The International Women's Health Meetings are based on the recognition of equality as a condition of health and the recognition of the principle of distributive justice for women of the North and the South. The 9th IWHM will allow health activists from around the world to advocate for essential health resources and the rights of women and girls and will focus on the following three themes: sexual and reproductive rights, violence against women (state and family), and environmental health. The Proposal Deadline is March 10, 2002.

Opposition leaders hurled ridicule and defiance at President Thabo Mbeki on Tuesday over his government's continued refusal to expand the use of drugs to prevent mother-to-child transmission of the AIDS virus. Mangosuthu Buthelezi, leader of the mainly Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), said he had instructed the IFP premier of KwaZulu-Natal province to dispense with testing and counseling if necessary and offer nevirapine to all pregnant women.

Buganda, the largest of Uganda's four kingdoms, will offer women who remain virgins until marriage television sets, electrical appliances or money as part of an effort to curb the spread of HIV, the Sunday Telegraph/National Post reports. A woman's husband will be responsible for determining her sexual status on their wedding night and reporting it to a panel of sengas -- female mentors -- to be eligible for the reward. "African tradition" is supposed to prevent young men from falsely trying to win incentives, according to Health Minister Robert Sebunya, who added that he is "convinced that our young people are fair-minded and will enter into the spirit of the program." Ugandan women who remained virgins until marriage were traditionally offered a goat as an incentive to avoid sex.

The International Secretariat of OMCT has been informed by the Sudanese Victims of Torture Group (SVTG), a member of the OMCT network that a Sudanese appeals court in Sudan's southern Dafur state has overturned the death sentence by stoning of a young pregnant women named Abok Alfa Akok, who was accused of adultery. An appeal has been submitted against the sentence and action is requested in the form of written submission to the Sudanese authorities on behalf of Abok Alfa Akok.

The G8 Education Task Force has begun e-mail-consultations on the Education
for All initative with development experts, educators, NGOs and concerned
citizens - from all around the world.

The alarmingly high dropout figures in Zambia have reinforced calls for an
overhaul of the education sector - and for the reintroduction of free
education in government schools.

The African Women's Development and Communications Network (FEMNET) held a Men to Men Consultation on Gender Based Violence in Nairobi from 6-9 Dec 2001. It brought together 27 men from Kenya, Malawi, Namibia and South Africa. These men are members of men only groups that have come together in response to the need for men to come out and break the silence and take action against violence on women and children. Some of these groups have also recognised the need to support men to cope with the changing male roles and responsibilities.

A group of 50 women leaders from the Democratic Republic of Congo are in Nairobi, Kenya for a week long training workshop in preparation for the up-coming inter-Congolese Dialogue. The purpose of the workshop, which will take place from 15-19 February 2002, at Silver Springs Hotel, Nairobi-Kenya, is to build a common platform and agenda for peace among women from various regions of the DRC, from Kinshasa to the rebel-held Bukavu and Goma provinces.

The Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC)Commercialisation Bill, which was passed by parliament, has been gazetted into law, "The Herald" reported on February 4.

Government's campaign against corruption moved some steps higher when a serving judge, Justice Garba Abdullahi, was arraigned before a Kano [northern Nigeria] High Court by the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission over alleged bribery.

The National Council (NC) has rejected the creation of an anti-graft commission as proposed by the Anti-Corruption Bill unanimously here Tuesday. The NC rejected the bill in its current form on the recommendation of its standing committee on constitutional and legal affairs that proposed that the functions of the envisaged Anti-Corruption Commission could best be performed by the Office of the Ombudsman.

OneWorld U.S. now offers a Daily Headlines e-mail service. We save you time by culling through hundreds of nonprofit and specialized news agency articles every weekday to find the most topical and engaging articles on environment, development, human rights, U.S. foreign policy, and globalization.

Human Rights Watch expressed its disappointment at today's decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that a Belgian arrest warrant for the acting Foreign Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo violated international law.

