processes according to their own preconceptions. Control over information, expertise and money is a powerful combination. This dependence also leaves African governments and civil society vulnerable to being caught between the potentially conflicting priorities of outsiders - for example, between those who privilege judicial action and those who have a bias towards truth processes; or between the different approaches of lawyers and mental health workers.
In addition, our experience suggests that the outside actors do not always have the expertise that they claim. They often lack the capacity to monitor and evaluate comparative developments or to develop a coherent historical and political analysis of the country in which they have become engaged. Combined with the inevitable bureaucratic inertia, this means that such organisations tend to depend upon prior "policy packages", which they are often reluctant to change radically even if they are inappropriate. One such problematic area in this regard has been the import of inappropriate psycho-therapeutic based models of "trauma healing".
The danger that victims' voices are marginalised
Accountability, reparation and support for victims are, of course, officially at the heart of all truth, justice and reconciliation initiatives in African countries today. But often the victims themselves have not been consulted and have had little participation in the design and implementation of these initiatives. Participation and consultation often amounts to no more than ratifying decisions that have already been taken elsewhere. Consultation should mean a genuinely free debate about the various possible courses of action. Yet there is usually a reluctance to have such a dialogue over a prolonged period and involving all levels of society.
Those African NGO's and CBO's that do have expertise in independent or community-level initiatives on truth, justice and reconciliation are also not always adequately consulted and involved in those processes of design and implementation. This is why accountability institutions and processes often try to control or substitute for grassroots initiatives. This partly explains too why official institutions with a specific life-span such as trials or truth commissions are often ineffective as catalysts for the longer-term follow-up at all levels of society that is needed in African countries emerging from violent conflict or authoritarian rule.
A service-providers' network?
So might an African service-providers' network play a useful role in addressing the twin dangers of "off-the-peg solutions" and the marginalisation of victims' voices? Could such a network be the basis for mutual advocacy and solidarity around issues of "good practice"? African NGO's are already linking up on this issue. For example, the Sierra Leone Working Group on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, is a coalition of Sierra Leonean NGO's and CBO's established to strengthen Sierra Leonean input into truth and reconciliation processes in that country. In 2001, it sent a delegation to the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation in South Africa and the Amani Trust in Matabeleland, Zimbabwe, to learn about their community-based truth, justice and reconciliation work. But so far such exchanges have often been on an ad hoc basis. Progress towards more systematic networking appears to have been made in southern Africa, however, where the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation is coordinating a sub-regionwide research project in partnership with a range of NGO's in the other countries of the sub-region.
There is no reason why such a network could not also draw upon the comparative experience of NGO's and CBO's in other regions. For example, the Amani Trust in Matabeleland, Zimbabwe, has worked with local communities in Matabeleland to exhume victims of human rights abuses there during the Gukurahundi in the mid-1980s and facilitate their dignified reburial. In doing so, it has worked closely with the Argentinian Forensic Anthropology Team, which is also due to be involved in Sierra Leone over the coming years, and developed relationships with human rights organisations in other Latin American countries working in this area.
We are acutely aware that networks can be difficult to sustain and often promise much more than they deliver. Given that this is the case, it might make sense to proceed slowly and to identify one or two areas for concrete cooperation over an initial period of two years. It might be inappropriate for such a network to take any formal institutional shape itself during that initial period. The hub of such a network could be a core group of no more than five African NGO's or CBO's, with one of them taking on initial responsibility for coordination.
But the "first principle "question is whether a service-providers' network of this kind would be desirable. The time, quite simply, may still not be right. Only if its desirability is established do questions of feasibility arise. We remain genuinely undecided. Whether you are involved actively in truth, justice and reconciliation issues in your home country or are simply an interested reader, please do let us know your opinion by replying to us via Pambazuka News.
[The authors are human rights activists who have been involved with a range of truth, justice and reconciliation initiatives in southern and West Africa. They are writing in their personal capacities]
For two days last month a SADC Regional Seminar on Organised Crime, Corruption and Money Laundering was held in Pretoria, South Africa. Organised by the Institute of Security Studies (ISS) of South Africa, the seminar concluded that organised crime and corruption, was a challenge to the transition process in the SADC region.
The findings of the Nepad gender assessment are quite hard to come by, because they involve the rather difficult process of looking for what is not there. Despite the many critical and pervasive gender issues which haunt Africa, and the international commitments to address these issue, Nepad is severely and almost completely gender blind. Whereas assessment of a development plan should more usually entail criticizing the inappropriateness or inadequacy or ineffectiveness of what is in the plan, in this case we are almost entirely looking for what is missing.
The United Nations General Assembly is holding a Special Session on Children from 8 to 10 May. Heads of government, senior officials, as well as representatives from non-governmental organisations will decide what steps need to be taken in order to improve children's lives and assess progress made since the 1990 World Summit for Children. Despite commitments made ten years ago, child slavery is growing. One area of particular concern is trafficking.
Funding to fight famine in Malawi has begun to trickle in, but it is still nowhere near what is required to prevent a humanitarian disaster, said aid agency CARE International.
Madagascar, the strife-torn Indian Ocean island nation of 15 million people, is by all indications poised to split into two parts unless another reconciliation meeting takes place soon. The split, which looks imminent, comes two weeks after a peace deal brokered in Dakar, Senegal promised a solution to a presidential impasse that has divided the island.
The food and nutritional situation of over two million internally displaced people (IDPs), particularly in northeastern parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and of over 330,000 refugees from neighbouring countries, "is cause for serious concern", according to the latest report from the Global Information and Early Warning System on Food and Agriculture (GIEWS).
Take a look at this wish-list posted on Slashdot by someone who is proposing an online community of coders to write software for civil society. A mailing list has been set up already.
The Writers in Prison Committee of International PEN condemns the prison sentences handed out to journalists Mamadou Oumar Ndiaye and Pape Ndiaye in April 2002 for "defamation" and "insult". Mamadou Oumar Ndiaye and Pape Ndiaye, publication director and reporter respectively with the Dakar-based weekly Le Témoin, were each sentenced to four months' imprisonment without parole and fined a total of three million CFA francs (approx. US$4,110). The verdict stemmed from a complaint lodged by Victor Cabrita, the director of the Sainte Marie de Hann Catholic school, following a September 2001 article in Le Témoin that alleged financial malpractice at the school. The article also included remarks made by union members to the effect that Cabrita was "a slave driver and a racist". The two journalists are appealing the judgment.
The Community Development Resource Association (CDRA) is offering the several five-day courses for organisational, programme and project leaders or managers of development organisations.
Creative Associates International, Inc., known locally as CREA SA, has been
contracted by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to implement a programme of grants management and technical assistance in support of the USAID Democracy and Governance Program in South Africa. CREA hereby announces the availability of an Annual Program Statement.
South African Network of Trauma Service Providers (SANTSEP)has published its guidelines for proposals.
Umhlaba Development Services is a development consultancy
company providing a range of support services to NGOs, donors, and government departments. It is looking for a Financial Services Consultant.
PAD is an independent body registered as a development Trust in the terms of the Trust Act. PAD is an umbrella coordination organisation of the rural associations representing communities, in particular women of economic active ages and post formal schooling youth. It is looking for a Director.
Development Action Group (DAG) is a leading urban development NGO in the Western Cape that supports and implements community housing and development projects and processes, and that works towards the creation of an enabling, community sensitive policy environment. It is looking for a Receptionist.
Your Excellency, The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply concerned by the recent closure of The Analyst, an independent newspaper based in the capital, Monrovia. During the early morning hours of April 25, police shut down The Analyst and ransacked the publication's offices. According to an Associated Press (AP) report, Monrovia police chief Paul Mulbah said the ban was permanent and refused to give reasons for the closure. "The paper is closed and will not print again. This is a government order," Mulbah told the AP.
Foreign correspondents in Zimbabwe have launched a challenge in the Supreme Court against a controversial media law which they say is unconstitutional. The journalists argue that the legislation, which was introduced in March, violates freedom of expression. A total of eight journalists have so far been charged under the law, which the government insists is necessary to tackle a collapse in journalistic standards.