Botswana said Thursday it will not accept financial assistance from international organizations working to help hunter-gatherer tribes continue living in a massive game reserve. Over the past few weeks, the government has stepped up efforts to relocate the Basarwa tribes of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, a 52,000-square-kilometer (20,000-square-mile) semidesert region in the middle of the country.

The BMJ Publishing Group has for almost a year provided free access to the electronic version of its 23 specialist journals to anybody in the 50 poorest countries in the world. (The BMJ and the studentBMJ are, of course, free to everybody everywhere.) Now we are extending free access to over 100 of the poorest countries in the world, which between them include most of the world's population. Within a few weeks (once we have solved some technical problems) we will also provide free access to Clinical Evidence, our evidence based compendium of answers to commonly asked clinical questions.

Amnesty International says new regulations are needed to prevent diamonds from funding civil wars in Africa.

Representatives of the ICRC and the Tanzania Red Cross Society are taking part in the "Tanzanite" military peace-support exercise organized by France and Tanzania in coastal areas near Dar es Salaam and Tanga. "Tanzanite" brings together armed forces from 16 African countries and military observers from across the world. Involving more than 2,000 troops, the exercise aims to improve coordination between various African armies and to enhance the ability of governments to cope with political and humanitarian crises.

This issue of the Newsletter contains a call to the AMVTN/AMANET Joint Workshop on Health Research Ethics and Good Clinical Practice July 2002. Please bring it to the attention of your colleagues, students and whoever you feel would benefit from participation. The AMVTN will award full scholarships, including travel costs for those selected. The AMVTN Newsletter as an Adobe PDF file (281 kB) on the AFRO-NETS server for downloading.

INASP's African Journals Online assists all those who need access to research and information on Africa. Its long term aim is to provide a comprehensive coverage of all scholarly journals currently published in Africa. It offers free access to the Tables of Contents and abstracts of over 70 journals in all disciplines, together with links to full text and a document delivery service.

Mountains -- homes of the gods, sources of life-giving waters, gigantic monuments of rock and ice - that for centuries posed as impenetrable boundaries, are increasingly falling vulnerable to humans' sporting endurance, to an onslaught of travelers seeking escape from cluttered lives, and to demands on natural resources and cultural institutions that far exceed capacities. Ironically, tourism -- that which brought laudable economic opportunities to here-to-fore isolated and undeveloped mountain regions - is turning mountains into "the world's highest trash dumps," into high altitude Disneylands that misrepresent and exploit mountain cultures with little gain for mountain inhabitants. Infrastructure development (roads, airports, hotels, communications, etc.) is opening mountain regions to mass tourism before proper tourism planning or management can take place.

The South African Government is to commit R10 million to an ambitious, multi-faceted conservation and research programme that involves scientist, submersibles, ships, helicopters and - fish. Coelacanths, the mysterious 'fossil fish' which was first discovered in its living form off the coast of South Africa in 1938, will be at the center of the study.

Clinicians in the developed West have now settled into an environment in which they are able to address the problems in most cases of poisoning in a logical fashion. In the developing world the situation is far from clear. In many countries, including South Africa, the majority of the population resort to traditional remedies in the first instance. The composition of many of these remedies are completely unknown. Traditional remedies or muti may be prescribed on the basis of colour. Some remedies are effective, others are harmless, but a number of others have considerable toxicity, especially when administered to small children.

More than four decades of oil exploration and production activities have left a severely degraded environment in Nigeria's southern, Niger Delta oil region. Spills - the uncontrolled discharge of oil or its by-products including chemicals and wastes, which mainly occurs through equipment failure, operational errors, or wilful damage - have been identified as the main source of environmental damage in the region over time.

The world court has ruled that Belgium cannot bring war crimes charges against a foreign government minister who enjoys diplomatic immunity. The decision by the International Court of Justice in The Hague (ICJ) is expected to stymie attempts to bring charges against several world leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

The case against those accused of involvement in the failed coup attempt of 28 May 2001 in the Central African Republic began on Friday in the capital, Bangui, before the criminal session of the Court of Appeals, news agencies reported.