This International Telecommunications Union (ITU) study, published in 2000, is one of a series. It provides an description of Uganda, the ICT status, Internet policy, and sectoral penetration in key sectors, including government and education.
Since March 28, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has been facilitating the return of Burundian refugees from Tanzania as part of a tripartite agreement among the Burundi and Tanzanian governments, and the UN agency. While UNHCR is not promoting the return of the refugees, it is assisting those who have voluntarily opted to return. In contrast, both the Tanzanian and the Burundi governments are actively promoting the repatriation process.
The United Nations announced on Tuesday that it was
suspending all activities in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, with effect from
Tuesday 9 May, a press release issued the same day by the office of UN
Resident Humanitarian Coordinator stated. According to the statement the action was taken after kidnappers refused to release an abducted UN staff member.
The transformation of the Organisation of
African Unity (OAU) into the African Union (AU) has been postponed just two
months before it is scheduled to happen, it was announced on Tuesday. Senior figures overseeing the transformation believe more time is needed to
complete the process of setting up the 17 key components of the new body. No
time frame within which this process will be completed has been given.
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has started distributing food aid to thousands of severely malnourished people who are being discovered in areas of Angola now open to aid workers after last month's peace agreement.
Despite President Robert Mugabe's election
victory, political violence continues in Zimbabwe with four deaths recorded
in April, according to local human rights groups. The Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum (Human Rights Forum) has claimed in its
latest report that there appears to be no end to politically motivated
violence and harassment.
The Nigerian police force is to create hundreds of new mobile squadrons as part of its efforts to effectively combat crime, religious and political upheavals in the country, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Haz Lwendi, said on Tuesday.
An ambitious project is underway in Zambia to integrate refugees into their host community while helping the local region to develop, UNHCR said in a statement on Wednesday.
In the early 1990s, under increasingly severe criticism of neo-liberal structural adjustment policy, the World Bank announced the need to reinforce its anti-poverty programs. Land reform became a priority as part of this shift, but the World Bank has been criticised by rural social movements for emphasising market-based approaches to land redistribution. They argue that "land for whoever works it" has become "land for whoever can buy it" and say that existing land reform programmes should have been continued and improved.
NGOs and trade unions charge that the IMF and World Bank are still imposing strict conditions on loans to borrowing countries. The Reality of Aid 2002, produced by a global coalition of NGOs, states that: "far from abandoning aid conditionality, international financial institutions and bilateral donors are collaborating in an unprecedented consensus to retool the aid regime under the rubric of 'ownership' and aid effectiveness".
Kubatana, the web network of the Zimbabwe NGO Network Alliance Project will be running a series of electronic activism and advocacy workshops. These will be practical, fun & inspiring. If you want to take part, email the site.
Jocelyn Alexander, JoAnne McGregor and Terence Ranger
Violence and Memory is the history of the former Shangani Reserve in Northern Matbeleland now known as Nkayi and Lupane. It is a rich and evocative study of the forced movement of people into a sparse wilderness area, in order to create a 'homeland' for the Ndebele after the conquest of the Ndebele state in the late 19th Century, and the emergence of this area in to a central platform of nationalist politics for the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU). The book explores, both the central theme of violence, not only under settler colonialism, but under the post-colonial dispensation, and the memory of that violence over a long period of time. Central to the study however is the development of nationalist politics in a particular rural setting, as a result of a complex interplay of rural and urban figures, and a combination of local grievances with broader territorial meanings of becoming national. Moreover the book explores the ways in which nationalist politics developed a moral economy, through which leaders and their practices, both in the anti-colonial struggle and in the form of the post colonial nationalist government, were held accountable according to norms and promises of nationalist objectives.
ISBN: 0 85255 642 X, 2000.
Thomas Meyer
A critically important question confronts many countries in the post-Cold War epoch: are culturally determined political conflicts inevitable? While acknowledging people's need for identity, and that different cultures necessarily produce differentiated identities, Professor Meyer argues that difference only leads to intolerance and violence when politically ambitious leaderships exploit it. Fundamentalism is therefore essentially a political phenomenon that has occured in all civilizations, particularly in contemporary Europe and North America. In the present age of globalization, Meyer suggests that social crisis grows out of an exclusionary dynamic that marginalizes growing numbers of people. Little wonder that the deepening of inequality between North and South has undermined popular confidence in secular leaders' vision of development and triggered a divisive fundamentalism that declares war on modernism and, ironically, on traditionalism too. This argument contains real grounds for optimism. In seeking political strategies to defeat fundamentalism and the identity mania that accompanies it, the focus must be on developing economic and social structures that give all citizens a common interest in the operations of a socially responsible market economy, which delivers to all. Zed Books, ISBN 1 84277 063 2, 2002.
Slowing the spread of HIV and coping with the consequences of AIDS are major challenges for many developing countries. There are now many examples of successful small-scale responses to the disease. Could these strategies work for a larger population? How can non-governmental or community-based organisations (NGOs/CBOs) broaden the impact of their programmes?
I am currently working on a hyper-textual project concerning the African Charter of Human and Peoples Rights, and the Arab Charter of Human Rights. The main aim of this project is to analyses, compare & contrast, and explain the basic tenants of both Charters from an international law, and human rights perspective. The uniqueness of this project lies within the new IT software that is being used, which has been designed by our IT department at the Mediterranean Academy of Diplomatic Studies ( Diplo Project). this software enables the user to add links, make annotations, and create briefcases in an interactive forum.
Furthermore, the initial research on the African Charter has been completed, and we are ready to move into the next phase, which basically will rely on the contribution of international lawyers, students of human rights, and all those interested in the application of human rights from an African perspective.
Therefore, I am extending an open invitation to all interested in this project to participate in this new research methodology. On my part i will provide you with the software, and of course user names and passwords enabling you to access the information, and contribute online to enriching this innovative method of research.
Please do not hesitate to contact me if you are interested in this project or seek further information.
Furthermore, please do visit the website we have created.
I must commend you on your website and am sorry I have only found it now.
Manchester, UK
African Women's Culture, Arts & Development is looking to recruit African Children's Development Worker Part Time (with high possibility of becoming full-time employment)
DURATION: 3 Years Pay scale: (NJC Scale 5/Spine 24) Part-time for 21hours week/52weeks.
Closing Date 24th of May 2002 Interview Date: 31st May 2002.
The Five College African Scholars Residency Program works to strengthen intellectual capacity in African universities and to enrich Africa-focused scholarship at the Five Colleges and internationally. It does so by bringing junior and mid-level African scholars, employed by and teaching in African universities and with active research projects with an African focus, for 5- and 10-month research residencies at Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, neighboring institutions associated in the Five College Consortium centered in Amherst, Massachusetts.
The Bretton Woods Project works as a networker, information-provider, media informant and watchdog to scrutinise and influence the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). Through briefings, reports and the bimonthly digest Bretton Woods Update, it monitors projects, policy reforms and the overall management of the Bretton Woods institutions with special emphasis on environmental and social concerns. Created as an independent initiative by a group of British non-governmental organisations (NGOs), it works with an extensive network to press for increased transparency and civil society participation in World Bank and IMF policies and interventions. This includes over 4000 non-governmental organisations, policy-makers, journalists, researchers and parliamentarians worldwide. By encouraging information exchange and debate, it seeks to move the Bretton Woods institutions (World Bank and IMF) away from simplistic approaches to development.
On 3 May, the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) launched its annual review of press conditions in Southern Africa "So This is Democracy?" This is the eighth year that MISA has published the report covering press freedom violations in Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Your Excellency, we are writing on behalf of the World Association of Newspapers and the World Editors Forum, which represent 18,000 publications in 100 countries, to express our serious concern at the passing of a media law that threatens freedom of the press. According to reports, on 2 May the National Assembly approved a draft law that provides for the creation of a commission to control the media. Under the law, the commission, whose chairman will be appointed by Your Excellency, will have the powers of a court and will be charged with licensing journalists and media organs and with adjudicating in complaints brought against journalists and the private media.