Representatives from Burundi's government and those of the rebel Conseil national pour la défense de la democratie-Forces pour la défense de la democratie-Forces pour la defense de la democratie (CNDD-FDD) are in the South African capital, Pretoria, to start discussions aimed at bringing a cease-fire to Burundi's civil war that has been raging for eight years.

Uganda is unlikely to meet health sector development targets made two years ago at the United Nations millennium summit, a new report by an economic research organisation has revealed.

Libya’s Minister for African Unity, Ali Abd al-Salam Turayki, said on Sunday that his country wants to revive the joint Egyptian-Libyan initiative to end the Sudanese conflict.
He told reporters that he had discussed "reactivating the Egyptian-Libyan initiative to achieve unity in Sudan" with Egyptian President Husni Mubarak, AFP reported.

Half the population of Uganda lacks access to safe water, and only about 30 percent has access to adequate sanitation, according to Minister of State for Water, Lands and the Environment Maria Mutagamba. Uganda has a population of about 22 million.

The collapse of coffee prices has severely dented Ethiopia’s precious foreign exchange reserves, the National Bank of Ethiopia said on Tuesday. Although the country has seen a massive rise in the reserves since the end of the war with Eritrea, economically it is still being hard hit.

The head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church said on Friday that the bloody war with Eritrea which cost thousands of lives could easily have been avoided.

It's too late for free and fair presidential elections in Zimbabwe, but the deployment of international observers in remote areas could help stop politically motivated violence and torture, the human rights group Amani Trust told IRIN on Monday.

Journalism standards appear to be the latest victim of Zimbabwe's hotly contested presidential election, according to an independent media watchdog.

The discovery of oil in Nigeria’s Niger Delta in 1956 has brought nothing but increased poverty, underdevelopment and violence to the people of the region. Demands for social and environmental justice have been met on the one hand, with brutal repression and the militarisation of the region, by successive governments and on the other, hostility and disdain by the multinationals such as Shell, Chevron and Elf, whose collective operations in the Niger Delta are one of the worst environmental records in the world: Pollution of the air and drinking water; damage to forest areas; oil fires that have left people dead and maimed occur on a regular basis; damage to fish and other sea creatures; oil spillage is also a regular occurrence; dumping of oil into rivers and creeks, and for the past 40 years uninterrupted gas flaring that produces noxious gases and soot close to villages and farms. Some of these flares spew balls of fire up to 300 feet in the sky. The people of the Niger Delta now find themselves “trapped between two evils – the oil companies on the one hand and the tyrannical Nigerian government on the other”. As a result of the above the people have been left pauperised and marginalized.

Women in the Niger Delta, particularly in rural areas are the breadwinners in their households and communities. They are the farmers, fisherwomen and they are responsible for the cooking, cleaning and raising of children and as such it is often women that are most directly affected by destruction of the environment. Nevertheless despite the many hours of daily labour, women have been active at village and community level in the struggle against the multinationals and state aggression. They have paid a high price for their activism. The military and armed police have systematically gone about terrorising whole communities, assaulting and beating indiscriminately. The aim of these attacks is to damage, humiliate or destroy. In addition women are subjected to repressive cultural traditions ranging from the prevention of women in the decision making processes of their communities, to forced female genital mutilation, widowhood rites and domestic violence. Women in the Niger Delta live in fear, fear of walking, fear of trading, fear of sexual abuse, rape, beatings, fear of violence.

The specific types of violence committed against women are: Sexual violence such as rape and prostitution; physical violence such as beatings, maiming and murder; violence against property and violence in the home or by men in the community.