A judge on 7th May dismissed charges of "abusing journalistic privileges" and "publishing false information" against Collin Chiwanza, reporter for the independent Daily News, citing lack of evidence. Chiwanza appeared in court with fellow Daily News journalist Lloyd Mudiwa and Andrew Meldrum, a U.S. citizen who is the Zimbabwe correspondent for the London-based The Guardian newspaper. Meanwhile, police on 6 May arrested Pius Wakatama, another Daily News journalist, at his home on the outskirts of the capital, Harare.
George Maziku, a correspondent for "Mwananchi" newspaper, is facing a criminal case after being interrogated and detained by the police for several hours. He is alleged to have displayed "contempt of Parliament" by writing a seditious article against Parliament. In his column that appeared on 7 April 2002, entitled "Mabadiliko ya Sheria ya Uchaguzi yanakusudia nini?" (Where does electoral law reform lead us?), Maziku explained how the law reform is used to legalise different election scenarios in favour of the ruling Revolutionary Party of Tanzania (CCM).
The Ethiopia government has demanded that the military head of the United Nations peacekeepers be removed from his post after a row over the disputed border with Eritrea. It accused Maj-Gen Patrick Cammaert of "serious mistakes" after journalists were flown into a disputed village on the border. "He did not do his job properly, so we want him to be removed," Netsannet Asfaw, Minister of State for Information, told IRIN on Wednesday. "If he is doing his job properly, it is amazing that journalists would enter Ethiopian territory without a visa. What is he doing?"
Your Excellency, I am writing on behalf of Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE), a non-profit, non-governmental organization advocating for a free press and freedom of expression around the world. We wish to express our concern about the state of press freedom in Senegal, in particular, with the recent sentencing of journalists Mamadou Oumar Ndiaye and Pape Ndiaye, publication
director and reporter, respectively, of the Dakar-based weekly Le Témoin.
Parliament's approval of a Bill allowing the government to control the media was condemned as draconian, unnecessary and an assault on free speech. Media owners, lawyers, the Kenya Union of Journalists and a cross section of Kenyans questioned the timing of the Bill. Most of the critics saw the Bill as an attempt to control media coverage of political events in an election year.
Parliament on 9th May closed the door on freedom of the Press when it passed the contentious Media Bill. The draconian law, which awaits the presidential assent, will punish vendors , media houses and journalists. Vendors who peddle newspapers, which are not bonded, will now pay Sh20,000 as fine or face a six months jail-term or both. Media houses will now be required to pay Sh1 million to publish newspapers. The bond was raised from Sh20,000 to Sh1 million.
Fahamu is preparing to conduct a survey of Community Based Organisations (CBOs) in southern Africa with the view to developing appropriate news and information services for, as well as developing appropriate training materials to strengthen the campaigning, advocacy and organisational capacities of, CBOs in the region. We are preparing a review of work that has been undertaken by others on the needs and capacities of CBOs. If you know of reports or studies published or unpublished which you think we should know about, please could you contact us with details. We would also be interested in receiving contact information on them and particularly be interested in learning about those CBOs who have been engaged in human rights work (whether on social, economic, cultural, political or civil rights).
About 5,500 children die each day around the world from diseases caused by polluted air, water and food, concludes a new study released Thursday by three United Nations agencies. The report details the deadly threat that environmental degradation poses to the Earth's most vulnerable citizens.
GENDER inequality is the root of the AIDS crisis, a conference on HIV/AIDS held in Kampala over the weekend, was told. The recent trends show more women becoming infected at a very early age. The conference also heard that HIV/AIDS will surpass the bubonic plague as history's worst pandemic.
GENDER inequality is the root of the AIDS crisis, a conference on HIV/AIDS held in Kampala over the weekend, was told. The recent trends show more women becoming infected at a very early age. The conference also heard that HIV/AIDS will surpass the bubonic plague as history's worst pandemic.
GENDER inequality is the root of the AIDS crisis, a conference on HIV/AIDS held in Kampala over the weekend, was told. The recent trends show more women becoming infected at a very early age. The conference also heard that HIV/AIDS will surpass the bubonic plague as history's worst pandemic.
PAMBAZUKA NEWS 62
PAMBAZUKA NEWS 62
Newspapers throughout Africa have reacted angrily to the success of Jean-Marie Le Pen in the first round of the French presidential election. None more so than in the North and West African nations where many French have their origins.
ZANU PF militia based at Bulawayo's Nketa 8 Secondary School recently stripped a freelance journalist, Rodrick Mukumbira, and his pregnant wife naked. Mukumbira was accompanying his wife to a local ante-natal clinic for a routine check-up.
Less than 24 hours following the arrest and detention of human rights lawyer Tiawon S. Gongloe, the independent Analyst Newspaper was on 25th April closed down by the police.
Because 120 journalists are still in prison around the world and because 31 journalists were murdered last year, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) continues to denounce those everywhere who attack the right to inform people. On 3 May, RSF will be celebrating the 12th International Press Freedom Day so as to alert public opinion to the need to stand up for press freedom and challenge public officials, international organisations and the media about their contribution to it.
A resolution on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health (E/CN.4/2002/L.47), sponsored by the Brazilian Delegation, was adopted by consensus on 22 April 2002 at the Fifty-Eighth Session of the Commission on Human Rights. The Resolution urges States to take steps, individually and through international assistance and co-operation, to achieve progressively the full realization of the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health; calls upon the international community to assist, without discrimination, the developing countries to this end; and appoints, for a period of three years, a Special Rapporteur on the right to health.
Two years ago - on 25 April 2000 - African leaders met in Abuja, Nigeria and promised to help fight malaria by dropping taxes on treated mosquito nets.
Yet, two years later, 26 African countries have not kept this promise.
Remind African leaders of the promise they made to DROP THE MALARIA TAX. No more taxes on treated mosquito nets that can protect the lives of Africa's women and children!!!!
Mountain forests still stretch over 9 million square kilometres with almost 4 million km2 above 1000 metres, and represent 28 % of the world's closed forest area.1 The observable global trend towards environmental degradation in mountain areas is partly caused by the extreme fragility of mountain ecosystems, which is due to its high geomorphic energy, steepness, isolation, and low temperatures, which cause vegetation growth and soil formation to occur very slowly. Another characteristic of mountain environments is that soils are usually thin, young, and highly erodible. These conditions set mountain ecosystems apart from all other global ecosystems and foster the quick emergence of scenarios of environmental imbalance and non-sustainable use. Mountain communities are often very poor, isolated and uneducated about sustainable forestry and agricultural practices, while population growth forces them into even higher, more fragile areas. Furthermore, one always has to keep in mind that ecosystems in mountain areas may need hundreds of years to recover.
The spread of the polio virus has declined sharply in Nigeria, the UN Children's Fund reported this week. It said 57 cases of poliomyelitis were recorded in 2001 as against 2,000 in the previous year. Nine cases have been recorded this year from a surveillance of 12 of
Nigeria's 36 states, UNICEF added in a statement made available to IRIN on Thursday.
Camels helped carry the ballot box to Sahara Desert nomads in Timbuktu and beyond Sunday as a democracy singled out by the West as a model for Africa held a wide-open presidential race. Twenty-four candidates were competing in Mali, West Africa's largest nation and one of the world's poorest. There will be a May 12 runoff if no candidate wins an outright majority.
The Petroleum Retailers Association of Sierra Leone has expressed concern about the filth that is associated with fuel distribution at the Kissy Terminal. The present system is very much prone to corruption and abuse by officials of the Kissy Terminal, involving drivers, transporters and the police, as well as representatives of oil marketing companies that the situation requires urgent Government attention.
Central Purchasing Company (CPC) Managing Director, Anthony Okwenye has decried corruption in the procurement process. "Corruption starts right from the tendering process through the contract administration up to the end of the procurement," he said.
What can a small impoverished nation do to
preserve its environment when faced with a destructive population growth
rate and an imperative to lure industrial investment to create jobs? While Swaziland, a landlocked kingdom of less than one million people,
struggles with these questions, conservationists are heartened by the first
major victory of an environmental monitoring body whose success is by no
means assured.