With regard to prostitution and rape, the latter has become a ritual amongst the occupying military and armed police forces as well as security personnel employed by the oil companies. Starting as far back as 1993 at the beginning of the Ogoni campaign, rape has become part of the campaign to destroy and undermine the communities of the Niger Delta. In many cases the rape takes place in the presence of husbands, children, siblings and other members of the community. Women are often dragged from their homes at night, they and their husbands threatened with violence if they do not comply. Women in villages, farms or fishing grounds that are located close to oil facilities are at most risk of sexual abuse, - daily harassment, prostitution and rape - by oil workers both foreign and Nigerian including security guards.

In terms of physical violence, Women are beaten, maimed and abused by the military and police. In every instance the military and police turn peaceful demonstrations and protests into carnage. For women the result is rape, beatings, amputations or worse.

In the case of violence against property, women are subject to having their farms ransacked or their produce stolen. Again these actions are not random but rather systematic acts aimed at destroying property and thereby further undermining Niger Delta communities. Market women have had their stalls and wares destroyed. Often the soldiers, security personnel or oil workers (who know security guards will come to their defence) refuse to pay for their purchases and the women face verbal abuse and possibly physical violence if they protest.

Women are also subjected to mental and emotional abuse. Violence does not actually need to take place, once it has been established as the norm. It is enough to know that violence is a possibility. Women walk in fear as they try to go about their daily work. Fear of being raped, of being beaten or maimed. In addition many husbands, fathers and sons have been killed or maimed leaving women to assume even greater responsibilities. This has meant enduring serious hardship, in finding ways and means to support their families.

This is the abuse and oppression women face in the Niger Delta from the Nigerian government forces and the multinationals. This is in addition to the farmlands, fishing waters and livelihoods destroyed through environmental damage, to say nothing of the impact on the health of women and children, such as skin conditions, bronchial problems, and miscarriages.

Women are very often empowered by the very same events and experiences that seek to destroy them. This may include, becoming politically active, taking on new roles in defence of their property and maintenance of their households. This is also one way in which women can begin to at least attempt to heal the physical and psychological wounds they have suffered.

The women of the Niger Delta have a history of revolt and resistance towards the Multinationals dating back to the mid 1980s when two revolts took place. The first was the Ogharefe women's uprising which took place in the Ethiope LGA in 1984 and the second was the Ekpan women's uprising, in the Okpe LGA in 1986.

More recently there has been the EGI women's revolt which started in September 1998 and the Ijaw women who demonstrated in Port Harcourt in January 1999. The demands of the former were and are similar to the two previous revolts. On 23rd Nov some 7,000 EGI women gathered in the streets and began marching towards ELF's gas plant site. But Elf blocked the road with the help of some 100 mobile police so the most the women could do was to sing and dance as a means of making their message heard.

Since then the women have been accused of trespassing on their own land. Local police and oil personnel have continued to harass them. The present situation is that the women have aligned themselves with the EGI youth council and the struggle continues.

The Port Harcourt demonstration was organised by the Niger Delta Women for Justice (NDWJ) The women took to the streets of Port Harcourt, to demonstrate peacefully against the raping and molesting of women and young girls as well as the beating and killing of young men in Yenagoa, Kaiama and other Ijaw villages. The soldiers fired shots into the air and then arrested at least 34 of the women. Those arrested were stripped, flogged and verbally abused. Others sustained injuries whilst fleeing from the rampaging soldiers.

Grassroots women’s organisations have become steadily more politically active since 1999 as the violence in the Niger Delta has become more widespread. Organisations such as FOWA (Federation of Ogoni Women’s Associations) NDWJ, Egi Women’s Council, Agape is a Birthright and Warri Ladies Vanguard, have become active in the daily struggle against environmental and social injustice. Working together with local youth organisations and human and environmental rights groups, these organisations are involved in monitoring oil spills, and other environmental and human rights abuses, documentation of grievances and compensation claims, advocacy, human rights training.

It is the women together with the Youths that are taking the initiative in the Niger Delta struggling against both the multinationals, federal and state governments alliance and the 'old guard who have failed the people and would like to maintain the status quo at the peoples expense.

The news media were yesterday challenged to establish a self-regulatory institution. Such an institution would offer protection against criticism and accusations from government and other sources, the visiting director of the International Press Institute, Prof Johann Fritz, said.

United States's trade represantative Robert Zoellick anounced the grants in a meeting with ministers and diplomats from SADC region. The package will be divided for regional integration intiaves and linking it with AGOA and customs reform and trade facilitation.

Cape Action for People and Environtment (CAPE) has receives $6-million from Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund.

A school in Eastern Cape is still operating with open-air classes two years after a promise by Panasonic which never materialised.

The South African Gender-Based Violence & Health Initiative (SAGBVHI) will host the Gender Based Violence & Health Research Awards. The awards will be given to researchers from South Africa at the 1st Gender Based Violence & Health Conference, South Africa. The awards are intended to encourage research in specific areas of gender based violence and health.

The City of Johannesburg, Region 7 Office has appointed Nemai Consulting to undertake a investigation into the improvement of the degraded condition of the Jukskei River. They invite you to participate in an Open Day, scheduled at the COUNCIL CHAMBERS at the METROPOLITAN
BUILDING, to showcase all
work done by various organisations, groups and parties in relation to
overall improvement of water resources.

The Lesbian and Gay Equality Project works towards the achievement of full social and legal equality for LGBT people based on sustainable
economic justice and development as a basis for equality and freedom for all.

SANGONeT, in association with LINK Centre at the University of the Witwatersrand, is offering a certificate course designed to promote computer literacy.

The Fifth Congress of the Federation of African Immunological Socie-
ties (FAIS) with be hosted by the Zimbabwe Immunological Society at the Zimbabwean holiday resort of Victoria Falls.

The first course in this series on how to source & access corporate, government & foreign funding, will focus on three major donor markets of vital importance to both small and large NPOs who wish to compete more effectively
in todays funding arena & expand and diversify their donor support base.

The Mauritius Institute of Health is pleased to announce its Training of Trainers courses for Reproductive Health with emphasis on Family Planning.

How to obtain funding for women to attend the Know How Conference in Kampala.

"Freenet is free software designed to ensure true freedom of communication over the Internet. It allows anybody to publish and read information with complete anonymity. Nobody controls Freenet, not even its creators, meaning that the system is not vulnerable to manipulation or shutdown." Well worth exploring for anybody working with secure data or in a sensitive political environment.

since December South Africa has borrowed more than R25 billion in foreign loans (Command performance required of Manuel, February 15). This financial spin-doctoring is undoubtedly the major factor in the recovery of the rand from R13.88 on December 20, but confirms that the Treasury and SA Reserve Bank have learnt nothing from the forward book and Asian contagion debacle of 1998. In addition to his Budget speech on Wednesday, the Minister's deadline expires on Thursday to file affidavits detailing the basis on which he intends to oppose ECAAR-SA's application to the Cape High Court for cancellation of the arms deal. We contend that the arms deal is strategically, economically and financially irrational, and thus constitutionally unlawful. In addition, the Minister failed to comply with the provisions of the Exchequer Audit Act or Public Finance Management Act that govern the management of his portfolio. Captain (now Admiral) Cubby Howell gushed before the Joint Standing Committee on Defence that "submarines are the ultimate stealth weapon to protect fish." The JSCD was told on another occasion that "submarines make small navies important, and that South Africa needs the capacity to give the Americans a bloody nose." Our government was gullible and naive in swallowing the pretensions of the "toys for boys" lobby. At issue now is whether the Cabinet and Minister of Finance will have the courage to concede that the human security needs of people take priority over fish, and to cancel the arms deal at no cost to South African taxpayers.

The Zimbabwe chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA-Zimbabwe) has established that the Zimbabwe government is selectively accrediting international journalists to cover the March Presidential elections, despite undertakings made to the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group, the Southern African Development Community and in the Abuja Accord.